How to take a road trip…

There are a lot of things I want to do in my life, many of which should be on my Murtough list, because as young as I am at heart, my body sometimes actually feels my age. The story I will share today is one that should be chilling pretty high on that list but being the ‘peter pan’ that I am I will share with you, the tale of my most recent adventure.

As you may have read recently, the Kissy Faced Booty Shaker decided to take a big leap and move all the way across the country to a little town called Los Angeles to take up residence with her honey whom we will call “Furry Chopra”. This being said, I offered to make the trip with her to her new residence because I apparently have nothing better to do with my vacation time, have an undiagnosed mental condition and enjoy sitting on my behind in a car for 10 hours a day. Truth be told, taking a cross country road trip has been a desire of mine, though I hadn’t thought about it in years….so perhaps I should say taking a cross country road trip was a desire of the younger, more able bodied A. Nonetheless, an older, more distinguished (aka: gray haired) version of A woke up last Sunday morning with a hangover the size of Texas (I can verify that as I have actually seen the size of Texas with my own pretty green eyes), got in a car, and drove 3,000 miles to L.A. with the KFBS and all her worldly possessions.

It was hashed out that if we were to take a road trip it would be a true road trip: lots of stops, lots of junk food, lots of photos with the “world’s largest fill in the blank”, restaurants we’ve never heard of, and being sucked into every tourist trap imaginable.

The first stop on the trip after a painstaking (remember the size of texas here) 12 hours in the car was New Orleans. It was everything I imagined it to be….streets full of drunk people even though it was a Sunday night, the smell of vom and beer left over from mardi gras which had wrapped up the week prior, beads, and delicious tummy tearing up cajun food. I will without a doubt be making a trip back to take in a little more of the New Orleans life.

The second stop was in Houston, where we visited the “Beer Can House”. I mean, come on, I’m A, of course I stopped here. It was wonderful and shiney and I imagine a lot like what my retirement will look like.

Next stop was River Walk in San Antonio. It was entirely too chilly and snowy to truly enjoy the beautiful area but we tried with all our might anyway. At the Kissy Faced Booty Shakers request we ate at an authentic Texas restaurant called Texas Roadhouse. If you are ever in Texas and want some local fare, be sure to check it out. After that I was excited for our next stop for dinner in Arizona so we could try this hidden gem a friend told us about called Arizona Pizza!

Fort Stockton Texas provided an opportunity to see the world’s second largest roadrunner, and Arizona provided the prettiest of skies I had seen in quite some time.

Our last days were spent in Big Bear where two of the world’s clumsiest girls decided to give snowboarding a try. FYI: For those who think if you can surf, you can snowboard, you are wrong. By the end of the day I was calling myself a badass snowboarder and the KFBS was nursing her bruised behind. Post snowboarding it was a trip to the store for a bottle of ibuprofen and a six pack of blue moon to chase it down.

Finally, I got to experience my first red eye flight. It made for a rough Sunday afternoon baby shower after getting a collective three hours of sleep obtained in 45 second increments on an airplane. All in all it was a fantastic trip, I got to see places I probably never would have otherwise, stay in some of the nation’s finest motels, I got to spend some great QT with a fantastic friend who I adore, and I have a head full of memories that will last a lifetime.