Quick trip to Vegas + first few weeks in Salt Lake City!
I have a lot of blog posts planned for the coming weeks to share our travels from Flagstaff, Zion and Southern California but first, a real-time update! We spent December and January in SoCal; first the desert in the Palm Springs area and then San Clemente in Orange County. It was sad to leave the sunshine, warmth and beaches but we were really excited to head to Salt Lake City. We booked three months here; we felt like we needed to slow down for a few months, Utah was one of the areas that we most wanted to explore and my brother and his girlfriend live here – very happy to have some extended time with them!
Las Vegas
We drove from San Clemente to Vegas to break up the drive to Salt Lake City + Jordan’s company had a showroom at a big expo there so the timing worked out perfectly. Back in November, when we drove from Salt Lake City to Palm Springs, we had planned to also stop overnight in Vegas; however, when we got to our AirBnB in Vegas, we didn’t feel like the neighborhood was very safe so we made the call to keep driving. When we do the quick overnight stops, we don’t unpack the car so we always need a super safe place to park the car. So, it turned into about a 14-hour travel day…brutal! This time, we did a lot more research and booked an AirBnB that was essentially a private guest suite within a 6,000 square foot mansion in a super nice, safe neighborhood.
This was our first time in Vegas and we LOVED it, and already can’t wait to go back! We would love to go see a DJ at one of the clubs, do one of the pool parties in the spring/summer/fall, go see a show and hike! The area surrounding Vegas was stunning. I was blown away by the hotels – each with such unique and incredible architecture and decor. We walked all around the Palazzo and Venetian, the Bellagio, Caesar’s Palace and the Wynn, and explored a little of downtown Vegas. Vegas is exactly like the movies: crazy, excessive, over the top, lots of fun. I thought the service was amazing everywhere; the drinks were as expensive as I expected and the food was great!
Our favorite bars from the weekend were Rhumbar, inside Hard Rock – delicious tropical drinks! – and Lucky Day, in Fremont East (great vibes & atmosphere, drinks were okay).
It was a quick trip, as we arrived Saturday night and left Monday morning. We drove through some crazy weather to get to Salt Lake City – tons of snow and high wind. We had to pull over a few times to wipe the windshield down because the wiper fluid froze and our windshield kept getting gunked up with debris from the road, making it hard to see.
Salt Lake City
But, we made it and have been getting all settled into our place here! It’s so nice to be able to truly unpack.
Our AirBnB is really nice – it’s super comfortable and functional, and a lot bigger then we were expecting. Since we’re here for 3 months, I figured that was long enough to make buying an air fryer worth it; it’s one of the things we’ve missed most from our kitchen 🙂 Found one on Facebook marketplace and have been using it almost daily! As per usual, there were only 3 forks so we bought a bunch of cutlery as well as a random other assortment of kitchen things that were missing (cutting boards, baking sheets, etc.) and we got the kitties a cat tower, which they’ve been loving!
It’s been a busy few weeks with a lot of fun activities! We saw one of our favorite trance DJs at a club, and I went to my first comedy show, which was iconic as I FINALLY got to see Girls Gotta Eat! Ashley and Rayna were amazing and I laughed nonstop the whole 2 hours. We also saw Ben Brainard, who was absolutely hilarious, and we went to the Freestyle International Ski World Cup at Deer Valley in Park City. Park City has SO MUCH SNOW!!
We’ve joined a great gym here and discovered that Peloton now rents their bikes with easy delivery and pickup; we love performance based spinning but none of the studios here have monitors so we’re eagerly awaiting this Peloton! Awesome hack for any other digital nomads out there 🙂
It’s snowed a couple of times since we arrived and of course the surrounding mountains are covered in snow. While I’m definitely a summer and beach girl, I’ve been leaning into the winter and appreciating the beauty and stillness it brings.
We’re heading to Bryce Canyon this weekend to hike; it looks like it’s going to be frigid but I’m so excited to see the hoodoos and it’ll be unique to see them against snow!
