Las Vegas || New Years' Celebration

Flix, Waters, Me, Pox and Paddles. Gotta love camp nicknames.

I went to Las Vegas for New Years.

Before you start freaking out, though, you should know who I went with--two of my camp friends who are 19. And we stayed with another camp friend who is 19, and her then boyfriend* (also a camp friend) who may have been 20.

At 22, I was the oldest--and also on some crazy cough meds because I had a case of bronchitis that led to two cracked ribs. So there was absolutely no cliche Vegas-style partying.

And cough meds meant I didn't have to drive! At all! Pox and Waters did all of the driving while I just sat in the passenger's seat, playing DJ and jamming out to Switchfoot and Kendrick Lamar and eating Sonic and reveling in how much I missed my camp friends.

When we got to Vegas, we immediately started celebrating. We took of our road trip clothes and changed into cute night-on-the-town clothes, and then went to get sushi.

"Look Ma, I'm a walrus!" // Pox is my camp roommate and a ray of sunshine.

Sushi is kind of my go-to whenever I visit Flix in Vegas. I met up with her when I was in Vegas in September, and we had sushi then--so, of course, we had sushi now too. It was delicious and perfect and so so so much fun.

Camp friends are awesome because our friendships sprouted in a time when we had z e r o cares in the world--we just had to wake up, go to a breakfast meeting, eat food, and do our jobs. And our jobs were hanging out with kids all day--so we're all basically glorified children with responsibilities, which means whenever you throw a group of us together, we're still glorified children with responsibilities. But we're not afraid to be totally ridiculous.

A-n-y-w-a-y...

The rest of our New Years Eve was spent at Dutch Brothers (le duh, DB is a HUGE deal for camp kids), WalMart and then back at Flix's dad's house where we poured some Martinelli's and toasted the new year! Then we ran outside and popped party poppers to our hearts content.

Night #2 was actually spent walking around The Strip, because it's really not a trip to Vegas without doing that. It's always fun to see how different people interact with and react on the strip. All of us camp kids took it chill and enjoyed the lengthy walk, the bright lights, and the crazy people.

I'm pretty sure there's nobody else I'd rather explore Las Vegas with. I love how lowkey New Years was with this crew, and I'd gladly travel with them again.

*the timestamp on this is January 2016, but I'm definitely writing it on March 31, 2016

That September "Family" Road Trip

Ok, it's now the final week of 2015 so I'm finishing and posting this bleeping blog post.

I'm now a college graduate.
Let that sink in.

Even more, I have a job--but more on that later.

The adventure that started it all took place more than four years ago, and I'm ready to embark on a new adventure: the work world.

So before all that happens, my parents and I decided to go on one final hoorah--a three week family vacation.

Only, the three week vacation turned in to a two week vacation after I fell and broke my knee. The Industrial Commission only allows Workers Comp recipients to leave the state for 14 days max, and since I broke my knee while I was on the clock...the vacation got cut short.

Which was ultimately okay.

The vacation also didn't end up being a family vacation because my mom got sick the morning she and I were supposed to leave for Las Vegas.

This vacation was also, like, two months ago.*

Mom's sick face.

So, when Mom realized she wasn't going to make it from Phoenix to Vegas to Sacramento, we enlisted my (now ex) boyfriend to help me drive to Vegas and Sacramento. So at 6 pm (way later than intended) Joel and I said goodbye to Phoenix and hello to the road.

We made it to Vegas at 11:30 pm, promptly dropped our bags off at the hotel room, and hit the strip--because there's no better time to see the Las Vegas strip than at midnight.

We slept in incredibly late, explored the strip during the day, went out for coffee and sushi and record shopping with a friend from camp who lives in Vegas, and went to bed relatively early that night with Mike's Hard Lemonade and HGTV because Vegas bars are gross and expensive.

Surprisingly, Vegas has cool architecture.

The following morning we ate breakfast burritos (and said farewell to Mexican food for the next few days, because the Pacific North West doesn't really have Mexican food) and headed out on the road.

