I did promise...it's late but here it is!

Oh hey, remember that trip I went on that I said I would blog about at some point? Well here I go. Finally. It's going to be short, but it's at least something!

I felt so grown up going through the airport alone and without my parents right by my side. It even helped that I didn’t even need help finding my terminals or anything. I mean, at 18 you’d think I’d be able to read signs that told you where to go. I probably shouldn’t have felt so proud of myself for that, but I really was proud.

I always get really sentimental on plane rides. Maybe it’s that little sense of freedom I get to feel knowing I’m leaving home, or maybe it’s the fact I’m flying, but I always realize on planes that there is so much more out there in the world that I haven’t been able to see yet. I really want to see it all. I want to be able to travel and see the world. This trip, as I looked down on the passing towns, I wanted more than anything to take a road trip of the Midwest. Just to travel and not be sure where I was going, but be going, would be a dream come true. Because, I’ll admit it, and it won’t be the first time I have, I’m not ready for college yet. I want to discover more before I settle down with a career and life.

But anywho, after not finding our group in LAX for about ten minutes, I connected with everyone, 15 other girls and three ATS instructors, later 4 and we played an epic game of Apples to Apples as we waited for everyone else. I was hoping that the first day we were going to be able to go into the city and see some sites, but instead we just went to our camp site outside Ventura and set up camp. Okay, so here’s the thing. It takes what? A half hour max to set up a tent? Now let’s factor in that we were Girl Scouts. Probably should take us less right? Yea right! It took us, us being three of us, two hours to get our tent up. Laugh now, go ahead. We just couldn’t figure out how it was suppose to go, although looking back, it was really, really easy. After that we were going to go to the beach right next to our camp, but it was blocked off for bird mating. YAY. So we just sat around for the night and ate pizza and chatted.

The cops showed up that night to the people camping next to us yelling “HEY you! Yeah, get over by the motorcycle!” When we woke up in the morning there were beer bottles and food everywhere. The best part the gulls were eating and drinking what was left over. I took pictures.

We got up early this morning to head out to the channel islands on the boat. Taking the tent down was a lot easier than putting it up. And we were ready to go in an hour, showered and all. Luckily we showered that morning because it was going to be our last shower for five days. The boat ride was fun, typical of most boat rides, and when we got to the island we had to hike 3/4ths of a mile to get to our site lugging all of our food and supplies. So after a few trips back and forth and some really nice guys offering us their dolly, we were able to get camp all set up, tents and all.

Every day was pretty much the same. Not that I’m complaining. We hiked a lot. About 33 miles total. The land was really pretty and although the wild life only consisted of earwigs, ravens (which by the second day stole all my snake food), island foxes (Which were the size of a puppy and just simply the cutest things ever), and the sea life, it was simply beautiful. I was always stuck in the back because although I love hiking, I am not fit and so I am really slow. It helped when one of the girls was afraid of heights and just needed a friend there to help her get through it, but it wasn’t so great when we got lost…twice. I mean we weren’t lost lost. Once we lost the path. And took another one that took us maybe an extra half mile past where we could have gone giving us an extra half hour to our hike, but we were still able to find our way back to where we were going. The other time we just were so far behind that we couldn’t see anyone around us at all. We were just hoping that the group was ahead of us. One of the days we actually got to the highest peak on the mountain (Mt. Mountain) which was 1200 above sea level. Every night we would come home, eat rather unsatisfying food, hang out (I would read), and then when it got dark we would play flashlight tag. Probably the worst part was that the ATS instructors were really good at hiding and weren’t afraid to go far off and go anywhere.

We went kayaking one day, which was really cool. We got to go through some sea caves and see some really cool sea creatures like whales and dolphins and even seals. Going through the caves was a lot of fun. I was scared a lot of the time. You couldn’t really get through the caves without cutting your hands on the rocks because you had to push your way through. It was so tight and so dark that sometimes I thought we were going to fall out of the kayak and basically die. Luckily we didn’t. After kayaking nine of us suited up for snorkeling, but despite the fact we were in California, the water was super cold and we just chilled on the beach for an hour before three of us actually went in. We made it over to a rock and waited for the boat leaving with people to head out before we started snorkeling. Too bad, it was about an hour that we waited and by the time we were actually ready to go we were all freezing and just trying to keep our body heat up. We went around the dock once saw some starfish and other cool creatures, and then we went back up to the beach.

We never spent much time in the city site seeing, so I definitely want to go back and check that out. But, after a week on an island where you couldn’t shower or properly brush our hair or use a flushable toilet, I don’t think I am ready to go back to the channel islands just yet. It was a great time, I met some of the most amazing girls in the world and I hope I get to see them again.

Okay, wow. Lame post. Oh well. That was a really quick idea of my trip.