Tag: USA

My fascination with Arizona began way back when I was around 7 years old or so, when watching Wile E. Coyote chase the Road Runner around on TV became my Saturday morning addiction.

Nothing in the world was better for this Michigan boy than waking up ungodly early on a Saturday morning, pouring half a box of Cocoa Puffs into the largest bowl I could find, and then running out into the living room to gorge myself on an unhealthy amount of sugar and hours of mind-numbing cartoons.

Of course Mom and Dad did not approve of this, but I quickly learned that the earlier I got up, the less chance there was of them stopping me (especially if I kept the volume on the TV very low). They loved to sleep in on Saturday mornings, that’s for damn sure.

As fascinating as the American Southwest was to me, I didn’t make my first visit until I was 22 years old and just out of college. I was living in Ohio at the time, and the company that I was working for sent me on a business trip to San Diego to meet with a client. That was the first time in my life I had ever been in that part of the country, and it was a mind-altering experience that changed my life forever.

Even though San Diego isn’t as rugged and baron as Arizona, there are deserts and cactus here – and seeing that kind of stuff for the first time completely blew my mind. Long story short, I moved to San Diego one year later, and made my first ever trip to Arizona exactly one year after that. San Diego is my true love, but I will admit that Arizona tugged on my heartstrings a bit on that first visit.

Basically, Arizona in February is awesome for three main reasons…

Choosing Arizona as a destination for this short trip was the obvious decision. It’s a nice and easy destination from San Diego, different than my day-to-day life at home, and I don’t think I’m ever going to get tired of wandering that state from corner to corner just like the cowboys and frontiersman did way back in the day. There’s just so much open land!

Fortunately, advancements in technology have made it possible to see all of Arizona in air-conditioned comfort, as opposed to riding on the back of a smelly horse for months on end like they did way back when. Arizona is an awesome place for sightseeing and aimless wandering – especially in the winter months. Here’s why:

1. The temperature is actually tolerable

You will never experience heat like you would if you arrive in Arizona in the middle of August. It’s not uncommon for temperatures to reach 120°F, which is borderline deadly. Scratch that. It IS deadly!

It’s the kind of heat that will melt the paint off your car if you leave it out in the sun too long, so it goes without saying that you be crazy to consider coming here in the summertime looking for fun hiking trails. That’s pretty much a death sentence, and a fantastic way to win a Darwin award of your own.

Unlike how it is in Paris in November, February is simply amazing in Arizona. The average high is 72°F which, according to my snobbishly high standards, is absolutely perfect because it’s not too cold and not too hot.

By comparison, January has a chilly average temperature of 68°F. That’s cold – especially if you’re only wearing shorts and flip flops (because you thought only idiots bring warm clothes to Arizona).

2. It isn’t like Florida

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the winter months are considered high-season in Arizona, meaning that it’s the time when all the tourists and snowbirds descend from the north.

However, in my experience, I’ve found that Arizona doesn’t suffer from the kind of wintertime “snowbird gridlock” which cripples Florida during the same time of year.

It seems the entire East Coast drops in on Florida from December through March, and it can be miserable at times dealing with all of the traffic and congestion from the mass of people who have no idea where they are going.

Arizona seems to have avoided that mess – at least for now. It truly is a wintertime oasis for the Northerners to come and defrost themselves, and since it’s the tourist season, everything is open for business all across the state (even the parts of the state which are mountainous and snowy). And that leads me to point number three…

3. Deserts in the morning, and mountain snow in the afternoon

It wasn’t until my 7th grade geography class when I learned that there are mountains in Arizona, and that it actually snows quite a bit up there on those peaks every winter.

You have to understand how completely astounding it was for me to learn about it – after all, up until that point in my life, the only thing that I knew about the state of Arizona was that there were really cool looking cactuses everywhere with lots of coyotes chasing roadrunners around (while trying to blow them up with dynamite).

Who says Saturday morning cartoons aren’t educational? However, they failed to teach me that wintertime snow in the mountains of Arizona is something truly magical.

The best part about the snow is that it’s not far from the deserts – yeah, the ones filled with all of those cool green prickly cactuses and terrifying deadly insects. As a matter fact, in the month of February, it’s possible to go from rugged dry desert to deep mountain snow in less than two hours. Amazing!

This is the first time that I have ever made it a goal to see a desert and mountains snow in the same day while in Arizona, it was a very interesting experience.

Now, if you’re originally from this part of the country, it may not seem all that exciting to you – but keep in mind that I was raised in the Midwest far away from anything remotely similar to this kind of landscape.

Michigan is basically the opposite of Arizona in every way possible, and even though I’ve been living in San Diego for over 20 years now, it still blows my mind to see deserts and snow in the same day.

So there you have it. My top three reasons why you’d be a fool not to hop in the car and do a road trip through Arizona in the middle of February.

