wingladytravels

hey everyone who still reads this. i just wanted to let you know that i have started posting some of the pictures from our roadtrip on my flickr account. i will try to update every day with a new batch.

enjoy!!!

hi it's nora!

ok so apparently there is a huge part of me that is (was) secretly an old woman who loves cheesy resort hotels, buffets and has a really bad addiction to roulette.

I LOVE VEGAS.

god that was fun. but now i am home, and new york is appropriately cloudy and freezing to accompany my current mood. but just hours ago i was chugging large souvenier glasses of margueritas and watching my travel companion kick some serious ass at black jack (to make up for all the money my dumbass lost at the roulette table... whoops).

while i have tons of fun stories from casa coachella and hottub antics (and carlos d pool playing at 8am antics) and my brain can only recall so much thanks to vodka antics... i flew on the red eye and i need a nap!!! nicole is apparently in kentucky in for the derby for some reason and i'm just thankful that the serial killers in missouri didn't manage to stop her return trip to nyc. i'm also glad to be home just a little past my scheduled arrival... i have JOB HUNTING to do. gah! oh how reality sets in...

hope all is well! pictures soon... whenever my camera cord makes its way back to brooklyn...

hi! it's nicola...

i haven't had much time to write here considering all of the driving i've done lately, the ooh'ing and ahh'ing of scenery, the maniacal photo taking and the lack of internet connection in most hotels we've been staying at. this has been quite a trip.

i am in topeka, kansas right now (no joke)... and i am currently without the winglady. i left her on tuesday morning on las vegas blvd. at the paris hotel waiting with baited breath for the arrival of her friend whom she spontaneously talked into meeting her. right now, i hope they are gambling their hearts out and winning lots of moolah in the process. nora's sister, lizzy, and i both had the same reaction when she said she was going to stay in vegas: "have fun, but promise me- NO WEDDINGS!!!!!!!". and so it goes...

i lost a winglady, and i gained a different but equally fabulous travel buddy. cugini sofia is along for the ride back east, and i couldn't be having more fun lately.

sofia, nora, erik and i left the coachella rental house (which was SICK, by the way - more on that later though) on monday evening, headed to vegas, erik flew home, us 3 girls stayed the night, nora decided to stay in vegas, and sof and i headed out on the road as a duo on tuesday morning.

tuesday: we drove through utah, passed through zion national park (which had stunning rock cliffs and mountains), through bryce canyon (which had amazing rock formations too, but with the addition of some trees) and into moab, ut for the evening. we stopped at roadside stands and did a bit of shopping (probably too much), ate lots of road food and trespassed on a ranch or two for the sake of beautiful photos. a perfect day all in all.

today: we got up bright and early and explored moab a little bit, had brekkie at a cute cafe in slippery rock and headed out on the road towards colorado. we traversed all of colorado today, through the rocky mountains and the chichi ski towns... and flew through 3/4's of kansas, till we couldn't see straight anymore. we landed in topeka and i'm excited to wake up tomorrow morning and be greeted by open fields of cows and horses and rolling green hills.

this country really is amazing.

xo
nicola

ps: i'm going to toss up a few photo posts now... hopefully they will be in some sort of order. nora- feels free to co-narrate :).

hi it's nora again and i don't know how to upload pictures with this stupid macintosh so sorry... no pictures yet!

i am sitting in the lobby of the holiday inn in palm springs enjoying the beautiful weather and wireless internet while Nicole heads back from the airport with her boyfriend.

so yes, we finally made it

HELLO CALIFORNIA!

the last couple of days have been filled with glorious desert landscape that makes me very very happy and sort of in awe at everything i look at. real cacti! red rocks! fiery sunsets!

it's an awful lot to take in.

when we got to sedona, we met up with Nicole's cousin who has been on a motorcycle trip all over the southwest, met this italian guy on the way and fell in love. they are so romantic and gushy, and he is a total gentleman and treated us to a delicious dinner of red wine and tasty cheeseburgers. bliss!

