Weekend Getaways: Via Las Vegas

We drove south back towards what I thought would be Las Vegas. Matt was pretty tired from driving so much and as we approached the Vegas exit, he said that he would probably need me to take over driving in another hour. Then he exited the freeway! What a trickster! We were still gross from hiking and being in the car, so we immediately went to our hotel, The Hilton Grand Vacations Club. The hotel was pretty nice and since it was off the beaten path, not too crowded but it was far from most of the action. We got cleaned up and ordered room service. Matt had another surprise for me: chocolate and champagne!

We put on our fancy clothes and headed out for the night. Visited Planet Hollywood (tacky!), Paris (to get tickets to the Eiffel Tower. I found a 2-for-1 coupon in a brochure in the taxi cab. Go me! But I didn't want to go up until it was all lit up at night), Bellagio (to go to the Conservatory), Caesar's Palace (to wander around), and back to Paris (to go up the Eiffel Tower).

Paris fountain

Bellagio Conservatory

Eiffel Tower at night

Unfortunately, the wait to go up was around an hour and forty-five minutes and we had already decided to go to the Wynn Buffet. Matt looked up at least 5 different websites to see which buffet was the best in Vegas. The buffet closed at 11 pm and by the time we were done at the Eiffel Tower we would have had 30 minutes to eat, so we left and got a return pass for the next day. As we drove down the Strip, we enjoyed fireworks from the back seat of our cab. Not exactly as romantic as being on the top of the Tower!

The buffet was nice. It had the usual stuff like prime rib, crabs, desserts galore but there was a lot more meat than I expected.

Mmmm....Desserts!

By the time we finished dinner, the hoochies were out in full force. I was overwhelmed by skintight mini dresses. We visited the Encore which was equally as tacky as Planet Hollywood and then decided to hang out at the Parasol Lounge at the Wynn. Being outside on the patio on a balmy night was actually kind of nice. Little did we know that there was also entertainment on the patio. It was a multimedia extravaganza and also had a dancing and singing frog! It was the perfect ending of a wonderful day!

Important thing I learned during this trip: Matt cannot keep secrets from me.

Weekend Getaways: Emerald Pools Hike (Zion Natioanl Park)

On Saturday, which happened to be Independence Day, we awoke much later than I was expecting. When we went to Joshua Tree in May, the temperature in the tent was unbearable by 7 am, but for some reason, it was still nice and cool by 9. We had to pack up camp and move out of our site by 11, so we had a nice breakfast of bagels, bananas, and watermelon and were on our way.

We moved our car to the Visitors Center and hopped on the bus to Zion Lodge. Today's hike was going to be to the Emerald Pools. There are three pools along this 3-mile hike. I found it to be more strenuous than the previous day's because there was a bit of elevation gain and direct sun exposure.

To get to the trailhead, you have to cross a short footbridge over the river. Boy am I glad that we did The Narrows on Friday because this is what we would have been wading through after the night's downpour. Matt and I wanted to film a commercial for Hershey's chocolate milk!!

On the footbridge leading to the Emerald Pools trailhead

We wound up finishing the hike very quickly but there were still a ton of people on the trail. I was sort of happy to be leaving. It was still a very beautiful hike but it's difficult to really enjoy when there are bottlenecks of children and slow people. The pools were pretty but the waterfalls were just a trickle.

Upper Emerald Pool

At the Upper Pool

After completing the hike, we left the park and got coffee and breakfast from a cafe in town and then headed to this faux town that we had seen on the way in and promised to stop at on the way out.

Tourist trap

Jacklopes!

Then we were off to my next surprise!

Weekend Getaways: The Narrows Hike (Zion National Park)

The next morning, we packed everything up again and had breakfast at the hotel. We definitely knew we were in Utah at this point. Fox News was playing in the dining area, which we both noticed. There was also a family who was sitting near our table. One of the men at the table asked his tablemates, "Do you know any gay people?" Then yelled, "They're sinners!!" Matt looked at me and then said, "Yeah, we gotta go." After we left, I learned that he thought the man had said, "Do you know any gay pornstars?" but then realized that regular pornstars are probably sinners too.

