Impromptu road trip takes Carina to the road back home, and reminds her of what really matters the most. Photos by Carina Noyla, Staff Writer

By Carina Noyola, Staff Writer

Each summer for the last three years, my family would take a trip to Palm Springs, and because I was always out of town for work, I have missed out on the trip every year.  This year, because of COVID-19, the family trip was postponed and I was in town to go. Except, between working for the school paper, the struggle of finding an internship, then finding one as an intern in sports media in the middle of such an impacted sports season, other course loads, and my personal life hanging by a thread. I felt like there was no way I could take a breather to have fun, there was still work to be done. 

The last eight months felt like complete chaos due to the COVID-19 pandemic.I’m the type of person that has to have their life planned out for at least 3 months in advance at any given time, and for the last eight of them, every single thing in my life was an uncertainty. 

The uncertainty even extended to this family trip, I wasn’t even sure if I would have been able to go.

It was a week before the scheduled trip when the Airbnb canceled the reservation with no explanation.

 A bummer, but not a total road blockage. Luckily, my family managed to get another house just outside of the Coachella Valley. The trip was back on but due to the prior mentioned commitments I was still not sure if I was going to go.

School was going great, work was slow but remote, and my personal life consisted of deciding if I even have the time to do anything else. 

It was Sunday morning Oct. 11th, I woke up, grabbed my duffle bag, packed up the car, and hit the road with my family. It was like I flipped a switch. The canceled reservation was a reminder that as cliche as it sounded, anything could happen, and tomorrow can look completely different. The stress of deadlines, work, school, and my personal life all seemed manageable. For the first time in three years, I was not only in town to be able to attend the family trip, but the world had almost completely changed to allow me to travel and work from wherever the world was going to take me that weekend. Being overbooked, and tired wasn’t going to stop me from making memories with my family that would far outlast a stressful weekend at home would. BI got in the car, grabbed my phone, sent a few emails to push back some deadlines, and set my mind to have a great weekend with my family. 

A two and a half-hour car drive later, with screaming kids, bored teenagers, and tired parents set us up for nothing more than the excitement to arrive and jump into the pool. 

Our destination was La Quinta California, a small city just outside of LA near the Coachella Valley. We turned the corner into the little neighborhood at the end of a cove surrounded by red rocky mountains. It was 102 degrees Fahrenheit; the urge we felt to run out of the car was higher than ever – we made the last turn onto the street we were staying on and made direct contact with the street sign. “Calle Sinaloa (St. Sinaloa),” the streets which were named after states in Mexico, and the state Sinaloa happened to be where my grandparents are from. The coincidence continued, as it was the last place I visited with my family, months before COVID-19 changed the world forever. 
The rather small coincidence made such a big impact, it felt like the trip was meant to be. A family road trip with a little reminder of our roots. A reminder of the sacrifices that my grandparents made and the fear they faced when they came to the states. It was all for this; the opportunity to give our family the experiences we have today. Just weeks before, the last of my older generation family members had just gotten their citizenship approved, after over 50 years in the states as permanent residents. This year had been tough on everyone — coming from such a large family, and living within a three block radius of each other, we were used to being around a large family on a day to day basis. The past eight months had brought a lot of celebratory moments for us, from three grandkids graduating to their next academic achievements, myself being one of them, to the citizenship of three elder members.We never stopped the love, support, effort, and achievements kept going despite the world and all of its change happening around us.The love, support, effort, and achievements, despite all the insanity going on around us, never stopped. And the importance of family kept going.