Yes, you could do the same thing in the middle of August, but I’d only recommend that for Red Bull guzzling adrenaline junkies who live life on the edge. If that’s you, have fun and fear not – boring people like me will find your smoldering remains and notify your family when we come through next winter.

Finally. After an entire lifetime of postponing a road trip around the great American southwest, this was finally going to happen. Years of years of procrastination had been weighing on me quite heavily – the Grand Canyon has been at the top of my travel list for as long as I can remember, but it’s so close to San Diego that I kept putting it off in favor of other (bigger) trips all the time.

When you only get a few weeks of vacation a year, you have to use that time to your advantage. Why take the time to see something close to home when I could hop on a plane and fly around the world instead? You can see why it hasn’t been so easy to scratch off my list.

I really hate having things linger on to-do lists, so you can imagine how much of a relief it was when my sister finally laid down the gauntlet and volunteered to plan everything if the entire family agreed to go along. Of course I didn’t hesitate for an instant to agree, and it was game-on as soon as my parents said they would like to go too.

There were only two things required of me in order to be a part of this: first, I had to send my sister cash to pay for my portion of the rent for the houses we were going to rent. Second, I had to be in Las Vegas the morning of March 26th. The rest was all up to her, and I just had to say “yes ma’am” and follow her lead for the entire week.

Day 1: The Hoover Dam

Yes, it’s true. The most common thing you overhear from others while walking around and looking at the Hoover Dam is, “daaaamn”. It’s really funny the first one or two times you hear it, but it gets old fast and I’ll admit that it didn’t take long before I was rolling my eyes every time I heard someone say it.

The staff are probably completely immune to it, but I imagine they have their own little joke about the amount of times they hear it every single day. I’m sure of it.

Jokes aside, the Hoover Dam really blew me away. The amount of engineering, ingenuity, and human perseverance that went into the construction of this thing is beyond words.

It’s the kind of structure that makes you feel small and insignificant when you walk around it, and it’s an awesome feeling to stand on top and think about the raw power and strength this dam has to hold back such a large amount of water pushing on it from behind. Daaaamn!

Day 2: The Valley of Fire

The Valley of Fire was the place I knew the least about on our itinerary this week. My sister and her family are avid hikers, so spending at least one day hiking around some of the beautiful landscape of the southwest was a given.

We needed to be careful not to choose something too rigorous though, as my mother’s knees aren’t what they used to be and we wanted to be sure that she could participate in everything we did.

Luckily, there are a wide variety of hiking trails located all around the Valley of Fire and we were able to find some breathtakingly beautiful terrain that wasn’t so difficult to traverse.

Day 3: Route 66 from Las Vegas to Parks, AZ

In order to get from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon, it was going to involve some driving. Interestingly enough, remnants of old Route 66 still exist for a majority of this drive, so we decided to make a day of it and take our time to see all the sights.

Google Maps said that it would only take three and half hours, but somehow we managed to stretch it out to 7 and I was absolutely wrecked by the time we arrived at our rental house in Parks.

I’m not really sure what the rest of my family thought about this drive, but for me (the car guy), I enjoyed it the most out of everything we did this week. There is absolutely n o t h i n g out there but desert for some very long stretches of road between little towns, and that’s what made it so interesting for me.

It may have well been 1850 and not 2017, as I’m sure the landscape hasn’t changed at all over the years.

My Kia Forte rental car wasn’t giving me the same feeling that the old-time cowboys and explores must have experienced crossing that land on horseback, but I did appreciate being able to cruise along at 70mph in air conditioned comfort.

Day 4: The Grand Canyon

I’ll admit it. I wasn’t really looking forward to the Grand Canyon as much as all the other things we did this week. Heck, we saw a pretty impressive canyon at the Hoover Dam, so I did feel kind of “canyoned out” and I wasn’t expecting much.

Remember the scene from National Lampoon’s Vacation where they make a stop at the Grand Canyon on their drive across the country, look at it for all of two seconds, and leave? That’s totally what I was feeling like doing as we were making the drive to the south rim that morning.

Thankfully, I was truly blown away when I finally saw it. It’s really true – all those pictures you’ve seen of the Grand Canyon on TV and in magazines your entire life don’t do this thing justice.

It is simply breathtaking (and HUGE) in real life and I was literally at a loss for words when standing on the edge for the first time and starting out at that big hole in the ground. It was then that I understood why they named it “Grand” – and I think I may have even said “daaaamn” a time or two as well.

A big “THANK YOU” goes out to my sister for making this a completely stress-free trip on my part. She’s not an event planner by profession, but I keep telling her that she could make an epic career of it if she really wanted to. She says it would be too stressful, and I totally agree – the amount of work she put into making this trip happen was incredible.

