Thanks for stopping by! You’ll notice that I’m not your typical Dominican from Paterson, NJ living in San Francisco. Try to blog every Tuesday, but you know, life happens. Please follow on social media.
As weird as it may sound, I first found out about backpacking through the movie Wild. My first time backpacking was one for the books. Outside of what I saw in the movie, I had zero knowledge of the activity. I went to REI to buy and rent shit on my own. My first trip was to Havasupai–a Native American Reservation in the west side of the Grand Canyon.
The trek to the Havasupai campground is a 10 mile downhill hike. I made all the rookie mistakes you could make during this trip. I packed clothes for several days, entire loafs of bread, with your regular bottles of peanut butter and jelly, and if that was not enough I brought several items to make pancakes in the morning (SMH). I was smart about my sleeping gear. A friend lend me a backpacking hammock, and I rented a lightweight sleeping pad and bag from REI. I felt my over-weight, over-packed backpack about 5 or 10 minutes into my trek. Heading out of this canyon I cheated because going in was brutal for me; I ended up getting the worse blisters you could imagine, and could not imagine having to do the trek, the uphill trek, so I took a helicopter ride out. First thing I did was book a nice hotel suite in Vegas, and made dinner reservations at one of my favorite steakhouses in town.
Here’s a picture of me and massively overpacked backpack… Wish I would’ve taken a pic of the full backpack.
After this trip you’d think I’d be done with backpacking… Nope! This really got me going, and left me wanting more. Luckily some of the folks in the group I was in knew quite a bit about backpacking, so I picked their brains for as much as I could. This trip happened in the summer of 2018, and I knew I wasn’t going to get into this in the fall with how things were in my life by then.
Fast forward to Spring 2019 and I was poised to overturn every rookie mistake I made. Signed up for a few REI classes, joined several subreddits, revisited the notes taken from my backpacking friends and this pic sums up the results:
Looking at lot better this time… No crazy items over my head, and a much more appropriate gearset at a reasonable weight.
This picture was taken in the San Rafael Swell in southern Utah. Unfortunately was not able to test out all of my new gear during this trip because me and my friend got lost and couldn’t meetup with a group we were supposed to. Luckily my friend and I ran into someone from that trip (whom we did not get to meet during that trip). He invited me to go to Grand Gulch in Bears Ears National Monument. This was the ultimate test them all trip. Three Days, Two nights, and roughly 35 miles to go through. Guess what? I kicked ass during that trip. That then opened the flood gates and in 2019 I backpacked the following:
Coyote Gulch in Escalante National Monument
Uintas National Forest
Cirque of the Towers in Wind Rivers, WY
Maroon Bells Loop in Aspen, CO
Small Portions of the PCT in Oregon
It also opened the flood gates to many camping trips that happened that summer and fall. Since then I have continued to backpack and also brought along a new friend with me:
TL;DR Went to Havasupai for my first trip where I brought too much shit I didn’t need or use. Got help, adjusted my gear, and have been backpacking lots since.
I am a big Kevin Durant fan. His game is just out of this world at times. For those NBA fans keeping track, 2016 was a particular interesting year. It was Kobe Bryant’s last NBA season, Golden State established the record for most wins in a season, the Cleveland Cavaliers came back from a 3-1 deficit in the finals to win the chip, and 2016 was KD’s last season in Oklahoma City.
When the season began I had a feeling this would be Kevin Durant’s last season in OKC. I’ve been watching him and this team for years and really admired their home court advantage. My cousin, Randy, who was living in Utah at the time, was also a big KD and OKC fan. We both decided we had to get out there before KD left and witness a game in person. We began planning for this trip towards the end of 2015. My sister had recently moved into Utah and wanted to tag along with us; had no interest whatsoever in going to the game.
Like I’ve said before I like road trips. I like the planning, the driving, the everything involved with road trips. So I took it upon myself to get everything arranged for us. I went ahead and scouted best restaurants in our routes, places to see and go. Here’s the route we took for our trip:
In case you didn’t notice that’s roughly 2600 miles of driving without detours; not the most I’ve taken on, but quite a bit.
