The purpose of going to Bakersfield was to get our Mazda Protege5 an alignment. Much more affordable to do it out of town vs. in Ridgecrest so away we went for the day. Yep, gotta make a day of it when places are a couple hours away.

First, we met up with my friend Jessica who lives in Bakersfield, at one of her favorite places, Los Tacos DeHuicho. We ordered tacos and sat and talked and talked! Usually, I get to see her in Utah at the Let's Create Expo but sadly this year, Snap Conference was the same weekend as Let's Create and I ended up at Snap the whole time despite my efforts to find time to head to Sandy for the other event.

A little dry, the green sauce was slightly spicy, but overall, good tacos

Tony got the nachos

We dropped the car off at Les Schwab next and walked around the shopping center area. A pet store, a pool store, a grocery store...and ended up at Starbucks. The guy working was able to pull a box of the oh so popular color changing cups out of the back for me. I got to try the pink drink for the first time. And get my favorite slice of lemon loaf bread. SO MUCH GOODNESS.

Tony's main errand was the car and a bank (but it was closed) so I got to pick some places to go. Of course, I picked craft stores (Hobby Lobby pics above) and we also stopped at Pier 1, Payless shoe store and Costco.

I let Tony pick where he wanted to go for dinner and we ended up at Dickey's BBQ Pit. We've been a couple times in Utah but haven't been for a very long time. Didn't care for the potato salad but the roll, waffle fries and most of the meats were a-ok. 

Our last stop of the day was Winco (because we were getting food and didn't want it to sit in the car long, esp with a 2hr drive home). Got everything we needed for the next 2 weeks of groceries for $60. We even splurged and got some big muffins for breakfasts. I love Winco! Plus, filling up our big 5 gallon water jugs for our dispenser was only .25 cents/gal instead of .35 cents/gal like we have to pay at Walmart.

On the way home we stopped and pulled over because the car hit 250k miles! Omgosh! It finally made it. So crazy. And of course, after we did that, the car started driving funny (the tires felt wonky) and we pulled over a couple times to check them. They looked fine each time. Yikes. Glad we could make it back to Ridgecrest with no major issues. I love this car with all my heart though. Tony believes it's time to sell it though and he's been looking at getting another car to replace this one. Breaks my heart but he wants a vehicle that is just not an 'around town only' car like the Mazda has become. Tear. We'll see what happens next!