ARR we D.A.R.E yet?

So as "all of you" know ... I moved to SO CAL this summer for my internship at Obey. . . And Hannah Escorted me on my journey... 

Hannah slept the whole time and did not help me with the driving at all. stupid slut. 

So we started in Iowa, obviously, and left around 4pmish. And of course our tour wouldn't be complete without a stop in the great state of Nebraska to visit the Gerken family and wispy locks mike.

Best quote of the night:  Hannah:   did he get a phone call ( talking about the joke about kevin's dog going to jail)

Second Stop: George town, Colorado.... I would also like to mention that I almost killed hannah and I on at least 3 different occasions.  The first I dont remember, but thats not surprising... or maybe it was just that traumatizing .. think about it... anyway.. second time I actually wasn't asleep but somehow I hit something that I never saw... I still think it was a deer, hannah thinks it was a small critter. but she slept the whole way so what does she know... third occasion... the pull of the platte river started to sway us its way, but my masterful driving skills saved the day.. like usual of course

Another side story: we wanted to take a "group photo" (love the quotes in this blog I guess)... so we set the camera on top of the car BUT it wasn't high enough, so we took our only pillow and set the camera on top of it and then on top of the car... picture was done, check, so we decided to explore the town.. Mean while we look to our left and notice that some fire men are pointing and chit chatting about us.. lonely folk probably don't see many people in their town.. Nope.. we were driving off with the pillow on top of our car.  joke was clearly on us. later we realized it and luckily found it on the side of the road.. filthy, but not dirty dirty rich. (lady ga ga pun for all you turtles)

Detour to "Hole in the Rock" Utah.. I really thought Utah would be a waste of time, but actually it was probably my favorite state to drive through... granted I didn't see Nebraska because it was dark, so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt for now.. 

Overall, hole in the rock, not that cool. We didn't even see the hole in the rock because we didn't want to pay the $3 tour fee. Instead we bought native american bead headbands. I know you are all proud.

We stopped at every border... and skipped it.. thats right.. check out the videos at the bottom.. or my youtube website if you want to see us skip it around the western part of the U.S.. parts of it anyway

also at this particular site, hannah set her sunglasses on the front of the car... needless to say, we drove off with them there and now they are in the mixup of arizona and utah... dun dun dunnn

I'm not sure where this picture is.. but i like it..

Before I get to the next stop, let me tell you why there aren't any Grand Canyon Pictures... well we attempted to go to the Grand Canyon and it was our final destination for day 2, but my lovely GPS Irene got a little confused. She led us down a ridiculous gravel road (not small iowa gravel, but large arizona rock gravel) by which we traveled on for a hour.. passing several cows via the nature tour....... and once we got to the turning point on the gps it was a road that didn't exist.. of course we didn't want to waste that hour we just spent on the gravel road, so we kept going for probably another 45 minutes before we were so frustrated and on the verge of killing each other that we decided to turn around. 

After we finally got off the nature tour that Irene took us on, we decided to make a second attempt and take the other path which was paved. Surprisingly this road did lead to the grand canyon, but unfortunately by the time we got there it was too dark to see anything or take any pictures... awesome awesome smile smile

The kicker is that after we got to the grand canyon and didn't see it, we had to drive 3 hours to our hotel after a 20 hour drive through what seemed to be somewhere out of the Hills have eyes... draw your own mental picture

So after the Grand Canyon flop we woke up after a wonderful stay at the Days Inn, exactly an hour too late for the complementary breakfast. Side note: our hotel was 45 minutes from a different entrance up to the grand canyon.. yipeee

Anyway, on a more positive note, Irene did lead us successfully to Montezuma's castle, which was pretty cool but at this point we were pretty disappointed by not have been able to see the grandest canyon in the world (or U.S at least)

The Hoover Dam was my favorite tourist attraction spot. It was amazing. The end. Wait. We took the Dam tour. It was $11. I was picturing some sort of scene out of Las Vegas Vacation. .. but the dam guide was actually very comical and i might say clever... 

Here i am looking serene 

After the dam we headed off to Las Vegas. We stayed at the stratosphere hotel for only $30.. yes $30. I am still impressed with that. The picture above is one of my favorites. 

Once we got into our hotel room we immediately noticed how cool we looked and of course had to take a myspace worthy shot.

There are many talented photographers in Las Vegas. Most of them are mustache wearing men who just want some girls to go get drunk with them, and their best pick up line is that they can make any picture work (after they see me trying to take a picture with my casio, attempting to hold it perfectly still so that its not blurry and then say that they can work with anything. After I tell them okay but there can't be a flash because then it won't work, but then they ask after they take the picture why there was no flash.. ahhh hilarious)  anyway so this picture was taken by one of those fellows, and I actually really like it even though he seemed pretty unhappy about his proof of skills at this point

New York Hotel

After our 3 day road trip we finally made it to Southern California. Once we made a quick stop at my apartment, we immediately headed for Huntington Pier.. 

So those were the ins and outs of our trips. I hope you enjoyed it. I also hope that you appreciate that I didn't put up as many pictures this time (even if there are still a lot)  because I had to cut a lot of winners.

On to the next blog

Dwarfin out: m c k