California...

Oh wow, we had a great time in California. But, we did drive there and have some interesting times in the van, like when we were in the California desert and there was a giant traffic jam and the van started overheating. So, we had to keep the doors open and turn off the AC and just enjoy the heat. FUN!
Then, on the way home, the AC went out all together, so we had a warm, sticky drive home. Ewwwwwwww.
But, we stopped in Las Vegas on our way and stayed there for a night. If anyone is wanting to take a trip to Vegas anytime soon, I would recommend that you NOT go in the summer. It was about 115 degrees there. I do not handle heat well. At least it was dry heat.
Then, we did get to see Hoover Dam, which Chris was very excited about.
Then, we headed to our rental beach house for the next four days in Oxnard, CA (about 40 min. away from LA). At our house, we drank A LOT and walked to the beach whenever we got warm. But, we had a huge deck to hang out on, so we did. It was a very nice temperature here, at night it was COLD! We had to go buy sweatpants for both Chris and me. We had a nice grill, so we did use that for dinner one night, and then used up all of our other grill food at about 1 in the morning a couple of other mornings when Chris wanted to grill food for a midnight snack. What a crazy guy.
On our way back to MN, we stopped in San Francisco and stayed with a high school classmate of theirs...we saw the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, and Muir Woods forest, and then stopped in wine country for a little while. We were going to camp in wine country, but since we already knew the AC wasn't going to make it, Chris did not sample wine and drove us all through the night. What a nice boy.
We had a great time....here are a few pictures....