Day 29 and epilogue

Since our week was nice, but still filled with unusual setbacks, we decided to go to the airport in plenty of time.  So we ate breakfast and then took the shuttle to the airport and did make it there in plenty of time!   I decided to go through security (after getting my boarding pass and handing ver my bags), since the line looked long and I didn't want to miss my flight.  So, that's what I did, and then I sat and waited.  Paul eventually got through as well (I was taking JetBlue and he was taking Southwest so we waiting in different boarding pass lines).  He came over to my gate, since his flight was a couple hours after mine.  We waited for my flight and then parted  ways!!  I went on my way to Boston, where I saw a beautiful sunset from my window just before landing.  I didn't stand up the entire flight, so my leg hurt later, but Mom, Dad, Katrina, Pierce, and I went to Nana's for awhile after they picked me up.  Then we went home!! (Krysta)

I proceeded to fly back to LAX, got picked up by William, and spent some time in Burbank, later met Austin and went over to his place to drink beers and watch this new U2 documentary! Ended up staying in the Glen Capri on San Fernando Rd. for 3 nights before heading to Oakwood and staying with William and Aaron for 6 nights. That was nice because I was finally able to go to the gym on a somewhat regular basis, didn't want to try running yet cause my foot was still healing. Ended up going to the movies quite a few times on the second part of my trip, mostly at the AMC Downtown Burbank 16. Tried (unsuccessfully) looking for jobs out there, came back with a few leads, but nothing ever really materialized... oh well... My dad flew out on November 2nd I believe, and he stayed for about a week, mostly in the good ol Residence Inn again. They were probably getting sick of me by then, spending the better part of a month there. We did a few things while he was in town, went to an LA Kings game, who little did we know would win the Stanley Cup and the end of the season. Visited the Reagan library in Simi Valley, and had a nice dinner at a friend of his from medical school's house in Santa Monica. 

When he went back I started to realize that it was probably getting near the time I should start thinking about leaving as well. Money was getting really low, yeah I had a credit card, but I didn't want to rack up an unpayable amount on it... I ended up heading back to the Glen Capri for the rest of my trip, 7 or 8 more nights I think. Tried more job searching, thought I might have had something promising with NBCUniversal when a recruiter called me, but that didn't manifest. Not really too much else to say about my last week or so there. Eventually I booked a red eye flight out of the Burbank airport on the night of November 15th. William and I got dinner and Outback Steakhouse off Victory Blvd. and he then dropped me off at the airport. My flight was a little delayed, so I almost missed my connecting flight from NYC to Boston. Got picked up at Logan by my mom, and headed home....

Overall it was quite an experience, probably a once in a lifetime type. While I would have loved to have stayed out in LA indefinitely, it was realistically probably time to come home. I feel very lucky to have been able to take that trip and seen so many amazing things. Anyway, I did go back to LA this past May for a week, nice to see my friends again, but it was far too short of a time to be that memorable, guess if I'm not going to end up living out there, which seems to be the likely scenario now, I can at least visit once or twice a year. 

Well thanks to everyone who followed our trip, it was fun writing this blog (most of the time...) and along with the pictures, it'll be a good way to remember our trip by. Sorry it took me so long to finish it, but I'm glad it finally is done.

The End.

Day 28 (by Krysta)

From Alamosa, CO, we drove up to Colorado Springs, where we visited Cave of the Winds, which was very cool.  The guy said that if we touched the wall we would be fined about $2000, Paul wanted to note that insanity.  Also, they had some wall that people could throw metal things on (like pennies, etc.), "legend" has it that if the penny doesn't stick you will get divorced or something. It had something to do with two women who left  bobby pins there and right after they got married.  Also, when they were discovering the caves, people would smoke and hold candles for light, so there were black marks on the ceiling of the cave from them. It was a fun place to visit.