We drove for another hour. By then, I knew we were going to Zion National Park. As we drove down the road leading to the park, he pulled up to a shop that had a sign reading "Canyoneering." Oh dear, I still had no idea what we were doing and asked, "Are you taking me on an adventure?" Finally, I learned that we were going to be doing The Narrows hike at Zion. The Narrows hike is one of the most famous hikes in America. It takes you in the Virgin River, which has carved a remarkable gorge through the sandstone rock. We needed to get some equipment to prepare us for the hike, namely water shoes, booties, a dry bag, and hiking poles.

Drive towards Zion

Entrance to Zion National Park

Once we reached the park, we had to check into our campsite but it was still occupied so we parked in the overflow area and packed up our daybag with lots of water, lunch, and hopped on the Zion bus. During high season, visitors are required to take the shuttle around the park because there would be too many cars in the park otherwise. Ours was the last stop on the route - The Temple of Sinawava. The landmarks around the park were named by the Mormons. They include the Great White Throne, Three Patriarchs, West Temple, East Temple, Angel's Landing, and my favorite The Altar of Sacrifice.

From there, we began the Riverside Walk trail which leads to beginning of The Narrows hike. The walk was a very easy, serene 1 mile walk along the Virgin River with lots of shade and greenery.

Along the Riverside Walk

The Virgin River

We didn't really have a set goal in terms of how far we wanted to go on the hike, plus there was danger of flash flooding that day. So we just decided to go as far as we could and then turn back. Once you reach the River, you are basically hiking or wading in water the entire time. It takes a lot longer to walk in water than on land especially with boulders all along the bottom of the river. I am definitely glad we got the proper equipment. It also didn't help that there were tons and tons of people doing this hike, many with no equipment!! At times, the water would be waist high as you can see below. It was a once in a life time experience. The natural beauty and the knowledge that a river carved all of this amazing landscape that all of us can enjoy!

Along the Narrows hike

From time to time, we talked about stopping to eat lunch but everytime, we just continued on. Finally, we stopped to eat at around 2 pm. We had packed some sandwiches and found a nice, big boulder in the shade to take our break. We noticed these cute, green, fuzzy caterpillars on the boulder and admired them. A couple of them must have found me curious because they kept walking towards me. It wasn't until we were getting up to leave that we realized there were a bunch of them crawling on me and I even had two in my pockets!!

Attack of the caterpillars!

As we continued, we finally passed Orderville Canyon, a goal both of us intended to meet even if we never said so. After Orderville Canyon, the crowds significantly thinned out and we had a few moments to enjoy the canyons alone for the first time. It was getting cooler and when we asked passersby how much longer the hike was before you reached the neck-level water, they said about another hour and twenty minutes. We decided to turn back. It had been over 3 miles since we started. I thought this was the most beautiful section we had been to. The canyon was more narrow so the cliff faces were much more powerful and close.

Amazing!!

At around 6 o'clock we were finished with our hike and went to return our equipment. Matt kept mentioning that he thought it was going to rain and pointing at this huge grey cloud. As we went back into the car to return to camp, a large gust of wind swept by and it started raining. We drove back to the campsite anyway and as soon as we did, it was pouring down. We sat in the car trying to decide what to do, thinking it was just a quick thunderstorm and we would be able to set up camp, but then it started hailing and back to raining. Matt had prepared all of this food for the campfire but it looked like our only option was to get some dinner and then decide whether or not to camp or try to find a hotel room.

Everything worked out in the end. We had a terrible Mexican dinner in Springdale and it stopped raining. We went back to Watchman Campgrounds, set up camp, and then had some of Matt's food as an evening snack. He made some delicious bacon-wrapped chicken kabobs with veggies! Yummy. Then we hit the hay!

Weekend Getaways: Surprise, surprise!!

For the long weekend, we decided to go on a weekend trip. A surprise for my early birthday! During the week leading up to the trip, I tried to figure out where we might be going. Some ideas included the Channel Islands, Catalina, and Red Rock Canyon/Vegas.

