This year I made a goal to go on as many trips as possible to go see the cool places in Southern California! As a non-local, I haven’t seen a lot of the beautiful Southern California destinations. This past month I went on two trips to Mount Laurel (near Mammoth) and Joshua Tree.

I went on a spontaneous camping trip to Joshua Tree with my roommate, Jordyn, and our friend Luke. It was my roommate’s first time camping! We made sure she got the full experience with a campfire and smores. We left on Friday after my class and by the time we got to the camp site it was already getting dark. We set up camp quickly, and stayed up telling stories and looking at the stars. We even saw the milky way. The next day we went on a hike up Rocky Mountain. The views were beautiful! I’d never seen a desert with so much vegetation – it was breathtaking. Before we went back home we went through the Hall of Horrors and climbed to the top of a rock formation.

I also went on a trip to Mount Laurel with Emerick. Mount Laurel is near Mammoth and is a great mountain for climbing! It was my first climbing experience and it was really fun (except the way down was pretty scary). My favorite part of the trip was taking a break halfway up the mountain and just listening to the silence. It’s not often in busy college life that you get a second to slow down. When we got to the top we saw some snow and a spectacular view!

Keep on the lookout for more trips this year! Hopefully I’ll go on many more 🙂