Laura’s Favorite Memories and Photos

Last week, Adam and I embarked on our first “out-West” road trip, covering a lot of new ground. Since we’re still pretty new to California, and hadn’t seen most of the state, it was nice to do it by car because we got to enjoy the drive and see a lot more than if we had flown. We made a lot of memories in the short 5 days. Below are my favorites, in no particular order.

Monastery
A seemingly unkept monastery in the middle of the desert? Creepy!

Vacant WaterPark
Photo Adam took at the abandoned Rock-A-Hoola Waterpark. The No Trespassing and Beware of Dogs signs kept up restricted to the perimeter of the park. This single Yelp review was further reason not to enter.

Calico Ghost Town
The “Lil’ Doggy” with the miniature horse saddle at Calico Ghost Town! Adorable, sweet, photogenic dog.

Vacant Town
Vacant buildings. Every inner photographer has that curiosity and desire to explore abandoned buildings for the perfect shot. This, admittedly, was taken from the car. :-P A brand new car parked in front of an abandoned building, alongside a busy highway, is likely to draw attention.

Alien Jerky
A car of aliens parked in the Alien Jerky parking lot. The backseat even had two child seats with aliens babies.

Whalebone!
Whalebone in Las Vegas! Adam was so excited. I wouldn’t let him throw it away, but now that we’ve brought it home, I’m not sure what to do with it. It’s found a home between the wall and the refrigerator. :)

Louie Anderson
Louie Anderson comedy skit in Las Vegas. Yes, it may have been 7 p.m., next to the buffet and targeted towards a “slightly” older demographic, but it was good clean fun. :-P

Wynn & Encore
Daytime photo walk / drive. As Adam drove down the Las Vegas strip, I enjoyed the challenge of snapping the perfect shots out the side window.

Were here
The room with the “city view” at the New York New York, Las Vegas. But it was worth it to have a jacuzzi in our hotel room!

Cafe 101
Breakfast at Cafe 101, Los Angeles. Great food! As the tour guide said, “very Hollywood.” We may have seen a celebrity or two having breakfast, but Adam and I wouldn’t recognize most people off-screen.

Ice Cream
The chocolate-vanilla twist with a chocolate shell—only the best ice cream from everyone’s childhood! And a lot to eat.

Laura
Meeting Minnie at Disneyland! We happened to catch her before the line to have your photo taken got too long. It was fun because I never met the Disney characters as a kid.

IMG_0701
A photo of honey by the hunny, Disneyland! Too good.

Merci!
Lunch at Cafe Orleans, Disneyland. French Mardi Gras theme. Outdoor seating. Great food. Adorable rat.

High class
Dunes Inn, LA—our “high class” motel. Not exactly a great photo, but a memory. Spontaneity means not booking a hotel, so we were lucky (and relieved) to find this modest little gem (and laugh about it later).

Road Trip Photos
Of course, The Lincoln! Once we figured out all the controls and how to program the GPS, it was a pretty sweet ride! At the end of our trip, “GPS lady” was our friend. We couldn’t have done it without her. Sometimes we’d detour from the route just to hear her repeatedly say, “In 300 ft., make a legal u-turn.”

Last, but certainly not least, visiting our great friend, Liana (@fittorrent on Twitter). I don’t have a photo for this one, but certainly a special part of our trip.

All in all, it was great, and I looking forward to further adventures!

 
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2009 Road Trip Content Wrap-Up

Laura and I generated a “ton” of content on this road trip. That was my goal and I’d say we totally succeeded in taking everyone along for the ride. Of course, this only makes me more likely to be controlled by robots when I’m older by having so much data on the web stored on servers that I don’t control but it was fun while it lasted. Anyway, here is the best of the best and will allow you to absorb every last bit of toasty media we created starting May 22nd and ending May 27th on the road trip.

Location Updates: You can download THIS FILE which is a KML file that allows you to see every location update on BrightKite within Google Earth. It’s pretty darn cool seeing my little push pins down the coast of California and back. To see the locations in web view, you can check out my BrightKite profile HERE.

I explored a fun new thing called “TweetMic” on this trip and I’ve quoted some of the links below so you can listen to the in order of publish date:

singing along to Peal Jam – http://tweetmic.com/p/orbf17nie8t

Sing-Along to MGMT – http://tweetmic.com/p/orbfbui647g

Drinking Beer at Disney - http://tweetmic.com/p/orbqaehu1oj

After drinking at Disney – http://tweetmic.com/p/orbqe9hg5qi

DisneyLand (11:14 update) – http://tweetmic.com/p/orbrnyw7akf

DisneyLand (3:40PM) – http://tweetmic.com/p/orbs7datgci

Going to Paige’s house – http://tweetmic.com/p/orbsgafhcvb

Karaoke in Vegas – http://tweetmic.com/p/orcg174soxk

Monday (to-do today) – http://tweetmic.com/p/orch39v5f4r

Louie Anderson Live – http://tweetmic.com/p/orci7937ctu

Boron California – http://tweetmic.com/p/orcuhladdmo

Finally back home – http://tweetmic.com/p/ord5cmjq9q0

Tons of great mobile uploads are available on MY ZANNEL PAGE.

