Djuly 2010

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, I wonder what Davis did during the period July 1 - July 31, 2010. Think no more:

Davistatistics

Average Mood: 52%
In other words, I felt slightly better than 'neutral' on average this month. I am zen+.

Miles Jogged: 9.8
Average Speed: 4.17 mph
Excuses: We were on vacation for the first two weeks of the month (see below), and I was sick the last week. But the few miles we jogged were a full 4.2% faster than June's average speed! So suck it.

Bars Visited: 11
Though 4 of them were in one night...
Favorite this month: Hamilton's Bar & Grill. Feels like you're in a different city. The front porch is great, and the basement is awkward. And, also, beer pong is the bar's central focus, it seems. Feature Ranking = Location > Atmosphere > Drinks > Clientele.

Restaurants: 11
Favorite: Pokey's BBQ in Gillette, WY. They had a secret menu, which I conquered completely (The "Beast Feast"):

Two words: exciting and delicious.

Episodes of the Wire watched: 25
That's a full day's worth of television... From season 3-episode 3 to season 5, episode 2. And for the record, season 4 is by far the best. It had everything, and has made wasting all that time on relatively boring season 1 worth it.

Haircuts: 0
Still 3 total in 2010.

Loads of Laundry: 2
One less than usual. But we were on vacation...

Miles driven: 2,800
See below.

Vacation

Laura and I went on a 12-day vacation starting July 3rd and did some serious sightseeing. Details:

Day 1 - July 3: Flew from DC to Las Vegas

Rented a convertible in Vegas and drove from Vegas to Holbrook, AZ (340 miles). Saw the Hoover Dam, ate a giant, tasty burrito for lunch at a Mexican food restaurant in Kingman, Arizona called El Palacio, and after arriving in Holbrook, spent the evening with family and friends by a fire pit in my parents back yard. Good to be back home with the folks.

Best picture of the day: This is me trying to look cool in the convertible while driving slowly in a traffic jam approaching the Hoover Dam, being sunburned at an unprecedented rate:

There is a lot of sun in Vegas in July.



Day 2: Fireman's BBQ and Fourth of July Fireworks in Holbrook, AZ

Ate some BBQ beef in the fire department on long cafeteria tables for lunch, as is the Holbrook tradition. In the evening, family and friends took a few trucks and one Suzuki and drove a few miles out of town to this fireworks venue in the desert, being set up here by the Holbrook Volunteer Fire Dept:

At which we had front row seats. The best. The crowd behind us:
...And we experienced some intense, in-your-face fireworks action. It had been three years since I'd been back for these, and I'd forgotten how awesome the Holbrook, AZ fireworks experience was. It was wonderful to be back in the home town with the family again, especially for one of my favorite occasions.



Day 3: Drove from Holbrook, AZ to Moab, Utah (357 miles)

Driving through Monument Valley with the convertible top down around sunset was just neato. This was one of my favorite sights:



Which is the mirror image (literally) of something I knew I recognized...

We had some fry bread pizza at a place called Twin Rocks Cafe in Bluff, Utah for dinner, which was fairly tasty. And I ordered fry bread as an appetizer as well. Also good. If you're in the neighborhood, I recommend stopping.


Day 4: Drove from Moab, Utah to Gillette, Wyoming (696 miles)

Quite the driving day. Covered a lot of scenery: Rock cliffs in Moab and the desert of southeast Utah, through Colorado, past Vail and a raised highway through a forest valley just west of Denver. A barely-missed hail storm and (reported) tornado in southern Wyoming, to rolling green hills and countless trains filled with coal approaching Gillette, WY. It was quite the 11 hour drive. And here's 11 hours recapped in a few pictures:

Outside of Moab, Utah

Western Colorado

Valley highway in White River National Forest, west of Denver

North of Denver

Coal train, south of Gillette, WY

We ended the drive in Gillette, staying for the next couple days at an old friend's place - HardCoreG and her siggy Professor Stacks, who own a totally tops house in a surprisingly nice city. They took us for dinner to a restaurant with the world's largest menus (size, not quantity of food) and an excellent beer selection, followed by a night tour of a park full of out-of-commission mining equipment. No pictures or description could do this place justice, but let me summarize by saying I got to climb on a giant haul-truck and explore the inside of a train engine car (is that what you call that thing?) at 10 PM at night after boozing it up in eastern Wyoming. Quite the combination of place and experience...


