My Very Own California Adventure

Yesterday, my ward decided to go to the Newport Beach Temple open house just for the day. I woke up bright and early at 6:00 AM. We got in the car and drove four and a half hours to Newport. We went straight to the temple and took the tour. The temple is so pretty inside. I especially enjoyed the rounded doorways. Everything is so clean and pretty in the temple and the chandeliers are amazing. After we went to the temple, lunch at Ruby's on the pier, and to the beach (where several girls from my ward got stung by jellyfish), we decided it was time to head home. We got back on the road at 5:30 PM and got stuck in traffic. We finally got out of the traffic when our tire blew out and we went careening out of control down the highway of DOOM. That's a little melodramatic....actually, the van swayed a little but we pulled off the road. We looked at the tire which was very beat up and not going to work anymore and were very concerned about what we should do next. We tried calling AAA but since my parents weren't with their car, AAA said they wouldn't cover us. JERKS! Morgie happened to have a AAA card so she called and they said they were on their way. The car was still on the freeway so we couldn't even try to change the tire because it was on the side facing traffic. We tried pushing the car off the freeway (that was a dumb idea) but we couldn't even move it an inch. :) It is a really heavy van, after all. We saw at least three policemen drive past and none of them stopped to help. Finally, a motorcycle cop pulled over to help us. He told us we needed to get off the highway. Even though it would ruin the tire even more, we drove it off to the side. Then we thought the policeman would offer to help change the tire, but he didn't. He told us not to try to "run across the highway." What an idiot!<(This quote taken from Hermione from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone). The AAA guy came and fixed our tire and we were back on the road! We stopped again, down the road to use the bathroom. The first place we saw was a bar called Cattlemen in Hickville, California (that wasn't the actual name). We went inside and ordered two Sprites and then all 12 of us used the bathroom. We asked the server for two straws but she said she couldn't get any for us because it was a busy night (although there were only four people at the restaurant). It was an interesting bar/restaurant with a stuffed pheasant in the entrance and a wolf with a flattened head hanging on the wall. There was also a pond in the entrance way with five goldfish in it. We found it all very entertaining but we were also pretty scared. We got back in the car and hit the road, finally arriving home at 12:45 am. What an adventure!