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Published: July 16th 2009
We left
Breckenridge late at night, the car full, the winter over, the mountain closed and my snowboard packed away. The next stage of adventure was about to begin.
Las Vegas Matt took the first shift driving and I fell asleep for some much needed rest. When I woke we were out of the mountains and down the western side of the Rockies, the snow was gone, replaced by the dry, dusty brown landscape of eastern
Utah, a stark contrast to the winter white.
We were heading west, towards the bright lights and false reality of
Las Vegas. That oasis in the desert where everyone thinks they will strike it rich on that one big payday. We checked into the
Hooters Hotel and Casino, the cheapest place we found on the strip and for a reason, it was a little tacky and was starting to show its age. We immediately went for a walk along
Las Vegas Boulevard otherwise know as the
Las Vegas Strip. To be honest can't really remember the details of our first night (it was a while ago), pretty sure we just went into a lot of casino's and explored the area as best we
could.·Blackjack was definitely involved.
Day two started with margaritas, next to the pool, in the sun, surrounded by bikinis. Life is tough. Later we walked down the strip and got giant margaritas (notice a theme), and bought tickets to
Cirque du Soleil's Ka for that evening. A few other kids from
Breckenridge who were also in town so we found them and hung out at their place. Matt, Rob and I then headed over to see the show which was amazing. There was some minor plot involving a kidnapped princess, an epic journey, a final battle with an evil foe and eventually a happy reunion, but mainly it was a couple hours of kick ass martial arts, gymnastics and acrobatics. The effects on stage were astonishing, the entire stage could move up and down, side to side and rotate completely around in every direction. At one point the stage twisted straight up and there was a vertical sword fight between the armies of good and evil. Somehow they managed to make the stage look like it "rippled" where ever the combatants put their feet down, simply amazing!
Afterwards Matt, Rob and I met up with a couple of
the other kids, Roddy and Tim. The next 8 hours involved blackjack and lots of it. We played blackjack a lot while in Vegas but never for anywhere near the 8 hours of this mammoth session. When you gamble in Vegas cocktail waitresses come around and take your drink orders, the drinks are free you just have to tip the waitresses. Thus we started off getting beers but soon convinced the girl to start bringing us tequila shots and a beer to chase (against the rules as you are only meant to get one drink and no shots), it started off slow but soon every time she came around, more tequila. Hours of ridiculousness followed, which involved in part, splitting 10's, trying to bet watches and cigarette's, getting on a first name basis with the pit boss and losing and making lots of money. Good, good times. You'll spot the one photo I took that night.
Day 3 started late. Very late. We did some more sightseeing along the strip and bought tickets to a variety show called
V, which involved, surprisingly enough, a variety of different performers. Matt and I watched the
Bellagio Fountain Show and grabbed some
Dan
Fun with torchesdinner. Everyone else was intending on heading out to a big club and spending a fortune but lacking the motivation and mindful of the cash situation given we still had about 2 weeks to travel Matt and I decided to peace out Vegas late that night. So once again we jumped in the car and headed west. I ended my time in Vegas up about $350, yeah!
Joshua Tree National Park We woke up in a dodgy truck stop casino in the middle of nowhere, technically
Jean, Nevada, but still equally fine being described as the middle of nowhere. We had decided to make a detour through
Joshua Tree National Park on our way to
San Diego, which probably ended up being the best decision of the entire road trip.
We drove into the park from the North East entrance and went for a hike around
Barker Dam. The scenery was spectacular, giant boulders and exposed rocks rising out of the flatlands, sparsely populated with
Joshua Trees. We scrambled and climbed our way off the path and took in the beautiful scenery in the late afternoon sun, cue some good photos and, in hindsight, dangerous rock jumping. We
decided to spend the night in the park so we drove out to get some supplies and set up camp at one of the many camp sites dotted around the park.
We messed about in the evening drank some beers, took some photos, cooked dinner and smoked some ______. Come 10 pm we decided it was a great idea to drive up to the lookout point nearby and watch the stars and the local town all lit up. Playing around with my camera we discovered the genius of a long exposure, a torch and an active imagination. I'll let the photos do the talking for that one!
Come the morning we packed up camp and headed for the Pacific. I'm so glad we spent the night there, it was definitely one of the major highlights of the trip.
