AGGIE'S DISCOUNT LIQUOR
I got back from my Colorado road trip late Monday night. I was sad for it to be over, but I'm also glad to come home and be with my bed and my TV and my computer again. I really missed LiveJournal. Time for an obnoxiously long update! (I tried to finish this on Tuesday, but got distracted by Sherlock again.)
I got up at 3 AM on Friday morning, after only sleeping for about two hours. I took a shower, packed my stuff, ate a quick breakfast, and left to meet the carpool at campus. Erin didn't get there with the car until 5:30, but that gave me time for another run to the ATM. When she got there we loaded all the stuff into the car. I rode shotgun, Kristy and LaRita and Amanda were in the back. We stopped at Quick Trip for gas and coffee (hot chocolate for me, of course) and set off a little after six. I dozed on and off as we drove through Missouri. Kansas City was fun to see, and we stopped at another Quick Trip for more gas and I got an egg biscuit and a corndog because I wanted something warm for breakfast instead of just Special K bars and trail mix. We pulled into another gas station to take a picture because it was named Handy's and had a giant smiling glove on the sign.
About a third of the way through Kansas we realized we were ahead of schedule and decided to take a break and stop at a zoo in Salinas. It was $13.50 to get in, which I guess isn't too much, but the zoo here in St. Louis is free, and a lot bigger. This place was fun, though, even if a lot of the animals were hibernating because of the winter. We saw big cats, snakes, primates (we were peering into a dark window to see what was inside and all of a sudden a blue-face mandrill with a giant head appeared and stared back at us, it was terrifying), ostriches, kangaroos, and these loud, squawking, scary black swans. We took our "roll call" video for the conference by panning across the mounted animals inside the museum and talking over them. Kristie was a walrus, the rest of us were polar bears. We also got pressed pennies for souvenirs and took a ton of pictures. I brought my stuffed Perry the Platypus with me like the cartoon dork that I am, so I took a lot of pictures of him next to his "fellow agents." After that we got lunch at McDonalds.
There isn't much to see in Kansas, but there were fields of these giant wind turbines, as far as you can see. We saw them on the horizon over the hills in other areas, but these ones were next to the highway, it was so cool and so eerie to drive past them. We stopped at a giant truck stop called Mittens right before we hit Colorado. Colorado looked suspiciously flat and empty for the first hour or two we were driving into it, but then we hit Denver and suddenly there were lights all around us. We couldn't see the mountains because it was dark and they obviously don't have many lights on them (which was really bizarre, knowing that these giant things are lurking there and you can't see them) but Denver is a huge city with lots of suburbs clustered around it, so the land was just blanketed with lights. We drove through this cool outdoor mall and stopped for dinner at Toby Keith's I Love This Bar & Grill. Country-style decor, of course, and it was the only restaurant I've been in that had something besides sports and news on the TVs, they were showing kung fu movies too. I had a steak sandwich and fries with this delicious ranch sauce. My friends rode the mechanical bull, which was a lot of fun to watch. I would've done it too if I hadn't just eaten a big dinner.
We saw the same patches of stores over and over again on the trip up to Ft. Collins, which was weird, and we're 90% sure we passed a gas station called Leaf in a Jug. There were lots of mattress outlets, liquor stores, and Mexican restaurants. We got into town at about 10 PM and found the place we were staying at. A brother from CSU named Michael, and his three roommates who were brothers too, were kind enough to put us up in their house. They had mattresses and couches set up for us, and were very welcoming.
I woke up at around 7:00 on Saturday morning and tried to take a shower in the upstairs bathroom but couldn't figure out how it worked and ended up taking a cold bath. When we got outside, the sun was shining and we finally got to see the mountains looming on the horizon. We had breakfast at the CSU campus, just orange juice and donuts, and the APO conference started with some announcements and watching everyone's roll call videos. We all went to a workshop on giving good presentations, which wasn't a lot of new info to me, but it was more interesting and useful than the other options. Then I went to a workshop on helping my chapter apply for the Chapter of Excellence Award, which has been a goal of ours for a while that I'm determined to make happen this semester. Lunch came from a little campus cafe called Spoons. I had chicken tortilla soup, Caesar salad, and a big piece of foccacia bread. I went to a workshop on applying for other awards from the national office, which I think will help me a lot. There was a break after that, and the girls and I went to explore Old Town Fort Collins, a gorgeous little town square full of shops and restaurants. We walked through some cool stores selling everything from used records to giant geodes and snacked on Ben & Jerrys.