so i'm thinking about moving to austin, but i promise not to sport a mohawk. but seriously, the music scene there is great and i can almost totally picture myself working in some little cafe or something and blogging and having texas babies or um.... i don't know. maybe the heat is making me delirious.

but i'm pretty happy. so that's my update. nicole should have something to add soon (like some of our 900+ photographs!!!!)


xo

--- nora.


ps: in a couple hours we will be @ our coachella house and i think carlos d is coming over to bbq. what the hell is my life. hehehe

hi it's nora

we're in santa fe. i want a cowboy hat and a taco. it was hot out yesterday as we drove along route 10 through the middle of nowhere texas on our way here. it was so beautiful on the route, that every fifteen minutes or so one of us would exclaim in awe: "where the fuck ARE we?!" it was gorgeous and serene and just being able to take something like that in with my own eyes makes all the hours of driving more than worth it. i get a sad feeling too sometimes, like i'm never going to see some of these beautiful places again.

this country is so huge and there are so many facinating stops on the map that it can be kind of overwhelming and i will feel this need to SEE IT ALL, when really that's sort of impossible.

but so far, everything has been beyond my expectactions... and now that we are finally in the desert I feel like it will only get better from here.

in the middle of the drive last night i noticed how clear the sky was, so we pulled over on the road, cut the lights, and we both climbed out of the car windows (we didn't want to touch the ground because of the rattle snakes) and sat there staring at all the stars. you could make out EVERY constellation, it was so beautiful, and there was nothing but darkness for miles and miles in every direction. then i heard a dog (coyote?) bark and nicole freaked out and we got back in the car.

monday night we stayed in Austin Texas with Mike, who is friends with my friend Danielle from college. Mike exemplifies all that is southern hospitality and he showed us a great time. we had dinner at this fantastic tex mex place on 6th street called Iron Cactus that Nicole has raved about since she was down here for SXSW. mmmm fajitas! mojitos! mango margueritas! gaaaaaaaaaaah. hello, my fat ass. it's ok though, everything is bigger in texas right?

after dinner we went to Emos to see some band that the website described as "bastard punk." So that sucked, and I saw more mohawks in once place than I ever thought possible in the year 2005. We ended up sitting in the backyard drinking 3 dollar drinks and observing the Austin scenesters. Then Mike called because he was off work at his job where he BAKES FRESH COOKES TO DELIVER TO DORMS AND HOUSES!!! I'm not even kidding, that's his job. Nicole and I were in awe. Mike met up with us and we went to two other bars, involving roosters in the name and had TWO DOLLAR drinks.

while we were hanging out, suddenly a camera crew and two stupid looking girls came parading into the bar and Mike informed us that they were part of the cast of Real World: Austin. So of course my drunk ass starts taking pictures. The whole thing was so absurd, the one castmember girl was trying to make out with some frat boy while a HUGE spotlight was on them and everyone in the bar was just standing there STARING. The bar had been fairly empty when they came marching in, and was suddenly PACKED five minutes later. I guess a lot of people want to be on TV.

and ok, apparently i'm one of them.

after last call, Mike got some heavy metal pizza (the pizza stand has black lights and metal music blasting....crazy) and we decided to sober up by walking over to the Real World HOUSE. where i proceeded to ring the doorbell and run around the yard like an ass (the house is like a compound and has a huge florescent sign that says AUSTIN over the door and some fake looking cacti planted outside). finally a producer came out and asked me what I was doing and I took the opportunity to pitch my "Real World: Coachella" concept to him but he wasn't going for it. Oh well!


so austin is amazing and I'm already on the plane for SXSW next year. it's like New York compacted into a few block radius with cheaper drinks and better food. in the morning mike and his roommate gene took us out for an amazing breakfast before we headed out on the road again. THANKS GUYS!

okay, it's time to shower and get ready to go to sedona!

