Home Sweet Home

March 9, 2009 - HOME SWEET HOME!!!!!! Tomorrow will be my last post but in the mean time I wanted to let all the faithful know that the trip is officially OVER!!!!!

So here goes a quick overview/best of....

54 days, 6,561 miles, 11 states, 2 countries, 7 days skiing, 35 different types of fish eaten, 9 family members, 7 friends we stayed with, 24 koozies, 1 crazy girlfriend, 29 different places we stayed, the entire west coast of the United States, 1 Super Bowl, 2 museums, 3 wine tastings, no flat tires, many PTI episodes, 1 tree house slept in, 4 laundry days, 1 zoo, 2 NBA games attended, 1 atlas, 1 GPS, Sirius Radio, 6 items Sarah stole, 2 bike rides, 1 Golden Gate bridge, 3 ferry rides, 1 broken muffler, 15+ different beers drunk, 1 time pulled out of a ditch, too many lessons learned, 1 sports wagon, 2 snow shoes, 1 roller blade along the strand, first jog since knee surgery, 1 Madri Gras celebration, 3 of the top public golf courses in the country, 1 bump into Jimmy Kimel, 1 crazy boyfriend, 5 wild animals, 1 southern couple we snow mobiled with, 20+ bald eagles, 44 blog posts, 25 blog followers, 1 Mrs. Semel, 4 BIG fights, and.........

We still love each other

PRICESLESS

(thank you EC for the sign and the welcome home!)

Grand Canyon & Four Corners

March 5, 2009 - Yesterday was a day of driving and sightseeing. We left Flagstaff early and headed back west to pick up the highway that would take us north to Grand Canyon. The drive is through a large Hopi Indian reservation and is pretty boring.

I am going to take you through the pictures of the day. Below is the main visitor center at the East rim lookout point. I love taking pictures of flags blowing in the wind especially when they are American flags.

Sarah pointing the way to our destination. The day was beautiful but we had 30mph+ winds.

Our first view into the canyon. The first thing that popped into my head was "wow that canyon sure is grand!" The next three pictures are a panoramic series. I took each picture and then turned left just enough to capture the right edge of the previous picture on the left edge of the new shot. The view was spectacular.

The "couples shot" of course. I used my trick again to get some lady to take our picture.

Look I found the canyon!!!!

This tower is called the watchtower and was built in 1933. It was built as one of the first tourist attractions in the canyon. It has a wood burning fire place inside and they use the native mesquite wood so the entire place smells like a bbq joint, it was amazing. The building is built from steel and clad in native rocks. Everything was hand built and looks like it is hundreds of years.

A few quick thoughts on the Grand Canyon. 1. It is very big 2. The visitor center is very helpful 3. Go in the summer time so you can safely hike down 4. Plan your trip so that you can stay for a few days either hiking or rafting.

After the Canyon we headed North East to the Four Corners. Along the way we drove through some desolate land. It was low 70's in early March so I can only imagine what it must be like in the summer. One thing I can say for sure is I would NEVER EVER settle here.

Along the way we broke a milestone I didn't think we would hit, the 6,000 mile mark. Regardless the trip is still called 5,000 Miles Of Freedom.

The Four Corners! This place is really not exciting. There is a plaque on the ground signifying the border and some flags. I am happy we went and saw it but don't expect much when you are there.

"Couples picture"

Taking a nap in four states at once, so relaxing.

For those who don't know about the Four Corners the states involved are New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Colorado.

In the process of our days drive we crossed over two new state lines which gave us an opportunity to take a few more state line shots.

Now that we are back in Colorado it is appropriate to take a look back at where we have been. Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Canada, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado. It took 6,194 Miles to get back to the great state of Colorado and now we have 4 days left of the road trip. Last stop Telluride, CO to get reacclimated to the altitude. The trip has been amazing and the wrap up blog will be even better. Thanks for reading and joining our adventures. I am sure I will blog in from Telluride so stay tuned.

Hope all are well!

Vegas Strip & Hoover Dam

March 4, 2009 - Las Vegas is an interesting stop on the road trip for two reasons: 1. No way is one prepared for Vegas after being on the road for 48 straight days 2. All your nice clothes are pretty wrinkled by this point in the trip. Sarah and I still managed to have a good time for the 15 hours that we were in town. On the way out we drove down the strip from the Venetian to the famous Las Vegas sign. Notable pictorial omissions are Wynn & Encore, Mirage, and whatever else is on that end of the strip. Now on to the pictures.

I had to put this picture first because any other place it wouldn't make any sense. In reality I took this picture as we left town.

I don't think I will provide running commentary on each picture but rather throw in a few words where I feel it is necessary. To begin with my first thought is, and I always feel this way in Vegas, this place is RIDICULOUS!!!!

Yes those are tower cranes you see in the picture. Las Vegas is one of the few places in America STILL building hotels. I was blown away by all the new construction since I was last here (18 months).

