Day 5- arrival in Cali

I'll start out with some pictures from a rest stop in Arizona.
Waking up this morning was so nice, knowing that it was our last day of driving for 12 hours was exciting. We left from Gallup, went through Flagstaff, AZ, the Mojave Desert and ended up in Solana Beach, CA. We stopped in Flagstaff for lunch and found it is a really nice little town tucked up in the mountains. Derek really liked the atmosphere of this city.
As you enter California you must pull over and speak to a state official. He asks you whether you are traveling with any living things, pets, fruits, or vegetables. We told the man no and he let us drive through. There was no real inspection or anything, he just asked and took us at our word. This was the only state I have ever had this happen in, pretty strange.

Upon entering the state the first thing Derek and I noticed were all of the vanity plates. I read a while ago that Virginia has the most vanity plates, but I can say I have seen tons more in Cali than in Virginia. We passed one woman whose vanity plate said, “DB Queen.” I am not sure what she means it to stand for but DB has never had a good connotation when I have heard it used.

We finally got to the part of the drive that Derek was all excited for. We hit the desert and well it’s the desert. While it was more interesting than Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas it was still not much to look at. Derek was a little disappointed since he was hoping for complete nothingness, just sand. Instead there were a lot more colors and hills than anticipated.After getting past the desert we were outside of LA. We hit this part of town perfectly at rush hour. We never really had a problem with traffic until this point. There was some in Albuquerque, but nothing like California. In addition to the traffic a storm rolled through. A cloud descended upon our route just as we were headed down a sharp hill making a curve to the left. It was slick with the fresh rain and probably the scariest part of the trip. Thankfully my car handled the conditions well and so did the cars following behind mine.We stopped by the apartment to take a look around. By the time we got there it was completely dark and I was a little cranky. We didn’t stay long and moved onto cousin Toni’s house. We arrived about 8pm and sat and talked a while. We then got showers and were passed out around 9pm, we were completely exhausted. I have realized I don't remember this day as well as the rest. I think all the anticipation made it blurry.