los angeles. it's been real.

to our favorite people,

well, these LA days have been in a word: interesting. laine and i drove straight from salvation mountain to san diego where we camped on the beach! never slept so good on the ground as we did there. not sure why, but i ain't complaining! we woke up to a heavy smog and a thick overcast. little did we know it would stick with us the whole time we were in LA. never saw the sun!! while in san diego we went to see laine's friend pat dodd! he lives in san diego with his wife, lacey whom laine knows, but i didn't get to meet though i know she has an eye for aesthetics because their apartment was lovely. pat was super cool and reminded us of one of laine's fav bands playing in san diego that night: frightened rabbit! so we hurried and got tickets and saw

them perform at the house of blues. laine was very happy :) pictured to the right is laine and pat in his san diego apt!

and excellent news!! my most precious friend, hannah lewis was spontaneously given a round trip ticket to california to hang out with us for a few days!! she called me with the news and

asked me what i thought about it, and i said "get on the next plane". she did that, pretty much. we picked her up from LAX the next day,

got her in the car and said, "where should we go next?" that's usually how our days begin.

so we went to venice to see laine's long-time friend cassie ball!! cassie just got married to christoph. upon meeting him, you assume he is the funniest, most delightful 20-something year old you'll ever meet. then you learn he is a 40-something year old which makes it better.

his son, noriel lives with them as well and he was so sweet and accomodating. nicest, most generous 15 year old i've met in a while! good thing we are animal-lovers because the ball's have five pets and they were super entertaining, especially fat-cat pictured to the left. need i point him out? :) cassie and her family

were so good to us. so nice to stay with them after camping for a week.

after venice, we went to santa monica and stayed with one of my favorite friends from dbu, jaceson! he is a super talented artist/writer/person who moved to cali to pursue his dreams. haven't talked to him in a while, but he is one of those lifelong friends and welcomed us to crash at his apt. santa monica was fun. hannah and i went down to the pier and rode the ferris wheel, played with some parrots, and insulted a homeless

kid. not on purpose. he was just really temperamental. in my defense, if you crawl on the ground acting a fool, i'm going to assume you want some attention. in his defense, he felt i should have paid him for the picture...lesson learned. we also hit up the getty museum in malibu which was wonderfully educational and beautiful!!

here is hannah and me atop the ferris wheel on the santa monica pier! and next to that is obviously the offensive picture of the homeless kid. speaking of offensive pictures, i'll add this

one from the getty for humor's sake :) as well as a pic of laine

and hannah in the courtyard of the getty museum.

we woke early this morning and said goodbye to jaceson and dropped hannah off at the airport to go back to dallas. she made it safely home! then laine and i drove to santa barbara and are currently in love and i'm not fully convinced i will ever leave here. LA was a fun time, especially staying with our dear friends, but that city could eat you alive. we learned a lot in LA, for sure. laine and i are happy for our time there and happy to be somewhere else :) especially santa barbara!! we will update soon on our time here, but know that we are happy girls, blessed to be out here but excited to come back home. just not quite yet. still, there are places to go and people to see. we love your prayers! and speaking of prayers, i'll end with this pearl of wisdom from mother teresa:

The fruit of silence is prayer,

the fruit of prayer is faith,

the fruit of faith is love,

the fruit of love is service,

the fruit of service is peace.

amen to that. love you guys so much.

laine and caro.

Salvation Mountain

Caro and I crossed into California yesterday with much excitement. My friend Mallory Hill told us that Salvation Mountain was just about an hour and a half from the coast and Caroand I were anxious to see it. We had started our drive all the way from Northern Arizona that day so we were racing the sun to get to Salvation Mountain by daylight.

For those of you who have never heard of Salvation Mountain, it was built by a man named Leonard Knight, 79 years old. We first learned about it from the book/movie "into the wild", which we are huge fans of. In the movie, this guy named chris graduates college, sells all his stuff and makes his way into alaska. but before that, he goes to salvation mountain, where he meets leonard, a man who loves god and is crazy about jesus.

as we are driving to salvation mountain, we are just hoping we can find it in time before the sun goes down, driving through tiny town after tiny town finally arriving in Niland, California. After asking someone at the only gas station in town we get some direction. Finally, after driving through the desert, we see it from a distance. so beautiful. and as we pull up to it, we see

leonard (the same leonard who played himself in the movie) !!! he's chillin' outside of his covered truck, where he has lived for 18 years by himself. we jump out of the car and he jumps up, so excited to see us. we introduce ourselves and he says, "come let me show you my mountain. i'm really excited about it. a lot of people really love my mountain."

so he hobbles toward his man-made mountain telling us how he spent the last 30 years making it with his bare hands. He first takes us into his man-made cave he calls "the museum" where inside he had painted trees he had made himself with tires and branches he had found in the desert, covered with adobe he had picked off the ground and painted with donated paints. We follow him in utter amazement. Everywhere written on the walls and man-made trees is "God is love" and "Jesus loves you" and the sinner's prayer: "jesus i'm a sinner please come upon my body and into my heart".

