Travel With a Smart App

Zooming along!

We travel a lot. When we are on the road, the GasBuddy.com App. Here in Utah we save 21 cents per gallon at the same chain by going 14 more miles. It's a no brainier!

Travel Quiz...Am I tired, drunk or am I in ?????

Image via Wikipedia

     We have traveled up the road from Arizona to Oregon and back again so many times I have lost count.  It is almost like getting and up in the morning every day of my life.  You would think that we would become bored with the routine...in both cases.  Yet we don't.
     Today I have a little quiz for you.  We have been in five state within the last 4 days...Arizona, Nevada, Utah and Idaho.  We stayed overnight in the three difference towns...Wickenburg, AZ; Las Vegas, NV; Ogden, UT.   Let me give you a little guessing game and see if you can guess which state we were in:

1. We drove so long we could not get into the restaurant across the street from the motel. When we get that tired we get silly.  When the restaurant owner let us in after we tapped on the window and begged to be fed, he thought we were silly and if you were silly then you must be drunk.  What state were we in?
2. We arrived in town after 4 o'clock in the afternoon and the little store we like to visit was closed.  What town were we in?
3. We stopped at a gas station to buy fuel, a human pumped our gas AND the fuel was cheaper than anywhere on our trip.  What state were we in?

ANSWERS:

1. The little community is called Wickenburg.  This sleepy little town is a perfect tourist stop with a museum, abandoned mine and golf course. 
2. We were in Utah where alcohol has only been legal for a few years.  I suppose after we ordered craft beers he just made the leap from very tired to drunk.  He was a nice man and we thanked his sister as we left the establishment.  Our behavior probably was a little wonky but even sober people have lots of fun!
3. We were in Oregon where voters continue to reject bills that allow self-serve gasoline.  We have figured out that if we were to give up this service, the price of gas would NOT go down.  

     Have a wonderful day.  Tomorrow the pictures of the Hoover Dam Bypass project.  It is very exciting!!!

b

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Boise, Id to Las Vegas via OGDEN, UT.

Isn't traveling fun...the truck stop food, the $3.28 per gallon gas with an out-of-order restroom...the snow on October 3? It is just a barrel of monkey flying down the road...really! Now if you do not have a sense of humor or are not grounded in the fact that life is not a smooth road to the sunshine, then you may not be able to laugh at what a trip will throw at you. I have a friend that says that my husband and I should not be allowed to leave our home. She may be right but we love the adventure. We were on trip near Three Mile Island nuclear facility in Penn. when it malfunctioned, we lived through black outs in Boston, we were in Spain with visas to go to Saudi Arabia when the war broke out in Iraq, we were on Koh Samui, an island in the Gulf of Thailand when the tsunami hit in the Indian Ocean, we have been on the destination part of our trip when the airline we had booked to come home went on strike...and the list goes on. But we have never seen it as a bad thing (well the broken down rest room was not good but still)...in fact we like the hard as well as the easy parts. We boldly call our mishaps bragging rights. I guess you can see what is coming...right?

This trip is no different in any way. We had planned to go to Estes Park in the Colorado Rockies but because the weather forecast called for sleet and cold wind, we decided to change our plans. We go to Arizona to escape just that kind of thing. We changed our booking with our time share and we are going to Las Vegas instead. Never did we dream that it would snow all the way from Boise Idaho well into Utah on I-84 going south toward Salt Lake City. Today is October 4, 2009. The temperature lingered at about 34 degree for most of the day. I can just imagine someone saying, "Here is the deal, you will be getting snowed on in October...no matter which way you go missy. Just tough up!" (that's cowboy talk in case you didn't know, only a cowboy would say just cowgirl up lady.)

We are now at a World Mark resort outside of Ogden, Utah. We traveled about 13 miles east of Ogden up the Ogden Valley. The resort is called World Mark Wolf Creek and is near the little community of Eden. If we were skiers this would be perfect in the winter. Powder Mountain is very close by. The resort ad touts "Over 7,000 acres covering three mountains adds up to the most skiable terrain in the US. With this much space, you won't share any of the 124 runs with a crowd." In the summer fishing would be an option. The large Pineview Reservior is just a short drive away. Utah.com says "Pineview Reservoir provides outstanding opportunities for boating, fishing and other water sports."

Or, if you are a golfer and would like a luxurious lodge to be your home for a few days, Wolf Creek Lodge is just next door to the World Mark Resort. They want you to come and enjoy all the services. "Your lodging reservation includes full access to our many mountain resort amenities that include championship golf, restaurants, lounge and bar, outdoor pools, spa, concierge shuttle service, plus special free and discount perks."

Our room is beautiful here at our time share. We pay less that $50 dollars to use 'bonus time' or that time that is not booked. We call about 10 days ahead to find a spot. Our room has a kitchen with everything we need to fix small meals...including a dishwasher. A separate bedroom allows one of us to go to bed early or even sleep in late while the other can rattle around.

So we ate a turkey dinner at a small restaurant called JC's in Tremonton (not really good) as we came down I-84. I will fix toasted cheese sandwiches later on this evening. We have a bottle of wine, a gas fireplace and a queen sized bed. Until tomorrow morning we are in a very wonderful place.

But best of all IT IS NOT SNOWING....YEAH!!!!

I just thought you would want to know!

b

St. George, UT and Wikenburg, AZ Shopping

Alph Inventions Link
Do you score some good stuff when you travel? Do you just drop into a shop that looks cool from the outside and do some aisle surfing? Do you look for great bargains or are you the kind of person that is will to spend a fortune for a memory piece of art? Whatever your style may be, travel holds opportunities for your shopping habit.

