A few weeks ago, I briefly talked about driving from Southern California to St. George, Utah with Kelly and Tiffany. We left in the early evening hours of a Holiday weekend. We met up along the way, since we were all coming from directions, and headed off towards our destination. Our first stop along the trip was Golden Corral. The only thing that I can really recap about that restaurant was full of “future contestants of The Biggest Loser”. I have buffet’ed (my version of buffet as a verb), it before, but wow, these people were serious. After leaving the not-so-fabulous Golden Corral, we headed towards Primm, Nevada which would be our last stop of the night, or so we thought.
We arrived at our lovely destination, Primm a little before midnight. We pulled up to the valet, and took all of our stuff out of the car. You need to imagine this, three bloggers, three women, on a three day trip. You can imagine how much stuff we had with us. We lugged everything towards the check-in desk only to be told that they had heating/plumbing/whatever problems at the hotel and that we had to go across the street to Whiskey Pete’s. So we stopped the valet and put our stuff back in the car. We headed across the way to that other hotel, Whiskey Petes. I should have known better about the hotel when we walked in and I saw the condition of the carpeting. We got our rooms and finally set down our stuff. Tiffany came into our room, and stared in amazement with Kelly and I. Kelly and I were staring at the condition of the beds in our room, which appear to have ruffled up a bit. Tiffany immediately went to check for bed bugs and/or testing of bed bugs and found umm, hairs in one bed. Yea, umm gross. And then Kelly checked the other bed, where she found traces of food underneath the covers. We couldn’t grab our stuff soon enough.
We attempted to stop in Jean, Nevada, and well I felt that there were too many truck drivers there. I had serial killer issues, and the carpeting in that hotel was the same pattern as Whiskey Petes. That was a sure sign for me to tell Tiffany to drive faster! We ended up at the fabulous South Point in Vegas. I wanted to jump on their fluffy beds and scream, “YAY”, but alas I was tired and finally got sleep at around 1am.
We woke up rested in our comfy beds, and well, Kelly and I were already on Twitter. Cause we are nerds like that. I may have been tweeting about cupcakes and stated that we needed to go to Retro Bakery before leaving the Vegas area. We had a little time before we had a meeting in St. George, so we headed towards Retro Bakery. Since, I haven’t included any photos yet, here is Kelly. She was navigating us via iPhone. Plus, Kelly is more pretty to look at than, those hotel rooms. I’m sure you don’t want a visual of our Primm, Nevada experience.
After getting lost, driving around in circles, and re-directed, we found Retro Bakery. It was a breath of fresh air. Actually, the air in there smelled wonderful. You can only imagine the goodness. I hate to say it, but really Retro Bakery’s cupcakes were like food porn. I may have squealed out some inappropriate words when eating one of their fabulous cupcakes. Kelly is smart girl and got several cupcakes to go also. Seriously, I can’t say enough good things about Kari and Retro. You need to go visit them, if you are in Vegas. It is on the must-do list!
After devouring cupcakes, we headed on our way towards St. George. We forget about the time difference between states and we were a little behind. I think that the stop for cupcakes was worth it though. We were on our way listening to some country music until we hit the Gorge. We lost our satellite music while driving through, but the view was breathtaking. This photo was taken from the front seat of the car, with my iPhone.
Tiffany had a meeting with the people that we hosting Bloggy Boot Camp the next day, and then we ate. I had never been to Cracker Barrel and there was one across the street from the location. If I had a life list, eating at Cracker Barrel would probably be on that list. I’m kind of a pain when it comes to food and I have a vile disgust for mayonnaise. I ordered a hamburger and told that waitress that I wanted it “plain”. I was quite specific about it. When she brought my food, she made a statement something similar to “here is your plain hamburger, but there is mayonnaise only on it, I hope that it is ok.” Kelly knew better and gave me a “I will handle it” look, and dealt with the waitress. After that experience, I was not impressed with the Famous Cracker Barrel, but I did like their little gift shop.
After leaving Cracker Barrel, we headed for an infamous place, Target. I was impressed with the sights of women in matching prairie dresses dressed alike, with one guy. You know what I mean, real life sister wives…
We checked into our hotel and headed to dinner. We made it to the end of a dinner hosted by the lovely, Tonya. We had to bring something that represented our blog, and then we had a little pass the gift game. Tiffany won an edible prize. Doesn’t she look fabulous and so well rested in this photo. I try not to post any bad photos of people. I am nice like that. I save the bad ones for blackmail later, kidding, ok maybe not.
After dinner, we headed out for some entertainment. After a conversation on Twitter, prior to the event, we wanted to have some karaoke fun. Do you know how hard it is to find karaoke on a Friday night in November, in St. George, Utah? Well, let’s just say we had the most entertaining night of karaoke at the Hawaiian Grill in St. George. We will never forget the visuals from their display screens and the sweet sweet sounds of the “Guava Jelly” song. Let’s just say, “you had to be there”, and it is difficult to explain the humor of shaved ice, and almost soft core porn along with karaoke. But I think the look on Jenny’s face explains it.
Doesn’t that sound like an extremely busy 24 hours? It was, but it was so much fun. We headed out before it got too late, because we had a conference ahead of us. We might have made a stop for a milkshake and then ate some cupcakes before bed. It also involved lots of giggles.
The next day was a very busy day. We were treated to some great Bloggy Boot Camp speakers, I may have been one of them. I made so many new friends, and got to take a million photographs, ok maybe not a million. We left St. George that night after a delicious birthday dinner for me, and headed back towards California.
Unfortunately, we had to stop for gas on the way out, which was stateline, you guessed it, Primm, Nevada. Tiffany, Kelly, and I all needed snacks as it had been a long day and we had a long drive still ahead of us. While wandering around the gas station, Tiffany noticed that they were selling sushi. It was just sitting there, waiting to be bought. I think it was California Rolls, but still, it was being sold as “sushi”. Tiffany offered me $100 to eat some of that “gas station sushi”. I told her to add a zero to that offer, because $100 would only cover my hospital co-pay. I think that the sushi story will be told for years to come, it was that funny.
After the sushi offer, Tiffany went over to some slot machines to gamble. Cause that is what you do in a gas station in Nevada. You buy sushi, and play penny slots. Although, Tiffany was victorious and came away a winner.
After a long and entertaining weekend, I made it home around 3am, and crawled into my warm bed. I was all alone, because Angry Husband and Angry Kid had taken their own roadtrip that weekend to San Francisco. Angry Kid took pictures along the way. Someday, I might look through them and post them somewhere.
This is a post for Day 9 of #Reverb10. Even though this was a roadtrip. It was our own little party.
Prompt: Party. What social gathering rocked your socks off in 2010? Describe the people, music, food, drink, clothes, shenanigans.