Day 0 – Friday, March 11th 2016
The day before the trip began. We were planning to leave early on Day 1 because of the amount of miles we were driving. I scheduled to pickup the rental late because I had a snowboarding class that day; I think I scheduled it for 9pm. When I arrived at the rental counter I was asked for my insurance card. I didn’t have my car or my insurance card with me. My car was in Orem where I was living at the time. To this day this has been the only company that asked me for this; I’ve rented all over the country and from several companies and not once have I been asked for my insurance card. The rental company closed at 10p and it was impossible for me to go and drive back from Orem before 10p. The representative said they would honor my rental the next day first thing in the morning. So I left, went to go get my insurance card, got ready for the trip, and went to bed early so that I could pick up the rental early.
Day 1 – Saturday, March 12th 2016
Woke up early, had everything ready, so I hopped out of bed, put on clothes and went straight to the rental company. This rental company canceled my reservation, and charged me a penalty for not picking up the car. The representative that was attending me was not left aware of the situation I ran into the night before. But wait there’s more, this company did not even have a car to rent out to me on this day. They made me wait a long time before telling me this. I was beyond furious with them and just left because I did not want to be mean to the representatives, they were just doing there jobs. Luckily I found another rental just a few minutes away within the amount we had budgeted for a car. At this other company everything went really smoothly compared to that first one.
On Day 1 we had planned to leave early so that we can go to both Monument Valley, and Four Corners. Because of the delayed pick up we had to choose between one of them; Four Corners unfortunately closes at 4pm, and we were just barely going to make it there before they closed, and it didn’t make sense to go back to Monument Valley afterwards. One rule I have on Road Trips is, I do not like to drive at night. I want to keep that to as least as possible, which is why I plan on having a day wasted just for travel.
We hit the road from SLC at 8:30am. Stopped in Orem to pickup my cousin, and went straight to Monticello, UT. My cousin was a big fan of Shake Shack, and I had found this bootleg Shake Shack in UT. I was planning for us to have lunch at this joint, but unfortunately this placed was closed for the season. There weren’t many options open in this town, so we had lunch in Blanding instead. We were still on schedule to make it to Four Corners before 4pm, and to our hotel in Farmington, NM before dark. Four Corners, was meh, we took some fun pictures though. On our way to Farmington we saw this weird shaped rock. We kept getting closer, and closer. We were all startled by it, like confused, because it looked like an Alien Ship, and funny enough I looked it up afterwards and saw that it’s called Shiprock. Checked in at our hotel as scheduled and called it a day. This was a long day, with the rental fiasco, and all the driving, so we all needed some rest.
Day 2 – Sunday, March 13th, 2016
I had planned lots for us this day. I noticed there was this nearby dam that had some beautiful east facing views, so I woke up the crew before dawn. Our hotel did not include breakfast, and the only place open was McD’s, so we went thru their drive-thru. Drove straight to Navajo Damn and just took in the sunrise. It was beautiful and peaceful.
We hit the road and headed towards Taos Pueblo. We drove through some mountain passes on our way there. Luckily the weather was on our side because if it had been snowing we would have been screwed. The views were beautiful. When we made it to Taos Pueblo we found out the historic monument was closed for the season; what?!? I was so bummed because I had found this little gem, but did not know it was closed for the winter months. We did drive around the town a little to take in the architecture views. This town definitely has an Aztec feel to it. After driving around hit the highway again with direction to Santa Fe, NM. To my surprise we drove over the Rio Grande. We had to stop to take in the views.
We made it to Santa Fe and had brunch at this cute little restaurant. The food was phenomenal. The weather was great, so we sat outside and just embraced the weather, sunlight and great food. Afterwards we explored around Santa Fe, NM. This town has a like a Spanish feel to it. Reminded me of the Zona Colonial in my hometown of Santo Domingo. After sight seeing found our way to the interstate with direction towards Albuquerque.
I only planned for us in Albuquerque to go up the Sandia mountain since we had to make our way to Amarillo, TX that night. I did leave it open for Dianne and Randy to do anything they had in mind. Randy wanted to go see Walter White’s house from Breaking Bad. Funny enough they were several people there who went to go see the house. The owners seemed so disgusted that we were there. They had signs all over the place saying TO NOT THROW PIZZA on the roof, lol.