San Diego JTNP to the Diego is normally a relatively easy 2 hr drive, it took us 6. We didn't want to go via LA so we decided to take a "slightly" more circuitous route over the mountains close to the border with Mexico and then head west. This seems as good a point as any to detail the
lack of "navigation tools" in the car. To find our way we were using a Cracker Barrel* map and the Lonely Planet USA maps**. This left us doing switchbacks over tiny roads up and over and down the other side of some mountains, driving along a deserted desert road and through tiny villages and towns in Southern California. There is some beautiful and varied scenery along the route we took although I would probably never be able to point out more then the general area of where we were!
Our stay in
San Diego was pretty much all down time, we went out drinking, played frisbee golf, relaxed at the beach and generally tried to do as little as possible, all evidenced by me not taking a photo in nearly 5 days. By far the highlight was the
Elemental Music and Arts Festival, which took place at
Mission Bay Park, right next to the water. It was a beautiful day, we chilled in the sun, drank some beers and listened to the music. The main acts were
Bassnectar and
Matisyahu, who were both excellent.
*Cracker Barrel is a chain of restaurants across the states. Their "maps" show the
The Road
On the way to Vegas location of all their restaurants in the US, thus it only has the roads where there is a Cracker Barrel. This means the map skips over major US highways and other such useful information.
** LP maps are notorious for being useless and extremely hard to read.
Austin We departed
San Diego late arvo and headed east, speeding through the night across the bottom of the States. Our destination was
Austin, TX, a place where unfortunately we only had one night, it is definitely on my list of places I would like to go back to. Austin is famous for the range and breadth of its live music, it has the highest number of venues per capita of any city in the US. Many of these venues are located along the famous
6th street, which of course is where we headed out. A few beers and some blurry photos later we were back at our motel and heading out the next morning. Not enough time at all, to be honest this is where the road trip started to get a little rushed for my liking.
New Orleans We also only had one night in New Orleans. It seemed
to be a fascinating city to explore but unfortunately we didn't have time for that. We headed out on
Bourbon St for some drinks, armed with a list of things to accomplish by the end of our stay. We did pretty well in the end, we got 4 out of 7 without really trying. My first experience of Bourbon St was getting hustled by some girl in braces who looked like she would be heading into school the next morning. She was selling shots in test tubes and lets just say we were sold to. She came up to us asking if we wanted any and we were umming and ahhing about it, so to make up our minds she grabs two test tubes, deep throats them and then I took the shot from out her mouth, next one was between her boobs. Isn't life fun! Then we had to pay for them, talk about mark up!!
After running amok along Bourbon St for a bit and grabbing some dinner we grabbed a taxi to a place called the
Maple Leaf Bar, where
Rebirth Brass Band has a standing gig on Monday nights. (Thanks for the recommendation Rob!) It
was a great show, lots of horns and shenanigans. Afterwards we headed back to Bourbon St and that's where the night gets a little fuzzy! In the morning we did a little sightseeing in the old town and I think its fair to say I was not feeling my best, then we were on the road again.
Pretty much the rest of the trip was a little uneventful, just a lot of long hours in the car. We were planning on heading to
Washington DC, but the car really started to fall apart on us, see below. We pretty much drove straight from New Orleans to
Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, where I am spending the summer.
And that's about it, I had a great time driving across the country with Matt, it got a little rushed at the end which ideal but overall it was still a great experience.
Next time the Bonnaroo music festival.
Fun Road Trip Facts Number of Miles Driven: 8068 km (5013 miles)
Hours Spent Driving: 80 hrs
Number of States Driven Through: 16
States Driven Through: Colorado, Utah, Arizona, California, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New
York, Massachusetts and New Hampshire
Top Speed: 180 kph (112 mph)
Average Speed: 101 kph (63 mph)
Number of Mean Bean's consumed: Too many to count
Number of Times we were Pulled Over: 3
Number of Times we got Fined: 2
Number of Seperate Fines: 3 (2 for speeding, 1 for an unregistered vehicle)
Problems with the Car at the End: hole in the muffler, oil leak in engine, no 4th gear, slow leak in back right tire, destroyed clutch, busted tail light, busted head light, unregistered. We also pretty much had to roll start it every time as well 😊
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Joel
non-member comment
awesome blog!
loved the photos, the interesting stories and how you managed to make it nice and short too! i will endeavour to be more like you in future travel blog entries! also good to see that you haven't matured, at all, since you left!