So below is a condensed version of my road trip out to Utah. It was a great trip that included a bunch of old friends, making new friends and seeing some pretty cool cities.
The first stop was in South Bend Indiana. It was a great time catching up with Erin and then going to take a tour of Notre Dame and watching some old school, 'Are you Afraid of the Dark' episodes. And just for the record… no I’m not.
Notre Dame is an absolutely fantastic campus. It has great energy surrounding it and the most amazing bookstore I’ve ever seen. No seriously it’s HUGE. So after a snowy walk through the campus, and a phone call that caused me to swear in a church… thanks Kevin... the tour was concluded and we went on. More good food, a tour of a museum posing as a house, great conversation and an interesting movie with Robert Di Nero playing a flamboyant pirate, rounded off a great stop in South Bend.
The next stop was St. Louis to visit world traveler Kevin Crouse and equally retired friend, Gina. The trip there was uneventful but St. Louis was anything but. It started out with me touring the city and finding all of the bad parts of town pretty easily. A dinner with Kevin and Kevin’s friend Peter changed the fun-nes level, however.
The first oddity I noticed about St. Louis were the evil unicorns. Yes you heard me correctly, evil unicorns, they do exist, not all unicorns are good. But luckily they are easy to spot. They are black and have a tattoo of a skull on one of their legs. So after the encounter with the unicorns I then found out I was sharing a car with an honest to God Caribbean pirate.
So as it turns out Peter was the captain of a sailboat in the Caribbean. He then went rogue and “attacked” another ship. Knowing that it was soup night the dastardly pirate ordered his men to perform an underwater attack. They swam over to the other boat, boarded without notice and stole all the spoons. That’s right… all of them! Imagine, soup night with NO SPOONS! His malice knows no limits. But he is an interested character with good choice in pizzas.
That night I was introduced to several other interesting aspects of St. Louis. The first was Dewey’s which is a really good pizza place, and where ALL of the wait staff is at your disposal. Seriously we counted, 7 different waiters stopped by to ask us if we were ready or if we needed more drinks. I felt important. But that of course was short lived. The second was the belief in Tofuolopes. Which basically are the animals that Tofu come from and graze up in pastures of Montana. It’s true look it up!
Following pizza we met up with my friend Gina from Boston and played some pool. What was interesting about the place wasn’t the décor or the pool tables we were playing, but the pimped out 6 foot 6, 250 pound guy in a maroon leisure suit, hat, and sunglasses. That night we were introduced to Big Moe, who informed us that if ever we were in his part of town all we would need to do is mention his name to gain instant street credit with whomever we were talking with. Needless to say, we did NOT try that one out.
The next day included a great breakfast followed by a walk around the arch. It’s a giant aluminum arch that serves no purpose other then a reference point to the rest of the city and to reflect the sun at you. But it was pretty cool and I got some cool pictures of me around it. We opted NOT to pay the $20 to go up in it. Then we visited the statue dedicated to George Bush apparently. It was suppose to be of Lewis and Clark, but honestly it looked like Dubya, both of them. Not the dog though… he looked like a more docile Cujo.
Our next stop was a trip to the zoo. The way to see a zoo is to walk around when it’s like 30 degrees out, no one’s there! After playing a game of hide and stalk with a baby snow leopard we found a zoo volunteer. Finding the zoo volunteer was amazing! We got a tour of the entire place and heard all of the stories on the animals and got lots of useless bits of information. If ever I find myself trying to get past an angry troll who demands an answer to a riddle, I feel pretty confident that my knowledge that a Giraffe has the highest blood pressure of all animals, or that certain Zebras don’t have stripes on their bellies will allow me safe passage. The trip to the zoo was concluded with a marvelous grilled ham and cheese and an enormous milk shake.
I finished my trip to St. Louis up with some great conversations with Gina and Kevin and some of Kevin’s famous Fajitas.
Leaving St. Louis I headed west… then south… then north… then east…. then west again. Traffic was not fun. But an atlas Kevin gave me led the way to KANSAS!
Sigh… Kansas. I’m convinced that Kansas is nothing more than a mile stretch of straight road copy and pasted 500 times. NOTHING CHANGED! I swear I saw the same damn barn and field when I first got in Kansas as when I left the state! But no matter, I had made it to Colorado!
Another few hours later and some snowy roadway conditions landed me at the base of Keystone in Dillon to visit long time high school classmate and friend Zoe. Some much needed appetizers and other food items, some catching up and about 2 gallons of water to ward off altitude sickness, I fell into a deep sleep after the 950 mile travel day.
Then it was on to UTAH!!! It took a little while, but I made it there. Park City is as beautiful as I remembered it. The mountains and the area have grown somewhat, but it’s still the same. I found my room, met my roommate and celebrated my victory with a dinner at the local pub (most likely my last meal out for a long time!) Oh peanut butter and jelly how I love you so!
So now I find myself in Utah, but more to come on that later, the stories are already starting to formulate and I will update my adventures as much as I can.
Until next time, watch out for evil unicorns, tofuolopes, and Kansas.
-Chris
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