We drove around downtown Albuquerque, found a descent empanadas spot, and drove through Route 66. It was pretty cool driving through Route 66 since there were lots of choppers, and old school car meet ups. After all the sight seeing went up the Sandia mountain not thinking much of it. When we made it to the top we were mesmerized by the views. Do yourself a favor and go up there to the very top viewpoint; it is beautiful. Even for a few Utahns where we have great views everywhere. We were running late at this point, so we didn’t spend too much time up there and went straight to Amarillo, TX where we had a hotel reservation for the night.
Day 3 – Monday March 14th, 2016
This is it. This was the big day. This was the Portland vs. OKC game, so we had to make it to OKC for the game. Luckily the game started at 7pm, so we had plenty of time. Since OKC was a 4hr drive from Amarillo I gave the crew the morning off so that they can catch-up on rest. When they woke up we checked out of our hotel, had an awesome ribeye steak lunch in Amarillo, and checked out the old route 66. Made a few stops here and there to see a few sights. Afterwards went straight to Oklahoma City. Made it to our hotel at a really good time. Rested a little and went straight to the game in order to catch the pre-game workouts. Man, I don’t know how games in OKC are nowadays since Westbrook and Durant are gone, but back then that was quite the show. Like shit, we had a blast starting from the moment we were outside the arena with some drummers, all the way to the end of the game. OKC has this tradition in their home games where the crowd does not sit until the first bucket is scored. Take a look at that next time you see a televised game from OKC. OKC obviously blew Portland away and easily won the game. We got to see Durant and Westbrook kill it. Mission accomplished! After the game we went to a nearby bar to get something to drink and eat with my sister.
Day 4 – Tuesday March 15th, 2016
For Randy and I the trip might as well could’ve ended after the OKC game because that’s why went out there for, and it was a hell of a game. But we were still in OKC, so it was worth exploring while there. I had planned for us to have this entire day to just get to know Oklahoma City. First order of business was food. I gotta say the most underrated burgers in all of US are the Onion Burgers in OKC. My gosh them burgers were good, really good! After eating we were torn between going to the National Cowboy museum or this lake Randy had found on his list. We went to the lake and weren’t at all impressed; should’ve gone to the museum instead, oh well. Drove around downtown for some sight seeing. We split from my sister and went to a baseball game where the OKC Dodgers play; some other team was playing that day. Randy wanted to go eat at KD’s, a restaurant dedicated and themed after Kevin Durant at the time. KD’s didn’t open until dinner time, so to kill time we decided to watch a movie, 10 Cloverfield Lane; heck of a movie if you haven’t seen it. Went to KD’s for dinner, and I gotta say the food was really good. I didn’t order anything myself, only tried some of Randy’s, but it was really good. After dinner did a little bit more site seeing at night and then called it a day.
Day 5 – Wednesday March 16th, 2016
Travel day! This was our last day in OKC and we were facing the long journey from OKC to Denver, CO in one shot. First order of business was food, and I had to take Randy to the Waffle House since we were in the south because he had never tried it. Cleaned the car, checked out, and hit the road. On our way to Denver we stopped at The Top of Oklahoma museum in Blackwell. This museum while interesting was kind of creepy. Randy and Dianne were obsessed with this clown doll they found in a corner. Head straight to Wichita, KS for lunch. On our way there we crossed our first tollbooth in the entire trip. Randy was so happy to see one because we don’t have any in UT and it obviously reminded him of Jersey. Had a descent lunch in Wichita, afterwards walked around and went sight seeing. It’s a cute little town. Definitely liked the brickyard neighborhood. After Wichita we were running behind on schedule, remember I don’t like driving in the night, so we went straight to Denver.
A side story for this day. I really screwed up on this day. This is where I screwed . Instead of going to that museum in Oklahoma and spending so much time in Wichita I should have planned for and researched the town of Hutchinson, KS. What’s in Hutchinson, KS you may ask? Well let me tell you. The freaking spaceships and artifacts from the Apollo 13 mission! They’re stored in the Cosmosphere Museum. Along with that there is Strataca, a big salt mines where a lot of artifacts are kept because of how well they are preserved. Big mistake on my part, but oh well, definitely on my to-do list.
