Hi everyone, I posted a few weeks back about starting to write a series about my adventures on the road - to inspire! I just finished the first section of my first story. This part takes place from 1 sunset to the next - adventures of 1 day on the road. This is part of a longer segment about a road trip to Coachella.... I hope you enjoy:
ps. any feedback greatly appreciated

It’s 4:45pm on a cold April evening in Boston, I’m counting the minutes and seconds 'till I can dart out of my office and head to the airport. I have my carry on bag and backpack with me at my desk, and my mind is far from work. My father, who happened to be in the city for meetings, is waiting outside to take me to the airport. The clock strikes 5 and I am gone before the big hand ticks again. I smoke a quick spliff on the sidewalk around the corner and then hop in my father’s car - I’m officially on vacation. He drops me off, we say our goodbyes, and I arrive at the airport with enough time to have 2 beers before my flight. As I sit in my window seat waiting for takeoff, I slowly watch the sunset over the Boston skyline, only imagining what the next couple of sun sets will look like from the west. I couldn’t imagine everything I would see before the next time the sun set. The plane took off at 8pm. I’m usually the type of person to stare out the window for the entire plane ride, so much so that I usually leave the plane with a sore neck - but for this flight I knew I should sleep so I could be energized for what lay ahead. I managed to sleep for about 2 hours on the plane. I woke up to the captain calling for the final descent into Denver. We touched down in Denver in the midst of a late spring snow storm, 10:30pm local time. Syd was already at the Terminal West pickup zone waiting for me with his bags packed. We make a couple of quick stops to prep for the road (munchies and what-not) and off we went - headed West. The clock strikes Midnight as we get on the highway - it’s now officially 4/20 in Colorado, I’m overwhelmed with joy, excitement, and weed smoke. Syd took the initiative and picked up an ounce for our trip - each gram was in its own bag which was odd at the time but came in handy later on in the trip. Just a few hours ago, I was in my cubicle - now I’m in Denver on 4/20, every adolescents dream. This was just the very beginning.

Exiting Denver heading West, I started to notice the drastic change in landscape. Denver sits at the very edge of the plains that spread across middle America from Pennsylvania to literally Denver. East of Denver is plains, farmland, and corn for 1,500 miles. Each farm and cornfield a spitting image of the previous one. West of Denver is the most beautiful, drastic, diverse scenery all the way to the Pacific Ocean. You have what seems like unlimited options to choose from once passing through the rockies - head southwest for desert, head norwest for ancient forests and god’s country, head directly west for a mix of both and everything in between. This trip we were going southwest. We zoomed into the rockies with snow getting heavier by the minute. I started to get nervous but remembered how I was here back in February with the same road conditions and the same fright. I then remembered how well Syd could handle these roads, so I chilled out. We passed by Loveland, Arapahoe Basin, and Keystone ski resorts, and I started to reflect about my 2 weeks of snowboarding here only 2 months prior in February. I thought about how I would love to snowboard here again one day. Little did I know, I would be working for Keystone the following Winter (more on that later).

With Keystone in our rear view, we quickly approached Breckenridge, then Copper, then Vail, and then Beaver Creek. Coming from the East Coast it was hard to believe that all of these world class resorts were all within 45 minutes of each other. You can drive 10 minutes in any direction in Summit County, Colorado and arrive at a world class resort. Once we passed Beaver Creek the snow started to subside and you could see dirt and grass start to be evermore present. A relief from the harsh storm. I was now more relaxed and slept for an hour or 2. I woke up to see an array of lights in the near distance, a massive city- like region as far as the eyes could see. We were approaching Grand Junction, CO, a city declared in the late 1800s as a “grand” junction of the mighty Colorado River and it’s largest tributary, the Gunnison River. Grand Junction is Colorado’s wine country and the closest civilization to Grand Mesa, the world's largest flat-topped mountain which covers hundreds of miles. I was in awe as it seemed to go on forever. We passed through Grand Junction and immediately crossed over into Utah around 4AM, and I took the wheel.

