Road Trip: Boulder to Los Angeles

Unfortunately, my road trip last week went the wrong direction - back to smog central for my last year of college (whaaat????). Katie flew home from Denver, but luckily my friend, Taylor, from USC flew out from LA and drove back with me so I didn't have to brave the open road alone. I didn't get enough good video footage to put anything legitimate together, but here are the highlights:

Leadville was the first stop on the morning we left. We had breakfast at Tennessee Pass, a charming little cafe on Harrison Ave. Go. Get the breakfast sandwich on toast. It also happened to be two days before the Leadville Trail 100 ultramarathon, so we even got to chat it up with some crazy ultrarunners.

We drove for a while and ended up in Durango next. Honestly, I was dissapointed. It's a cowboy town in Southern Colorado, and while I'm sure the outdoors opportunities there are fantastic, the historic downtown area was just really touristy and overpriced.

Unsatisfied, we hit the road and made it to the Four Corners. Yeah, it's a very figurative man-made monument, but it's just kind of neat. It was worth a visit.

Monument Valley, UT

Next we headed to Monument Valley, Utah. Actually, we stopped in Kayenta, AZ and looked for a hotel because it was raining and we'd just driven through a lightning storm in the twilight zone for three hours, but the cheapest one was $169, a scary guy tried to sell me native american jewelery six inches from my face in the supermarket parking lot, and an exceptionally sketchy woman in a pickup truck offered me a room at her "private bed and breakfast in her private home," which I politely declined. Anyway, it didn't seem like the kind of place I wanted to spend the night, so we pitched my tent in the dark at Goulding's Campground in Monument Valley. We didn't even realize there were huge rocks around us until we woke up in the morning.

Grand Canyon

After admiring the big rocks at sunrise, we went to the Blue Coffee Pot diner in Kayenta. I'll be kind and say it was mediocre. I will give it this, though - it's cheap. Back on the road, we drove straight to the Grand Canyon (thank you, annual National Parks pass!). It was pretty much was I expected - a huge hole. I think it would've been cool to walk down in it, but we were only there for a day so we just walked around for a few hours. Pretty awesome.

Sunburt and tired, we drove to Needles, CA, where we got dinner (breakfast, actually) at the Wagon Wheel Cafe. It was SO good. SO good. We planned to camp at Lake Havasu, so we drove down there, but it was literally over 100 degrees and it was 8:30pm. Knowing we wouldn't be able to sleep and not willing to pay for a hotel, I filled up Gladys's tank and drove through the night to LA.

And here I am.

Impressions from the road trip:

• Everyone should drive through northern Arizona at some point to understand what complete poverty and desolation really is. 
• The Wagon Wheel Cafe in Needles is freaking delicious.
• Leadville is pretty sweet.
• Havasu is hot.