"I never could do anything to please anybody, but everybody really loves my mountain" he says with a little laugh.

Then we follow him out of his cave and to his mountain when he tell us that we should climb the yellow brick road to the top of his mountain and look around! So we do just that.

After we explore the mountain at sunset we walk back down to sit with Leonard who sits on the back on a broken down pick up truck. We thank him and tell him how much his mountain means to us. He hands us a dvd, post cards, and magnets all with pictures of his mountain on them. He thanks us for coming. We then explained to Leonard that we've been struggling with our faith lately, and that meeting him and seeing this mountain has been a great encouragement to us.

"I'm really glad you said that, it really means a lot."

then he tells us how much God loves us and how just saying a little prayer, "Jesus, I love you." could change your life. he kept saying, "just love god...keep it simple."

sitting there, listening to leonard talk to us about how god loves us was incredible. I don't know if I can explain this but hearing that from a man like Leonard really makes you believe it. we couldn't help but listen with tears falling down our faces marveling at the beauty of it all. it should be said that this road trip for us isn't just about seeing the west coast, but it's about figuring things out, working out our faith. we ask too many questions, we are too skeptical of everything. so hearing leonard talk about how simple it is really made sense to us. we drove away peacefully knowing that we don't have to know all the answers. if we just simply love god and surrender our lives to him, he can do incredible things. like he did with leonard, just a simple man who loves god. now people come from all over the world to see his mountain. whether they are religious or not, they are moved by the simple beauty of it, and the love leonard has.

leonard told us they are trying to make the mountain a national treasure. there is a facebook page for it. go to it and "like" it. the more votes, and the more popular it gets, the better chance there is for congress to approve it as a national treasure. go here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Salvation-Mountain/304620534545?ref=search&v=wall

if you ever get a chance to go to salvation mountain, you must.

feeling loved,

laine and caro.

i filled up the grand canyon with love for you.

family, friends, and strangers....

we made it to the grand canyon. wow. seeing the grand canyon is something that you can never fully prepare for or accurately anticipate. laine and i were squealing girls as we ran up to our first glimpse. we would have been embarrassed at our childish behavior, but neither one of us are too concerned with impressing the germans (there were a lot of them at the grand canyon). we camped out and got up early the next day to hike down. we went down approximately 4.6 miles. it was a breeze. you just kinda float on down and enjoy the scenery. coming back up, though....yikes. it was hard but incredible. being in the midst of something like that, i've never felt so close to god. i tried to be still and take it all in, but i'm too finite, and god is too infinite. and i like it that way.

laine and i are currently living like queens. well, queens of the road. we treated ourselves to a motel for the night, so i write this blog chillin' in what some might consider a seedy bed in a seedy room, but for us....we are royalty. after camping for a week, we are living the lifestyle of the rich and famous. we bought "frost and glow" kits at target, so we are feelin' like sassy ladies.

we are driving to california tomorrow, all day most likely. so pray for safe travels and pray for me cuz i think i'm coming down with something. we are having an incredible time, learning so much about ourselves and each other and god and jesus and mother teresa. everyday that goes by we realize more and more how much we adore you guys. this trip wouldn't be as enjoyable if we didn't know there were people back home that miss us. our love for you guys could fill the grand canyon. no doubt.

laine and caro.

gonna name my first-born 'taos'.

These New Mexico days have been a blast! Camping has been really fun. We are getting to be old pros... sort of. We camped up in the mountains in Santa Fe which was
incredible and quite chilly! Caro woke up feeling a little congested due to the weather! I (laine) cooked us little mozzarella tomato Italian pizza-ish things and they were gooooood!

The next day we hiked around till we found a spot to set up the hammock William Graham (a dear friend of ours) let us borrow. There we read for a while and took a little nap. After that we drove an hour north to a little town called Taos, which is my favorite so far. We are still here, where everything is locally owned and there's something very genuine in all of the people. It's nice, it's like the town has nothing to prove, and in that, they live beautiful and peaceful lives at the base of these

amazing mountains. Artists and vagabonds old and young... but mostly old (hehe). It's so easy to feel connected to Taos. So easy to be rooted right in with the community. I don't know how we are going to bring ourselves to leave tomorrow...sorry this post is a little hectic, but we want to walk around. Free Jazz concert tonight at a local bar/restaurant. Who knows what else we will run into!

