Day two of our Road trip to LA

We woke up in Bakersfield and wanted to get a relatively early start. We were out of the hotel by 8:30am or so and headed over to IHOP for a nice nutritious breakfast. yeah right. But it was good, and we were hungry.

After getting back on the rode I took a good look around and noticed how much we really were in the middle of nowhere. I have made this trip once before, but forgot that it was so barren out here.

Absolutely flat and yellow as far as you can see. I could not imagine living out here. I thought I was from the middle of nowhere. The traffic was non-existent until we got closer to LA so that made the trip much more bearable than last night.

Our destination was downtown LA. We were headed to Joel's brother's apartment. I didn't have my GPS so we had to rely solely on my phone map, what a disaster! But we made it finally around 12:30pm.

We parked my car and Ben and Katy drove us around. Which was awesome, because gas is super expensive and they knew where they were going. We ate lunch at In n Out and then headed over to one of the cupcake shops that was on my list of places to see, Yummy Cupcakes.

Yummy Cupcakes is in Burbank, CA and it's a really small shop with two rooms. The first room has all of the cupcakes on display and the second is a small store with cupcake gifts.

The people inside were very nice and answered al of our questions about the flavors. Between the four of us we decided on five cupcakes. We got Shirley Temple and Red Velvet with chocolate and Vanilla Cream Cheese frosting:

And Ben and Katy chose Vanilla/Vanilla, a snickerdoodle flavor, and I think the third one is called Happy Day? Like a birthday Cake type flavor.

The cupcakes were delicious! I wanted to go back and buy more flavors but we had other stuff on the day's agenda. My only complaint about this place is that their to-go packaging sucks. Luckily we weren't traveling far, otherwise the cupcakes would have fallen over and became a mixed up frosting mess.

Next on the list was Johnny Cupcakes. I have known about this place for years now and have always wanted to go but the location has always been too far away. So this trip to LA was perfect for scoping out the new store.

This is the entrance to the store on Melrose Ave.

When you walk in they have a display case of t-shirts immediately to the left and then these cool display ovens are up on the wall. I want an oven like that in my kitchen!!

This big oven in the back is the door to their back room. And on the wall they have the story of how Johnny Cupcakes came to be. So neat! And I only walked out with one t-shirt and two stickers. But I wanted more....

After doing some more shopping on Melrose at Urban Outfitters and American Apparel we headed to the grocery store for some barbecue shopping. We ended the night barbecuing on Ben and Katy's roof in downtown LA. Great end to a great day!

Oh, and we had no idea where we were going to stay for the night. We didn't book a hotel because we weren't sure which area we wanted to stay in. Luckily, Steve came through for us and hooked us up with an AWESOME room in the Burbank Marriott. Joel's very lucky to have such great friends and family.