Roadtrip to California – Pt. I
3,000 miles in a Honda Accord from Chicago to Orange County. National parks at sunset, city nightlife and lots and lots of road. Pictures are now posted from the roadtrip I took with Matt out to California. We headed out to L.A. for separate reasons, I headed out as a springboard to Asia, Matt to find a job.
Indianowabraska
Indiana, Iowa and Nebraska have some amazing gas stations! And that’s about all we saw on our beeline to Colorado. My sister was leaving for Michigan not long after we arrived so we got to see her for a total of about 3 hours. After that Matt and I went to REI and hung out for a little in Boulder before continuing on our trip. We had a plan to get some bikes and a bike rack that we could use on our way. We checked Craigslist a bunch but we couldn’t find 2 bikes for the price we were looking at. So then Matt had an idea to check Wal-Mart and we found some bikes we could get for around $45 a piece. It sounded great and the bikes looked really good online…Unfortunately you get what you pay for and we should have known, but when we arrived at the store there was no way we were going to ride around on those pieces of junk for the next couple weeks.
Those brakes don’t sound so good…
Well after Boulder we were headed on our way to Moab, UT, which is really where the bikes would have come in handy. It was a routine gas stop, or so we thought, in Glenwood Springs, CO. However, shortly after exiting we could hear a grinding noise in the brakes and it didn’t sound too good. We knew that the car had to be checked out immediately and look at that, we were parked in a Jiffy Lube parking lot. Matt and I took a hike up to Doc Holiday’s grave site and then headed over to an internet cafe to figure out what to do and wait for the news. Well the news came back and the estimate was $1300 for repairs. Basically everything dealing with the brakes had to be replaced. Calipers, rotors, pads – not a single thing survived. From the sounds of it the last brake job hadn’t been done very well and it was just a matter of time for some heavy stress to induce chaos. With no other choice the $1300 went onto the credit card and guess what, there’s a hostel in Glenwood Springs, CO. The hostel was pretty nice and we enjoyed ourselves even with the recent news. The next morning the car had it’s brakes and parts delivered from Denver and we were off to Moab before 10 a.m..
Parks, Parks and more Parks
Our plan was to hit up tons of National Parks along the way out, so we opted for the National Park’s Annual Pass, which for $80 got the both of us into all of the National Parks along the way. It was well worth it for our roadtrip we had planned. Moab had a really cool vibe and most of the people there were ‘outdoorsy’ and there to see some of nature’s finest. We went to a pizza place and it reminded of being in Jackson Hole, WY in the summer for some reason. Our lodging consisted of camping at a private campground literally about a block away from downtown. We had a tent with us because Koohzad left his at Purdue and we decided it was perfect not only for the trip but that we could return it to him as that was our final destination. It was funny though because most of the people at the campground all had their 1-2 person tents and here we are setting up Koohzad’s massive Swiss Army tent, no joke this really was a Swiss Army tent. A real beast of a tent this was a far cry from what I was using in Africa, it pulled out all the stops – an electrical port, a front porch, a doggy door, I mean we could even stand in it! We visited Arches National Park soon after arriving in Moab and were able to stay until sunset – what an amazing sight! Honestly, if you want good landscape photos, the best thing you can do is wait for sunset (who really wants to get up for sunrise?). We continued on to Canyonlands National Park in the morning and before we knew it we were at the gates of the four corners wondering why you can’t see the geographic masterpiece after 6pm.