Then it was back to the conference for a meeting with our section to discuss upcoming events and then the big region meeting. Kristie and I were the voting delegates since we were the most senior members (Erin, LaRita, and Amanda just pledged last semester). The only thing we were voting on was whether or not our region wanted to nominate St. Louis as the site for the next national convention in 2014, which was passed. Myself and most of the current chapter will have graduated by then, but we'll probably all still get together and go as alumni. (This year's national convention is in Anaheim, and I'd love to go, but I'm not sure if I'll have enough money. Depends on how much fundraising the chapter does this year.) After that we went back to Michael's house to get dressed up for the banquet that night. I just wore my outfit from the family Christmas party, a skirt/blouse/cardigan combo that felt a little dowdy next to the short glitzy dresses of the other girls, but at least when we changed at the end of the night I just had to take off the skirt and put on pants. The banquet room was lovely, decorated in lots of paper snowflakes, and dinner was chicken alfredo and broccoli with little pieces of chocolate cake. I only picked at my broccoli and the waiter who took my plate asked, "Callin' it quits, miss?" which I still find weirdly hilarious. The keynote speaker was entertaining, and all the speeches and presentations were kept thankfully short. A bunch of awards were handed out. Our chapter didn't get any because we didn't turn in the applications, but I'm making sure we will next time! They did do a raffle of leftover conference goodies, though, and I got a free long-sleeve APO t-shirt from that, and Amanda got to take the mason jar snowglobe in the center of the table. There was a dance afterwards, which we only stayed at for a few minutes. Then we all changed clothes and went back to Old Town, which was even better at night because the trees are filled with lights, and met one of our friends from SIUE at a gelato bar called Gelazzi's. I'd never had gelato before, but I got a half-strawberry half-lemon cup and then tried some birthday cake flavor, and really enjoyed all of it, I'm going to have to find a good gelato place in St. Louis. We went back to Michael's after that, and I went to bed because it was after midnight and I didn't want to be too tired the next day. The girls stayed up and played beer pong and X-Box Kinect with Michael and his friends, which I kind of wished I could've been there for, but I think I mainly needed a good night's sleep at that point.
We slept in until 9 on Sunday morning, munched on some bagels and cereal at Michael's house, and then went back to CSU for the service project. We stuffed "breakfast bags" for a local homeless charity to hand out and wrote letters to troops. I just drew a sun with sunglasses and wrote STAY OPTIMISTIC on mine. That didn't take too long, so we went back to Old Town again. We had lunch at a sort of Irish saloon called Lucky Joe's with Erin's friend Jerica that worked in the city. I had a chicken salad sandwich with pineapple in it, which was pretty interesting. Then we shopped for souvenirs in a store called The Colorado Showcase, I just got two Ft. Collins postcards a chocolate bar made with huckleberry truffles.
After that we went back to Michael's house and then we followed him and his friends out to a spot in the mountains to go hiking. I was hesitant at first because I'm not a real outdoorsy or active person, but I ended up having such a good time. The mountains were absolutely gorgeous, and the place we were at overlooked this big clear lake. We walked down the hill to the shore, and tossed rocks for a while. Erin jumped onto a big rock about three feet out and smacked her knee, and it took us fifteen minutes of convincing to get her to jump back again. Instead of taking the trail back up to our car, we climbed up these big piles of rocks, I felt like I was in Lord of the Rings or something. I was really out of breath at the end of it, but so glad I went. We went back to Michael's house and drank tea and I played with the Kinect for the first time. Again, I'm not a person that likes to move a lot, but I played a dancing game and an obstacle course game and had a lot of fun. The sprinting game was murder, though, you had to pump your legs and get your knees really high and it's exhausting. That was three days ago and my legs are still sore. All us girls and Michael and his roommate Nick went to a late dinner at a Mexican restaurant called The Armadillo. I had a big plate of nachoes where the cheese was completely melted, like a cheese skin draped over some chips, but it was still delicious. We got some free sopapilla too! After dinner Erin, LaRita, and I went to a liquor store (not Aggie's, though, it was closed) and bought Michael and his house some beers as a thank-you gift. We bought them a card at the Rite-Aid too, and even found one card that had already been written in and signed - "Rocky, thanks for all you do!" Michael was playing cards with a bunch of girls when we got back, but he took the time to look our present and give us all a big hug. Everyone was going to play another round of beer pong and party that night but I was super tired, so I took a shower in the downstairs basement and slept in Michael's bed down there, which is where us girls moved to so we could sleep without the party disrupting us.