We stopped a lot. This is the first road trip I've been on where we frequently stopped along the side of the road, because Joel is a photographer and loves capturing things on the side of the road, and I really enjoyed it. We got to explore an old abandoned road-side store as well as something called South Tufa at Mono Lake.

There were a ton of tall rock pillars that looked very supernatural. Unfortunately, we didn't get to explore them very much because we were a) hungry, and b) trying to get to Sacramento by that night. But they were gorgeous, and somewhere I really want to visit again.

Abandoned

Mono Lake

Our route went through Nevada into California, which meant we got to drive on the CA 120. It was gorgeous--we drove up and through the mountains, and I got to see an amazing alpenglow during sunset.

The goal, however, was to be in Sacramento by 9 pm to pick dad up from his flight. We ended up being at the airport a little closer to 10, but dad was fine with it. We were on an adventure, after all.

After picking him up from the airport, we went and checked in at the Delta King, an old riverboat converted into a floating hotel. The staff was alright. Not incredibly helpful or accommodating, but we were a few hours later than we expected to be. Ultimately, we got our room and got to sleep.

Dad!

Our reservations with the Delta King included breakfast (hallelujah) and we appreciated that very much. The meal was served in the restaurant, which overlooked the river.

This happened in September, and I'm now picking this post back up in the end of December* so I'm just going to summarize the rest of this.

We took my (ex) boyfriend to the airport that day, and then met with one of my former professors (who is also the former editor of the Sacramento Bee and an all around great person) for lunch, and caught up on life.

We stayed one more night in Sacramento, then we headed north to Portland, stopping in Redding, Calif. so I could visit my friends Heidi and Shane (whom I met in Eva's wedding) and my friend Sarah from camp.

In Portland, dad and I just chilled a lot. It was almost overwhelming, the whole being in Portland thing. Initially, mom was supposed to join us and I had planned that she and dad were going to spend time together reading or whatever, and I was going to go explore Portland more, but since mom didn't come, Dad and I spent a lot of time together, which was great, but I felt kind of bad leaving him alone to go hang out with friends a bit.

But that doesn't mean I left him alone all the time. We went out for dinner with my friends Andie and Liz one night, and checked out Olympic Provision co. We ate meats and cheeses and olives and goodies like that, and it was lovely.

I also saw Brenna a lot, who was her usual sassy self, and Rhea. It was so so good to see Rhea and her little baby Lucy (who is now a year old.)

The Redwoods are huuuuge and I'd like to live in the forest.

After lunch with Rhea on the last day in Portland, dad and I headed to Tillamook and then coasted down the coast. We saw redwoods, we saw ocean, we drove and we drove and we drove.

Battery Spencer, we shall meet again.

We tried really hard to see the Golden Gate Bridge, but the fog was horrendous from Battery Spencer for the most part. When we drove over the bridge, I got to see some of it, but I also got to explore the creepy and freaky and abandoned Battery Spencer, which was rad.

And at some point after seeing the Bixby Bridge, we decided we didn't want to see anymore sights. We were driving alongside the ocean as the sun was setting, and realized that we wouldn't see any more ocean until the sun rose the next morning. We'd had enough ocean. We wanted to go home, to the desert and to see mom, so we drove through the night and ended up in Phoenix right after sunrise and surprised mom and ended our road trip in the same speedy haze it began.

My dad is probably my favorite person to travel with.

I think I had a hard time writing about this because it's a difficult time to look back on. I'm not in the relationship that kicked off the start of the trip, I was still recovering from a broken knee, and my mom was unable to join us on what was supossed to be a family vacation. The trip itself didn't go as planned, and it was absolutely amazing to spend time with dad, but the trip is still a lot to process. I still haven't gone through all the digital photos from it, and I still have a roll of undeveloped film. I also feel like this was my last large Portland adventure for a while. The city just felt...fake. I remember getting doughntus at Pip's and seeing potted cacti and cliche-cute western decor everywhere and wanting to vomit. Tiny cacti don't belong in Portland, they belong in Phoenix--and so do I.