It took me about a eleven million hours, but I finally uploaded all of my trip pictures to Flickr (Phoenix and San Diego). I never really wrote much about the trip besides some highlights and a long description of Brad’s hospital visit, and now the trip is practically a distant memory. I’m still not going to go into any detail, but I will share a few photos so you can see just how cool my business trip slash vacation was.

In Phoenix, when I wasn’t working, we spent a lot of time at the pool. And even though we didn’t see much of the actual desert, our hotel did a great job of recreating it in the form of a Cactus Garden. Other than hang out at the resort, we took shuttles and trolleys all over Scottsdale to see what it had to offer. A lot of shopping basically. I hate shopping, so we didn’t buy anything, but we had a good week anyway.

My first day in San Diego was actually spent in Los Angeles, namely Hollywood Boulevard, where I took far too many pictures of the star-studded sidewalk (because really, who cares?) and met the likes of Batman and Michael Jackson.

The next day we romped around San Diego all day, seeing the sites. It was my first time seeing the Pacific Ocean and I was inspired to attempt to conquer my fear of heights. I failed. But I also had my very first In-n-Out Burger, of which I approve.

The third day was called the Desert Drive Day, but actually we drove through of variety of terrains: mountains, rocks, deserts, plains. The best photo opps were in the desert though, where I began a series called “Trash in the Desert.” Look for a book to be published soon. I also captured a lot of the beautiful flora (fortunately we encountered no fauna because desert snakes equal not cool).

My last day in San Diego was spent at the zoo. Of course. I wanted to see everything though, which meant over six hours of walking. Fortunately Erica and Ronia were up for it (actually Ronia was pushed in a stroller, she’s kind of a baby like that). The zoo has so many cool animals, and if you pay attention, they have some really interesting plants as well. Erica says Dr. Suess used to visit the zoo to sketch the plants, and then used them in his book illustrations. But of course, my very favorite part was the elephant exhibit (is it wrong to say animals are exhibits? It feels wrong) because I’m best friends with them.

Most of the trip photos on Flickr are friends/family only, so if you refuse to jump on the bandwagon, too bad for you. If you do jump though, add me as a contact and get an all-access pass to my pictures. Hot.