Afterwards, we drove to Denver, where we sat in traffic waiting to get into the city and drop off the car before the Hertz closed.  We thankfully made it there just before it closed, parked Mazey, emptied it out, and said bye to our Mazda! :(

From there, we dragged all our crap to the bus station.  I laughed a lot during the walk to the station since we must have looked so ridiculous dragging several suitcases through the streets of Denver.  We were also not sure which was to go, so while Paul was calling Dad to have him look at a map on Google, I asked some random dude on the street.  We walked over to station and stood outside of it, confused.  Paul went in to figure out what to do, while I waited outside with some homeless dude and a security guard watching him.  Eventually Paul came back and we went into the station and sat down.  Thankfully they had a bathroom and a little cafe store thing.  We waited for our bus, only to get into the wrong line and miss our bus.  To be fair, though, the driver did not stay there for more than about one minute and the announcement that the bus was here was said as the bus was leaving (or had just left..). We asked some guy working there and he said it hadn't come yet, but he was wrong and so we waited an hour for the next bus to the airport.  We ate sandwiches from the little store cafe place for dinner. 

When the bus got there the second time, we did not miss it, thankfully!  So we began our trip to the airport, though at one point the bus stopped at some stop for at least 20 minutes and I was very happy we didn't have to catch a plane!  Finally, we made it to the airport, where we called the hotel.  They told us that their shuttles come at every hour and half hour, and of course it was about 8:26pm.  So Paul quickly ran to see if he could find and ATM to get cash for a tip for the driver, but he couldn't find one and came back.  We rushed outside, waiting about a minute until shuttle that said Fairfield Inn (a Marriott) drove up.  I thought we were staying there, so I almost got us on the wrong shuttle, but thankfully Paul asked the guy if he was going to the Residence Inn (also a Marriott), which is where we were really staying, and the guy said no.  So, we didn't get on that one and waited for the right shuttle to pick us up.  Soon after, our shuttle showed up and we headed to the Residence Inn.

When we got there, we attempted and failed to print the boarding passes for our flights due to weird computer issues they were having.  Paul then washed all his clothes because of the bed bugs and the fact that he was heading back to LA and not home.  I think I just showered and went to bed.  That Residence Inn was nice because it reminded us of the one we had stayed so long in while in LA..like our "home" during the trip.

Day 27 (by Krysta)

The next morning, I called Mom to tell her about the wonderful news of bed bugs, ate breakfast, showered and tied all my bed-bug clothes in plastic bags.  Later in the morning, we headed out...and then came back after Dad had spoken to the manager of the motel..and got our night's stay for free.

We headed over to the Four Corner's (Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico), where both of us got to stand in four states at one time! It was on some sort of Indian reservation, it was pretty cool to go to since it is kinda of in the middle of nowhere.  But we did get to spend about one hour in New Mexico (total) on our trip!

We went to a Burger King in Kayenta, Arizona (not sure of the spelling..) for lunch, I'm not sure if it was before or after going to the Four Corner's, but I believe it was before since it was in Arizona and we were heading back to Colorado.

We decided to go to another National Park, Mesa Verde, which is near the southwest corner of Colorado.  Mesa Verde used to house cliff-dwelling Indians, which was pretty amazing.  They built cities, including a palace on the side of the mountains.  Thankfully, we got a chance to stop at all the overlooks and other types of stops they had there (such as where huts used to be, on top of the mountains). Yet again, we left a national park as the sun was setting.

I believe we went to Denny's for dinner that night in Durango along the way (in the dark again) to a Days Inn in Alamosa, CO, which is in southern Colorado.  We stayed there for the night and it was such a relief to stay in a reasonable hotel!

Day 26 (by Krysta)

The next morning we went Subway for "breakfast", but really lunch...because it was about 11:05am, and they couldn't possibly make a breakfast sandwich.  Then we headed over to Grand Canyon, which was about an hour or two away. 

Of course, the Grand Canyon was beautiful.  We took lots of pictures, headed down a little side path at one of the overlooks and pretended to fall of the side, and saw a herd of very large deer.  We later saw a small herd of small deer as well.  At some main overlooks, we walked up to a little visitor's center, which also had some nice views.  While we were there, we looked through some provided binoculars at where we had been the night before, the North Rim.  It was called the "Governor's Lodge" (the creepy motel-like place with red lights).  It was pretty windy by the end of the day, and Paul wasn't wearing a sweatshirt, so he was freezing (his fingers were numb by the time we got to the car).  I sat at an overlook for awhile, watching the sunset...again, we stayed until just about sunset and then headed out.  We  stopped at a place called "We cook pizza and pasta" for dinner, where we (not surprisingly), ate pizza.