Day 5: Coal Mine Tour & Mount Rushmore

The very gracious Prof. Stacks gave us a driving tour of the open-pit coal mine where he works, which was actually one of the more unexpectedly unique experiences of my life. There were some extremely large machines, some of which we climbed inside... The tour was enlightening in ways I could not have predicted. Here's me not being run over by a giant dirt-hauling truck:

And we drove to Mount Rushmore afterward. Laura and I were overly touristy, and purely adorable:

We finished the day eating at Pokey's BBQ (see above list of animals that were consumed by me) and drinking on the G&Stacks back porch, which was just tops.

And a note to G&Stacks: Thank you so much for the hospitality and the good times - Laura and I could not have asked for nicer people or better experiences, packed perfectly into such a seemingly short amount of time. If you come to DC, and we shall attempt to return the generosity.

Day 6: Drove from Gillette, WY to Gardiner, MT (413 miles)

We took the long route, suggested by the masters of the scenic trip - my parents - through Beartooth Pass, Montana. I've never had a more... scenic... drive. And the convertible top being down, while making it slightly cold (it was snowy at 11,000 feet...), made the whole thing truly remarkable. These pictures cannot do it justice:

And afterward, we drove through Yellowstone National Park on our way to my good, long-time friend Fred's new house in Gardiner, Montana. We saw quite quite a few buffalo on that first trek through the park:

...And we ended the evening up on a mountain, accessed via Jeep on a rough dirt road, by a bonfire, with Fred and his siggy Theresa and a few kind hippies, drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon under the stars. Good stuff.



Day 7: Rafting the Yellowstone river, Gardiner bar hopping and bottlerockets at night.

The old friend mentioned above - Fred - recently purchased a house in possibly the best location I have ever seen for a house, overlooking the Yellowstone river, a few hundred yards north of Yellowstone National Park's border. We had some serious relaxation time drinking his delicious home-brewed beer in the back yard, staring at the river:


And then went rafting in it. It was shockingly cold, and shockingly fun and memorable. No pictures, as I left the iPhone behind for obvious reasons...

We spent the evening at a couple Gardiner bars packed with an interesting mix of locals, tourists and part-time park employees; all people that seemed to have the same perspective of the place and attitude - carefree, as though they were all on a camping trip with friends. Or maybe I was just projecting, as that's how I felt pretty much the entire time. Let me just say that as far as I could tell, Gardiner is a very unique little town full of very kind, relaxed people.

After a good boozing, we came home and lit a few bottle rockets off over the dark river, the fireworks echoing over the rushing river noise... Quite the memory.



Day 8: Tour of Yellowstone National Park

There are a large number of amazing, unexpected things in Yellowstone park. We would have been 100% impressed just aimlessly exploring the park, but we had a secret weapon: Fred & his very wonderful girlfriend Theresa gave us a personalized, 9 hour tour of the entire park, showing us things and sharing knowledge that enhanced the entire experience 10 fold.

This was the Grand Prismatic Spring, which I'd say wins out for my favorite sight of the park (though it was a close call). This picture does not do justice to the whole thing. Check out this one I stole from the internet:

Colorful.

I'd post some more pictures, but you can get better ones on the internet. In fact, click here, I did your Googles for you. Yellowstone is totally rad.


Day 9: The Boiling River, Drove from Yellowstone to Coalville, UT, by Salt Lake - (384 Miles)

Left Fred & Theresa around noon, after spending the morning in . A note of thanks to them as well: You guys were just amazing! Laura and I had an excellent, excellent time - The restaurants, the jeep trip and mountain bonfire, the river rafting, the bars, the epic tour of the park, and getting to meet your truly wonderful (and numerous) friends in that town of yours was priceless. Can't thank you enough for the good times and the extraordinary generosity. It was great to see you again, Fred - and meet you finally, Theresa! - and I really hope you guys will come up our way sometime soon.

