Hoover Dam, Lake Mead, Las Vegas, and Silas!

My first time at the Hoover Dam. It did not disappoint.

I camped at Lake Mead (which took a bit of creativity with one arm, but not too bad ...) and the neighbors in the campsite showed me a spot where you could head over and see all these huge, and I mean huge, four feet long basses, carps, and catfishes ...

After Lake Mead, I went to a hotel in Vegas and just chilled in sin city ... had a nice 24 hours, won 11 bucks, and Vegas will always be Vegas. Glitz and outrageousness. Vegas.

Cousin Jake and me - outside of his apartment in Riverside the night before staying with Silas. Was fun to connect with the cousin without "encouragement" from the families, and now that we're a bit older, we're enjoying each other much more.

And damnit no picture of Silas yet - he's at work, so I'm going to wait til he gets home to take a pic of us! We went to Disneyland (popping my Disney cherry, yea, never been to any Disney theme parks ...) on Friday, and on Saturday we went to the renaissance faire ... as usual Silas is his crazy self, and I had loads of fun. As soon as I get a picture of Silas, it will be posted here.

UPDATE! Picture of Silas and me -


Tomorrow, Route 1 beckons!

channeling jack kerouac - road trip number two

On The Road by Jack Kerouac was a book I read several times - and just reread before I headed to Colorado - parts of the book stuck with me, especially some of the crazy drives from Denver out to California that Jack and his friends made.

Granted, I am not making the exact same trip, and definitely using much less drugs (yay for vicodin!) than he and his buddies did, I am feeling a bit philosophical about this road trip - I am doing something I have always remembered wanting to do, go up north in California on the Pacific Coast Highway - so I took a few pictures of the open road. I took the back roads in Colorado, stopping by Telluride for a bit before continuing into New Mexico.

Without further ado - the pictures of some of the backroads / parts of Colorado.

Telluride! Gorgeous little town surrounded by mountains.

And now, the sort of warm New Mexico - it never rose above 50 degrees when I drove through. I think the thermometer in my car must have gotten sick of me looking at it despairingly as I drove south. I keep telling it to rise. It did the opposite throughout Colorado, and then finally obeyed my command in New Mexico, but it definitely underperformed.

After staying in New Mexico for one night, I continued to Phoenix where it was blissfully 85 degrees and where my old college roommate and her family lived with their kids, age 3 and 1, who were insane bundles of energy, but they rated highly on the awesome and adorable scale. You can see the insane amount of energy they had because I plumb forgot to take a picture of the girls.

It was a good start to the road trip.

leaving breckenridge ...

Leaving Breckenridge was made much easier than I expected - I had made several friends that I hope to remain in touch with for a good while, had a fantastic winter (albeit a blip that will be called "the wrist"), all in all leaving Colorado was not something I wanted to do easily.

Until I looked outside the house on the morning of May 1st. Yep you read that correctly, people, May 1st. It was snowing.

My former driveway - which was clear the day before.

Driving down the dirt road for one last time ... snow covered.

You could usually see the magnificent mountain of Breckenridge in the above and below photos. The mountain that closed on April 20th but one that should be still running that day.

Almost a complete whiteout.

After a shake of my head and a great breakfast at Daylight Donuts, I went on my way.

cast udpate ...

I'm now sporting a nifty purple cast - thank goodness my elbow is free - that was annoying with the splint. 5 to 7 weeks left. Ugh.

Moab, Utah

yep ... and on my last day of skiing ....

yeah. was going off a box jump in a park in a-basin .... lost my balance and unfortunately my wrist got in the way. got a nasty fracture, so after the sling i'm sporting, i'll need a cast for 6 to 8 weeks. fun, yes? at least i got vicodin out of this mess.

ah-well - off to the moab tomorrow!

apparently a month has passed ...

Today is April 16th. A day after tax-day (and by the way, hoping y'all are enjoying that economic stimulus package that mistah bush has decided to pass out ... ).

I repeat. Today is April 16th. As in the middle of April. As in a few weeks after Spring is supposed to begin.

This picture was taken at approximately 3:15p MST today. This is a view of the back of the winery where I work at.

See the white fluffy thingies falling down from the sky? Nope, not marshmallow fluff, but snow. It's snowing like .... I've run out of ways to say what it's snowing like.

This picture was taken at 10:18p MST today.

This is my driveway. That car is my roommate's car after being parked there for two hours. When I left for work this morning, there were no snow in the driveway, sure there were piles all around, but you could actually see pavement! A few hours and 6 inches later, you see the result.

We're supposed to get another 5 to 6 inches tonight on top of the 6 inches that's there already.

Have I said that it's April 16th?

While yeah, sure, there's some awesome snow for skiing, as Breckenridge closes this Sunday, and most other resorts have already closed up last week except for A-Basin which will remain open (they have an annual goal of staying open til July 4th, but last couple of years they had to close in June), but dude. DUDE! I'm ready for short sleeve shirts. My flip-flops!

Next week a group of us will be heading out to Moab desert, so I'll get my dose of warm weather, but it's like going to polar opposites - three feet of snow here to 80 degree weather over there - and it's what only a four to five hours drive.

Crazy shit, I tell you. Crazy shit.