A very long drive

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Moving to Las Vegas...


I’ve never done a road trip quite like the one I took here. Words can not describe how amazing it is to see so much of the world in just three days. At the start of the trip we ended up following mr. GPS (who we named koala karl), through chicago. It was snowing and while I was getting ready to move I was worried about roads being closed in Texas and Arizona because they had closure the week before and were expecting another snow storm. It was slightly terrifying, knowing what I was going to be driving into. And on the first day, while snow was coming down, Koala Karl directed us into a closed road in some industrial part of Chicago’s suburbs. We failed to get a picture. 😞

My good friends Jessica and Sam were in town for Christmas and made a stop over my house the night before. The two (Jessica in her pregnant glory) kept me up till 2 am. When ever I see Jessica, we can’t help but talk and catch up. And Sam, well he has made a nice addition to our little group of friends. Just don’t tell him I said that
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So, waking up at 6 am to go on a long road trip, made me slightly cranky. I woke up that early because I had a car to pack with all of my most prized possessions and I didn’t want to leave the car in my own drive way unattended. This added to another fear that I had, I suddenly realized that there would be times (eating and sleeping) that I’d be leaving my car unattended with everything in it. Everything being two large green storage boxes, four egg boxes, a 42” plasma tv, a mac mini, a monitor, and lots of little boxes of jewelry and what-have-yous. This, the snow, and lack of sleep, had me wishing I just flew to Vegas and had my stuff shipped.


It was hard, saying good bye to my mom and to my cat. My dad thankfully had to work that morning so saying good bye to him was a bit easier, it was like saying good byte to him any other day that he had to go to work. It didn’t hit me just then that it was good bye for several months at a time. But the incident ( the good byes) all happened with realatively no tears, at least no streaming crying just some welling up I could wipe away. And off me and Stevie went, on this adventure that started off looking like, well, not such a good idea.

The crankiness and the worry all lasted until I saw the St. Louis arch. The feeling I got was like a giant sigh; it was just an incredible sight. From it, I found this renewed energy, this excitement to embark on the adventure ahead of us. And driving into the city, it became this amazing thing that I loved. I was everything -- nervous, excited, and hopeful. We drove right to the arch because we wanted to make good use of any of the sunlight we had left. Timing on our drive was slightly against us; we were in St. Louis right around 7pm and the sun was dropping fast. We parked in this little cobblestone parking lot and we started our walk. It felt good to be out of my little honda fit, walking around.




After seeing the arch we got back into our car and drove to this Bar-B-Q join featured on Man Vs Food (or maybe the travel channel). I love Bar B Q and the two of us had been looking forward to this meal all day (having only briefly stopped for drive through lunch). When we got up to the door of this place, in a not so nice area of town, we were disappointed to find it closed. Frustration returned as we drove back to the cobble stone down town area and to the restaurant we had originally stopped in to use the ladies room on the way to seeing the arch. We sat down, played a card game and waited for our food. Mine was chicken and a CHICKEN was just what I got, right there on my plate. YUM. not really. I prefer a chicken breast that doesn't resemble the bird that I'm paying good money to eat. We then headed back to our car and through one of the casino’s on the Mississippi river (sadly we didn't go to the riverboat one). We both got players cards and I can’t remember if we actually played. I was EXHAUSTED and we still had more driving to get back to.

We left St. Louis wanting to come back to it one day and explore all the city has to offer. As we started driving again we saw this beautiful light show up in the mountains/woods. It was called winter wonderland and it looked magical up there in the middle of no place all light up. If we had seen it in time, I’m sure we would have stopped but we didn’t realize what it was until we had passed the exit. That late at night there was no turning around. So, just like St Louis, it went on the list of one days. We moved on to Springfield MO where we stopped for the night. It was weird rolling into a hotel room at 11 or 12 or 1, I can’t remember which hour it was. But we drove along a strip of hotels, picked one and I went in to pay. This brought me right back to my first worry, what would happen to my car while I was sound a sleep in the hotel room? I thought sleeping would be hard, but it wasn’t. I slept through the night just fine. I actually was passed out. It was extremely hard to wake up for continental breakfast.



Getting back onto the road again was amazing. I felt so much better about the trip ahead of us. We had a lot more driving but I was excited about that. I was looking forward to seeing a new place and getting that overwhelming feeling that I got when we finally found St Louis. Plus, we could sing along to Oklahoma while crossing the state line. No really, we did this like three times as we tried to get it right. We song it early a few times, so the third was when it actually counted. We also got to stop in Kansas, which was thanks once again to Koala Karl who directed us through a one lane farm land. We weren’t necessarily upset with him this time, not like when he miss directed us at the start of our trip.


We trucked along all day, determined to make it into Texas before we stopped next. One of the more exciting discoveries we came across was the route we were taking happened to be the old Route 66. Actually all we knew was that, just before we got into Texas, that is what we were driving on (later, shopping for shot glasses, I would find out that the whole trip was actually route 66). We even took a short detour onto the old route, which you can sort of see from the larger freeway. There wasn’t much to see other than a few signs we just couldn’t seem to get a picture of.

We were moving on to this place I found online. The place was called Big Texan and could have been horrible because their website just looked ultra cheesy. When we saw it’s gaudiness from the freeway we got excited again all over. I would also like to say we started hearing the southerner accent at every gas up and I found this extra amusing. I giggled every time we went in some place. Anyways, take a look at the pictures of our restaurant! This was the BEST part of the trip. There were tourists all over taking pictures of the outside props. Getting in we were told that there would be a 30 minute wait. You would think two girls starving would have a problem with this but we didn’t we just went into the gift shop and looked for some good cowboy hats. They didn’t really have any. The hats were all very fashionable and not very Texas but we had to buy some anyways. I mean, you just have to have a cowboy hat from Texas. It’s great. We wore our hats to dinner.


