Day 27: Arizona to California

After 3 and a half weeks I had finally cleaned my car at grandma's house . I cleaned out the smashed crackers, seashells, sand, popcorn kernels, and wrappers and reloaded our carefully strategized automobile. We said bye to grandma, thanked her for her incredible hospitality and headed to Cali. After driving for hours, making it through the Agricultural inspection and a few rest stops, we finally landed at our next destination- Joshua Tree National Park. Now Im not going to dis Joshua Tree, because (1) I'm sure our effort level to explore at the moment had diminished our experience, (2) the place is named Joshua, so it is by necessity awesome, and (3) we realized we kind of entered into the back door of Joshua Tree. But the trip seemed to be less promising than imagined. Although it seems part of that was due to Allison and I not having a clue what to expect and making up a rainforest paradise of what it might look like. In case you haven't been it is actually a very dry hilly desert environment with much different plant and animal life than you might find in a tropical forest. I had assumed a Joshua Tree was probably a really large, strong, old tree. Nope, just sort of little neat looking bush trees. We did, however, have a chance to see a really cool spring in the park with clusters of palms, rich bird life, and a lot of history. Our ambition ended about there and we shot back for the freeway to the Cook's in Culver City.
There we had the blessing of being able to see Krista, Michael, and their adorable son, Tristan. We enjoyed their company for a few hours as Krista made us a delicious home-cooked dinner. Tristan gave me a green car for my birthday as he promised. He was pretty excited about getting me a hot wheels car just like he had, and I was actually just as excited to receive it. Something about a young child being exuberant about giving you a simple birthday gift, makes the gift worth 10 times more. From there, Allison and I navigated our way to Lake Forest, where we'll spend the next 3 days at the Celebrate Recovery Conference at Saddleback with an incredible leadership team.