The day started as most other checkout days – the charade of me sluggishly wheeling a wonky bell cart around the narrow corridors of a hotel, struggling to keep all the bags and equipment in check as I navigate past the trolley of housekeeping goodies.

We left Grand Junction with a few bowls of Cheerios in the car and the GPS set to Moab, Utah. We’d been talking about Moab since early on in the tour, and as the colors and shapes of the scenery became more vibrant and angular, there was a collective excitement about camping in the rugged adventure terrain. Jessica was a veteran of the area and had a gem of a hidden camping location in mind. It was a short hike in, nestled in the scrub, sheltered by a cavernous red rock. Someone had fashioned a chair out of stones, a throne for our arrival.


After securing our secluded and much coveted spot we decided a swim was in order. Tour guide Jess acquired some valuable information from the most trusted of sources – the teenage cashier kid from McDonalds. Aaron did not lead us astray, and soon, not unlike Aaron’s brother Moses, we found ourselves wading in a river, frolicking in the rockpools of one of Utah’s most prized natural areas.

As day turned into evening we made our way to the Lion’s Back, a mammoth rock with a steep incline that Jess decided would be our sunset vantage point. As the weather channel had predicted it was breezy. But the further we climbed, the blowier it became. And as we approached the peak, noticing a car that had plunged off the side several years earlier, the wind pounded the Lion’s Back with serious fury. So serious it became comical as hairstyles turned into chaos, and cheeks flapped like dancing jelly. Standing was increasingly difficult (and possibly dangerous) so we reclined as the sky turned pink, and the red rock walls of Moab shed their several shades, changing colored costumes every minute.

The night was rounded out by the campfire, complete with kebab skewers, flame cooked shrimp and vanilla bean s’mores. The air stayed warm, and if you looked down you’d see dusty desert feet. If you looked up, you’d see a sky flush with stars, and a shower of meteors hurtling towards the earth, burning up in our planet’s protective atmosphere. The fire’s light flickered against the flora, the crickets sung their songs and the Aha crew danced and howled at the splendor of it all.

There is a place in Kansas that 30,000 people visit each summer and 40 percent of those people come back. It is called Prairie Dog Town.

 

In our quest to find dinner on our first night in Milwaukee, we were wandering around downtown and happened upon a total gem of a bookstore–three stories of used, new and vintage copies. The endless shelves and rooms and genres happily entertained four road travelers in need of new reading material. The night however, was quickly getting away from us and we were afraid we wouldn’t find an open restaurant. Turning down a side alley in hopes of the lights on the other side, we made a fateful and spur-of-the-moment decision as we saw a suspicious door on the left that looked like it could house a run down Italian restaurant. Boy were we wrong.

While the story so far reads like a thriller from the third floor of that bookstore, the next sequence will surprise you. Little did we know that we had stumbled upon one of the Nation’s best spy-themed restaurants called the Safe House. We still had yet to figure this out before we were asked for a password, and after three incorrect guesses (“swordfish,” “Capone,” and “bananas” do not work, by the way), we had to prove we weren’t double agents. By dancing. Without music.

Once allowed entrance we had a great night exploring hidden passageways, lurking behind one-way mirrors and checking out the spy memorabilia. By our luck it was karaoke night and Dave introduced himself to the early crowd singing an old opera tune, “nessun dorma.” An hour later “Dave and the Ahas” returned to the floor with “Build Me Up Buttercup” and the rest is history.

WaveRunners. Jet skis. Ski-doos. Sea-doos. I had never ridden any of these nor even understood that they all were one and the same, just different brands. “Personal water-crafts,” Gary adds, “is what the Department of Fish and Game calls them.” Boy was I in for an experience.

Never underestimate new experiences. Saturday morning we woke up in the little town of Troy, Ohio and backtracked a few miles north to Piqua, Ohio. Piqua is home to Fort Pickawillany (see: French and Indian War), the historic Outdoor Underwear Festival (no longer in existence), and most importantly: Glenn McKinney. Glenn, one of the miracle men that tows the airstream, was waiting for our arrival with nothing less than two one-week-old waverunners that glistened and purred in the driveway when we arrived.

Next was our safety lesson. Glenn described each waverunner and from the sounds of it I knew the one with the smaller engine would be my ride. The other, like a young thoroughbred straight off the track, was a super-charged 1800-somethin’-somethin’ from zero to 60 in four seconds. And zero to 30 in one second. Needless to say, I thought I would stick with the quiet mare.


And off we went. I initially kept it at 30mph but during my lessons on turning and “riding the plane” I slowly climbed my way up to a comfortable 50mph. Wind was hitting my face so fast that my eyes were watering. And I was grinning. Felt just like my childhood arcade days where I virtually raced 11 others on my jet ski-shaped controller. Thanks, Chuck E. Cheese.

The day culminated to the moment where Dave offered me a ride on the supercharged waverunner. Nervously, I stepped forward and put on the orange wristband, symbolically accepting the fate I was getting myself into. I quickly realized that boy, I had been missing out! With 76mph top speeds, 360s, sharp figure eights and blowing past any competitor who dared to race… I was a new woman! Another 15 minutes went by when I realized everyone was waiting on me to leave. And so I rode in like a winning jockey, killed the engine and hoped the waverunner wouldn’t crash into the loading dock. As I gathered our life jackets, I mentally stored that experience in my “best days ever” catalogue.

And so the lesson for everyone at home: never miss out on the supercharged waverunner.