xo

-- nora


ps: i forgot to mention that in Dallas I finally ate at Whattaburger which was YUM and I got yelled at in Wallmart for taking a picture of the gun display. Seriously, management had me surrounded and you woudl have thought I tried to steal one of the semi automatic weapons that they sell to SIXTEEN YEAR OLDS.

the roadtrip begins and nora finds a skybar:


we bought a big huge atlas, then nicole let it fly off the roof of the car. oops.


gas stop in no-man's-land:


nora's breathes the air, sofia-style:


arriving @ casa de walker... nora's getting happy:


bogey welcomes nicole to his abode:


nora swears there's a beach in chicago- and there it is!:


there's even a lighthouse!


we go out in evanston, and nicole drinks alot of redbull&vodka. go figure:


drunk girls, again, go figure:


scott is hottt, nora is wrist-dancing and nicole looks greasy. awesome:


the boy is obviously quite bendy:


up next, photos of the virgin mary waterstain! get excited!!!

xx
n

nicole said i should write an entry because she wants to sleep. i'm od-ing on redbull, so that's kind of difficult.

today nicole left our giant awesome atlas ontop of the car and drove away and it fell off, never to be seen again. but we didn't get lost. i got a speeding ticket in Texas and the cop made me get out of the car and come stand in the reeds with him and nicole watched out the window and i was freaked that he was going to arrest me or assault me but he didn't.

waffle house is awesome. SCATTERED. Mmm. the counter lady freaking out that we were from new york was kind of scary though. we are petrified of all truckers (because nicole thinks they are secretly all S&M freaks, she saw it on TV or something). jed says that everyone who works at waffle house has been in jail at some point and that he used to like going and trying to guess with his friends what the employees there had been arrested for. interesting stuff...

graceland was amazing. i have a huge crush on elvis now (early elvis, not fat sweaty elvis). i ate a grilled peanut butter and banana sandwhich, which was elvis's favorite and i can see why because it was YUMMY.

we also went to the hot springs, which were hot (like 143 degrees hot) and sat in hot tubs and it was awesome.

now we are in dallas. everything here is big. HUGE.

i can't wait to eat a whattaburger.

ok time for sleep now.

we left chanpaign/urbana at 7pm. it is now 3am. we just pulled into our elvis presley themed hotel in good ol' memphis, tennessee. we drove off track by mistake on the way down here and ended up driving in circles in missouri for an hour or two. we've also lost another hour due to time change formalities.

even with the driving mess-up, all is well and we are happy girls......... elvis presley is singing on the tv, we have free high-speed internet, i'm going to jump into bed now and sleep for a million hours and tomorrow we are going to get up and go in the guitar-shaped swimming pool before we go to graceland and cheese out. ahhh, tennessee is good.

nighty night.

~nicole

ps: fyi- missouri is pretty much full of killers and rapists lurking in the back of semi cabs and abandoned train boxcars... that's my observation of the evening. go go full moon!

yay! i'm back in college...sort of. hehe.

we are currently visiting lizzy (nora's little sister) at the university of illinois in urbana, il.

at this very moment, we are having an in depth discussion about descartes term papers and american eagle sales at the mall. good stuff.

lizzy is taking us to steak & shake and then to the mall to check out the sale at american eagle (thus the conversation). after we spend some time with her, we are going to head down to memphis and have a good ol' time in elvis-world.

go go graceland!!!

-nicola

i see vampires in love.
here is my number, call me in two years ok?
it's my pillow. MY PILLOW.
its SOOOOOOOOOOO good to be here (in paris)
can you spell rhino?
i paid 25 dollars for five dollar atlas


hi welcome to the winglady travel journal which basically will make no sense to you but should be amusing at the very least.

- nora

yay, it's time to go!!

check back here for our weird roadside tidbits, photos and adventures.
roadtrips rule... especially when they are winglady style.

~nora & nicole