Kimberlee K.

Thursday started out normal. It was just your average, run of the mill Thursday, complete with an aggravatingly early alarm, a satisfying lunch break, and a 1:30 pm food coma. But then, we escaped.

At around 5:30, me, my sister, and our cousin Ashlynn packed up the car to head to Vegas, a.k.a Stop #1. The drive was pretty standard: lots of desert and budding anxiety. One highlight included us getting off the freeway to get gas, where we passed by a “motel” that, while open, was completely pitch black. It looked like the kind of place that might feature a guy walking around asking, “hey, you wanna see a grave sized hole I dug out back?”

We arrived in Vegas around 11:15, and immediately rallied ourselves into public appropriate attire, went downstairs and lost a few dollars playing craps. Then, in an attempt to put off the impending mouth-open exhaustion sleep, we went upstairs to the Toby Keith country bar and danced our hearts out for a solid few hours. Ashlynn and I hit it especially hard, here’s a picture of us chugging pints of straight up H20.

Let’s just say we woke up the next morning feeling prettttty, you know, hydrated

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One thing that always takes a little getting used to about being in Vegas, is that it’s an afternoon to night type of town. So when we all started to move around at a normal time the next morning, despite being out late, my cousin Cory countered the movement with an appropriate, Vegas-themed argument: “Is there a reason why we’re awake right now?” And after thinking about it, we realized the answer was “no.” Thus, we commenced with prolonged lounging, and only gave this up to find food around 12:30.

After lunch, we walked around a bit, taking in the (mostly sun faded) sites Vegas has to offer during the day, before eventually settling on outlet shopping as the afternoon’s desired activity. One valuable lesson I learned there:

“High heels are good. The higher the heels the closer you are to God.” – Amanda

Later that night, after my Fitbit was thoroughly satisfied with all the steps we’d put in while shopping, my mind took that as a sign to go ahead and do Vegas up right for the remainder of the evening. And by “do up right”, I mean “do it as best I can because Vegas isn’t really my thing but I want to be a good participator.”

So, I lost money at keno, I lost money at craps, I bought a slushy alcoholic drink called a Fat Tuesday and shamelessly walked around with the souvenir cup. I stared confusedly at a Willy Wonka slot machine my cousin played on and then went nuts when it lit up lots of colors and somehow calculated that he won $500. We walked to the Bellagio to get a crepe, we took touristy pictures in front of the Eiffel Tower and made bad jokes about “going to Paris for the day”, we went back to the Willy Wonka machine with high hopes, only to walk away disappointed and kind of nauseous from watching it spin for so long, and then finally we decided to call it a night.

Back in the hotel, I packed up my suitcase and gathered all of the miscellaneous items I’d managed to volcano around the room in only two days, then I got in bed and looked up our driving time for the next day: 12 hours 30 minutes. We didn’t really know what to expect from the drive. Would it be smooth? Would it feel quick or slow? Would it be scenic? But as I lay awake in bed, I realized that the whole draw of a road trip is the unknown. It’s a learn as you go, think on the fly, be totally vulnerable and free type of an experience, which is exactly what we were looking for.

Read Day 3 here.