We left Seattle heading to Vegas on a Friday night. We took I-90, down to I-82, then took that to Idaho, where we cut south around Post Falls. After driving all night, we swapped so Erin could drive right at the border of Idaho & Nevada. The little town of Jackpot, Nevada. It seemed like a cute town, out in the middle of no where. I slept for about an hour then enjoyed the ride as a passenger as we went through northern Nevada.
We got to Vegas in the afternoon, where we went and checked into our hotel off the strip, South Point. It wasn't horrible by any stretch, but it wasn't amazing either. We then went into the strip to check things out, get some food, play some poker and enjoy Vegas. Played in a poker tournament at Harrah's that night, took9th. Not bad for one hr of sleep in over 36hrs. The World Series of Poker was over doing circuit events at Caesar's Palace. It was cool to see though I definitely wish I would have played in one...
Sunday we were going to go to Phoenix after playing some poker, so we jumped into an early tournament at Treasure Island where I made the final table again and took... 5th I think? I can't remember, it was all a blur. Mix in the tournament finish and some chatting and that got us a strip view room up high in TI for a cheaper rate than our previous night in South Point. We took Sunday night to go visit the new City Center, had some amazing food, including our $4 shrimp! haha. We also played some Blackjack Switch, which PB definitely did better than I..We got up Monday morning and took off for Phoenix, since Monday night was the graduation the trip was originally planned for. The drive between LV & Phoenix? Boring as hell! The only cool thing to see was going over the Hoover Dam. Everything else was rocks, yellow dried plants, and a cactus here and there. However, as we were driving, PB threw "The Hangover" up on her laptop so we could watch it on the drive, somewhat fitting as we just left Vegas. (Though we remembered our trip..haha)
It was quite warm in PHX. When we got there we made lunch for everyone, went to the store down the street for some items and then went to the graduation waaay on the other side of town. The graduation was cool too. It did take about 2 hours though, a lot of singing & such. Once that was done, there was a little reception in the back of the church where I got to sit and chat with a future nephew on his plans for the future, as he's an IT major. It was a great conversation and fun to hear someone young interested in the things you can do in technology. Though I do have mixed emotions about being old enough now to be a mentor in someone's future. I know I have 12+ years doing this, but still..... Crazy.
We stayed Monday night, packed up Tuesday morning and headed west! We decided to visit an old friend of PB's in California on the way through. The drive there was pretty cool. Up through some windy roads we stopped off at a viewpoint and got some great pics from an overlook, saw a rattle snake and had some fun with the Hemi through the curves.. We got to their house around 6ish, had steak, a lot of chatting, and laughing, then left for Washington around 11pm.
As we left their house we realized we were only about an hour north of San Diego. So close.. The drive up I-5 was fairly uneventful, though we did stop and eat at a small little place called Burger Barn in Northern California, then stopped off in Weed, California. Had to pick up some memorabilia for such a great town. OH and we also stopped at the Liquor Expo, picking up almost $200 in alcohol, which was 3 half gallons and 6-7 fifths of booze. We got home around 10:30-11p on Wednesday, just in time to get back to work on Thursday morning.
Despite all that time on the road, together, we had a great trip. There was no fighting or complaining, we just enjoyed it for what it was. A lot of time together, talking about life, the future and the fun that we were having.
Given the length of this post, I'll go ahead and end it here. I need to update everything else going on, so more to come! Maybe even this week!! haha