Matt sent me an evite with the following packing list:
1) Your swimsuit
2) A sexy going out outfit
3) Sunblock
4) Sunglasses
5) Camera & plenty of batteries ;)
6) 2 sets of Hiking Clothes - shorts and t-shirts preferred
7) You should wear something comfy on Thursday and bring something else comfy for another day.
8) Your "A" Game!

There was a condition with the hiking clothes that one set had to be non-cotton. I had no idea where we were going or what we were doing.

Thursday afternoon - Matt came to pick me up and left the following clues:
Clue #1: He put food in the fridge so that meant he would be making me dinner or breakfast when we got back!
Clue #2: The car was packed. Firewood and large cooler in the backseat = camping. He wouldn't let me scope out the trunk though.
Clue #3: Heading east on the 10 freeway. Channel Islands and Catalina are out! Vegas/Red Rock Canyon still in.

And east we drove...Finally, we made a pit stop in Barstow for dinner at Arby's! Vegas was still on the horizon, but then we kept driving. Past Vegas and into Arizona. I thought we must be going to the Grand Canyon, but then we kept going into Utah. We stopped for the night in St. George, Utah at a hotel. By then it was midnight because of the time change. Hiking was on the agenda for tomorrow (the non-cotton kind of hiking?) I was still clueless...

Weekend Getaways: Joshua Tree (part 3)

After visiting Split Rock, we hopped back into the car and drove to the north end of the park to do the 49 Palms Oasis hike. The trailhead is outside of the national park, near the city of Twentynine Palms.

The flora on the hike was not spectacular compared to what we had already seen, but seeing an oasis of palm trees in the middle of this uninviting, harsh landscape was something I didn't want to miss. The hike itself was only 3 miles roundtrip and took us about 2 hours to do including the time we spent relaxing at the oasis.

You can see the patch of palm trees in the middle of the desert landscape

Cactus along the trail

Quail along the hike

Arriving at the oasis

When I hear the word "oasis," I imagine a nice blue pool of fresh, clear water. What it really means is a festering tiny pool of green, stinky water. At least there was shade and interesting dragonflys buzzing around. I still think it was worth the journey to see the way nature can sustain itself in the middle of the desert.

Tons of hikers were just beginning their hikes as we were leaving the trail, by that time it was close to noon and it was pretty hot out. I'm glad we were finished with our most strenuous activities by that point in the afternoon.

Weekend Getaways: Joshua Tree (part 2)

Saturday, May 23rd

The tent was roasting by 7:30 in the morning and opening the vents would have just caused more heat to enter, so we were forced to start our day early. It turned out to be a good thing considering how hot it would be later on in the day. We quickly packed up the car and had some breakfast. In the daylight hours, we could finally enjoy our surroundings. Now I could see why this area is called "Jumbo Rocks."

Joshua tree in the sunrise

Campsite

Desert flora

Our first stop for the day was a short 1 mile roundtrip hike to Skull Rock. I was not extremely impressed with it.

Skull Rock

Scenery along our hike

Next we drove to another area of the park to see Split Rock, which is named for obvious reasons. We climbed into the split like dorky tourists too!

Split Rock

Weekend Getaways: Joshua Tree (part 1)

Friday, May 22nd

Matt and I decided about a week before the long weekend to take a roadtrip to Phoenix with a stop in Joshua Tree National Park. I left work a little early and hit the road to pick him up from work. It took me quite a while and we didn't wind up leaving until around 4:30 in the afternoon after packing up the car. We decided to wait out traffic and went to Monterey Park to buy food and firewood and also have dinner at Little Fat Sheep.

Little Fat Sheep is a Mongolian hot pot place. I don't know what the difference between Mongolian and Chinese hot pot are, but it seemed pretty similar to me. We ordered the half and half, which is half spicy broth and half original broth. The spicy broth comes on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the spiciest. I ordered a 3 because Matt can't eat spicy. After about 20 minutes, I couldn't eat it anymore either because the broth comes with all of the spices and chilis inside it still and as it boils, it becomes more and more spicy over time. Items we ordered for the soup: sliced beef, beef balls, seafood dumplings, spinach, fried tofu, shittake mushrooms, and handmade noodles. The beef balls were terrible but everything else was pretty good. Best items were definitely the noodles and dumplings! Yummy!

