Hello, Red Hills Desert Garden & Pioneer Park in St. George, Utah

June 18, 2021, 9:53 AM PDT by Parkzer • Hiking, Travel

This post is over 5 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.

After arriving in Utah yesterday, I went to sleep early because I didn’t want St. George to be a repeat of Lake Las Vegas. I woke up at 6 AM this morning to head out on an adventure before the temperature rose above triple digits again.

My first stop was the Red Hills Desert Garden.

Right afterwards, I looped around up north deeper into Pioneer Park and hiked up some of the rocks.

I also made it up to the Pioneer Park Arch.

After descending from the rocks, I went into the St. George Narrows, a very small opening between two very large rock formations.

And finally, I finished my loop around Pioneer Park and headed over to the Dixie Sugarloaf and Red Hills Parkway Trail.

After having hiked some of the easier trails in Red Rock Canyon and Mount Charleston, I think Pioneer Park was mild enough that it doesn’t quite even count as a real hike. Regardless, it was a nice walk through nature to see some of southern Utah before heading up to Salt Lake City tomorrow.

Hello Lake Las Vegas

June 16, 2021, 11:13 PM PDT by Parkzer • Las Vegas, Travel

If you read my most recent blog post, you know that I just left Southern California—specifically, Long Beach—where the temperature was in the upper 60s and lower 70s°F. It’s incredibly jarring when, after driving for just four hours, the temperature is in the low 110s. Yes, the Las Vegas heat doesn’t feel as bad as the heat in other areas because of how dry it is… but once you get past 110, you start feeling like you’re cooking, regardless of how dry it is.

As my final stop prior to heading out for the real portion of my extended road trip, I swung by downtown Las Vegas to check my PO box and deposit some belongings into storage for the final time prior to leaving the city for at least two months. For my last few days in the Valley, I decided to stay in Lake Las Vegas, an oasis resort built around an artificial lake in the far northeast corner of Henderson, NV.

A little-known fact about me, mainly because I never revealed this publicly, is that, at one point, I was planning on purchasing a property in Lake Las Vegas. I think this community is extremely underrated, and as long as you don’t need to commute to the main city for work, living in Lake Las Vegas allows you to live a luxurious, upscale, retiree lifestyle. Being both an independent entrepreneur as well as a remote worker for Tempo, I figured that I would fit in well in the Lake Las Vegas lifestyle.

I’m good at identifying undervalued properties listed at below market value, and I know this for a fact because most of the homes I’m interested in usually get sold within one day. I found a new home community on the northern side of Lake Las Vegas, and I found a condo I liked with a price point of ~US$320,000.00. I went out with my real estate agent and was doing a final tour of the masterplan amenities… when we received a call from the sales center saying that someone else had contracted the property right before I was about to commit.

Needless to say, the homebuilder continued raising the price of the properties after this because they were selling so quickly, and as of today (just two months after this incident happened to me), the base price of the condo floor plan is now nearly US$370,000.00, $50k higher than when I originally wanted to secure it.

Seeing as I do have an interest in Lake Las Vegas real estate, I figured this stop in Las Vegas would be a good opportunity to immerse myself into the Lake Las Vegas lifestyle—at least for a few days—to get a preview of what it will be like living here.

Unfortunately, that immersion aspect didn’t really happen.

My hotel of choice this time around was The Westin Lake Las Vegas Resort & Spa, which is a resort-style hotel with a resort fee that includes a bicycle rental. I was planning on using that perk and going biking around the community, but considering that it repeatedly reached highs of about 115°F and sustained triple-digit temperatures throughout the whole day, I mostly just stayed indoors because I didn’t want to risk getting heat stroke.

This hotel didn’t have covered parking, so the times that I did go out to get food, I would get in my furnace of a truck and drip sweat while watching my air conditioner struggle to keep up with the heat. By the time the air conditioner finally had an opportunity to catch up and cool down my cabin… enough time had passed that I had already finished the round trip to the restaurant and was back at the hotel.

