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Valentine's Weekend 2006
2006-02-20 at 11:06 a.m.
So, I finally raise my sickly head from the fog of antibiotics and other assorted meds I've been under for the past few weeks to post an entry. Let's see if it was worth the effort.
This is usually the weekend that my boyfriend and I celebrate Valentine's Day. It all started two years ago with our now-legendary 1st trip through Utah and its gorgeous red rocks. Ahh...the memories. We started out on Route 66 (get your kicks, baby)and turned left...somewhere. We ended up going through the Grand Canyon and Kanab, Utah (one of our faves). It was smashingly brilliant.
Last year we moseyed ourselves up to Ely, Nevada, where we discovered that where we live (in Vegas) is not really Nevada at all. Nevada is gorgeously small-town and carries more similarities to Wyoming and South Dakota. Vegas is California, and not the good parts...it just happens to be on the Nevada side of the border. This was the trip of the rescue of the stranded girl and her daughter who flipped their trailer on a snowy and dark mountain road (and miraculously not their car), the horrendously scary trip down the Pony Express trail in snowy pitfalls of mud (when I almost literally kissed the highway when we finally found it), the Loneliest Road in America (Highway 50), the "town" of Border (where the motel was in Utah, but the attached cafe was in Nevada), and the stunning limestone structures of Lehman Caves in Great Basin National Park (Nevada's only one).
So, considering our past exploits, you can be sure that I was definitely looking forward to this year's expedition. Actually the words would probably be closer to DESPERATELY looking forward. We haven't travelled much of late, and my Vitamin T has been getting dangerously low in my bloodstream. But, as luck would have it, our trusty steed (the much maligned Dodge 1500) was in the shop for repairs following a fender bender. And I'd been desperately ill. Oh the inhumanity. I was prepared to lay myself down on the couch all weekend in sorrow and mourning. Prepared that is until...
"Want to go out for lunch, hon?"
"Lunch? Can we go for a drive to?" (Hope springs eternal after all)
"Sure, we can burn the rental around a little."
And so, with those simple words...we were off! Off for a lunch stop at Bob's Big Boy...yes, THE Bob's Big Boy. Not quite the restaurant I remember from my youth, but the Bleu Cheese dressing was still fab.
Off for a drive through the netherlands of Vegas, where you could swear no one would have the sense to keep building housing tracts (have they figured out a way to make water yet? No? Then stop building!), but there they were. Off finally to the Swap Meet of North Las Vegas. Yes my friends, the swap meet. For those of you that know me and where I grew up, you know that there was a wonderfully borderline ghetto swap meet (now not so borderline) that I frequented in my youth. This was much the same. Ah, the sounds of dueling mariachi music blared at volume 12. The smell of chicharones dipped in hot sauce (yeah, just the smell, I ain't tasting that stuff), the imported Mexican candies and deoderants, the taste of fresh coconuts, the noticeable lack of English spoken...were we in Vegas any more, or were we just a bit further south?
I chose to pretend towards the later. Perhaps it was only a day trip, and perhaps we didn't leave the city. I however happen to have a snazzy new teapot that you won't find in an American store, with not a stitch of English to be found on the packaging (french, german, norweigan? yes. English? no.). This can attest to the fact that, yes indeed, there was an adventure to be had this weekend.
Perhaps travel can be had anywhere, even in a city you already thought you knew.
Quoted: "Take the adventure, heed the call, now ere the irrevocable moment passes!" --Kenneth Grahame
Listening to: Simon and Garfunkel --"let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together...and walk off to look for America..."
it's been a while... - 2007-04-01
Here comes the bride... - 2007-01-15
it's been a looooong time! - 2006-11-05
"I Am" - 2006-09-17
the first week of school - 2006-09-02
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:I
READ: I'm reading now... "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens (gave up on the Les Mis...for now anyway) I just finished... "Bird by Bird" a (very good) book on writing by Anne Lamont (for my class)
Yes, I do.