Day 52 or the first day of the new year

So last night, 12.31.2012, my dude and i were trying to figure out a place to go or something to do since neither of us have had new years eve off together in 5 years. The first new years of our relationship was the first time, and then he started working at disneyland and hasn't had a decent holiday schedule since.

So we had a plan to go to one of my friends' house and hang out in fancy, fake furs and drink champagne, but then her man got sick, and plans fell through. We didn't want to go to some giant party or somewhere that was standing room only (his hernia surgery is still freshish and he can't hang for very long).

Now we're sitting in our room, brainstorming, where do we go? what do we do? Everything was expensive and it was getting later and later into events. We finally said, "fuck it, lets just drive somewhere". So i grabbed 3 layers of jackets, some blankets, a beanie, a cooler with a bottle of champagne and 2 glasses, and my camera and we set out.

As we were filling up at the gas station, we were like, "how funny would it be if we drove to Vegas?!" We didn't end up going to Vegas, but we started on the road in that general direction.

Drove for about an hour and a half and ended up in Hesperia/Victorville at a Denny's for food.

Had to get artsy, didn't I?

Hobbit holes!

After we fueled up, we started driving again and ended up driving for maybe another 20 mins, got to Exit 169 and pulled off the highway.

This was the scary part, after pulling off, we couldn't see the road too far in front of us and drove slowly, suddenly the pavement ends, and that's where we ended up! About 15 mins before midnight!

I snapped a couple pictures with long exposures:

Then we looked at the clock and it was midnight! We cheered with a toast from the bottle of champagne we brought (and eventually finished), and danced a little.

Happy New Years!

I snapped a couple more pictures with my fisheye lens:

So it was freezing at this point. Like, below freezing. According to my phone's weather thing, the closest city being Victorville said it was 27 degrees and feels like 17 degrees. Didn't take long for my fingers to start freezing, to a point where i started to not be able to feel my finger tips when i was playing with my camera (almost dropped a lens!).

We started to freeze and decided to call it a night and did the drive home.

The city coming back over the mountain

I'm glad our plans got altered and decided to just drive. We've been wanting to go on a road trip since he got his new car a couple months back, and this was a small taste of what we could do on a moments notice. It also became the best new years i've ever had. Just get out and drive, see the stars, take some photos, and do it all with my best friend :)