Hiking

Today Bill, Sara and I took the my new super car to Joshua Tree National Park for some hiking.  We had decided on this plan yesterday on our walk.  Since I now have a super fuel economy vehicle our travelling option have opened up.  I'll drive anywhere.  This was actually the first time anyone other than Max had ridden in the back and Bill reported that it was fabulous and that he was shortly going to be purchasing his own Camry because he wants to be me.  We spent much time making fun of each other because, well, that's what we do.

Sara and I have a year pass to Joshua Tree because that's the kind of gals we are.  We both took along our chapstick in case we saw some marines.  When Bill and I hiked San Jacinto in 2007 we saw marines.  It was undoubtedly the best moment of the hike.  There were so many of them.  You never know when you're going to run into a pack of marines.

In any case today's hike was sans marines, but avec a tarantula.  Sara screamed and I started to panic thinking it was a snake because we were in a canyon and one time I saw the biggest snake I have ever seen in a canyon, but turns out it was just a tarantula.  He did not try to eat us, but Sara was nearly in tears.  This was the second tarantula me and Sara had seen in a week because last week we saw one when we were walking.  I'm not a fan of the tarantula, but I find them much less scary than the snake which should be banned from Earth.

We knew we couldn't do the whole out and back trail so we set the timer for 1.5 hours at which time we dutifully turned around and then missed the trail and then had to scramble over some rocks and then we decided to "backtrack" where we found where we had gone wrong and where the trail had been clearly marked for people who were actually paying attention.

They couldn't have made it more obvious if they'd said, "This way morons."

Then we came home, spending a fair amount of time making fun of each other because that is what we do.  And despite scrambling over rocks I feel pretty damn good, which is fabulous because tomorrow I have to go to jury duty in fucking Barstow.  Barstow!!  I'm so annoyed, but I have these things going for me:  1)  I still know way more than the average juror about voir dire because of my participation in the "How to Pick a Winning Jury" powerpoint (fuck, I still have the powerpoint and maybe I could offer it to the lawyers in case they weren't able to attend the state bar conference  2) my dad knows everyone in Barstow because he worked there from the beginning of time until he retired.