While we were at the Grand Canyon, though, we called Mom and Dad to reserve a room for us that night.  We ended up going down to Flagstaff, Arizona, where we stayed in a Super 8 motel.  I was still exhausted from the night before, so I went to bed at about  9:30pm.  Paul stayed up though, to write the blog, which got erased.  At about 1:30am, Paul woke me up to inform me that there were bed bugs in our room.  He had seen one run across the bed, and killed another one.  Needless to say, I was horrified, and I remember saying "What are we supposed to do?".  We went outside in the frigid temperature to cross the creepy parking lot to the main office.  The lady was very nice and moved our room, her advice was just to put the clothes we were wearing in plastic bags as tightly as possible and to shower.  That's exactly what I did the next morning, but that night I stayed awake until about 4am, not covering myself with the blankets for fear of bed bugs in this room as well, and watched some ridiculous cowboy comedy movie starring Billy Crystal (Mike Wosowski's voice in Monster's Inc.).

Day 25 (by Krysta)

After waking up in Las Vegas, we ate some breakfast that we brought in from the car (from our food stash in case we get lost along the way).  Thankfully we had that stash... We went to the lobby of the hotel we were in and reserved a room on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.  So, at some point in the morning we headed out.  Unfortunately, we thought that the room we reserved was on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon...

Before that, though, we drove through two beautiful National Parks. First, we drove through Zion National Park, which was amazing.  It reminded me of a smaller Yosemite, but in red.  It had thin, windy roads and a couple tunnels. 

After leaving Zion, we quickly headed over to Bryce National Park before sunset.  Bryce was also quite unbelievable.  It had one road straight in and out of the park.  After the amount of time it took us to get through Yosemite, we thought that we would not make it to the end of the park before sunset, but we did!  So, we stopped at each of the overlooks and took pictures.  The last site was probably the most breathtaking.  It was called Rainbow Point and its elevation was over 9,000 ft (I believe that the entire park was very highly elevated, but this was the highest point).  From Rainbow Point, we could see like 100 miles. I'm not even sure that is an exaggeration!  And since we were there around sunset, I got some amazing pictures.  Once again, we drove out of a national park in the dark.

After leaving Bryce, we decided to head to our hotel "on the North Rim" (but not really!).   We made it all the way to the road that leads to the North Rim, passing by a few creepy restaurants named "restaurant" and a little inn called "Jacob Lake Inn".  We started to head down the long straight in and out road that leads to the North Rim.  We had assumed that since there was a hotel on the North Rim, that there would also be a place to eat.  As we drove down the extremely dark road, we noticed were the only ones on it, which seemed suspicious.  We saw an amazing number of stars on the way in, as well as an amazing number of deer.  About forty five minutes in, Paul looked at his iPod, where he saved the address of the hotel.  We discovered, to our dismay, that the hotel was on the South Rim.  (We had just entered the north rim of the Grand Canyon into our GPS).  So, there we were on a dark, abandoned road surrounded by a million deer.  We decided that instead of turning around, we would see if there was anything on the North Rim...a place to eat or to sleep.  When we got there, though, we drove by a little motel-like place, with red lights outside, and a pickup truck parked at it...basically it looked like something from a horror movie.   We parked in a little lot at the end of the road, near an RV and random other car that were there.  Thankfully, Paul had a tiny bit of phone signal, since I had none.  He called the hotel and they tried to help us, but Paul had almost no battery on his phone and there was nothing that they could really do.  We stayed there for a little while, eating Nutri Grain bars and drinking water bottles from our food stash.  Paul went to the trunk to find his car phone charger.  It was taking so long I thought he was eaten by a bear, especially since I said his name and he didn't reply..the first time (he did after the second one though).  Then we turned around and drove out the the North Rim.  On the way, though, we almost hit a deer, swerving out of the way just in time to save us and the deer! :)  We went by Jacob lake inn again, but unfortunately it was closed by that time (it was about 10 or 11 by this point).  So, we filled up the gas tank at their little gas station (you could fill the tank with credit cards, even when no one was there), Paul drank Coke right out of the bottle because he was scared of falling asleep on the way and we headed toward the South Rim. 