After dinner, we made a quick stop to Quickly for boba before hitting the road again.

By the time we reached Joshua Tree, it was obviously nighttime. We didn't make reservations for a campsite and it was already very late in the night, so we had to ask the park ranger which campsite we should try. She told us that we would probably have the best luck at Jumbo Rocks, which is basically smack dab in the middle of the park. The national park is much much larger than I was expecting it to be. We had to drive 17 miles to the campsite, but along the way, there were tons and tons of joshua trees along the road. Although it was dark, you could still see many of them as well as the giant boulders behind them. Whoever says there aren't any more joshua trees in the park is lying. It was a beautiful sight and I wished we were seeing this area during daylight hours because we were not intending to return this way the next day.

We finally reached Jumbo Rocks. It is actually the largest campground with 124 campsites. We found a few open ones and finally decided on number 26, which was located in front of a large boulder. Good for me to pee behind in the middle of the night. We unpacked the car, made a campfire, built the tent, roasted s'mores and hit the sack.

Things we had for camping:
2 sleeping bags
1 air mattress
1 tent
3 starter logs
1 bundle of firewood
2 flashlights
Metal skewers
1 cooler of food from breakfast and s'more making materials
Lots of water

Campfire

Campfire at our campsite

Little Fat Sheep
120 S Atlantic Blvd
Monterey Park, CA 91754

Quickly
1328 E Valley Blvd
Alhambra, CA 91801

Weekend Getaways: Las Vegas

I haven't journaled in more than a week. During that time quite a bit has happened. First off, I'll be leaving for new york on September 20th at 9:45 pm. I'm flying over to Washington DC with Michelle and meeting up with Cindy in Maryland. After that, the three of us will be driving up to New York.

As for what has been going on. Last Tuesday night I meet up with Michelle, Matt and Tim Lau at Chuck E. Cheese's to hang out. Matt had a coupon for 100 tokens so we all played Skee Ball to our hearts content. It was pretty fun. They have this new game that is a ride and it takes your picture for you. It was only 2 tokens! By the end of the night, we had 600+ tickets. We wound up sending 200 of them on cotton candy and the rest on these little motorcycle men that were 15 tickets each. We wound up with over 30 of the motorcycle men. I wish I had a digital camera so you could see them. But they are freakin awesome! After that, Mike Yim picked me and Michelle up from Chuck E. Cheese's and we went to The Loft to eat with one of Mike's friends. The night was fun because it was a spontaneous get together. I miss spontaneity.

On Wednesday, I got one of my lower wisdom teeth pulled out so I was out of commission for a while. My medication was making me barf so I wasn't doing much besides resting. I watched a few more movies: The Graduate, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Double Indemnity.

Then late Friday night, I went with Michelle and some of her family to Las Vegas to help out at a Chinese concert at the MGM Grand. We got to Vegas pretty late on Friday so we just went to sleep after we arrived. Since the show wasn't until Sunday, we had all of Saturday to ourselves. After sleeping in until around noon, we went downstairs to eat lunch at the Grand Wok. The good thing about this trip was that I didn't have to pay for food or the room because MGM pays for it as part of the concert deal. This way i don't feel bad about ordering expensive food or eating certain things. I ate a tuna roll and shrimp salad. After lunch, we spent a good part of the day driving Michelle's grandmother and great uncle around. We took them to the Bellagio and to the Fashion Show Mall. In the afternoon, Michelle and I gambled a little and ate at Wolfgang Puck Cafe. We had bruschetta and spinach and cheese dip. I drank a watermelon martini that was the color of swamp water. It wasn't very good. I can't remember what we did after that, but I know we ate again at the Studio Cafe. Mich and I shared an apple crumble a la mode, which was really yummy. That night there was a production meeting that we had to attend. I felt like a complete dolt because I don't speak mandarin. Afterwards, we went to Studio 54. On Sunday, we spent all day getting ready for the show with rehearsals and sound checks that we had to attend. It was really cool being able to see what it is like behind the scenes and what it takes to put on a big concert. The concert was held in an arena sized venue but only half of the seats were opened up. Another thing, Ada Choi can't sing worth crap. We got about a 45 minute break to eat before the show. So we ran down to the studio cafe and rushed through our meal. During the show, I just sat on the left wing acting as security in case something happened like if Emil Chau left the stage and went into the audience. Next, there was an after party at Pearl. It was really annoying because a bunch of middle-aged women who were already eating at the resturant saw Ada Choi and Emil Chau and went into our section of the resturant trying to get autographs and pictures. One lady was especially rude because she kept poking her head in even after she got her pictures. A bunch of the crew hung out in the casino after the dinner. We were just wandering around the casino and drinking. We found out the Emil Chau was hanging out at one of the casino bars, so we went over there. It was really funny because he was totally drunk. He kept saying the most random things and singing "We are the world." But he was cool too because he bought everyone drinks and was really nice to everyone. I also got to talk to some of the other people who were helping out and found out some of them were pretty cool too. One of the guys is from queens so we're gonna hang out with him when we get to new york. At around 6 am, there were only about five of us left at the bar because Emil and his entourage already left. We decided to call it a night.

