June

We returned home Sunday, June 12th to a roaring party down the street from our house. We deeply regretted not staying out in the mountains longer. I quickly threw a dinner together while Christian brought our stuff in from the Jeep. Caitlyn had gone to get her Patriarchal Blessing earlier that afternoon.

We sat down for dinner and did our weekly video chat with Emily. During the week, Emily had been helping Caitlyn register for her fall classes. Caitlyn worked most of the week but took off Wednesday to hang out with her high school friends. One of them turned 18, so they had all taken the day off to go to the beach to celebrate. Aubrey had already turned 18 and was able to drive them all to Laguna Beach. 

Caitlyn had the next Tuesday off, so we decided to go for a drive. We let Caitlyn choose where we were to go. She decided that we were going to go to Salton Sea. She saw some pictures in our archives from when we took them when they were little but she could not remember it. Since she is into photography these days, she wanted to go back to take pictures of all the birds and dead fish and stuff.

Before we went, we decided to start our Father's Day celebrations a bit early because we got Christian some little accessories for his Jeep that we knew that he would love to try out on this trip.

I got him some little entry guards and Caitlyn got him some side mirrors so that he can take the doors off his Jeep and still drive legally. So he put them on and we left the door behind!

Unfortunately, Salton Sea is pretty much a dump. We went through some pretty sketchy neighborhoods to find the marina we visited years ago. Also, some company bought a lot of the land up so much of the access to the beach was no longer open to the public. It was pretty frustrating. We also did not really see any birds anywhere. We decided to go to the Sony Bono National Wildlife Refuge...where we saw no birds. The water has receded so far that you cannot even see it from the observation deck. We travelled a long way, it was getting really hot and poor Caitlyn was so disappointed at there being no birds there.

We decided to traverse up the other side of the sea to see what we could find and started to talk about alternative plans. We found ourselves at the boat launch.

It was bone dry. We could have driven off of it. You can almost see the sea off in the distance. It is astounding how much it had dried up. But I guess if you think about it, we saw the same issues at Lake Powell and Shasta Lake. We have, however, passed a lot of smaller lakes that don't seem nearly as affected. A few of them look totally normal, so I'm not really sure about what is going on with these lakes and if there is more to it than the drought to contend with.

We eventually found a few birds here and there but you had to be pretty quick on the draw. To be honest, we saw more birds going through the farms than anywhere else.

Once we had our fill of the Salton Sea, we decided to head over to check out the Painted Canyon Canyon near Mecca (unfortunately). But it was a really neat canyon. We just kind of drove through it. If it wasn't so hot and getting late in the day, it would have been nice to stay here much longer to explore, but as it was, we were on the verge of getting heat stroke.

We headed out of the desert and went in search of some Icee to refresh us for our drive home.

For the actual Father's Day, we had Terry and Jackie come over for dinner after church. Christian smoked us some ribs.

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Emily has just been spending most of her time working to get enough money to return to school in the fall. Her new job is very tiring but she has gotten some good experience working there and the money is definitely better. In her free time, she hangs out with her friends. Her roommate, Lanie, has decided college is not for her and will be returning home to Tennessee to pursue a nursing career. So they have been trying to spend as much time as possible together. We are sad that she won't be up there with Emily anymore.

Grandma Jackie gave Emily some funds to get a top for her truck. She decided to get a soft top so that she can take it off if she needs to or just put it down. Traveling with her stuff back and forth to or from California will be a lot easier to deal with with a top.

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It has been difficult for Christian to work in the shop in the extremely hot temperatures we are currently having but Christian will try to get out early and get some things done before the heat gets totally unbearable. We need to finish Caitlyn's vehicle for her to go to college so we have a deadline to make. 

We had a brief summer thunderstorm on day, but we didn't get any rain from it. It was really neat but we didn't get more than a few drops of rain. Christian took Caitlyn in the out just in the neighborhood to teach her how to take pictures of lightning. She got some really good shots.

Also, the TJ got a bit of a lift. Although, it should have just taken half a day, it ended up taking a full two days in the usual fashion. So that set us back a little, but boy does it look so much better. I think we will not have as much problems getting over things now. We drove it around a little to make sure there were no problems but haven't gotten a chance to test on it yet.