Looking at a map, we decided that we should stay in a town just on the other side of the rim and texted William for the phone number of a Super 8.  We got it and called them, and they told us we didn't need to make a reservation because there were plenty of rooms.  So, we headed to Page, Arizona.  Again, though, we were driving through such darkness, I was confused when I saw the moon behind the clouds. Paul and I both had no idea what the "creepy light" coming from the clouds was, I guess we had forgotten that the moon even existed, haha! 

Already been a year...

Since this week marks one year since we went on our long West Coast road trip, I figured I'd revisit this blog. Sorry I never really finished up posting about the trip, was typing up about the night Krysta and I got lost at the Grand Canyon, and accidentally deleted my whole post. Was really frustrated about that and fell so far behind that I just gave up. I'm going to start blogging again about stuff that interests me, don't really care if anybody reads it or not, but I just want to do this for my own sanity. Krysta had typed up some stuff about the rest of our trip, so I'll post that soon if anyone's interested.

Day 24

So today we said our tearful goodbye to Los Angeles county (we Krysta did, and I did for a few days anyway, I'm going back on Saturday hehehe). We checked out of the Econo Lodge in Glendale, where we had spent a total of 7 nights on this trip now. (Yes I can now reveal where we stayed, didn't want people to know while we were still there!) It served us well and was fairly inexpensive. I had to sleep on my air mattress the whole time we were there though.

real life Saul Goodman?

Anyway, we checked out around 11 and headed towards fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada! It was about a 4 hour drive from Glendale to Vegas, very little traffic on the way. We made a quick stop at a McDonalds and gas station, but otherwise drove straight into the city. Got to Vegas a little after 4, I think anyway, checked into the Tuscany Suites & Casino. I booked the room through hotels.com, and it was only like 30 bucks. Pretty crazy. After getting settled, we decided to walk over to the strip, which was a few blocks away from Tuscany.

So we walked over to the strip, passed by a few more hotels/casinos  including the massive Ballys. We walked by the Flamingo a bit, streets were really crowded even though it wasn't really late yet, but I guess this city runs 24/7. Looked at a bunch of the places along the strip, took pictures in front of them, etc. Ton of people along the street giving out rather interesting pamphlets and "reading material" (to keep it family friendly). I can't believe people actually hand that stuff out as their job. Anyway, we walked around a little more, and went into Madame Tussads Wax Museum.

We didn't end up going to Madame Tussauds Hollywood on this trip, I went on my LA trip last year, but we just didn't get around to it this time, so we wanted to go here in Vegas. It was fun, lots of very realistic looking figures, not to mention a "live" exhibit probably especially for Halloween where you walk around a very scary laboratory and people jump out at you. Ahhh!!! Here are some of the pics.

yeah...Arnold makes me look like a girly man...

aw yeahhhh

poor Krysta, her dreams are ruined!

really like how this one came out, long live The King!

After exiting the museum, we saw a rather large crowd gathering nearby, I was a little perplexed, but then realized that Anderson Cooper was down there, as there was going to be a presidential debate the next day in Vegas and he was hosting it. Looked like he was talking to people, taking pics, maybe signing autographs or something, not quite sure.

We eventually walked back to the Tuscany. When I checked in, they gave me a coupon booklet thingy that included a $20 coupon off any $40 purchase at the Italian restaurant in the lobby. I'm a sucker for Italian food, so we made a reservation there for dinner, which we went to at about 7:30. Great food, great atmosphere, very friendly and efficient waiter. All around good dining experience. After eating, we headed into the hotel's casino for a bit, where I failed miserably at the penny slots. We headed back to the room, I watched House at 9, and then went back over to the lobby for a bit.

Sat at the hotel bar, ordered a few drinks, talked with some of the people there, including the bartender who was a pretty cool guy. They also had a virtual poker game at the seats at the bar, so I decided to play. As you may remember, I only really learned how to play poker a few nights ago, so I wanted to test how well I remembered it. I actually won some money in the game! Shocking I know. I only put a $5 bill in, eventually had as much as $15, but stopped once I got down to $10. I guess that's how you manage to "win" - set limits for yourself so that you don't lose everything.

Anyway, short, but fun Vegas experience, would have liked to maybe see a show or something, but alas we need to keep a tight schedule on this trip.... Here are a few more Vegas pics for your enjoyment.

yeah I'm the man