Spotlight: Phish Outta Water Blog

I have a friend who I met at Utah State University and then we worked together after college. She recently quit her job to go be a tour guide/bus driver in Alaska for the summer. (My friend is the one who put the idea of "life mistakes" in my head which I blogged about on my everyday blog) She and her friend up there have started a blog about their adventures. They are both very witty but also incredible writers.

Check out their blog! http://phishouttawater.blogspot.com/ It makes me want to drop everything and fly up to Alaska today!

Napa Valley Ragnar 2012

I ran the Napa Valley Ragnar Relay Race with a group of Friends in September. Earlier in the year we ran the Southern California Ragnar Relay Race and if you ran both California races in the same year you receive an extra medal... The Gold Rush Medal! So of course we had to do Napa Valley!

The day before the race we did a few small touristy things in San Francisco; walked around Fisherman's Wharf, and visited Lombard Street and the Golden Gate Bridge.

Another fun surprise: two of our teammates got engaged at the Golden Gate Bridge! YAY! Congrats Brooke and Cesar!

The race started at the Golden Gate Bridge Park and Ended in Napa Valley. When we had talked about the Napa Valley race with some other people from California during the SoCal Ragnar, they had said that Napa was hard because it was "really hilly." Well, I guess the people we talked to were kind of wimpy because Napa valley was hilly but not hard at all; our whole team was used to Utah hills. It was just enough of a challenge that it kept it interesting and fun but not so much that we were questioning our sanity.

Our team name was The Gold Diggers. I was in Van 1. You might notice there are only 5 people in this picture and there should be 6. Well.... my brother Nate was going to be our 6th runner and then he had to drop out 2 weeks before the race because of school. We scrambled to find a replacement but we couldn't. So Van 1 named ourselves the "Fast Five" and we all took turns running parts of Nate's runs. Every time something became difficult for us because of only have 5 runners, we would jokingly say, "Nate, grr!"

Our Team Captains! Brooke was our great team captain for this race. Our van named Cesar co-captain of the race because he drove our van for the whole race (unless he was running) and well... since the two were now engaged... it seemed appropriate.

Start Line at Golden Gate Bridge. Brooke was our runner one and she got to run across the Golden Gate Bridge over to Sausalito.

Team Support During the Race

After our first set of runs our van had a big lunch and then napped in a goose poop infested park and we didn't even care because we were so tired and wanted to nap.

Waiting to start our second set of runs... time for our night runs

 My outfit for my night run: I thought it was appropriate to wear something that stood out.

After our night runs we got to sleep on the gym floor of this high school. Coolest Mascot EVER! Even though it was a gym floor as soon as I hit the floor I was out. I love the sleeping breaks during Ragnar; you are so exhausted that you can sleep anywhere and on anything and it is the best sleep ever.

Coming into Napa Valley: It was such a stunning place to run into.

Car Time: We basically lived in this car for 36 hours.

After we finished all of our runs and we were waiting for Van 2 we went to lunch at Ihop. While trying to decide if we should go to Ihop or Denny's I determined that we should go to Ihop because it was an action verb and we had just "Irunned" and so it made sense to eat at Ihop. After lunch we went and walked around a vineyard in Napa Valley before heading over to the finish line to wait for our team to cross the finish line.

Crossing the Finsih line!

While running her last leg, my friend Dez met a lady from northern California. While they were running Dez asked for some recommendations on where we should eat dinner after the race. The lady told her we had to get burgers at The Habit Burger! So we did! (They have now opened two Habit Burger's here in Utah. I would highly recommend eating here AND getting the sweet potato fries)

Team photo! This was such a fun race; great team, fun runs and beautiful scenory. I think of the 4 Ragnar races I have run Wasatch Back and Napa Valley are my favorites because of the legs and the scenery.

Spotlight: Roadside America

Are you planning a road trip and want to make a random, possibly memorable, stop along the way? Check out the website Roadside America. It's a guide for "Offbeat Tourist Attractions." Basically you go to this website to find out where you can find the World's Largest Office Chair or The Big Peach Water-tower or a random themed museums. Just type in the name of a city or town, you will be traveling through, into the search bar at the top and it will tell you all the random things to see in that city or town. Some things are stupid but some are fun. Even put in the name of the city you are currently living in and go check out the attractions.

I recently went to Pocatello to visit a friend living up there (blog post on this trip soon to come) and I used Roadside America to see if there was something random we could do. Sure enough, there was! The Clean Museum! Ha! Yes, that is correct, the Clean Museum. It was actually kind of stupid but I have told so many people about it, I learned some fun facts for conversation and I know my friend and I will never forget it that we went to the clean museum.

So go check this out... have fun!