One thing that strikes me about these Western states is you can actually see and feel yourself crossing into another state without there being any formal notice or signs. The way the land drastically changes is amazing. As soon as we entered Utah everything around us started getting more colorful. The brown dirt changed to red clay, the tan grass of Western Colorado quickly changed to green cactuses (or cacti?). The snowy mountains changed to rainbow-colored hills and otherworldly rock formations. I felt like I had just left planet earth and landed on Mars. “This is the coolest place ever” I said to Syd. I continued on in admiration for about an hour, then I could see the very first sign of the sun rising in my rearview mirror. What I thought was beautiful before instantly appeared way more spectacular. I was in awe, trying to soak everything there was to see. I’m lucky that I didn’t drift off the road during these gazes, but luckily the Utah highway was straight and flat, with no other cars at this hour. Each and every minute grew more beautiful as the sun rose higher and higher in my mirrors. It seemed as if the sun was chasing us from the east as we bolted west at a steady 80mph. Once the sun was about halfway up the horizon behind us everything started to brighten up from the darkness of the night. I pulled over at a rest stop to climb a hill and watch the sunrise over the utah desert. I found a boulder at the top of the hill perched over a valley, and watched the sun slowly illuminate hundreds of miles of desert. I will never forget it. Now that it was bright as day, I hopped back into the driver’s seat and continued on. Syd woke up from a snooze; I tried to describe what I had just witnessed but no words could do justice. From there on, I pulled over at every scenic viewpoint that we came across, which seemed like every 10 minutes. They each got better and better the further into Utah we ventured. Sand Bench, Ivie Creek, Devil’s Canyon, Ghost Rock, Spotted Wolf, San Rafael Reef, Black Dragon Canyon, and Crescent Junction to name a few. We probably lost an hour off of our ETA for these stops, but to me they were priceless, and I didn’t care the least. By this time it was around 8am and the temperature had now reached a comfortable 70 degrees. From here the windows would be down for the rest of the trip.

After about 8 hours of cruising I-70 from the snowy Rocky Mountains through the Utah desert, we passed through Fishlake National Forest in Salina, UT and pulled onto interstate 15 to start heading South. The desert had now transformed into an oasis with green grasses growing, wildflowers budding, trees waving in the gentle wind, and chirping birds greeting the morning. It was like entering a whole different environment yet there was still snow capped mountains in the near distance. I could smell the beautiful scent of the valley and everything it had to offer. I thought to myself how bad the streets of Boston stunk where my office was located, and how amazing this often overlooked section of the country had been so far. Syd was well rested at this point so we pulled over, took our shoes off to walk around the soft warm grass, had a quick beer while soaking in the morning, and hopped back on the road - Syd driving now. We only drove for about 10 minutes until we saw Our next stop was Zion National Park.

We approached Zion National Park from the north, so we were able to get in without paying the national park dues. As we approached Zion, I was convinced that I had already seen the beauty of Utah, and that Zion National Park was going to look like the beautiful valley that we were in during our approach. I was wrong. We traversed the winding road that leads into the northwestern park of the park and then she revealed herself. The sheer beauty of this valley is almost indescribable, and only the finest poets could barely do justice. All of a sudden we were hundreds of feet above this majestic garden of eden. Both Syd and I had to pick our jaws up from the car floor, and still remained speechless after that. We pulled the car over and sat there in awe and tried to absorb all the beauty that was in front of us. It reminded me of the old childs movie “The Land Before Time”. I imagined pterodactyls soaring above the cliffs, gazing over all sorts of other dinosaurs that roamed the valley floor. There were emerald rivers below me and massive cliff walls surrounding me with trees and plants growing everywhere. Every color on the spectrum could be seen in this little speck nature. I pictured the natives who used to call this place home and how it must have felt to discover this desert oasis. I felt one with nature here. Syd and I must have spent an hour sitting here and admiring this beauty. We had to get going so I took one last gaze, and went back in the car. I told myself I would come back here to really explore the place. I sure did, but that adventure comes in a later story.