Day 6 – Thursday, March 17th, 2016
It’s been quite the trip so far, but oh you’re in for a treat. The trip has only started at this point, lol. We made it to Denver late the night before and had to wake up early. Today Randy and I were going to split from Dianne and go snowboarding in Loveland ski area. My best friend, my sister from another mother, my homie, Patry, lived in Denver, and she had free tickets to this ski resort. We picked up the tickets, got breakfast at the Denver Biscuit Company, picked up our rentals and went straight to the Ski Area. Little did we know a big storm was headed that way, and it was going to create a nirvana like snowboarding conditions. There was so much powder, it was crazy. This day was bound to fail for many reasons:
I got altitude sickness because of the insanely sweet and huge breakfast I had an hour before snowboarding.
The lack of rest from the night before.
My history with keys (more on this later) .
The snow storm (although it provided some of the best shredding I’ve ever done).
After I was able to hydrate enough to fight off the altitude sickness Randy and I shredded the shit of that mountain. We did Blues, we did a little bit of a Black, we went all the way to the very top of the mountain and snowboarded like crazy that day. It was sooo much fun. We had been taking a snowboarding class all winter and were ready to put our skills to the test, and boy were we ready.
This is where things go south. We were all done shredding and took a picture at the bottom to remember this majestic day. Right after the picture was taken I reached for my pocket to get the car keys, lo and behold my pocket was never zipped up and the keys were gone. Have you ever ridden a scary roller coaster? You know that feeling you get in your heart/chest during that first big drop, that’s what I felt. “Shit! Where are the keys?” – I said. We could not do much. I went to Ski Patrol, and they said they usually have ski patrol go through the runs after closing, but with all the fresh snow falling it will be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Long story short the keys never showed up. We were supposed to go to Patry’s house for dinner that night; she was going to cook for us. I tried getting help through the rental company, but they couldn’t help me since I was so far away from their location. I called Patry afterwards and she dropped everything and went to go pick us up. The drive back to Denver was scary because of all the snowfall; we even swerved a lot on the road, but luckily made it back safely. We ended the day by going to TGI Fridays for some booze and food since it was St. Pattys day. I was supposed to pickup my girlfriend at the time from the airport, but since this debacle happened I had her meet us at TGIF.
Day 7 – Friday, March 18th, 2016
Well our rental car is stuck in the mountains, the keys have not and will not show up. I tried getting a hold of several locksmiths in hopes of getting into the car but none of them would go out this far to service the car so I had to get it towed. Luckily it was a new car, so I found a loophole where I was able to get it towed to a Toyota Dealer for free. Anyways, back to Friday, this day was supposed to be Denver day. Get to go out and explore the city with the gang. Instead I spent most of the morning doing damage control in hopes of getting a car so that we can drive back to SLC. I have to say I was really lucky to have Patry in Denver, without her we would’ve been really screwed. She helped me get around town, and afterwards we were able to still explore a bit. We decided to go to Golden, CO to tour the Coors Factory. Later on, my girlfriend at the time had booked a hotel for me and her in downtown. She wanted to have a date night. Funny enough that also got screwed. I ended up somehow getting some kind of food poison and was sick all night so we weren’t able to do anything. It was a really gorgeous and romantic hotel I have to say, oh well.
Day 8 – Saturday, March 19th, 2016
This was supposed to be a travel day where we get back to SLC, but we still didn’t have access to the car. The car was still in Loveland on this day. My hope was getting the car to a Toyota dealer so that they can make a new key. I have to say I had a guarding angel at the Rental co. When I lost the keys I mentioned how I called the rental company for help. This lady helped me and she said the best thing to do was find a way to get the car to their location at the Denver Airport. I don’t know why I didn’t stick to this first. After being unsuccessful at making a new key for the car at the Toyota dealer I called the rental company again, and lo and behold it was the same lady again. She didn’t want to tell me directly, but she kept insisting don’t worry about getting the key replaced, just get the car to the rental location and they’ll take care of me. It’s like she was telling me, dude we’re not going to make a big deal out of this and charge you all these fees. I got the car to their location, and I have to say there priority was helping me get my belongings out of the car and into a new car. Got the new car, was waiting for a bill, nothing, no charges. The gang was out and about without me this day. They wanted to help, but I told them this was on me, so I had to get this fixed however I could. Luckily I did. At 4:30p I was able to pick them up from downtown Denver. I put it up for a vote and said should we pay for a one night at a hotel and leave first thing in the morning to SLC, or leave right now. Everyone just wanted to go home, so we hit the road. We broke my role of driving at night, but luckily we took turns driving back to SLC. We made it back to SLC safely around 1:30am into Sunday.