Because of this, my visit to Lake Las Vegas wasn’t quite as eventful as I wanted it to be. I do want to make another trip back here at one point, but it’s definitely going to be in the spring or fall so I don’t melt every time I step outdoors.

And with that, the true “nomad” portion of my journey begins. Tomorrow, I depart for St. George, Utah, a little over two hours north of Lake Las Vegas. Unfortunately, the current heat wave is affecting this entire area, so it’s also going to be debilitatingly hot in St. George, but hopefully I can either find some indoor activities or wake up early enough before it heats up too much to explore nature.

Goodbye SoCal

June 13, 2021, 11:50 PM PDT by Parkzer • Face, Tempo, Travel

My two weeks in Southern California are coming to an end—tonight will be my final night here, and tomorrow I’ll be headed to Lake Las Vegas.

When I first arrived here, I stayed in a spare bedroom at the company headquarters in Long Beach, but once we had two game designers fly in for work, I relocated to off-site lodging so our two staff members could stay at the house.

I originally relocated to TownPlace Suites Anaheim Maingate Near Angel Stadium, but that was an absolute disaster. The room I got felt old and unmaintained, it smelled horrible, housekeeping did an awful job, and the fitness center was closed. I’ve become a Marriott fanboy at this point (and am also a shareholder), and I’ve come to expect a very high standard of quality from Marriott; this Towneplace was nowhere near that standard. Luckily, even though the property was terrible, the staff was great and understanding, and the front desk manager let me shorten my stay to one night without incurring a penalty (even though it was pre-booked at a discounted rate for one week with no cancelations permitted).

I was able to rebook myself to a newly-constructed hotel nearby, the Fairfield Inn & Suites Anaheim Los Alamitos. While checking in, the front desk representative asked me what brought me to Los Alamitos; I told him a brief version of my story of being a nomad for the next half year, and he was amused and impressed. He voluntarily upgraded me to a larger suite so I would have more space to set up my workstation. The quality of the room was an astronomical difference from Towneplace. This Fairfield had everything I needed and nothing I didn’t need (i.e., it had all the essentials that I wanted without having any needlessly fancy things that end up being an inconvenience).

My past week has, in its majority, consisted of working and spending time with Tempo staff members while I still have a chance to do so prior to setting off on my journey. When I wasn’t using my desktop computer setup in my hotel room to get work done as efficiently as possible, I tried to spend a lot of time at the team house. One of the days, one of our managers invited me on a walk through Naples Island, which was good for sightseeing.

While on our walk, I noticed a black crab on the ground. I pointed at it and asked for confirmation that it was indeed a crab.

My employee confirmed, then swooped down to try and pick it up. After trying for literally a minute and a half, he finally managed to grasp it, then told me he was going to transfer it to my palm. I immediately declared that this was an absolutely terrible idea, and that I was probably going to drop the crab. He handed it off to me anyway, so, in concern for the crab’s life, I moved my hand over the grass so that, if the crab were to fall, it would at least land on the grass.

Unsurprisingly, the crab sprinted off my palm and flew straight off my hand. … It missed the grass and landed on the concrete sidewalk.

It died.

…

Okay, it didn’t actually die. It walked away just fine. But for a fraction of a second, as the crab was plummeting towards the earth, I thought that I had actually committed reckless crabslaughter.

Another one of our adventures was going to an ice cream shop called tsun scoops. The thing is, this wasn’t just any ice cream shop… it was an anime-themed ice cream shop.

Being a fan of anime and Japanese culture is quite commonplace within the esports industry, so I’m used to being exposed to this subculture often, but I never realized that it would actually manifest into an entire ice cream shop.

The exterior of the restaurant seemed fairly unsuspecting, but once you step inside, you are immersed in an anime world. The flavors are named after references to popular anime series (such as “I-it’s not like I like you or anything, Baklava”; “Notice Me Apple Sen-Pie”; and “The Meloncholy of Honeyhi Dewzumiya”), there is anime art throughout the whole shop, and there is even a little section with anime merch.