We left Zion and had Las Vegas in our sights. Zion is only about 2 hours away from Las Vegas, so we planned on that being our next stop/point of interest. Right around this time, about 10AM, we realized that we had left Denver about 10 hours ago and needed some food. We decided we would wait until Vegas, but then all of a sudden a mirage appeared in the desert. “That is a mirage, right Syd?”. “It must be”. I got overwhelmed with excitement as my mouth started watering, the mirage got closer. “That mirage looks pretty real” “But it can’t be...we’re in Utah”. Yup, it was real. I rubbed my eyes to be sure. We pulled up to the Washington, UT exit signs and there was a billboard that read “In-N-Out 1 mile”. I hadn’t been that happy in a while. We checked what time they opened: 10:30 AM, we checked our clock: 10:20 AM. It was a miracle. We smoked a joint and walked in as they were taking down the “closed” sign.

Now here is where I had another “holy shit it’s a small world” moment. Throughout my life I had always had these weird coincidences where I see someone I know while on vacation or somewhere hundreds/thousands of miles away. From seeing a college friend at a resort in Puerto Rico, to sitting next to my hometown buddy on a plane from the DR, to sitting across the table from a classmate in the Bahamas. As I was munching my burger, in the middle of Southerwestern Utah, two people from my highschool walked in. An older couple that was I think 3 years above me. Now we didn’t know each other well enough, so we didn’t speak but we all looked at each other with the “WTF?” eyes, and continued to pretend not to know each other, even though we both knew our stories started in a small coastal town in MA. “What a small world” I thought as I finished my burger (animal style, of course).

We hopped back in the car and in a flash we were in Las Vegas. I was very excited to finally see Las Vegas. I was reminiscing of all the crazy stories ive heard and movies ive seen, portraying this to be the place of no rules where everyone leaves with a crazy story that they can’t tell their mother (I do have a crazy vegas story, but thats from a different road trip). Well, not at 1:00pm I guess. We drove up and down the strip feeling like movie stars with our arms and feet hanging out the window, trying to show off my fake Y-3 shoes (SMH). Vegas is a whole nother world during the day, and there is not much to be excited about. We parked the car at Caesars Palace and roamed around the casino, only to find desperate slot-goers at this hour. It was kind of depressing. After an hour of roaming the strip and fantasizing in the Louis Vuitton and Gucci stores, we decided it was time to leave Vegas. The next time I was in Vegas turned out to be a lot more...fear and loathing-ish, we’ll get to that later.

After Vegas we were ready to get to California. We decided we would only stop for gas from this point on, and set our sites on San Diego. The goal was to race there fast enough to watch the sunset over the Pacific Ocean before heading to Coachella the following day. My cousin lived in San Diego at the time and welcomed us to stay the night at his house before the festival. We drove and drove racing the sun which was starting to gain on us. We crossed into California and kept driving until we hit San Bernardino and came to a complete stop. There was traffic for as far as the eyes could see. “Are you kidding me? LA traffic all the way out here” while it might not have specifically been LA traffic, there was certainly bumper-to-bumper traffic all the way to LA. “wow, people aren’t joking about LA traffic” we laughed. Luckily after only a couple miles we pulled off the exit to head south to San Diego and were back cruising along.

In what seemed like a close race against time, we pulled into Pacific Beach, San Diego right as the sun was reaching the point where it really starts to turn the color of the sky to a pinkish-peach color. It was so beautiful. We paced onto the boardwalk and got a perfect spot to watch the sun set over the surfers trying to catch their last waves before darkness. We stayed and watched in awe until there was no sun left to watch. As we were exiting the boardwalk we were overwhelmed with delicious smells of local vendors preparing food for the night crowd. It felt as if we entered a food truck convention, and thousands of people now fluttered in to get a taste of the local cuisine. We walked around aimlessly smelling and tasting all they had to offer. I had a couple beef and pork tacos and a churro; Syd had a freshly caught fish taco. From there we soaked everything in, breathed a sigh of relief for we had made it and reflected on what an incredible day we just had. From there we went to my cousins loft and relaxed with him, only to begin a new adventure tomorrow.