While my husband and I were traveling home I had the chance to visit a couple of shops that caught my fancy. The first was a shop names Salsa in Wickenburg, AZ. Located in a block that featured a saddle shop, the store was a mixture of old and new items. Gently used clothing hung near a pile of fabric roll ends. That was where I found my first treasure. I had looked for years for the perfect bark cloth...at antique stored, fabric store, and on and on. When I stepped into Salsa there was that piece of cloth. I purchases 2 yds of the material for a table cloth and it is perfect.

In St. George, UT, I discovered a shop called Urban Renewal while searching for local history. I am a blog writer after all. My husband I parked in a lot just off St. George Blvd. because it was close to Brigham Young's summer house and a local LDS church and Temple. I just wanted to take a few pictures. My choice to step into the Urban Renewal shop turned out to be serendipitous . The store features consignment items, new decorating items and clothing. I purchased a pharmacy lamp that had been consigned to the shop. It has found a home along with the bark cloth table cloth in my dining room here in Hillsboro, Oregon.

Both items were priced well below what I would have spent here in the Portland, Oregon metro area. After all I am the traveler that is always looking for a great bargain.

If shopping is your gig and you know what you want and like, travel shopping may be just the thing for you. If nothing else, you will have bragging rights!!

Have a wonderful journey!

b

http://www.alphainventions.com/

How to Choose a Motel... Holiday Inn Express Ogden, Utah

Is there a motel at the end of this rainbow? (Tucson, AZ. 2009)

Well we really scored with the motel in St. George, UT last night. My husband chose the Ramada Inn by searching online for a good price, good location and reputable chain. The motel sported three award trophies on the counter when we checked in. Our room was perfect, the pool area was as nice as any resort you will find just smaller and the breakfast included, bagels, rolls, English muffins, biscuits/gravy, cereal and several juices. The coffee was passable and the breakfast room was big and sported two big screen TVs.

Tonight we are in Ogden, UT and staying in the Holiday Inn Express. This room is equally as nice and there is an indoor pool next to a well equipped work out room . That is a good thing as the mountains still have quite a lot of snow and the temperature was only in the mid 60s when we arrived. The free wifi is just an added bonus. We will wander downtown to the historic 25th Street for dinner this evening. The website makes it look very appealing.

I think we should get out more! We have traveled using time share bonus time or in a motor home for several years. This motel room thing is working for me!

More later.

b

Utah Vacation, St. George

My friend said, "I think I've died and gone to Hollywood!" We were visiting some of her old friends from a former life. They were both in their 80's and I was a young person looking on. We were in Palm Spring, Ca. The condominium complex was built during the late 1980's and the view was of a fairway lined with palm tree with water laying in the middle and green in every direction. You could almost feel the ghosts of Bing Crosby and Bob
Hope playing through. I love that memory...even though it, like the condo, have gotten dusty over the years.
The Oasis, The Palmer Course

Well we played golf in Mesquite, NV yesterday. Mesquite is west of
LasVegas but would love to be closer. Casinos, both new and dusty, lie along the freeway and the condos are beautiful until you look beyond at the reality that lies there. Like Palm Spring, the fantasy sometimes fades and the reality settles in.

The Palmer course there in Mesquite at the Palms Resort is a difficult challenging course. The cost can be astronomical if you are not using a "left over golf times" booking. We used the Golf Now for this particular booking and the cost, tee times and amenities were just as stated by the website. We paid around $110 on this day including cart, any taxes and range balls. We loved the course with the exception that the tee boxes were not marked clearly leaving us searching for our tees a number of time. I even had to skip one tee box because we had driven off a hill and there was no going back...people were behind and in front.

As we sat on the first tee, I could not help but think of my friend. I took a picture of the beautiful setting there. But, as we played the rest of the course, reality settled in. The unfinished developments loomed everywhere and one could not help be reminded that Palm Springs looked like this at one time. It will be a long time before Mesquite catches up. LasVegas and it rapid growth still over shadows this part of the world. It is a wonderful place to be...warm, green but sometimes very dusty! But it is not the cultural center of the western world!

We gambled at the Casablanca Casino in the evening and had a dinner in the grill for a very reasonable price. The porter house steak sold for $10.99. It was reminiscent of the prices we paid in LasVegas 10 or more years ago.

We have been using our Work Mark time share in St. George, Ut. The condo we use was very hard to find in the dark. I thought I had it nailed down on my iphone but it turned out that, when we arrive in town, the directions changed and we ended up in a subdivision on the north side of town. I called the office here at World Mark St. George and got the correct directions...it still took some doing to find our room for the night. My suggestions would be...do not come to town in the dark. St. George evidently enforces strict sign laws that do not allow resort accommodation to post signs leading to the resorts. With the correct address, my iphone and about 5 turn arounds, going back from whence we came, we finally arrived at the resort around 10 p.m.. We had left Mesquite around 7 p.m. for the 30-40 mile drive. WOW!

Sunbrook Golf Club

St. George, UT

We played the Sunbrook Golf Club here in St. George, UT today using the GolfGopher.com. Our experience with this discount website was not as good as Golf Now but we think there may have been some misunderstandings. We had to pay more that the understood booking price. Sunbrook says they will not be using the service anymore. I found the golf course to be very unfriendly to women in that the fairways were set a long distance from the women's tees. I am not a particularly long hitter. I would discourage anyone with a handicap above a 28-30 to avoid the course.

Zion National Park
near St. George, UT

We have gone into the Zion National Park near St. George. It was a beautiful day trip. The entrance to the park features a lovely resort area, motels/bed and breakfast and restaurants. A tram will take you into parts of the park that cars cannot enter and I think it would be worth the time and cost. We just drove through the park and took pictures. What a beautiful part of the world.

We are staying here until next week and will head north toward Oregon and home. Until then we are on the road.

b