When K-State Football started having a better than expected football season, I started mentally preparing for a bowl game trip. I’ve never been able to go to a bowl game before so I decided this was the year I needed to make it happen.
As amazing as it would have been to travel to Miami for the National Championship Game, my wallet appreciated the fact that the Wildcats didn’t make it there…..I’m not quite sure how I realistically thought I could afford that trip on a nonprofit budget. J So when the Fiesta Bowl became our game, my friend Tiffany and I started planning. We knew that to fly to Phoenix would be really cheap, and even though the flights we found were inexpensive, we determined we’d be able to make it even cheaper on the road……let the road trip begin!
When we started looking at the route we could possibly take, we decided we should make the most of it and explore. Living in Colorado, you’d think we would already understand how beautiful our country is – but this trip kept us in awe the entire time!
Wednesday evening after work, the trip began. I loaded up our rental car, went to pick up Tiffany and we were off…..sort of. Because of rush hour traffic we didn’t actually get out of Denver until around 7 – which normally wouldn’t matter except we had a 14-hour drive ahead of us – eek! Our first leg of the trip was straight to Phoenix, via Albuquerque, and I hate to break it so many of you, this is not the real Las Vegas. Did you know there’s a Las Vegas, NM? Neither did we. We both sat and stared at each other for a second thinking; can you actually get to Vegas in just 6 hours from Denver? Sweet! But sadly, no.
For some reason, neither one of us thought it would be important to sleep on the trip there…..we were rudely awakened around 7am when we were just getting near Phoenix – and completely exhausted! We had only planned on getting a hotel room for one night, so when we got close we called and asked if we could check in early to sleep…thank goodness they were gracious enough to do that! We stumbled into the room for an hour and a half of sleep (yes, you read that right), to get up and turn around and tailgate…..we are serious about our Wildcats!
One of my favorite things about football is the tailgating, and I couldn’t wait to see some friends from the Kansas City area that made the trip as well! What made the experience even more enjoyable? There was purple EVERYWHERE!! For the first few hours, we didn’t see any Oregon fans, I was really beginning to wonder if any of them had arrived for the game at all!
Everyone knows the disappointment of how the game actually turned out (not ideal at all), but that didn’t ruin the fun we had. It was my first experience of a bowl game and Tiffany and I had the lots of miles still to cover! With our cramped agenda, we both called it an early night so we could get on the road for….the Grand Canyon! Check back in a couple weeks for the blog about the next leg of the trip…..
