Wednesday, April 11, 2007

The Great American West Trip - Day Five

Surprisingly I had some amazing sleep the previous night despite the smallish sleeping quarters. Tiffany, as usual, was up earlier and getting ready by the time I rolled out of bed, but being a guy and requiring no makeup/matching outfits/cleanliness, we were ready to get moving. After a painfully long delay at CVS we got on highway 101/I-5 headed down to San Diego. Now don’t get me wrong, San Diego is a beautiful town, but I was highly disappointed in it. I had built up San Diego in my mind to be that quintessential surfer town full of Mexican style buildings and mariachi bands; it turns out that area of town (old town as they call it) is about two square blocks. But we wanted to make the most of the time allotted to San Diego, so we did the most touristy thing possible and headed to the San Diego zoo.
Being the two cheapos that we are, me and Tiffany tried to get every discount imaginable for the zoo tickets, but nothing would lower the thirty dollar price tag associated with the park entry. Since this zoo is supposed to be the largest zoo in the world, and because both of us were far from broke, we figured that being cheap was a bad reason to give up on the zoo. Sixty dollars later we found ourselves heading to the park, but first stopped and got some huge and wonderfully delicious four dollar burritos. Arriving at the zoo, we realized that we were pretty much going to have the place to ourselves since it was a weekday in December so there seemed to be no rush. We decided to go on the bus tour first which gave you a good overview of the zoo and drove you past a good 60 percent of the animals in the zoo and it had a nice tour guide that could tell us all the cool things about the animals that we would never have known. Besides having a tire blow out in the middle of the tour, my favorite surprise was running into my former dean of science for Morehouse College, Dr. J.K. Haynes while on the bus. Here I am looking at the animals, when I take notice of one of the occasional black people that I saw in San Diego. To my surprise I thought I knew this person, except there was no way in hell that my old advisor from Atlanta, GA would be here in San Diego looking at the zoo. But sure enough, as we got closer the astonished look of recognition spread across both of our faces, but by the time we could say anything, the bus had moved on. I looked to find him the rest of the day, but the size of the zoo made another run-in extremely improbable, and we gave up the search. After the bus tour, we pretty much hit all the big attractions, the pandas, koalas, hippos, elephants, rhinos, giraffes, and the such. It was a very impressive zoo but at some point in life you feel like you have seen all the animals you need to through zoos or the nature channel. Actually, I don’t think I have reached that stage yet, because I was as giddy as the rest of the schoolchildren running around the zoo. All in all, the zoo was a lot of fun.
We realized that the beach at San Diego was the closest we were going to come to a temperate beach on this trip, so we parked our car next to the boardwalk and walked among the eight million dollar beachfront homes (if your house is worth eight million dollars, do you really think flyers is a purposeful way to advertise? get an agent!). Tiffany and I had a really lovely walk on the beach at night. It was one of those perfect times to have intimate conversations and just enjoy the cool beach air. So that’s exactly what we did, until we got hungry and tired of walking. Heading back we decided to try and find the famous Old Town district that is supposed to be reminiscent of old Mexico. Little did we know that there are no street lights, signs, or main streets that lead to this spot, so we did quite a few loops around the area not knowing what to look for. What ever we were expecting to find, we thought it would be big and attractive, but without the signs we would have passed right through the area unexpectedly. When we did realize that we had been driving through the place the whole time, we parked and found the most authentic looking Mexican place in the area. The place was pretty cool, with its mariachi band and outdoor fountains, but I think we preferred our cheaper lunch burritos over the real thing. The margarita was pretty good and there was a stray cat that entertained us most of the meal but the food sparked no fireworks. It was funny when our waitress wanted to take our check though. She was getting off shift and wanted to close her tabs so she brought us our checks. Since we both paid with cards, she left (for quite a while I remember) and came back with our cards and bill. But instead of leaving for us to sign and make out the tip, she stood right there in front of us waiting. This was the first time I have ever had any server sit there as an observer through the whole tip process. Tiffany tried to wait for her to leave but sure enough, she stuck around patiently as we did our calculations and handed her the bill, to which she peeked and said thank you. First time for everything.
Full and off-schedule, we had to reach Las Vegas by the end of the night. It was about 10 PM and Las Vegas was about five hours away, so we had quite the trip ahead of us. Tiffany wanted to do the driving from San Diego to Las Vegas because she felt bad that I had been driving the whole way up until then, so I sat in the passenger seat and chilled out. Now I had some pretty scenery and exciting (translation: dangerous) roads that helped keep me awake while I was driving, but we were driving through the deserts of southern California…in the dark… so Tiffany’s awake levels started to slip after awhile. Tiffany is a bit like me, in that once she sets herself to doing something, she will try and accomplish it no matter how illogical things get (I later learned a shorter description for that trait: pride), so despite the increasing sleepiness, she kept on truckin. Now once Tiffany’s driving reached the erratic stage, she explained that she cannot see well in the dark, and since she was having a hard time keeping her eyes open, it was making it even harder to focus. The entire ride we had been treated to a wonderful celestial display of shooting stars. In that wilderness the stars are brilliant and distinct, and about every forty seconds you would see a thin line streak across the sky, so once I realized my life was in one of its more dangerous periods, I made a wish upon a star. Long story short (haha, never thought I would use that phrase in any of my writings), we made it in safe, but Tiffany was struggling, but she completed the task she had set out to do.
In Vegas we stayed on the strip (the far end of the strip) at the Stratosphere hotel. For all who have been or know anything about Vegas, it’s the hotel/casino with the big space needle. The cool thing about that place was that the hotel rooms were only $22 dollars a night, and the rooms were actually pretty nice. The not-so-cool thing about that place was the ten dollar visitor package that was mandatory upon check in. I really had an issue with this visitor package because nowhere on anything leading up to this check in had I received any notice that I would be charged for stuff I had no interest in using. This package included a free ride to the top of the tower…but only from 10 AM to 2PM; it allowed for free pool access… which is free to anyone with a room key; we had free valet parking… which is free to anyone who goes to the hotel; and we were blessed with free use of the laundry room… but the washer and dryers were coin operated. So I simply saw this as a swindle, and I do not like getting swindled. Luckily it was three o’clock in the morning and I was dead tired, so I did not let the cheapness get the best of me. I gave the hotel check in lady my ten dollars and figured I would just steal a few towels to make us even (unfortunately my conscious has gotten the better of me these days). I asked the concierge how far the Grand Canyon was from Vegas (ohh not far... only about an hour) and set our wake up call so that we could get there in time to see a few things. Tiffany had never seen a casino before so she ran around there for a little while and I went upstairs and got ready for bed. It was only four o’clock by the time I got to sleep, and that’s pretty good by Vegas standards. The only problem was that our wake up call was at 9 the next morning. ‘Till the next entry. Adios

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