We got up at 5 AM on Monday morning, packed our things, and set off for home after a brief stop at Quick Trip for gas and another obligatory hot chocolate because it was freezing cold. I watched the sun rise over the mountains as we left Colorado and drove up through Wyoming. We wanted to go through Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, then dip into the Kansas side of Kansas city before driving across Missouri to home, so that we would be in six states in one day. Erin was looking at the maps on her phone and saw that there was a point where the Colorado, Wyoming, and Nebraska borders met, so we decided to find it. It took us more than an hour, and we had to drive through barren fields to get there. There was no sign advertising it, and not even a road, paved or dirt or gravel, just a rut in the ground from a tractor. The point itself is a 3x3 foot metal plaque with a big stone sticking out of it. We took a ton of pictures of it anyway, we were just so glad we had finally found it. And since I had my Perry doll with me, I got to take a picture of him in a tri-state area, which I am extremely proud of.
We stopped at a gas station in Wyoming and a bought a fridge magnet and two postcards, one of which has a picture of a middle-aged couple sitting next to a stuffed bear in a bar and reads "Buy a Bear a Beer Day in Wyoming" and it's the best postcard I've ever bought. We drove into Nebraska after that, and while the western parts of it had some of the same charming hills and bluffs as Wyoming did, the rest of it was very boring. There were no billboards, no roadside attractions, and very few other cars on the road, just lots of cows and grass. We did stop at a truck stop that had the most random assortment of t-shirts, though, not just Nebraska souvenirs, but Mario, Harry Potter, and "legendary" wolves too. We had dinner at a cute 50's style diner called Penny's Diner. I had a salad and a buffalo burger, which was pretty good. More driving after that, a brief stop at a Dairy Queen because Erin was craving ice cream, and more driving. I was dozing when I heard my friends shout something about a dinosaur and looked up to see a big T-Rex statue looming over the highway, advertising some. We swerved into the exit and drove up the hill to take pictures with him, which probably didn't turn out that well because it was dark and windy.
Right before we hit Lincoln we started playing a "20 questions" type game to keep us from boredom, asking questions to guess what person/place/thing from our trip the girl was thinking of. It was a lot more fun than it sounded, and kept us entertained almost all the way home. We drove a the last stretch across Missouri without stopping, just driving and talking and planning APO activities for the new semester. We got back to campus around 11:30, and my mom picked me up and took me home and I watched a new Phineas & Ferb and went to bed. :)
I got up at 3 AM on Friday morning, after only sleeping for about two hours. I took a shower, packed my stuff, ate a quick breakfast, and left to meet the carpool at campus. Erin didn't get there with the car until 5:30, but that gave me time for another run to the ATM. When she got there we loaded all the stuff into the car. I rode shotgun, Kristy and LaRita and Amanda were in the back. We stopped at Quick Trip for gas and coffee (hot chocolate for me, of course) and set off a little after six. I dozed on and off as we drove through Missouri. Kansas City was fun to see, and we stopped at another Quick Trip for more gas and I got an egg biscuit and a corndog because I wanted something warm for breakfast instead of just Special K bars and trail mix. We pulled into another gas station to take a picture because it was named Handy's and had a giant smiling glove on the sign.
About a third of the way through Kansas we realized we were ahead of schedule and decided to take a break and stop at a zoo in Salinas. It was $13.50 to get in, which I guess isn't too much, but the zoo here in St. Louis is free, and a lot bigger. This place was fun, though, even if a lot of the animals were hibernating because of the winter. We saw big cats, snakes, primates (we were peering into a dark window to see what was inside and all of a sudden a blue-face mandrill with a giant head appeared and stared back at us, it was terrifying), ostriches, kangaroos, and these loud, squawking, scary black swans. We took our "roll call" video for the conference by panning across the mounted animals inside the museum and talking over them. Kristie was a walrus, the rest of us were polar bears. We also got pressed pennies for souvenirs and took a ton of pictures. I brought my stuffed Perry the Platypus with me like the cartoon dork that I am, so I took a lot of pictures of him next to his "fellow agents." After that we got lunch at McDonalds.