Someone correct me but I believe the Eiffel Tower "replica" at the Paris is actually life size.

We didn't get a good shot of the front of New York New York but they have a Brooklyn Bridge and a really cool NYC facade out front. Sarah told me they have all the famous NYC neighborhoods in the hotel too (Chinatown, Little Italy, LES). I hope they represent the UES with all the employees dressed in ultra preppy clothes and talking about their weekend homes in CT.

It is great to see the older hotels and how much they have aged compared to the "new" Vegas. I don't think there is a place on earth where buildings age faster than Las Vegas. Sarah and I were saying how the Venetian (9 years old) is even out dated.

The parting shot. It should read "Thanks For All Your Money"

After the strip we headed SE on HWY 93 for the Hoover Dam. Truthfully neither Sarah nor I expected what we saw. The Hoover Dam is a HUGE tourist draw and they know it. They charge you for everything there. On our trip this has been the ONLY national monument/park/forest where you need to pay to get into the visitor center and to park. We said FU to the visitor center and did our own tour.

The dam is for sure more impressive than the Coulee Dam we say in Washington but it is much small in width. The reason the Hoover Dam is so famous is because of its height and its proximity to Las Vegas.

The two states that the dam straddles (Arizona & Nevada) are building a new freeway that will by pass the dam allowing cars and trucks to miss the tourist show. I am not sure if this means they will discontinue allowing cars to drive over the top of the dam but in this post 9/11 world we live in I wouldn't be surprised (they did this in Coulee). Anyway the bridge they are building over the gorge is amazing. Look closely at the picture and you will see the arches of the bridge growing closer together.

Here is another great shot of the new bridge.

These are the water intake terminals on the upper end of the dam. Water passes through these terminals down through the dam into the turbines that create the power and then out the bottom. Each tower is over 420 feet tall.

No visit would be complete without the "couples shot". I have a new trick where I find two people taking singles shots of one another and I go tell them I will take their picture and then when I hand them the camera I ask for a little reciprocation. 60% of the time it works all the time.

As I said the dam straddle the boarder between Nevada and Arizona so we were able to get another state line picture. So far we have only missed Washington and Nevada and that was because we were driving on interstates when we crossed the border.

Hope all are well.

Fill In The Blanks

March 4, 2009 - I can't sleep this morning so I got up and looked back at the blog and the trip pictures and realized that I forgot to blog about some things that happened while in Hermosa. After waking up Sunday and getting breakfast with Sarah's parents we headed back down to Hermosa for half a beach day. The weather had been very good that weekend (mid 70's and sunny) so we wanted to try and get some beach time in. UT had told me that in each of the last 4 years he has been in LA that at some point between Feb 1 and Mar 30 the Santa Anna winds blow west (I assume it is west/south) out of the desert and deliver hot air to the LA area. Unfortunately we didn't get the high 80's - 90's weather that comes with the Santa Anna winds but we did get enough warm air for me to decide it was time to go swimming in the ocean. I don't think the trip would have been complete without the dip.

The next sequence of pictures is pretty goofy but you have to remember that the water is about 54 degrees and the air temperature is about 72 and breezy.

Thinking about it.....

Going for it.....

Getting the hell out of it....

We last about 15 seconds in the water. Sarah and Mark had both said that the water is so cold at first that it knocks the air right out of you, I did not believe them. Most of the nights we stayed in Hermosa we walked down to the pier at sunset with beers to enjoy the view. I said that I would like to jump off the end of the pier and swim in. Sarah told me that I would almost certainly drown from the cold water sucking the air out of me. Honestly I thought I could do it until I ran into the water with Mark and realized how right she was. I was completely zapped form the shock to my system and DEFINITELY would have drowned had I tried to swim any where. All that said the dip was amazing and totally worth it. It is pretty cool that on this trip I have snowshoed, skied, hiked, biked, roller bladed, swam, and driven over 5,000 miles.

That Sunday night we tried to get ticket to the Comedy and Magic Show. This place is pretty famous because Jay Leno got his start as a comedian there. He made a promise to the owner of the club that if he made it big he would come back EVERY Sunday night and perform stand up and he was true to his word. Typically the tickets sell out weeks in advance so we went down to the club at 4:30 to put our names on the wait list. We were the 3rd party in line and thought we had a pretty good chance. They tell you to come back at 6:30 when they start calling off names form the wait list. Obviously only the first two parties got let in because the club was over sold due to GQ Magazine doing a special on Jay and his continued loyalty to the club.

Regardless I got a few pictures of Jay and his buddy pulling up to the club. As I am sure most of you know Leno is a car and motorcycles collector. His collection is supposedly very large and ranges across all era's. On this night he showed up in his 1955 Buick and the car was in PERFECT condition. It was pretty cool and Jay was really good to all the people who wanted to take photographs and get his autograph. I respect the guy a lot more after seeing him do what he did.

