Three. Days. On. A. Bus.

The 3-day trek across the country from Arkansas to Oregon was definitely one that I'm currently trying to forget.  The first day was scheduled to be our longest drive of the 3 days, with 11.5 hours to go. Snow caught up to us in Texas, however, and the first day took 16 hours. That day we went from Alma, AR through all of Oklahoma, the top of Texas, and all of New Mexico to get to Albequerque. Here's some pictures from along the way, as I believe a picture is worth a thousand words:

That last picture is from our dinner stop in Texas, it is a place called the Big Texan and it's famous for its 72 oz steak. Sick! If you eat the whole thing its free, if not...it isn't free :-) The steak itself takes about an hour to cook and is the size of a phone book. In addition to the steak you must eat 2 sides and bread; this is a challenge you could not pay me to try. As we were ordering a guy got his steak and took the challenge, we were all very surprised to see a challenger on our 1 hour dinner break. He ended up getting through 50 ounces of meat before giving up. I actually left and ate my dinner out in the bar area because I was afraid he'd blow chunks up in those garbage cans. With about 5 or 6 more hours left to go on the bus the last thing I wanted to do was try to delete that image from my memory. But the chicken fingers were great!

The drive on the first day especially sucked because there's hardly any rest stops along the way. Either this cast has incredible self control or very little fiber because we only stopped when we could! The drive through New Mexico was so beautiful, on Day 1 that was definitely my favorite state.

Travel Day 2 took us from New Mexico to Nevada, Las Vegas to be exact! :-) We were all very excited to spend the night in a very classy hotel called Hooters. You may have heard of it. The drive was pretty damn boring, after a while there's just not much to look at in the desert! But here's a couple of my favorites from Vegas as well, it was a great stop!

My favorite part of Vegas was seeing the fountains at the Bellagio, they are so huge they probably go up like, 100 feet! They play every 15 minutes so there was always something new to see each time we walked by. And my favorite casino was the Venetian, it had a beautiful Italian decor and moving sidewalks that went up over hills, proving very difficult to ride in heels. :-)

The 3rd and final day of huge travel was mostly worth it for the scenery, we drove past Shasta Mountain! I had never seen snow capped mountains before so this drive was especially beautiful to me, although the change in air pressure was not. Lesson learned for Colorado, we've got to hydrate 2  days ahead of time! Check out the pictures of the drive from Las Vegas to Sacramento:

I've included in there a Googled picture of Donner Pass, which we were worried would be a problem with the snow and ice. Our crew bus drives through the night and they had to pull over on the side of the road and wait a couple hours. But we had no problem driving through the famous dining destination and I thought it was cool so I found a couple other pictures online about the Pass and thought I'd share:

And then we went to Oregon!

I have to say I think Oregon is my favorite state so far. One of the guys on tour said the Pacific Northwest is a great place for foodies and I absolutely agree. Some of the girls and I found a bar called Porter's that was right on the train tracks (and a train went by and everything!) They had a great little bar menu called Get Giddy for 3 Fiddy, and all the menu options were around $3.50. I had a homemade pizza tomato jam, fresh cheese and seasonings as well as homemade hummus and pita bread, delish!!

The theatre there was the Ginger Roger's Theatre, she performed there a lot and eventually the place was named after her.

My friend Darrell wants me to add that in Oregon he left his laptop but, do not worry, he got it mailed to our hotel in Reno for the low low price of $20. This is now documented. :-)

After Oregon we drove back down to Cali for a show in Turlock, which was interesting because both the mens and womens bathroom were in the ladies' dressing room. We got lots of visitors. That was a great space in Turlock, because we had no fly space so the show was very minimal. I love doing those kinds of shows because we have to work a bit harder to get the audience on board.

After Turlock we went to Reno for a 3 day sit-down! And it was even better because my sister Jill came to visit! It was so great I'll give it it's own blog entry as soon as I get back from the show tonight. :-)