As we finally pulled into my Grandma’s house I glanced at the clock 3:43 A.M. Even though we left Kalispell after we got off work at 5:00 the night before, we still arrived early morning. As I agreed to earlier, I took the later driving sift. Now, I was exhausted, when I stepped out of the car, the dewy smell of South West, Washington surrounded me. The smell always brings me back to my childhood as I was running away from my cousins, excited to be at Grandma’s.

“Were here!” I said loudly to wake up the other girls. Justine and Danielle were snoring in the back as Lineesa drove late, giggling about taking the wrong turn or some other mishap. It was only that funny because we were overtired.

As I lay in bed, trying to sleep, it thought about the day ahead of us. I had a couple hours to sleep then I would have to be ready. Tomorrow- oh wait today!- was the fourth of July.

The squeal of my alarm woke us up before I even knew I was sleeping; no way could it be 9 o’clock. As I turned off the alarm, I realized it was going to be harder than I thought to wake these girls up. They wouldn’t get up on a normal day.

Finally after we showered away our car trip grime and ate breakfast, we made our way to the rodeo. The four of us, still a little tired form the night before, giggled the entire way. The rodeo was in St. Paul, Oregon and is always on the fourth. As we got there we were surrounded with people. This little town of 700 people hosted one of America’s biggest rodeos.

It didn’t take long to find our seats. Danielle had bought our tickets weeks earlier. She was always prepared for what we hadn’t thought of. The distant smell of popcorn and soda came from the concessions and made us hungry while we were waiting for it to start. But when it started we watched the cowboys and cheered extra loud for the ones from Montana.

A group of boys from Portland kept bugging Lineesa. She in a serious relationship was annoyed. I thought it was funny and could see why. She looked great! Lineesa had blonde curly hair and dark rimmed glasses that hid her eyes. They were exotically beautiful and she was constantly getting tired of people commenting on them. Today Lineesa wore a bright coral shirt and jean shorts that she bought the day before. She seemed to have a special glow the entire day.

After the rodeo, we decided to head up to the beach. Friends of ours were meeting up there to watch fireworks. The drive took longer than we expected, but none of us seemed to mind. We were having too much fun to bother getting worked up. As we hit the coast and could see the waves crashing on the shore, our energy spiked. All of us loved the beach and couldn’t wait to get where our friends were. Just driving along the coast and smelling the salty air was refreshing. We all needed this break from regular life in Kalispell.

We reached the beach shortly before the sun went down. As I walked onto the beach I was filled with a fullness you can only feel at the ocean. With the sand in my toes, the wind in my hair, and a beautiful orange and pink sunset before me I felt as though I could do anything. So did my friends.

I took a while of wandering the beach to find our friends because of the large number of people on the beach. When we did, it was overwhelming. There were more here than we thought there would be. With bright colorful fireworks exploding overhead it was it was easy to see everyone, even though the sky was at it darkest. We spent the rest of the night talking to new people. We met people from all over America.

As we started to get tired and the moon was shinning bright we made it back to the car. On the drive back to my grandma’s house I thought over the day. It was one of my all time favorites and I absolutely loved my friends. Little did we know that in the next couple of days our lives would drastically change and I would lose one of my best friends: Lineesa Rose. Lineesa never made it back to her home in Kalispell; instead she reached her eternal home on July 7, 2013.