Just trying to Put Myself Out There: Putting my car out there...

...on the open road

(at the bottom of this post are the lyrics to the Goofy Movie Song "Out on the Open Road" because it has been stuck in my head all day!)

The first time I drove cross country I was with a very good friend and her sister and we were in 2 different cars, and by the end of day 1 we had just decided okay, let's just get to Los Angeles. I think we were both a bit shell shocked that we were moving cross country in the first place, so as much as we planned about stopping and seeing things we didn't. We arrived on September 1, 2006 and it wasn't the road trip we were hoping for. In fact the whole situation wasn't what we had expected, and I vowed to stay only 6 months.

So, 4 years (minus 1 day) into my 6 month stay in Los Angeles, I finally left. August 31, my road trip buddy, known in this blog as Babs (who is real LOL) took off. I had initially couldn't find a buddy, and thought I was going to have to do it solo, but thank God, Babs came through! :)

There we were, Babs, me, my beloved kitties and the open road. Unlike the first time I had a very planned out route, places to stop along the way, and things I wanted to see. And oh yeah, this time I had cat carriers, so it made things like stopping to see things a bit easier.

So our first "stop" was Vegas. Though, because our actual first stop was still 8 hours from Vegas, we did a Vegas drive-by, took pics and then headed further North/East. In 4 years in LA I didn't ever go to Vegas so it was nice to see. Our actual first stop for the night was in Salt Lake City Utah. I have always wanted go to Salt Lake since the 2002 Olympics, and I wanted to let my inner (and usually outer) Olympic geek out! We stayed with a good friend/practically family member who showed us amazing hospitality and a very nice evening in Salt Lake. We even found roads that were 80mph (DUDE) The next morning we headed out early towards Park City Utah to see the rest of the Olympic-y things. AWESOME!!! :) I was so amazed by everything in front of me. I have always been an Olympic geek, being in Torino in 06 really did only made it worse. Despite my love of the moving Cool Runnings and growing up really only hours from Lake Placid, NY, I had never seen a real bobsled track! It was sooooo cool, I was like bouncing out of my car! All and it all the whole morning was amazing, I even got a Salt Lake Pin!! Babs and I both found a love of Salt Lake City and I will one day retire there and work in the Salt Lake Winter Olympic Museum.

The first day in the car was loooong, almost 12 hours, the kitties were cranky, and Babs and I were tired, but all and all not a bad first day. I was so excited to be on the road with a good friend headed towards an Olympic Mecca that I didn't even have time to be sad so that was a step in the right direction.

After Salt Lake we headed on to Denver CO, yet another place I had never been. It was my goal to cross off more states on this trip and by day 2, I had added NV, UT, WY and CO to my already sort of good size list. We had a nice drive to Denver, very pretty, the kitties were in a much better mood day 2 and while we were looking to doing fun CO things, we were also very excited to sleep in our own beds at the hotel! LOL, at that point I hadn't slept in a real bed in days, since I had moved my mattress, slept on a friends coach and shared a bed with Babs the night before, I was looking forward to a nice bed. All day in the car we discussed where we were going to eat in Denver, because the goal was to eat things you could only get in the cities were going to be in and I wanted to try beer all along the way. About 20 mins from Denver, it hit me. What does CO have that would be an awesome place to stop and say we went too?!??

CASA BONITA!! (that's right we took the advice of Cartman and the Katy Perry Parody http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYGpelWYFx0"> Colorado Girls And while the food wasn't the best either of has ever eaten by far, the margaritas were pretty good, and the atmosphere was pretty excellent, cliff divers, and arcade, music, and whole little Mexican like village in side, and these amazing Mexican puffy bread things which were amazing! It was a good time. Then we made what a good pilgrimage to the Real World 18 house (RW18 was my first paying gig in LA) and wandered a little bit in Denver's Downtown, hitting up the bar that was in the CO girls video where the are "Sipping Coors Light" though I didn't realize it till later. A pretty good stop in Denver if I do say so myself. We also tried to eat a cookie bigger than our heads, and even splitting it we couldn't do it. We also tried some great local beers that were not Coors light! We managed to get to bed fairly early that evening and were excited to hit the road again in the morning.