Thanks so much for your prayers and hopes for our travels. We are having a blast and we partly owe it to those who love us and have been keeping us in there prayers. We think and talk of those we love often. We have a lot of time to kill on the road. We talk about what we love most about each of our friends and family members. So little did you know each of you are woven into our travels. So you should feel a part...

until next time,

Laine and Caro<3

jellyfish of the sky.

you know those days that are so horrible you want to jump in a pool of hungry sharks and die? or one of those days where you go to bed at night and think to yourself, "did i do anything worth remembering?" yeah, we don't know about those days either. our day will be remembered indeed.

we woke up at 4:30...make that 4:45. took a quick shower and headed off to the balloon fiesta!! it was in a word: magical. there was this huge field where people were free to go where they wanted as the ballooners set up their balloons. we were right where the action was. we watched them get all blown up and take off. first just the one, then a couple more and soon enough the sky was full of them. and it was "special characters day"!!! No joke, it was so magical that at one point we thought we were going to cry... here's a couple pics from the fiesta!

Up...

up...

and AWAY!!!

i like this one. kinda retro.

here is spongebob. he stole the show.

happy!!!

darth vadar! luke, i am your father. (laine)

i'm not really into star wars, but still....this was a good one. and some kangaroo chillin' in the back.

cutzie bug of some sort. so many more of the balloon festival. i'll put them all up on facebook later (caro).

ok, so after the balloon festival we met up with the one and only jan margrave who was randomly in albuquerque at the same time! maybe not so random, her daughter alyssa lives here and jan was visiting her grandchildren! they took us to this incredible indian-vegetarian restaurant where we ate like queens.

this is us in front of annapurna! yum yum yum.

jan's daughter alyssa let us bum a nap at her place as well, seeing as we got up so early and our humble camp sight might not be the most comfortable....note to selves: invest in sleeping pads.

jan is a saint and slipped some cash in caro's boots so we could go ride the tram to the sandia mountains!

jan and alyssa in front of alyssa's beautiful home! you guys are incredible.

ok, no time to waste. we had to get to the tram! the world's longest tram!!! it was a fifteen minute ride to the top. once we got off we went on a mile + hike to this cabin. it was built during the depression when people who needed a job would come up to the mountains to make hiking trails. instead of making the commute up the mountain everyday, they built this stone cabin to stay at until their work was done. it was a fun hike, absolutely beautiful. the weather was incredible, slightly chilly but perfect for hiking.

here's the view from the top on the left and the cabin on the right!!

so many more pictures, but it has been quite a long day. hopefully we will attain some sleeping pads and then off to our tent to reflect on the day. god is kind!!!!! off to santa fe tomorrow. that's what's up.

laine and caro.

New Mexico.

dearest bloggers,

we made it to New Mexico!!!! The drive was incredibly scenic and awesome. The windows were down almost the whole way, music blasting and the wind in our hair. It was wonderful.

Leaving Amarillo was bittersweet. Jeremiah, Julia and Melissa were so much fun. We hiked the Palo Duro Canyon and ate us some good mexican food...Ruby Tequilas. Don't worry, caro got a "Dos Rita" which I stole many a swig. Anywho, it was such a gift to see Jeremiah and Julia interact together as a newly married couple. Needless to say they melted our hearts and made us believe in young marriage.

Hiking Palo Duro Canyon.

Dos Rita... ! ! !

love birds/lightweights/most hospitable people ever.

now entering new mexico!

tent set up was a success. we are apparently excited about this. can't see it too well, but the sandia mountains are in the background.

exploring old town albuquerque. we found a toy Chihuahua!

enjoying live music.

caro in our front yard.

SO... we did have a couple minor incidents today... one including retrieving a lens cap from Interstate 40... and another including me (laine) freaking out about my debit card spontaneously retiring... but no bones are broken we end the day laughing. (I should note that my mom is amazing and will bend over backwards to help me when i least deserve it. I love you so much momma.)

Tomorrow should be incredible, waking at the crack of dawn for the Balloon Fiesta!!! where many hot air balloons and hot chocolate will be enjoyed. Cross your fingers that we will be able to sneak on one and fly into the sky!!! So tune in tomorrow or the next day for the pics caro will capture with such beauty and skill!!!!

love love love to you. everyday that goes by we realize what we've left behind and by looking from a distance we can recognize it in all it's beauty. Friends and family... we love you so much.

but we ain't comin' home yet!!!!!

peace... in the .... west....

laine and caro.

day one: still alive.

well, here we sit. a lot of you haters didn't believe. but we're sticking our middle finger up to you as we sit in amarillo...what we didn't tell you is that we are also sticking up our pointer finger to show the peace in our hearts as we bask in the glory of our manifested dreams.

in all seriousness, we arrived safely at our first destination: amarillo. our parents and whoever else can rest easy, we are alive and well enjoying the company of loved ones.

here is our first picture. departing from laine's house:

Wide-eyed and bushy-tailed!

It was a six hour drive from dallas to amarillo. not bad. easily survivable with good music.

this is a picture of our first sunset!

alright, much to do today! we will fill you in on it later....if we don't die. (kidding mom!! hehe.) LATES!

laine and caro.