After the comedy show thing didn't work out we went back to Mark and Megan's and they made us a fantastic send off dinner and we hung out. Megan took this last picture. The Three Musketeers.

Hope all are well.

LA Add ons

March 2, 2009 - I completely forgot to tell you all about dinner Saturday night. After a great day of seeing the LA sights (see last blog post) we went back to Andaz for a few cocktails before dinner. We had the hotel guest services make a reservation for us at BLT Steak. For all the NYC blog followers out there you will recognize the name since BLT has over 7 locations in New York. The dinner was ridiculously good and totally worth it if you are in LA.

As I said guest services had made the reservation for us and somewhere along the way there was a misunderstanding in the chain of communication and BLT thought that Sarah's Dad owned Andaz. As some of you know Sarah's father works with the family that owns the Hyatt Hotel chain (Andaz is the Hyatt version of the W) and at one point in his career was an executive with the firm. The people at Andaz obviously told BLT that we were VIP's (I love being a VIP) and they should take care of us. In the end we got the best table in the restaurant (in my opinion) and we got a whole bunch of food comped. To top off the night Eric Dickerson walked in about half way through the night and sat down right in front of us.

Sarah and I are not huge fans of LA but our weekend with her parents and all the great food we ate was a highlight of 500o Miles Of Freedom.

We are now in Vegas for the night and then continuing back east tomorrow. We are staying at the Venetian hotel and got a great room rate. Tonight we ate at B&B Mario Batali restaurant on the property. The place was fantastic and well worth the bill. After dinner we did some gambling (not me) and didn't fair as well as Tahoe. Oh well maybe next time.

The trip is over within the week so we are dealing with that. 48 days on the road is a bit tiring...

Hope all are well.

LA Funday

March 1, 2009 - After a great dinner at the Ivy and a night out on the town LA style we woke up and saw the sights of the city. The day started with us saying goodbye to Mark and Megan and then organizing a car to take us around to see what we wanted to see. We started the day by visiting the Grove on 3rd and Fairfax. The place is an enormous shopping mall now but the real attraction is the old farmers market out back in the parking lot. I was told that the market dates pretty far back into history so it is kind of cool to visit something with some historical significance in a city that values the "new thing".

I didn't get many good shots of the market because we were focused on breakfast but this is one I thought was worth sharing. The entire store is for hot sauce!!! We think the store is called Light Your Fire but regardless of the name the store had EVER kind of hot sauce one would ever want.

After the Grove we headed out to Santa Monica to see the pier and most importantly to have a caricature done of Sarah and me to memorialize the trip. The Santa Monica pier is world famous and is definitely worth stopping by on a nice day.

Sarah and her parents at the end of the pier, nothing between them and Hawaii.

What a great picture!!!

After the Santa Monica pier we headed up to Ocean Blvd to find some oysters for lunch and low and behold we sat down at Ocean on Ocean. The restaurant was great, the seafood platter for two was truly satisfying, and the roasted beat salad was great. We then headed back inland to so Sarah and her Mom could walk down Rodeo Dr.

When in LA this is a MUST do. The people, stores, and cars you see while walking down the famous strip are amazing. No joke I think we saw 10 Ferrari's and 7 Rolls Royce's in a 4 block span. Not buying anything didn't even matter the experience was still very cool.

We took this picture at the very north end of Rodeo on what I call the Spanish Step of Rodeo. Sarah's Dad was telling me about the RE deal that ended up building this side shoot off Rodeo. It is a pedestrian mall now with tons of stores and these steps at the end. Once you walk down the steps you are at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, another famous LA landmark. One thing I found hysterical was that Jose Eber, the hair stylist from the late 80's mid 90's, has a store on this little off shoot of Rodeo. If you ever watched info-mercials in the 1990's you for sure saw this guys and his products. When I lived in Germany I used to watch all these info-mercials because it was some of the only English speaking TV on at that time.

This is Jose Eber if you don't know/remember who I am talking about. Totally and completely classic!!! Funny what you remember from your childhood.

After Rodeo we were beginning to tire a bit so we got the car to take us up to the hills over looking the city, the Hollywood sign, and the Hollywood Bowl. I had not been up to this lookout point before, mainly because UT is a bad friend and host, so it was pretty cool to see it now. The views of the city, the south bay, Santa Monica (sort of), and the rest of the neighborhood was fantastic. Maybe we caught it on a light smog day.

If you look carefully over Sarah's left shoulder you can see the Hollywood sign up on the hill. It looked way better in person.

Of course we had to stop by the Kodak Theater and Grauman's Chinese Theater. The people that hangout on Hollywood Ave are really weird. There are a bunch of desperate actors looking for work that dress up in famous movie characters outfits and charge you a dollar to take a picture with them. I would have to be pretty desperate to do that...

The mandatory "couples picture". When I make the album from this trip we are going to have some really good "couples" shots.

Hope all are well.

PS - I am done editing these posts. I want to go have a few last beers with Mark and Megan before LaLa is gone.