TL;DR there was so much that happened in this trip. This is one of my most memorable trips because of the people I shared this with, the moments and places we experienced, how I fucked up by losing the rental keys when snowboarding, and how we pulled together at the end to make it back home safely.
My cousin Randy who was living in the Dominican Republic wanted to visit me in Utah. He was going to be in New Jersey for 3 – 4 weeks, so I offered to host him out here for a week. It led to what is arguably the best road trip I have ever put together.
Our cousin Rodney also tagged along for the trip. They both landed Thursday 12/29 into Friday 12/30 midnight. Our first order of business was food, and what better joint than an In-N-Out burger which closes at 1a. Immediately after went home, and told them to get as much rest as possible because we were going to hit the road to Los Angeles, CA early in the morning.
Friday December 30th, 2011. First day on the road. As promised, we woke up early around 6a, hit the road at 7a. I was hoping for lunch in Las Vegas, but we were doing good time, so I decided to skip Vegas all together since we were going to stay there on the way back anyways. We drove straight to Los Angeles, had dinner, did some touristy things like going to the Staples Center, checking out downtown. Immediately after checked in at our hotel in Compton; of all places, smh. There was something ghetto about the hotel, but we didn’t care because we all came from Paterson, NJ and weren’t going to be at the hotel much anyways.
Saturday, December 31st 2011. Last day of the year. We woke up early in the morning, or should I say I woke up early that day and had to drag both these cats out of their bed to get ready. Had an amazing breakfast at Philippe’s French Dipped Sandwich. Afterwards went straight to Six Flags Magic Mountain. We had a blast out there! There weren’t many guests at the park that day because of New Years Eve, so we were able to get on all rides without the Flash Pass, not a common feat in Six Flags. After Six Flags had dinner somewhere, went to go get snacks and drinks for for New Years Midnight. We tried hitting up some parties later that night, but Randy forgot his ID at the hotel so we failed miserably and just decided to chill and drink in our hotel room.
Sunday, January 1st 2012. The new year has arrived. Gave the guys some extra rest because it had been a long and busy past few days. Checked out of our hotel and went straight to Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles for breakfast. Look I love soul food, but I ain’t having no chicken and waffles for breakfast. Give me some waffles and eggs instead. Randy and Rodney were all over that Chicken and Waffles. Afterwards we went around South Central for a bit to check out the hood. Went to Hollywood Blvd, did some touristy stuff, then went to one of my favorite spots in LA, Santa Monica. Stood there to see the first sunset of the year over the pacific. A side story, see in my home country, Dominican Republic, it’s tradition to not go to sleep on New Years Day and wait for the first sunrise of the year at the beach. Obviously in California facing West we reversed that to the sunset. After the sunset we hit the road and went straight to Las Vegas. Made it to Vegas at a somewhat descent hour. We checked into our hotel, hit the strip right after. The guys were underage at the time, so we were really limited as far as what they could do on the Vegas strip after midnight, so we didn’t stay up long.
January 2nd, 2012. Last day on the road. This was somewhat of an easy day. Let the guys catch plenty of rest. We went to Old Vegas (downtown Las Vegas) to check it out and for lunch at a buffet. Afterwards did some more touristy stuff like the New York, New York rollercoaster and the M&M Store.
January 3rd, 2012. Back in Utah. At the time I was living in Provo, UT. I took the guys around Provo, UT for the morning. We checked out several of the nice viewpoints. Had lunch at Cafe Rio, and went straight to Salt Lake City, UT. We first went to the Utah Jazz Arena, back then the Energy Solutions Arena (or the dump :P). The Jazz were playing the Bucks that day. Both teams were pretty garbage, and this was a weekday game, so I expected to get some cheap tickets. The scalpers were asking for way too much money for the tickets earlier in the day; I figured to try my luck later on and show the guys around SLC instead. The gamble paid off as we got the best seats I’ve ever had at a basketball game. Had a Crown Burger after the game to celebrate the Jazz Win.
