My trip to California

Lauren Bernard
Period 2

My Trip to California

“Lauren I swear! If you don’t get up right now...” was what I was awakened as my dad walked by door.  My dad’s voice sounded nervous and worrying.  He was afraid we weren’t going to leave in time to make the plane. He yelled for me and my sisters, Alyssa and Shae, to get up countless times.   Every time I heard him call, the less I wanted to wake up and face a very long day of travel.  My light then came on and there was no turning back.  So I rolled over and gazed at my father with my half blind eyes from the light shining.  He gave me that look that I had seen many times before: he meant business.  If my dad was to hate anything, it would be our vacation not going as he planned.  Step one, on all of his trips, is to get up ridiculously earlier and leave hours before the plane really takes off.  It is okay to play it safe, but he is just impatient.  I looked at my clock and realized it was 5:00 a.m. and our plane did not take off till 4 p.m.  Knowing that I could sleep for hours longer, I let him win. I woke up my sisters and then returned to my room, where I found my mom repacking my suitcase.  I saw cloths flying out of the suitcase and her disturbed face.  I was going to ask why, but I answered my own question because this was no surprise to me; she has done this on every vacation I have ever taken.  She kept shooting me the “look”.  It clearly stated “why in the hell would you pack this?”  She gets so stressed that things aren’t going to go well.

I am the middle child between two sisters.  My oldest sister at this time was about 18, my youngest was 9 and I was 13.  I am nothing like my two sisters.  I am the quiet one because they can talk enough for me.  I was expecting a fight to happen because of how controlling my parents were being.  Not only minutes later, I heard my sisters blaring at my father.  I’m sure he was prodding them to hurry and they snapped, however I decided to stay out of it and not find out the truth behind the fight.   I am the one they will always come to vent to, and it’s something I have become very acquainted with over the years.  I have become very good at nodding along. 

“Why is he so stupid and controlling?  Why can’t he just be a normal dad?” As my sisters yelled in my ear, I was thinking about the hours of sleep I was missing.  I was also thinking and hoping that everything would calm down once we arrived in beautiful California.  I had no idea what to expect, but from living in Ohio, my expectations were only to get better.   

The rest of the day felt like it was in fast forward.  I was on auto pilot until I was in my plane chair with a blanket over my head crying.  I have never been an admirer of planes, but my ear drum erupting was never something I thought would happen to me.  When my ear drum burst, we had just taken off so I had a whole plane trip to deal with pain.  It felt like someone was putting needles in my ears.  I could have let this ruin my vacation, but I still had hope it was going to turn around any second.  When we got off the plane, I took some medicine and calmed down.  Landing in California was astonishing, remarkable and incredible.  I had been waiting to come here for as long as I could remember.  The beach climate is where I am supposed to be living.  When I walked outside, I could smell the salt water and could feel the breeze in my hair.  Even though these were things I was not used to, it felt like home. 

The trip had just started and I didn’t want to waste a minute of it.  We started out in San Francisco.  This is a huge city so we able to experience Chinatown, a very hippy town, and the core of San Francisco.  The first thing I noticed was how windy it was there.  The second thing I noticed was how horrible everyone was at driving.  It felt like there were no lines on the road; everyone was just driving on top of each other.  We saw so many sites and so many different kinds of people.  Being in Chinatown was such a cultural shock.  There was a Farmer’s market on every street you turned on.  I couldn’t handle the smell of the foods they were eating, but ever native walking around couldn’t get enough. It was all sorts of dried up foods, including seafood and meat.  To me this is so foreign, but that is exactly why I love being shown new things.  It opens your eyes so much!  When I would walk into a store, I heard French, Chinese, Japanese, German and Sweden.  I have never in my life heard so many different languages.  Surprisingly, English was the minority language. 

I remember walking into the hotel near Chinatown.  From the outside, it looked old and dirty.  It was a white building surrounded by brick and steel.  When I walked inside, it was beautiful and longstanding.  It had a homey feel.  Since my sisters and I were getting too old to share a bed, my parents decided to give us our own room at each hotel on the vacation.  So naturally, every night felt like a party.  It is weird the things a person remembers, from a place.  At this hotel, I remember how soft the water made my hair, how soft the bed was, and the good sleep I got.  The next day we went shopping.  The reason this shopping experience stands out more than any other shopping day is because every store we went into was ten times bigger than any store in Ohio.  I felt like my jaw kept dropping over and over again.  We wanted to do the city right since this was the last time we would be in a city the rest of the trip.  We had a long and enjoyable day.  It was the perfect way to end our stay in San Francisco.  The last thing we did was walk across the Golden Gate Bridge.   That experience is something I’ll remember forever. 