One of these days I’m going to scrounge up as many airline points as I can and put her on a plane in first class to anywhere in the world she wants to go. It’s the least I could do for helping me scratch that lingering southwest road trip off my travel to-do list in a most magnificent way. Thanks sis!

When it comes to relaxing vacations stuffed to the brim with peace and quiet, I am the first to admit that Waikiki is not the best choice. Don’t get me wrong – it’s a downright beautiful place.

But let’s be honest here. It’s a full-on metropolis, and it comes with all the downsides of a big city: noise, traffic, crowds, and…more noise! Every time I go, I tell myself that I’ll go to a different island instead next time but I always end up back in Waikiki.

A super-nerdy overview of my weekend Waikiki trip

I’m not really sure what it is that I like about this place, but it has an energy about it that is hard to describe.

Day 1: Arrival

The first day of a Hawaiian vacation is always amazing to me. I honestly feel the same way I used to feel on Christmas mornings when I was a kid. The anticipation, excitement, and sense of wonder is all exactly the same.

Therefore, there’s really no point in dragging on too long about how good it felt to arrive at HNL after the long 5 and a half hour flight from San Diego. I was in “Hawaii” mode as soon as we hit the ground.

I decided to take a taxi from the airport as opposed to the Roberts Hawaii bus that I normally take, all because I was no mood to ride around on a bus for an hour (or more) as the driver dropped other passengers off at other hotels. And come to think of it – I don’t recall seeing ONE Roberts Hawaii bus this trip. Are they even still in business? Hmmm….

The taxi from Honolulu International Airport to my hotel (the Hilton Waikiki Beach) took about 25 minutes and cost $50 with tip. Yes, that’s expensive, but the convenience was worth it.

I wasted no time at all after checking into the hotel, and was changed into proper beachwear and on the beach in record time. I was more than ready to get this vacation started! The only annoying thing was how windy it was – the trade winds were blowing hard, and I couldn’t keep my hat on my head because of it. But problems like these are easily overlooked and I was happy as could be to be on the sand in Hawaii again.

My only plans for the evening consisted of two things: First I wanted to be back in my hotel room at sunset in order to get pics of the sunset that was sure to be amazing. Second, I wanted to get something healthy to eat for dinner.

Eating healthy in Hawaii is a lot harder than it sounds with the plethora of amazing restaurants around. But I did ok, grabbing some tuna, cheese, crackers, and fruit from the Food Pantry grocery store on Kuhio Avenue.

I made it back to my hotel room just in time for sunset, then spent the rest of the evening sitting on the open patio overlooking Waikiki and enjoying life.

Day 2: Diamond Head (and being lazy afterwards)

I was awake by 7:30am, and things really started out great. I rolled out of bed, pulled open the curtains, and was presented with this:

Yes. This is why I love Hawaii! I stood and watched the view until the rainbow faded away, then jumped in the shower in anticipation of walking down to Island Vintage Coffee for an acai bowl.

I discovered this cafe on the final day of my last trip to Oahu, and the acai bowl I had at that time was more than enough to convince me to do it again.

Heck, I had no idea if they were still in business, but I made the walk anyway to find out. Luckily, they were still there and that acai bowl was as good as I remembered it to be.

It was about 10am right after I finished breakfast, and I really had no idea what I wanted to do for the day. I had been thinking about walking over to Diamond Head a few days before the trip, but the research I did made it seem like it would take a big chunk of my day and I really didn’t want to spend my only full day in Hawaii running around like a tourist.

But heck – it was only 10am, and I figured I could easily make it back to Waikiki by early afternoon, so…I went for it.

All in all, the trek to Diamond Head (and all the way up to the top) took about an hour and a half from Waikiki. It was quite a walk, and made even more difficult by the strong trade winds and hot temps. I definitely should have brought water with me, but oh well. I survived!

The walk back to Waikiki was much easier since it was all downhill, and I was sitting on the beach again by 2pm chugging a full bottle of fresh cold water I bought at an ABC store along the way. Yes, exploring Diamond Head was fun, but this vacation was all about chilling out and relaxing so I was much happier sitting on the beach.

I did a bit of shopping in the afternoon, then returned to my hotel room to relax for a couple hours before heading out again in the evening to walk around for a bit and then find some dinner.

I’m normally a very healthy eater, and it’s not often I pig out on junk food. But this day was a special occasion. I was on vacation, and I was craving a hamburger, so why the heck not?

A quick search on Yelp led me to Teddy’s on Kapahulu Ave, which wasn’t far from my hotel. I was planning on getting just a burger and fries, but…those burgers looked good so I ordered two of them.

Long story short, the fries were cold and soft by the time I got back to my hotel room – so I didn’t eat them. But those burgers. OMG. Two of the best hamburgers I’ve had in my life, hands down. I did over eat though…it was a lot of work to finish that second one but I did it.