There isn't much to see in Kansas, but there were fields of these giant wind turbines, as far as you can see. We saw them on the horizon over the hills in other areas, but these ones were next to the highway, it was so cool and so eerie to drive past them. We stopped at a giant truck stop called Mittens right before we hit Colorado. Colorado looked suspiciously flat and empty for the first hour or two we were driving into it, but then we hit Denver and suddenly there were lights all around us. We couldn't see the mountains because it was dark and they obviously don't have many lights on them (which was really bizarre, knowing that these giant things are lurking there and you can't see them) but Denver is a huge city with lots of suburbs clustered around it, so the land was just blanketed with lights. We drove through this cool outdoor mall and stopped for dinner at Toby Keith's I Love This Bar & Grill. Country-style decor, of course, and it was the only restaurant I've been in that had something besides sports and news on the TVs, they were showing kung fu movies too. I had a steak sandwich and fries with this delicious ranch sauce. My friends rode the mechanical bull, which was a lot of fun to watch. I would've done it too if I hadn't just eaten a big dinner.
We saw the same patches of stores over and over again on the trip up to Ft. Collins, which was weird, and we're 90% sure we passed a gas station called Leaf in a Jug. There were lots of mattress outlets, liquor stores, and Mexican restaurants. We got into town at about 10 PM and found the place we were staying at. A brother from CSU named Michael, and his three roommates who were brothers too, were kind enough to put us up in their house. They had mattresses and couches set up for us, and were very welcoming.
I woke up at around 7:00 on Saturday morning and tried to take a shower in the upstairs bathroom but couldn't figure out how it worked and ended up taking a cold bath. When we got outside, the sun was shining and we finally got to see the mountains looming on the horizon. We had breakfast at the CSU campus, just orange juice and donuts, and the APO conference started with some announcements and watching everyone's roll call videos. We all went to a workshop on giving good presentations, which wasn't a lot of new info to me, but it was more interesting and useful than the other options. Then I went to a workshop on helping my chapter apply for the Chapter of Excellence Award, which has been a goal of ours for a while that I'm determined to make happen this semester. Lunch came from a little campus cafe called Spoons. I had chicken tortilla soup, Caesar salad, and a big piece of foccacia bread. I went to a workshop on applying for other awards from the national office, which I think will help me a lot. There was a break after that, and the girls and I went to explore Old Town Fort Collins, a gorgeous little town square full of shops and restaurants. We walked through some cool stores selling everything from used records to giant geodes and snacked on Ben & Jerrys.
Then it was back to the conference for a meeting with our section to discuss upcoming events and then the big region meeting. Kristie and I were the voting delegates since we were the most senior members (Erin, LaRita, and Amanda just pledged last semester). The only thing we were voting on was whether or not our region wanted to nominate St. Louis as the site for the next national convention in 2014, which was passed. Myself and most of the current chapter will have graduated by then, but we'll probably all still get together and go as alumni. (This year's national convention is in Anaheim, and I'd love to go, but I'm not sure if I'll have enough money. Depends on how much fundraising the chapter does this year.) After that we went back to Michael's house to get dressed up for the banquet that night. I just wore my outfit from the family Christmas party, a skirt/blouse/cardigan combo that felt a little dowdy next to the short glitzy dresses of the other girls, but at least when we changed at the end of the night I just had to take off the skirt and put on pants. The banquet room was lovely, decorated in lots of paper snowflakes, and dinner was chicken alfredo and broccoli with little pieces of chocolate cake. I only picked at my broccoli and the waiter who took my plate asked, "Callin' it quits, miss?" which I still find weirdly hilarious. The keynote speaker was entertaining, and all the speeches and presentations were kept thankfully short. A bunch of awards were handed out. Our chapter didn't get any because we didn't turn in the applications, but I'm making sure we will next time! They did do a raffle of leftover conference goodies, though, and I got a free long-sleeve APO t-shirt from that, and Amanda got to take the mason jar snowglobe in the center of the table. There was a dance afterwards, which we only stayed at for a few minutes. Then we all changed clothes and went back to Old Town, which was even better at night because the trees are filled with lights, and met one of our friends from SIUE at a gelato bar called Gelazzi's. I'd never had gelato before, but I got a half-strawberry half-lemon cup and then tried some birthday cake flavor, and really enjoyed all of it, I'm going to have to find a good gelato place in St. Louis. We went back to Michael's after that, and I went to bed because it was after midnight and I didn't want to be too tired the next day. The girls stayed up and played beer pong and X-Box Kinect with Michael and his friends, which I kind of wished I could've been there for, but I think I mainly needed a good night's sleep at that point.