They split up the ice cream flavors into “tsun,” which was more sorbet and fruity, and “dere,” which was more dairy and traditional ice cream. I tried a sample spoon of Ramune and yuzu; neither of them were bad, but I didn’t think I could down an actual portion of each one of them. So, in the end, I went with a trusty scoop of honeydew and a scoop of lemon with poppy seeds, topped with mochi.

And no, I did not purchase the shirt.

For one of my final adventures, I accompanied our CEO reynad to Scott Robinson Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram, a car dealership, to help him purchase a new Jeep.

Even though they were branded as a generic Fiat Chrysler Automobile dealership, they didn’t really have too many Ram pickup trucks. They had a special 75th Anniversary edition of the Ram 2500 Power Wagon inside the showroom, which I immediately went up to and hugged (if you’re not yet aware, the Ram off-road trucks are my favorite vehicles, and if I didn’t live in a city, I would have either a Ram Rebel or Ram Power Wagon instead of my GMC Canyon).

I also found a Ram 1500 EcoDiesel out in the lot, which I also hugged.

reynad ended up following through with the vehicle purchase, so he is now the proud new owner of a Jeep Wrangler Sahara.

I’m generally never this active and social, and this trip was far more draining to me than usual because I’m on the extreme end of introversion, but it was definitely also more fun than usual. I’ll have plenty of time to recharge over the next month while I’m traveling alone, and once I make it to my parents’ in the Chicagoland suburbs, I’ll find a week in August to make a routine trip back to Tempo headquarters.

Hello, Marriott’s Grand Chateau

June 3, 2021, 1:55 PM PDT by Parkzer • Las Vegas, Travel

Last week, I wrote a blog post about how I’m going to be homeless for half a year. Besides the fact that people are accusing me of clickbait because, even though I’m literally going to be homeless, I will still always have a safe place to stay every day and night… my “homelessness” officially started on June 1.

My plan was to drive from Las Vegas to SoCal on June 1, but I ended up getting too busy with highly time-sensitive work and couldn’t spend the five or so hours needed for the trip that evening. Unfortunately, my bed and mattress were already tarped and deposited into storage, and my rental lease replacement was already moved into my old condo, so this meant I had to find some alternative lodging. I browsed through Marriott’s website for a nice place to stay for a one-day staycation and found Marriott’s Grand Chateau.

That was a huge mistake.

The room was fine; it wasn’t the nicest, but it was still fully functional. The problem, and why I consider this to be a huge mistake… is because Marriott’s Grand Chateau has mandatory valet parking.

So here I am, someone who hates other people touching my belongings in general, with a pickup truck loaded with all my stuff, driving up to the hotel entrance and seeing that there is no self-parking garage. I thought it would be a bit ridiculous to actually carry all my stuff into the hotel, so I open my back seat doors and truck bed in the valet lane and start shuffling things around. I pull out only one night’s worth of my essential belongings out of all my boxes so I only need to bring one luggage bag’s worth of stuff into the hotel.

Later that evening, I decided to get some food. I went downstairs to summon my vehicle, but I didn’t realize that there was an automatic kiosk system that scans the barcode on your ticket, so I was instead waiting for a good six or so minutes at the valet desk to wait for someone to actually tell me that I just need to go to the kiosk. After scanning at the kiosk, it took another 15 minutes for my vehicle to arrive. The following morning when I was ready to leave after checking out, I scanned my ticket at the kiosk and had to wait 17 minutes for my vehicle to arrive.

I’d say that the only thing I truly liked about this hotel was the view of CityCenter (which I was lucky enough to get, because I had a west-facing room).

To be clear, I don’t think this hotel itself is actually really that terrible. But, if you just need a clean and safe place to spend the night in Las Vegas, there are tons of other options that don’t come with these inconveniences.

Just to add, mandatory valet parking wasn’t the only thing that was inconvenient—Grand Chateau doesn’t conform with the standard Marriott Bonvoy program, so they don’t honor the 2 PM late checkout for gold elite members, and actually have a relatively early 10 AM standard checkout time. That, mixed with the traffic on the Las Vegas Strip and the inflated prices of all food within walking distance, and after my tenth minute of waiting for my truck the first time I summoned it, I very much regretted not just staying at a Courtyard or Residence Inn.