January 4th, 2012. Last day. This was the last day, so I saved it to show Rodney and Randy my school and see if I can get them interested in joining. Rodney had to think it through, but Randy was really impressed with Utah and was ready to start filling out the initial paper work. We spent our morning sorting out his application. Afterwards had lunch at Tucanos, a Brazilian steakhouse. Immediately after Tucanos went straight to Sundance Resort for a snowboarding lesson we signed up for; which was hella dope! Immediately after Sundance went to IHOP for some hot chocolate to warm up, then straight to the airport from IHOP. The guys were exhausted, but at the same time were sad to leave.
Not happy the trip was over…
TL;DR My cousins visited me for the holidays, even though it was only a few days we packed in so many activities within that short span. To this day it’s been my favorite road trip. Even writing this blog brought me a smile. We had lots of fun.
This trip was pretty dope. For Spring Break 2010 I just did an impromptu trip to Vegas for a few days; it was pretty wild. For 2011, I wanted to do something a bit more organized. My cousin Kenny was living in New Jersey and he wanted to come visit me in Utah. We both agreed the best time would be Spring Break 2011. Weather is usually improving lots by that time, I would be able to have an entire week off from work and school. The plan was to hit Vegas, L.A., and the Grand Canyon.
We called the Hershey Kiss because of our trip overview was mapped out in the shape of one. I’m not going to go into too much details about what happened in this trip since I blogged quite a bit about them in my previous post; I want to go blog more about the mistakes we made. To sum this trip up, the outline of this trip was really similar to my first trip in LA. I took them to do the touristy stuff, went to the beach, and even tried to go to Six Flags, but it was somehow closed.we had lots of fun. What really stood out was that the Grand Canyon is just one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in this world.
Where did things go wrong? Several years later I realized how many beautiful destinations we left out of our trip. Where did things go wrong? Let’s make a list of what we missed:
Palm Springs and Joshua Tree National Park
Sedona
No hikes in the Grand Canyon (although none of use were in shape for it)
Horseshoe Bend
Antelope Slot Canyons
Lake Powell
Bryce Canyon
Kanab
Zion National Park
All those places listed above were on the routes we drove through. Very little to no rerouting needed. When we were driving from LA to Phoenix we were all mesmerized by how beautiful the drive was for a small portion of Interstate 10. I even took a ton of pics of this… What we were admiring was Joshua Tree National Park. How’d this happen? Rookie mistake for all of us, specially me. I had been in Utah for almost 2 years by then, and I still didn’t fully embrace Utah Outdoor Culture. It wasn’t only until the Summer of 2011 when that started to change. I could have used reddit, or simply do some google searches for places to stop by in our routes, but didn’t even bother to do that. Over the course of the years I realized how we drove through many of these destinations, some at night where we couldn’t see anything, and missed out on some of the most beautiful scenery the West has. By that time most of these places were even pretty virgin too! Instagram hadn’t exploded yet, and we were still barely recovering from the recession, so not much travel going on. I remember in the Grand Canyon it was just us and like 3 more peeps… Before the rona hit, going to the Grand Canyon was crazy, wayyy too many folks; and don’t even get me started with Horseshoe Bend.
TL;DR When planning your road trips do google and reddit searches and other internet resources to look for attractions along the way, specially those sneaky hidden gems.
So I officially moved back to the United States in August 2009. I had just graduated from college in the Dominican Republic and was ready to begin my adult life. Does anyone remember anything from 2009? Yeah… As a young millennial I graduated into a recession which meant I had to get whatever job I could and reinvent myself (again). One of those jobs I got was a front desk receptionist for TRiO at UVU. At TRiO I met and started dating Jenny, a workstudy student that was a mentor at TRiO. For MLK Day in 2010 we decided to go on a road trip to Los Angeles, CA. She had a friend who’s brother was living in LA, so we’d have a place to stay. Jenny and her friend did not want to stop in Vegas and wanted to go straight to LA. I had asked we only spend the night on our way there, just so that I could get to know and explore Sin City.
Day 1 – Wednesday, January 13th 2010
We were supposed to be on the road by 5pm on Wednesday. Unfortunately I was working at Carl’s Jr. and was scheduled to work that night. I had told my manager I needed to take the day off, but they needed me that day and said they’d let me go early. It was 6:30p and I was still at work. I was beyond pissed. We finally hit the road by 7:30 pm. This was my very first road trip in which I was leading it and driving. Rookie mistake was to not look at the weather report. Right in between Beaver and Cedar City we ran into a blizzard. This was the worse driving conditions you could imagine. I could not see anything to the sides, the lane paintings, or where the road was leading to. To describe what I was going through was like a tunnel of snow where all I could see were the headlights of the car in front of me. We were driving at 20-25 mph at a section of Interstate 15 where the speed limit is 80 mph. To our luck we were in these conditions for roughly 30 minutes. Afterwards it was all clear roads to Vegas. At 12:50 a.m. we see the Oasis in this vast and dark desert we’ve been driving through. Las Vegas!