Below is a YouTube player that will let you play THIS PLAYLIST of videos specifically related to the road trip.

There are over 6 videos on 12Seconds.TV (LINK HERE) that are fun and quick updates with photos. No need to embed them below as they are pretty small updates.

Below are embedded Albums for THIS FLICKR COLLECTION that showcases 490 photos we uploaded to Flickr while on this road trip. Enjoy!

There is probably more footage that I could post here but this is the best of the best. Tomorrow, I’ll be revealing all of my thoughts, feedback and impressions on the Lincoln MKS. woot!

 
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Day 5 Trip Wrap Up

Day 5 was challenging. It was fun, exciting and “interesting” but it was long and tiring as well. Laura and I woke up from a very late night at around 8AM. After packing and eating breakfast, it was time to hit the road. Our plan was to ignore the schedule and just enjoy the ride. Well, that ride was from Las Vegas to San Francisco. We planned on stopping in Monterrey or Santa Cruz and getting a hotel room last night but we arrived very late and it was dark so enjoying the bay would have been challenging so we decided to simply push on through. 13 hours after starting our trip. we arrived in San Francisco around midnight. Boy we were exhausted.

Along the way, there were some excellent adventures we had:
Checking out a vacated water park
buying some alien jerky
Stopping in a ghost town
Stopping at a school bus graveyard
buying fresh fruit
getting lost (twice)

There were more adventures yesterday that I can’t cover in one blog post. It was a fun time and I’ve embeded some things below for you. I’ll be doing a couple more posts recapping our road trip but this is the final “day x wrap up” post on this blog.

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Twitter Updates for 2009-05-27

Twitter Updates (after the jump)
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Twitter Updates for 2009-05-26

Twitter Updates (after the jump)
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My Favorite Photos from Today

I had to do a second blog post. Some of the vegas photos came out REALLY GOOD! Here are my favorites.

New York Hotel Vegas

LAURA!

Our Vegas Hotel Room

Our Vegas Hotel Room

Beer pong

LAURA!

Bellagio

Pairs Hotel

balloons

VIP Admission to Revolution

Blue Cheese Burger

 
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Sunday Day 3 Wrapup

So what a crazy day! I covered exactly what we did in THIS BLOG POST but now it’s time to share some rich media.

First, here’s our Flickr Set (now 233 photos. I think you’ll like these photos and the full set is available here. I’ve embedded it after the jump as well as a ton of other things.

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Day 3: Partial Update

We had a great day! Woke up and had breakfast at Cafe 101 which was “very hollywood” and then we went down the blvd and saw the touristy stuff.

After that, it was a drive through Beverly Hills and then we drove straight to Vegas only stopping to check out some ghost town.

You can see everything in the FriendFeed Room OR This Flickr Set.

I’ll post a better update later but right now, I have a dinner reservation at The Mirage. L8r!

 
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Twitter Updates for 2009-05-25

Here are today’s Twitter updates.

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Day 2 of The Road Trip!

Day 2 was exhausting and semi-painful. I had a massive headache all day long and I woke up this morning completely sore from yesterday’s activities.

We started the day by going directly to Disney. We snagged some free tickets from a friend and spent the hours of 8-4:30PM in the park and still didn’t get to do everything! From there, we drove through downtown LA and into Venice Beach to a friend’s house for some BBQ. It was a standard beach party but way too crowded so Laura and I walked on the beach down to Santa Monica. We got to see the Ferris wheel and roller coaster on the beach!

Finally, it was around 6PM and i had a massive headache and a bit of a sunburn so we decided to get a hotel over in Hollywood and spend the night dancing and dining in class. What actually happened, was we drove around for 3 hours trying to find a hotel / not get lost which was impossible. We drove from west hollywood, to universal city, to burbank and finally ended up somewhere off the 101 on Sunset Blvd. Either way, we found a place and it’s cozy but none of the rooms are non-smoking. bleh!

It’s day 3. Today we have Hollywood tourist stuff, newport beach and then VEGAS! Keep following a long and we’ll see you later!

CLICK MORE FOR ALL OF THE COOL STUFF WE DID (PHOTOS / VIDEOS)

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