Road Trips and Rants

It’s day 4 of the road trip, and as we work our way from San Francisco to Austin via Yellowstone, Boulder, Santa Fe, and Lubbock, I am beginning to realize how much of our lovely country is pure emptiness, unused land. The hours pass, and I’m glad we’ve had the opportunities we’ve had to live where we’ve lived.

It has been educational and interesting. We spent a night in Pocatello, Idaho, an extremely small college town populated 70% by Mormons – more than Salt Lake City! Who would have guessed. The drive there was a bit too long, I think that the planner (that would be me) was slightly ambitious in the amount of mileage that we could realistically cover on the first day, after a very stressful two weeks. But, 800 miles and about 14 hours later, we arrived at our host’s house in Poky, exhausted and so grateful for our own room and a bed. Did I mention dinner places in Idaho close early? We narrowly avoided Burger King for our first dinner together when we discovered, two blocks later, a local diner called Idaho Joe’s. Delicious potatoes, for sure.

From there it was off to Yellowstone, to discover bacterial pools, watch Old Faithful erupt, and camp for the night. A chilly night and lots of buffalo sightings later, we were on our way to the Grand Tetons. I was amazed at the number of older tourists around the Yellowstone area, I guess because it’s so accessible. The Tetons involved a lot of driving and a lot of phenomenal scenery. And at last, we arrived in Boulder – in time for dinner with some old friends.

Its taken me a few days to wind down and realize that I’m on vacation – and stop checking the Blackberry! And, it’s a good feeling. I just hope we both make the most of the remaining days off.

And now, a rant. In the midst of wedding planning (which, at the moment involves mostly searching for the appropriate location), I am learning how frustrating planning a Houston Indian wedding can be. Talk about limited resources! I was hoping for more user reviews and recommendations of services we should use, but the only recommendations come from advertisements. Food recommendations are sadly, sub-par, and hotel catering restrictions make it really tough to plan a ceremony on our terms. Oh, and did I mention the locations are tragically uninspired? Alas…. What to do, and where to make compromises?

As we work through the options to determine the answer that best suits us, I will start my own ‘reviews and recommendations’ effort by reviewing the services I encounter on this blog. What I’d love to see, and build eventually, is a review site specific to wedding services by locale. Very specific, sort of like the Knot before it went commercial (unless it always was that way). We’ll start with Houston, and go from there.

As I keep this blog posted on the progress of that site, I’ll also provide all the information I learn here, about locations. How frustrating is it to play phone tag for weeks with various venues, before you actually get an introductory idea on pricing, if outside catering and alcohol is available, etc

So...stay tuned for that, and more road trip adventures ahead!

-anika