On Monday morning, I woke up with the biggest headache. I guess I drank a lot more than usual but i totally didn't feel it during the night. I slept until around noon. Michelle was expecting Mike Yim and Greg Mah to come up to Vegas and we were going to go back to la with them. After they called, we got ready and went downstairs to look for them. Mike wasn't getting reception on his phone, so we wandering around trying to find them. Finally, we found them and decided to go shopping at an outlet mall. The mall didn't have any good stores so we didn't stay there very long. We went back to the hotel and ate at Grand Wok. We couldn't think of anything to do so we decided to leave for la early. On the drive back, we stopped by the outlet mall in Primm and then continued to la. That drive back to la was so painful. Mike and Greg kept wanting to play all of these stupid games to pass the time. We didn't have any music to listen to and there was so much traffic. I never wanted to get out of the car so badly. Finally we got to Michelle's aunt's house and picked up her car. She drove me back to her house where my car was. Right as I was leaving Michelle's house, there was an earthquake. I made me a little uneasy driving back by myself but it was okay. Overall, the trip was pretty fun. It definitely had some really memorable moments like drunk Emil.

I didn't really do anything on Tuesday, but I got another one of my wisdom teeth out yesterday. The surgery was really fast and Dr. Wu sewed me up really quickly, but then she tried to put the pieces of teeth back together and realized that there was still some pieces left inside my mouth. So she unsewed me and went to work again. There were actually 3 tiny pieces that had broken off but she got them all out. I feel worse than I did last week even though the swelling isn't as bad.

Weekend Getaways: Santa Barbara

Yesterday, my whole family went up to Santa Barbara for the day. It was pretty funny because none of us knew where we were going so we just drove. Finally, there was a freeway since that said there was a visitors' information center, so we decided to go there for some direction. We discovered that the visitors' center was pretty much in the heart of the tourist area, right by the pier and the water front. We decided to walk to the pier and there was a dolphin statue there. We took some pictures in front of that. It was around lunch time then, so we ate at a nearby resturant called Fishouse. I ate crab and oysters. YUM! After lunch, we left our car and went by electric shuttle to the downtown area. Some people are so stupid. They can't figure out how to put money into a machine! Idiots shouldn't be able to go on vacation! Downtown is basically a shopping district with all sorts of galleries and shops lining State Street. We went to the As Seen on TV store and to some other random places. I bought some pepper spray. Then we had dessert at the Andersen's Bakery. It was totally overpriced and not that good but whatever. I wouldn't go there again, but the interior of the bakery was really pretty. After that we walked around a little more and then went back on the shuttle to go to the car.

We left Santa Barbara to go to the Camarillo outlets. I really liked the shopping there. The stores are really good and it's really big. We didn't have enough time to shop even though we spent more than 2 hours there. I only bought a dress, a cd holder, some Harry and David cheese, and a birthday card for Chris. After shopping, we went to Alhambra to eat dinner at OK Cafe. The day was really long but fun! It was better than I expected.