I have never been away from the WGOM for a whole week.  Hopefully you all can point me to any awesome threads I missed.  And, this may be really pretentious, but I thought I'd recap some highlights and lowlights of my trip.  This was my first ever road trip, and aside from a flight to Yakima to see Spooky, I had never left the Midwest before.  So the last week I was awash with a whole lotta new.

Hotels

• We stayed in one America's Best Value Inn, three Best Westerns, and one Days Inn.  All of these were more comfortable than the Excalibur on the Vegas Strip.
• This is partly due to the fact that the Excalibur had timeshare hounds all over us the whole two days we were there.  More on that in a bit.
• Dalhart, Texas was by far the most hospitable town we stayed in.  Though the guy at the desk being  a huge Twins fan (and from Grand Rapids) may have helped.

Driving

• We got AAA just in case.  It did save us on hotels.  Thankfully, no car issues.
• Gas is more expensive in the mountains, but not by much.  However, any gas station within 30 miles of Grand Canyon price gouges.
• Speaking of mountains, my lord is Colorado beautiful.  I can't remember how many times I said "Wow, this is gorgeous".
• I also don't know how many times I said "Oh, shit!" while navigating said mountains.
• Colorado was also the cleanest state.  Not one smidgen of roadkill anywhere, and it was also the only state I saw no blown out tires on the freeway.
• We saw a massive accident in Omaha.  A truck was burning on the freeway for five hours, and there was only a shell of the truck left.  Nobody was hurt, apparently.
• Kansas City was a nightmare to navigate.  Really poor signage.
• Ran into my first ever DWI stop in New Mexico.  I sat for ten minutes while cops were checking random cars in front of me.  He waved me on through.

Sightseeing

• Red Rock Amphitheater near Denver was breathtaking.
• At the Grand Canyon, we just hiked along the South Rim.  Kind of meh, actually.  I am sure there are more exciting things you can do there.
• Took the World's Longest Second Longest Tram near Albuquerque to the peak of Mount Sandia.  That was fun.

Vegas

• Penn & Teller were pretty good, though some tricks were old and samey to me.
• Ka was breathtaking.  What an amazing show.
• The Pinball Hall of Fame was super trippy.  I played Tron (arcade) for the first time in 25 years.  It's still excellent.
• The pool at the Excalibur was easily the highlight there.  Kudos, actually, to that part.
• My father gave me $100 to place on black at a Roulette wheel.  I hit black 13 and walked away.  One person told me to go away, and one shook my hand.
• I played $10 blackjack table for a half hour.  At one point I was up $120.  Finished up $60 before I walked.  That's all I gambled.
• The cabs give rates per mile, but in reality, it's based on time spent.  Explains why we can sit at a red light for five minutes and our meter goes up two dollars.

Restaurants

• Went to my first In N Out burger.  I would rate the burger the best of regular fast food joints.  Not as good as Five Guys, though.
• Centro in Des Moines--Excellent.
• Denny's in Ogallala, Nebraska--Dreadful.  We could not find a mom & pop place and were starving.  Whoops.
• Morrison Inn in Morrison, Colorado--Pretty good Mexican.
• Seafood Buffet at The Rio (Vegas)--Mediocre, and at $45.00 to get in, definitely not worth it.
• The Buffet at MGM Grand--Above average, and at just $30.00 to get im, worth it if you're there anyway.
• Canyon Star in Tusayan, AZ -- Pretty good.  Our waiter was from my hometown (Coon Rapids) and we both went to ARCC and the U of M.  Crazy.
• Rudy's BBQ in Albuquerque -- Really hokey, but really good stuff.
• Subway in Pratt, KS -- Awful.  Not only was the service terrible, but my sub tasted off.  We went there for convenience, and it took us 20 minutes to get out of there.
• HuHot in Des Moines -- Not as good as Mongo's Grill, but better than Kahn's as far as Mongolian Stir Fry restaurants go.

Timeshare

This is embarrassing, but I thought I'd share that we actually agreed to go to one of these meetings for some show tickets (that we didn't use) and $50 (which we did use).  What a waste of essentially three hours of our trip (we were told it would be two hours tops).  We tried to have fun with it, because we knew there was a zero percent chance of us buying anything.

• Our guy claimed to be from Mason City, IA and his wife was from Minneapolis.  Yet, he knew very little about either state.  He claimed to be a former truck driver.
• He also claimed that he owned a timeshare in Vegas and goes on many vacations.  Yet, somehow he's working for the timeshare people full time.
• His best claim was that when he found out I was a social worker, he said his wife worked in Phoenix as a drug counselor, marriage counselor, and in child protection.  This is about as likely as being a criminal lawyer, a divorce lawyer, and a copyright lawyer all at the same time.
• When we asked to see a picture of his kids he kept talking about, he changed the subject.
• He asked us our ideal vacation spots.  Stef threw out Ireland, and I threw out New Zealand.  He said Australia was the #1 vacation destination in the world, and that Ireland was the #2 destination in the world.  It was at this point we killed him.

Road Trip Bingo

• Believe it or not, it took until New Mexico to find a pro-life billboard.  There are five just on the way to Monticello from Minneapolis.
• We didn't actually see an obvious hooker, but we went through Hooker, Oklahoma, so I gave it to her.

Finally, I was at the Royals/Blue Jays game on Saturday.  Stef took a picture and some dork behind me mugged for the camera as well.