For dinner I ordered the ribs. I had to because they are my favorite food ever and I had to see if they were any good in the south. Stevie was torn on what she wanted to order but finally she got the chicken steak. It was kind of plain but good none the less (neither of us had had one before). I also ordered okra on the side. Okra is pretty darn good! The ribs though, those were perfection on the plate. I ate them all and got overly stuffed because, it was amazing. I also had the sampler of beer from them, none were great and I realized that there was no way I was going to be able to finish them and get us out of Texas that night. Which was the plan because a big snow storm was on it’s way. Everyone at the restaurant told us we should just spend the night but I wanted to truck on, so we did.

Making it back onto the road late at night ended up being another worry. I started to worry about hitting deer. I mean we were driving out in the country of Texas and it was so dark out I worried I might not be able to see anything in time to avoid hitting some road animals. It was weird driving into utter darkness. But it wasn’t so bad. We were able to drive all the way to New Mexico, as planned. This was sort of depressing though, we were driving up in these long winding mountains and I just knew, it would be one of the best views if we had day light. Also, I felt bad for my little car heaving it’s way on the way up and then costing on it’s way down. It’d rev up to 4 rpms and I’d cringe as it did a whopping 60 mph. This night we had our choice of hotels and picked one. I was just glad we made it as far as we did.


New Mexico was amazing during the day. It was over cast but the view was incredible. My good friend Meagon had done a clinical visit out there and had told me just how pretty it all was but I didn’t realize. I mean I believed her, and my Aunt Mary who also told me how awesome it was, but I just couldn’t imagine it. But once there, I saw just how awesome the state really was. It became another spot to visit one day when I have more time.



While in New Mexico we chose to stop at an Indian store. They have all these large signs for them and so when we pulled off to check it out, we were a little disappointed to see a small house with only a small selection of beautiful artwork. Stevie bought something and then we both got some bread. Which was actually pretty good. It was very much like an elephant ear, but less grease. A few more miles down the road we saw that we were in the center of the US and then a few more miles later we stopped to take a picture at some signs for the continental divide. This was a pretty amazing feeling, knowing we were almost center on the US.

New Mexico changed to Arizona and we noticed this right away because it started to snow. YES! Snow in Arizona. Actually, it was a pretty thick snow as we went up the mountains in Flagstaff. I was a little bit worried that we would run into some problems because of this, maybe a large delay, but just as I started to worry the sun came out again and we were out of the worst of it. In fact, this afternoon we got to see one of the most amazing sunsets. It's defiantly one of the best I've ever seen. I was snapping away with all three cameras while Stevie drove us down the mountain.

The last leg of any trip is hard, you know you are almost there and the anticipation is mounting. For me this was especially true; I knew we were just hours away from my new home. I can't describe how important that statement was to me. I was moving across the country, and in just a few hours I'd be starting fresh in a new city, new state, and new school. Stevie and I decided to cap off our gas (we typically didn't let the tank get below half before we refilled) and we switched so I could drive us into Nevada. We were lucky we did cap off the gas, because just an hour outside of Vegas -- in the middle of nowhere -- we were stuck in a very large line of traffic. Tails lights were all we could see for miles and miles down the winding and hilly desert road. To our left and to our right was virtually nothing.

For an hour, we were an hour away from my new home. It was extremely frustrating -- waiting in a line I didn't understand after being cooped up in a car for 3 straight days. I was on the phone with my new roomate, my family, and finally we saw a sign saying that this was a police check point. OK, my dad had said they check for fruits in your car, he suggested that maybe that's what we were doing, going through some line of customs.

NOPE! we were driving, unsuspectingly, over the hoover dam! We had no idea, and so naturally we had to stop and take pictures of the dam at night. Even though we couldn't see much, it was still pretty. And I got to drive over the Hoover Dam!

Driving into the city, I started to point out casino's to Stevie, who had never been. You could see several of them from the freeway as we took the 15 north to the 95. At one point we got detoured off the freeway, once more by koala karl, who had us get off only to get back on. By the time we got to my new home, we were exhusted. Neither of us wanted to leave the house, more so me who was moving into it. But we went to BJ's which is right across the street from Red Rock. This was my first experience with a Zookie! YUM!

I'd also like to note that when I first got home and rang my new door bell it was so awesome to see Breanne, my new roommate, excited and welcoming to me. I wish she would have ditched her boyfriend at the time to join us down on the strip for my quick grand tour.

Anyways, this first night I couldn't sleep. I was beyond exhausted but knowing that I was going to live so far away from Michigan had me too excited to actually sleep. I hope I didn't keep Stevie up that night.

That morning me and Stevie drove down the isle of palm trees to the walgreens and back (we needed super glue for the roommate's passenger mirror ... sorry BRE!). I remember being super excited about how there were palm trees so close to my house. Because, to this northern girl, palm trees were like some sign saying you made it in life.

Stevie is a good sport for driving 3 days down to Vegas only to get to spend one day there. That one day, I tried to pack in the best view of the strip. We went all over it, to the Mirage, Bellagio, Paris, Ballies, Venetian, and the fashion show mall. I wish we would have gotten to see phantom of the opera, I should have planned this out better instead of epic failing. But over-all, I think she got a great example of what Vegas is like. Well some of it anyways. I hope her and her husband Chris come to visit me one day, flights are cheap! 😊

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