We slept in until 9 on Sunday morning, munched on some bagels and cereal at Michael's house, and then went back to CSU for the service project. We stuffed "breakfast bags" for a local homeless charity to hand out and wrote letters to troops. I just drew a sun with sunglasses and wrote STAY OPTIMISTIC on mine. That didn't take too long, so we went back to Old Town again. We had lunch at a sort of Irish saloon called Lucky Joe's with Erin's friend Jerica that worked in the city. I had a chicken salad sandwich with pineapple in it, which was pretty interesting. Then we shopped for souvenirs in a store called The Colorado Showcase, I just got two Ft. Collins postcards a chocolate bar made with huckleberry truffles.
After that we went back to Michael's house and then we followed him and his friends out to a spot in the mountains to go hiking. I was hesitant at first because I'm not a real outdoorsy or active person, but I ended up having such a good time. The mountains were absolutely gorgeous, and the place we were at overlooked this big clear lake. We walked down the hill to the shore, and tossed rocks for a while. Erin jumped onto a big rock about three feet out and smacked her knee, and it took us fifteen minutes of convincing to get her to jump back again. Instead of taking the trail back up to our car, we climbed up these big piles of rocks, I felt like I was in Lord of the Rings or something. I was really out of breath at the end of it, but so glad I went. We went back to Michael's house and drank tea and I played with the Kinect for the first time. Again, I'm not a person that likes to move a lot, but I played a dancing game and an obstacle course game and had a lot of fun. The sprinting game was murder, though, you had to pump your legs and get your knees really high and it's exhausting. That was three days ago and my legs are still sore. All us girls and Michael and his roommate Nick went to a late dinner at a Mexican restaurant called The Armadillo. I had a big plate of nachoes where the cheese was completely melted, like a cheese skin draped over some chips, but it was still delicious. We got some free sopapilla too! After dinner Erin, LaRita, and I went to a liquor store (not Aggie's, though, it was closed) and bought Michael and his house some beers as a thank-you gift. We bought them a card at the Rite-Aid too, and even found one card that had already been written in and signed - "Rocky, thanks for all you do!" Michael was playing cards with a bunch of girls when we got back, but he took the time to look our present and give us all a big hug. Everyone was going to play another round of beer pong and party that night but I was super tired, so I took a shower in the downstairs basement and slept in Michael's bed down there, which is where us girls moved to so we could sleep without the party disrupting us.
We got up at 5 AM on Monday morning, packed our things, and set off for home after a brief stop at Quick Trip for gas and another obligatory hot chocolate because it was freezing cold. I watched the sun rise over the mountains as we left Colorado and drove up through Wyoming. We wanted to go through Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, then dip into the Kansas side of Kansas city before driving across Missouri to home, so that we would be in six states in one day. Erin was looking at the maps on her phone and saw that there was a point where the Colorado, Wyoming, and Nebraska borders met, so we decided to find it. It took us more than an hour, and we had to drive through barren fields to get there. There was no sign advertising it, and not even a road, paved or dirt or gravel, just a rut in the ground from a tractor. The point itself is a 3x3 foot metal plaque with a big stone sticking out of it. We took a ton of pictures of it anyway, we were just so glad we had finally found it. And since I had my Perry doll with me, I got to take a picture of him in a tri-state area, which I am extremely proud of.
We stopped at a gas station in Wyoming and a bought a fridge magnet and two postcards, one of which has a picture of a middle-aged couple sitting next to a stuffed bear in a bar and reads "Buy a Bear a Beer Day in Wyoming" and it's the best postcard I've ever bought. We drove into Nebraska after that, and while the western parts of it had some of the same charming hills and bluffs as Wyoming did, the rest of it was very boring. There were no billboards, no roadside attractions, and very few other cars on the road, just lots of cows and grass. We did stop at a truck stop that had the most random assortment of t-shirts, though, not just Nebraska souvenirs, but Mario, Harry Potter, and "legendary" wolves too. We had dinner at a cute 50's style diner called Penny's Diner. I had a salad and a buffalo burger, which was pretty good. More driving after that, a brief stop at a Dairy Queen because Erin was craving ice cream, and more driving. I was dozing when I heard my friends shout something about a dinosaur and looked up to see a big T-Rex statue looming over the highway, advertising some. We swerved into the exit and drove up the hill to take pictures with him, which probably didn't turn out that well because it was dark and windy.
Right before we hit Lincoln we started playing a "20 questions" type game to keep us from boredom, asking questions to guess what person/place/thing from our trip the girl was thinking of. It was a lot more fun than it sounded, and kept us entertained almost all the way home. We drove a the last stretch across Missouri without stopping, just driving and talking and planning APO activities for the new semester. We got back to campus around 11:30, and my mom picked me up and took me home and I watched a new Phineas & Ferb and went to bed. :)