The rest of the evening was a carbon copy of the evening before. Sitting on the patio, overlooking the city, enjoying the warm tropical breezes of Hawaii.

Day 3: Departure

Sigh. I woke up feeling really bummed that it was my last day and that I needed to check out of the hotel and be on my way to the airport by 12pm. I felt like I had just arrived, and that I hadn’t really had the chance to sit and relax as much as I wanted to.

I desperately needed another day here, but sadly, it wasn’t going to happen. I had to go to work the next day, and there wasn’t really anything I could do about that. It was then that I started feeling disgust with the 9 to 5 lifestyle…

I got out of bed and cleaned myself up before taking a walk over to Vintage Island Coffee again (for an acai bowl, of course).

Despite the sore on my foot from walking everywhere in my sandals over the past two days, and the fact that I knew I had to go home today, it was hard to feel discouraged as I made my way over to the cafe. I love Hawaii. This place agrees with me – and I could definitely see myself spending a lot more time here.

The cafe was much busier this morning compared to yesterday, so I got my order to go and walked over to the Moana Surfrider hotel just a few blocks away and sat in their open air patio to enjoy my breakfast.

This was the hotel I had wanted to stay at for this trip, but sadly, they were booked solid the entire time. Oh well – I will definitely stay there at some point, and it’ll always be the first place I check when making reservations on Ohau.

I took my time with breakfast, and then s l o w l y walked back to my hotel. I took a slight detour and spent about an hour on the beach just people-watching and thinking, and it was really difficult to force myself to go back to the hotel in order to get cleaned up and packed before the 12pm checkout time.

I really love Hawaii. Aloha, Oahu. Until next time…

My recent trip to Colorado was an interesting one. I’ve been there many times before, and I’ve enjoyed the experience each and every time I visit. But something was different this time (my feelings – not the state). I found myself in awe of the natural beauty of this place like no other time that I’ve traveled here, and I couldn’t get over how amazing the snow-capped peaks of the Rocky Mountains are. Of course I’ve always appreciated how nice the state of Colorado is, but it really hit me hard this time.

California and Hawaii are still (and always will be) my favorite states in the nation, but I’m pretty sure that Colorado has moved up to my number three spot, edging out Alaska for that coveted step on the podium. That’s a bold statement considering that I only spent about 16 hours here on the ground on this trip, but that was all the time it took to make me an even bigger fan than I already was.

So what’s the big deal about this place? Is it really that much better than nearly all the other US states? You bet it is – and here are 5 good reasons why:

1. Snow. In the summer.

There’s something really damn cool about being outside wearing shorts and a t-shrt while looking up at snow-covered mountain peaks off in the distance. It looks downright cold and rugged way up there, but down in the valleys the temperatures are always warm and toasty in the summertime. It’s an odd sensation to say the least, and it’s mesmerizing to just sit and watch the scenery.

2. The Front Range

Stand anywhere in Denver, and look east. Looks pretty, right? Nothing but wide open land for as far as the eye can see, and the sense of vastness is amazing. But turn around for a second. Bam!

The Rocky Mountains jolt out of the ground abruptly just west of Denver, transforming the wide open prairies into amazingly rugged terrain in an instant. There is very little transition from plains to mountains, and the way they frame the city of Denver is really unique.

3. Cleanliness

The residents of Colorado take pride in their state, and it’s really easy to see. Everywhere you look, things are tidy and clean. Nothing seems out of place, and I really appreciate the respect the locals have for the place in which they live and work.

California and Hawaii share equal amounts natural beauty, but in both places it’s much more common to encounter neighborhoods and communities that look downright filthy and neglected.

4. Abundant sunshine

Despite the wild swings in climate between each season, the sun shines a lot in Colorado. In fact, the Denver area is sunny (on average) more than 300 days a year! Yes, I know that there is a lot more to this state than Denver, but the entire state is a lot less gloomy than you would expect for a place that receives so much snow in the winter time.

5. Pot commercials on TV

(Quick edit: Keep in mind that it was 2015 when I wrote this article. A lot has changed since I wrote the following lol)

I nearly fell off the couch when I stumbled upon a commercial for a local bong shop while flipping through the channels on the television in my hotel room. I had completely forgotten that pot is legal in the state of Colorado, and to see advertisements for it on TV was quite amusing.

Seriously though, legalized marajuana isn’t actually one of the reasons why this state is better than yours. The fact that the government had the courage to take a stand and pass such a controversial law is what I like. That kind of progressive thinking is something that we don’t see much of anymore (sadly), and it gives the impression that Colorado isn’t as uptight as many other states. Residents may disagree with me here, but from an outsiders point of view, I think it’s very cool.

I realize that these are very subjective points, and you may not agree with me on some (or all) of them. But the state of Colorado is something that fits my personality and lifestyle pretty darn well and it was good to go back and rediscover it all over again. I definitely need to spend more time there in the future!