I was so excited to be here! The movie the Hangover had just been out a few months earlier, so everything about it was fresh in my mind. I wanted to relive so much of it, not ALL of it, lol; that’d be too wild. Wanted to go play craps, party, go to a strip club, and who knows what else. Well…. One problem, I was alone. Yes I had with my girlfriend at the time, her sister, her friend and her friends’ sister, all these ladies, and all were Mormon, and none of them wanted any part in any of my adventures. This was part of the culture shock I went through moving from the DR to Utah. I just never in my life had imagined this culture existed out there (that don’t drink, party hardcore, have sex, etc…). So they all checked in at the hotel. I decided fuck it, YOLO! Went out, did not play craps or gamble, but did stroll around the strip, it was around 3am on a Thursday, so it was pretty dead. When all failed, I decided screw it, went where any depressed male should go (unless you live in Utah) I went to the Strip Club! Man what a rip off… I was a rookie back then so, please cut me some slack. Decided to go walking to one that was close to the strip. Just walked in and paid the cover fee, got me a drink. Asked for a lap dance and remember it was some outrageous amount like 100 or 200. I had already paid 50 bucks for the cover fee, and 10 or 15 for the drink. So I took my broke ass back to the hotel. We were staying at the Circus Circus, BTW first and only time I stayed there. Drinks there were cheap so I decided to just grab a few more and walk around. I was tipsy when I made it back to the room. I decided to wake up Jenny and asked her to join me, she was so pissed, but still came along. After about 15 minutes she convinced me to go to bed and get ready for LA, I complied.
Day 2 – L.A. here we come!
Nothing out of the usual this day. Had a bite to eat before leaving Vegas, made it to LA by late afternoon. I remember not much happened that day. We just kind of settled in and started to plan the rest of the trip.
Day 3 – Explore LA
We decided to go explore downtown LA. Man was I happy to be there. The weather was perfect, I was seeing bums in the street, trash in some places, and lots of people in hurry to get somewhere. At that point I felt like I was in America. Utah doesn’t feel like the US in many ways. There was the alley that was just filthy and I felt like I wanted a picture there because it reminded me of home, both NJ and DR. It was near Santee Alley. Later on did all the touristy shit you would do in LA, Hollywood BLVD, Wax museum, Universal Studios, celebrity watching in Beverly Hills, etc.
Day 4 – Some me time in LA
The gang wanted to spend the day going to the zoo in San Diego. I was like damn go to Cali to go to a Zoo, I get that San Diego Zoo is unique, but shit the weather was perfect. I told em take my car and go without me. I decided to explore LA some more, and in a way had the best day of this trip. The only goal I had was to somehow make it to the beach and dip my feet in the Pacific Ocean, this was going to be my first time seeing this ocean. I took several buses and trains this day and went all over town. Walked around downtown, went to a few artsy museums, checked out a few stores my cousin wanted me to spot, went by the Staples Center, and had Dominican food! Never thought I’d find Dominican Food in LA, and it was really good. There was some drama at the end of day because Jenny was mad I did my own thing and did not show up until about 11p that day. Truth be told I didn’t care for the drama, and we patched things up pretty quickly.
Day 5 – Six Flags
Gang got back together for this day and decided to go to Six Flags Magic Mountain. I’m not going to lie this was a fun day, not better than Day 4, but Six Flags was empty because it was raining that day, so there were no lines anywhere. Rain wasn’t that bad, and only delayed us a few times, which ended up being a perfect time for a break and some snacks.
Day 6 – It’s a wrap
Left LA pretty early through some rough fogs going up to San Bernandino. Made it to Vegas by 2:46p, was able to see my first Belagio water show, got something to eat, and went straight back to UT.
All in all I had a blast during this trip, and knew I had to do another trip to LA, but next time with some party peeps.