We saw a few more sights on the way out of the Yellowstone, then drove through the truly gorgeous Grand Teton National Park, stopping at Jenny Lake to take some pictures of Laura reenacting the time she went to Jenny Lake when she was a kid. Then drove through Jackson, WY, stopping for dinner at a strange place that seemed destined not to survive in a town like Jackson, called Ignight, and continued on, almost making it to Salt Lake City but instead staying the night at a Best Western in Coalville, UT. Some highlights:

Grand Tetons

A Jackson, WY antler arch

House on a hill in the middle of ...somewhere...

Day 10: Salt Lake City - Drove from Coalville, UT to Las Vegas (502 miles)

Drove into Salt Lake City in the morning, seeing the giant salty lake, the LDS Temple and the state capitol building. All three were about on par with what I expected. Actually, I did not expect the capitol building.

Drove from there to Las Vegas, stopping for lunch at a place at which I had not eaten in many, many years: Arby's. Good stuff.

We arrived in Vegas around 6 PM and dropped off the rental car (it was a good run - 2,692 miles driven between cities, plus at least another 100 or maybe 150 or so in Yellowstone and driving around in cities. So I'm rounding to about 2,800 miles total. Thank you, Enterprise, and your unlimited mileage and awesome, cheap weekly rentals of Sebring Convertibles. It was much appreciated.)

And took a cab and checked into the MGM Grand - cheap in the summertime, by the way, as are most things in Vegas - where we had some pizza for dinner and some drinks at the Centrifuge Bar while playing bar-top blackjack (Laura needed to practice before we did the real thing... Which, for the record, did not actually happen. Table minimums are expensive in Vegas!)

Saw the Beatles "Love" Cirque du Soleil - it was pretty amazing. Though I'd probably only recommend it to either a Cirque du Soleil fan or a Beatles fan (this describes 99% of the population, I would bet...). Someone who appreciated neither would call this show overpriced and fairly cheesy. But only one is needed to love it. For the record, I'm keen - but not overly keen - in both regards.

The only [non-blurry] picture I could take without being yelled at by theater staff was of the crowd afterward. Many of us were still singing... "...All you need is love..."

Then we cabbed it north and got ourselves some Fremont Street action, on '70s night:


Quite the thing, Fremont Street is.

After that, we went down to the south side of the strip again and I gave Laura a quick tour of the Excalibur and Luxor. Two places that seemed much larger - and newer, and cooler - when I was younger... But were still fairly interesting to look at.


Day 11: More Vegas.

Activity list:

- Ate breakfast/lunch at The Buffet at Aria, which turned out to be quite the eating experience - highly recommended to everyone who likes food.

- Checked out the Pawn Stars (if you have not seen the show, ignore this sentence) pawn shop, which is far, far smaller than the TV show makes it appear.

- Against Laura's will, we rode two rides on top of the Stratosphere, getting insanely stuck on one of them - the "Insanity: The Ride" ride, on which getting stranded for five minutes was an insane ride in itself. And by insane, I mean kind of a boring let down, which is just the least sane thing you would expect out of a ride that claims to be insane. Though my insane sun burn was getting even insaner by this point.

- Hung out in Circus Circus, where I came in *last place* against 10 kids on the throw-the-balls-in-the-holes-to-make-the-plastic-horses-move-in-a-horse-race game. I was shocked at myself.

- Dinner at Wolfgang Puck's at the MGM

- Toured the strip, ending the night with three water shows at the Bellagio.

View of the south strip from Stratosphere

Day 12: Back to DC.

We slept in, caught our noon flight and got home by 8 PM DC time. After 3,100 miles traveled in a car, 2,800 driven by yours truly, we returned to the low visibility, humid east coast. View from the plane window of northern Virginia:



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Well, there you go. Hope you like looking at other people's vacation pictures, because that's all I've got this month. Long enough for ya?