That short leg of my journey is now over, and I made it to Long Beach in California. I’ll be spending the next few weeks in Southern California, and then my real journey begins.

Goodbye Oklahoma City

May 19, 2021, 11:45 PM PDT by Parkzer • Travel

After a week in Oklahoma City, I’m back home in Las Vegas. I posted a few blog posts already about some interesting things I’ve done in Oklahoma City, but like usual, I decided to do a recap covering all the miscellaneous things that I haven’t already discussed.

My airline of choice is Delta Airlines, but I opted not to take Delta for this flight because it didn’t have any non-stops from Las Vegas to Oklahoma City, while Southwest Airlines did. The shortest Delta flight had a layover in Salt Lake City that added about three hours to the total travel time, so I figured I would take Southwest.

This was a less-than-ideal experience, as I somehow ended up fairly far back in the queue for boarding. The flight was completely full in both directions, so we ended up cramming into every single available seat (and then had some people involuntarily delayed due to seats being oversold). Also, I had to sit towards the back of the plane (which is not something I’m used to doing anymore in Delta), otherwise I would’ve had to take a middle seat.

I love getting nice aerial shots of cities, but unfortunately, that didn’t work for my flight into Oklahoma City because it had rained that day and there were a lot of low clouds.

I’ve historically been loyal to Enterprise Rent-a-Car, but for the first time, I decided to go with Avis Car Rental due to a chain of disappointing experiences at the Enterprise Rent-a-Car at Los Angeles International Airport. I’m a big fan of pickup trucks, but the trucks offered at Enterprise at LAX were basically work trucks—they were lowest-trim Ram Classics or Chevy Silverados for the past handful of rentals. Avis advertised their pickup truck class as “Ram Rebel or similar,” so I figured I’d give it a shot.

Ram Rebels are my favorite truck, and I was a bit disappointed that Avis didn’t give me a Rebel, but they actually really did honor the “or similar” portion of the listing. I ended up in a 2021 Ford F-150 XLT with the new 12″ screen, which was great.

I wasn’t really a fan of Ford F-150s during and prior to the 2020 model year, but they made some pretty nice upgrades for 2021. The 12″ screen doesn’t look as overwhelmingly large as Ram’s because the Fords have horizontal screens, but once you actually go to use it, it’s clearly very large. The touchscreen is responsive, the menus are intuitive, and the camera is clear. I’d still say that Rams are my favorite trucks, followed by GMC, but Ford has improved their trucks enough that I’d actually consider them in the running for my next pickup truck purchase (as opposed to before, where I wouldn’t even consider them at all and thought they were lagging noticeably behind other truck brands).

The only thing that stuck out as annoying this time around was the auto-start/stop (but that’s not unique to Ford anymore). If you put the vehicle in sport mode, it will disable auto-start/stop, but then I noticed that the transmission is a bit rougher when shifting. Also, the truck doesn’t remember what mode you last used, so it will always go back to normal mode when you restart the vehicle.

Apart from that, I had a great time driving the new 2021 Ford F-150. I clocked in right around 8 engine hours for the week.

The people in Oklahoma City are a lot nicer than I expected. In Los Angeles and even mostly in Las Vegas, people generally ignore each other and don’t really interact much if they don’t know each other. While in Oklahoma, I acted the same way I do in the West coast, and I imagine people in Oklahoma thought it was weird, because they would go out of their way to start a conversation.

