Lauren and amber and I have been having a blast. Too much fun in fact. We are staying another day or so. Yesterday we went to amber's church. It was kinda on the wild side and reminded me of campus crusade in college a little bit. Then we went to the beach. The beach was swarmed with other people celebrating the 4th. It was like a beach party with thousands of people. Reminded me of Spring break or something. Everyone on the beach was between 20-30 years old. It was kind of weird. Amber and I went and played in the ocean. The water was cold and the shore dropped off really quickly. To get out where the waves were breaking you couldn't touch the bottom. There was a crazy rip tide where we were so the whole thing felt a little dangerous. I played until I couldn't take getting driven into the sand by another wave. The sets were coming in at about 5-7 feet. It was really cool.

After we were covered in salt and sand, we ran into this cool group of people that had a sweet suite at a hotel along the beach. We didn't have a place to shower and we wanted to stay and watch the fireworks that night so we went back to their hotel to hang out with them. They had 14 people in one gigantic hotel room. It was a crazy set up. After a while a bunch of us went down and went in the pool and hot tub. It was a lot of fun. The group were people from all over the world who were working as interns at UCLA. We had a great time meeting and talking with people. After the hot tub we split off from the group and went back to the boardwalk where the houses meet the beach which is what they call "the strand". I made friends with some people along the beach and amber and lauren went into this crazy fancy house party with bouncers and everything. I got a picture of them dancing in the second story window like idiots. LOL At this point it was dark and crowded and by the time they came outa the house party the fireworks started. The display was weak compared to red white and boom!!! After the fireworks one of the people who I was talking to before the fireworks got into an argument that the cops had to break up. It was pretty funny. Amber Lauren and I wandered around talking to people and people watching. We went up the beach and saw another house party where they had a michael jackson impersonator. He did a show and about 2500 people gathered. It was pretty well done with lights and everything. He performed off a huge balcony. It was really funny! As if the day couldn't get more random we ran into a couple people who we were talking to earlier and they needed a ride home so we all hopped in ambers car and drove them across town. Crazy end to the day. We were all tired and hadn't eaten dinner. WHen we got back to Ambers house we warmed up left over pizza and made quesadillas.

miles so far: ~4600
elevation: 190 ft
temperature: 84 degrees