air and the palm trees outside lent something exotic to life for a young kid form Oregon. Not even the ever-present smog could douse our spirits. We were on top of the world to quote an old cliché. Tom, Jeff, and I had been friends since middle school, now on that oft traveled road to maturity we had reached college and it was here that our roads would part but before that we decided to make our last summer together one worth remembering.
So we set out in search of memories. We headed east to the Rockies and climbed a mountain together. We came to rely on one another's strengths. Tom, the quintessential negotiator, could talk the average innkeeper into dropping their price twenty percent. He quickly became in charge of our lodgings and general manager of finance. Jeff knew how to get anywhere in the U.S. without even looking at a map, making him navigator and primary driver. Myself, I didn't see me as being all that important to the trips functioning, but the guys told me that without me and my charisma there would have been very little fun on the trip. I suppose they might have been right. Whenever we arrived somewhere I discovered myself looking for and talking to locals finding out what there was to do and where to do it. Things like where the best fishing was and what bait to use, or where there was this absolutely awesome view to be found after climbing up a cliff or what have you.
We visited Mexico, and stayed at a ranch at least an hour away from the nearest town. The sunset there was unlike anything I had ever seen before turning the whole sky into a miasma of warm rich colors. The stars at night were brighter than I had ever seen before, and I finally realized why they call it the Milky Way as it does look like a great big milk moustache in the sky. .
On our way up north again Tom got the urge to visit the Grand Canyon. Jeff, ever the skeptic, whined, "who cares about a big trench?- .