The next city we stop in was on our way to Santa Cruz.  It was a very small, very hippy town.  All the buildings were painted with beautiful designs and lovely artwork.  The cloths were like nothing you have ever seen.  It reminded me of the town in the movie Across the Universe.  Everyone one was so joyful and pleasant.  It wasn’t just this town; all of California was incredibly nice.  We spent most of the day here.  We saw a band, shopped and just practiced a different way to live.  We still had some traveling to do, so we got back in our car in headed to Santa Cruz.

When we arrived in Santa Cruz it was night, so I could not quite get a feel of the place.  We stayed in a motel right by the beach.  I wanted to sleep as soon as I could.  As I was falling into my bed, I heard my oldest sister and my mom laughing hysterically at my dad.  This might not be a big moment for most people, but for my family that was not something you overheard every day.  They never really got along.  I was hoping this vacation would work for the best and then I thought it had.  They could me laughing at me, just as long as they were getting along 

The next morning I couldn’t get up fast enough.  I threw my bathing suit on and woke my sisters up.  I was more than ready to go to the beach.  As I walked down towards the beach, it started to hit me how pretty this town was.  The first thing I took in was the giant amusement park sitting on the beach.  There was any ride or game I could think of right at my fingertips.  A giant Farris Wheel, tons of spiny rides, a huge, old, red roller coaster and those are only to name a few.  Once the shock of that wore off some, I began to head towards the beach.  Boys were skateboarding by, teenage girls were shopping, and couples were having picnics all on the boardwalk.  It was something so unfamiliar but something that felt so right.  Once I hit the beach, it felt as if time had stopped.  It may sound dramatic, but more than true.  The sand was as white as snow.  I sunk right into it within the first step.  Once I laid my towel down and stepped into the water, I never left the beach.  I was either making a sand castle, lying out under the sun, reading, swimming in the ocean, or playing games and rides on the boardwalk.   That night we went to a great seafood restaurant.  I felt so perfectly happy.

The next day it all happened again: the beach.  It is plain and simple.  It was literally all I did.  I had to be forced to enjoy the amusement park too.  The beach was enough for me.  That night was the best of the whole vacation for me.  It had everything I love wrapped up into one day.   It started with us picking up a pizza from what we heard was the best pizza in town.  On our way back to the motel, we were just laughing and really being a family.  We had to walk fast because we were so excited to see High School Musical 2.  It may sound lame, but at the time the premiere of this movie was all my family could talk about.  Yet again, we had the perfect bon voyage to our current town. 

To end the two week California vacation, we decide last minute to head to Yosemite National Park.  Driving to Yosemite, we endured a lot.  There were quite a few ears popping and lots of gasp at the sites along the way.  It just kept going.  It is really the only way to explain it.  I thought I was as high as I could be and then we would just keep driving.  The air was cleaner and had a fresh smell.  If land can be a work of art then Yosemite was a museum.  I had never in my life seen such a pretty view.  I remember our car getting stopped by a herd of cows.  They all just stared at our car.  For some reason my sisters and I got terrified of the cows.  It didn’t hit us until after we were able to pass, how silly it was to be scared of a few cows.  We ate at probably the only restaurant in the park.  It was a real pork and beans kind of place.  I loved how homemade the food tasted.  We had a very hard time getting a hotel room that evening. For a long time we thought we were going to have to stay in our car for the night.  Luckily, the last hotel available had two rooms.  The next day we did some more site seeing.  We realized the only food accessible here was one grocery store.  We pigged out and bought enough food for the ride back to the airport.

When we were finally boarding our plane it was miserable.  I was leaving and going to miss California very much.  I walked across the Golden Gate Bridge, endure a cultural shock like Chinatown, saw how people in California really shop, got plenty of sunburns from Santa Cruz,   discovered my fear of motionless cows, and life lasting laughs with my family.  They make me a better person today.  I am now open to more things.  I want to learn different cultures and see the world.  The memories from this vacation will stick with me forever.