A few excerpts of the more interesting ones:

A man asked me about my pickup truck because he hadn’t seen that design of grille before on an F-150. I told him that it’s the new 2021 model year. He asked if he could check it out, to which I said “sure.” He peeked inside, saw the 12″ screen, and said “wow, it’s like a Tesler!”
I went to 7-Eleven to buy some beverages and noticed that the cashier was very friendly and seemed to know everyone’s names. When it was my turn to make my purchase, she pointed out that I was a new face and asked what my name was. I told her, then clarified that I’m only here visiting. She said that she’ll still remember my name, in case I ever come back in the coming years.
A guy was walking his dog around the hotel I was staying at. He greeted me, said that he was visiting from Tulsa, and asked where I’m from. I told him I’m visiting from Las Vegas and he seemed shocked, because he was under the impression that people weren’t actually allowed to live in Las Vegas, and that they would just go there for the hotels and casinos, then go back home after gambling.
While refueling my rental truck, there was a guy on the other side of the fuel pump also refueling his work truck. He insisted on having a conversation with me, and we were yelling back and forth over the sound of two running fuel pumps. We somehow pieced together a discussion… but I still don’t know whether we were talking about fuel prices, the speed at which the pump was dispensing fuel, or the size of his fuel tank.

Visiting Oklahoma City was a pleasant experience. Considering that most of my recent travel has been to Southern California, as well as some other cramped cities (and even a few cities that were harshly anti-police and made me feel uncomfortable with their vandalism), it was refreshing to go to a city that had a lot of wide open space with respectful people who seemed to live normal, law-abiding lives.

I’m unsure if I’ll ever have a reason to return to Oklahoma City again, but if the opportunity ever arises, I’d definitely be open to taking the trip again. If anything else, this has opened me up to wanting to visit a lot of other “random,” “middle of nowhere” cities in the Midwest. They may seem “insignificant” to someone who has spent a majority of their professional life in and around Los Angeles, but they definitely have their unique reasons for being special in their own ways.

Hello, Vast at the Devon Energy Center in Oklahoma City

May 17, 2021, 11:50 PM PDT by Parkzer • Food, Travel

For my final adventure before flying out of Oklahoma City, I ate at Vast, a restaurant on the 49th and 50th floors of the Devon Energy Center in downtown Oklahoma City. The premise of this restaurant is similar to the Top of the World at the Stratosphere in Las Vegas where you sit atop the city with a vast view while you eat your food (though the main difference is that Vast does not rotate).

With construction starting in 2009 and completing in 2012, the Devon Energy Center stands 844 feet (257 meters) as the tallest building in Oklahoma. It towers over the second-tallest building in Oklahoma City, which is the BancFirst Tower at 500 feet (152 meters). Vast is on the highest two floors of the Devon Energy Center, rising to 726 feet (221 meters) in elevation.

We intentionally went on a weekday so we could avoid all the people going on dates over the weekend. Downtown was fairly peaceful around dinnertime, and parking was easy—there was a structure next door to the tower with spaces large enough to easily fit my full-size pickup truck, and the fee was only $5.

After a quick walk into the building (which had very modern aesthetics with lots of glass and marble), we took a dedicated elevator straight up to the 49th floor. We went at 7:30 PM as to time it such that we would get about an hour of daytime view, then the sun would set and we would have a nighttime view for the second half of our meal. We didn’t see much of the inside of the restaurant because we were seated somewhat close to the entrance, but the bar area nearby looked nice without going too overboard.

The first dish was on the chef, and was something with crab inside. We also got some rolls with butter to munch on while we were deciding on what to order for our main courses. The fried crab dish was great; it was greasy enough that it oiled my fingers when I picked it up, but it didn’t leave any unpleasant or greasy aftertastes.

For her main course, my dinner companion got some herb marinated chicken with root vegetable hash, roasted mushroom puree, fennel, pistachios, and bacon lardons. I tried a portion of her chicken and it was actually impressively tasty with great texture—the outside skin was very crispy, while the meat was juicy and moist.

Her drink (which I did not get a photograph of) was the 726 Cosmo, an alcoholic drink off the Vast Classics beverage menu containing Charbay blood orange vodka, triple sec, Greenbar hibiscus liqueur, cranberry, and lime.

For my main course, I decided to go with a feature dish (which wasn’t on the main menu, so I can’t reference back to the online menu to see precisely what was in it). It was called the Surf and Turf, and was basically a medley of small servings of various different dishes they offer. It included 6 ounces of Creekstone filet, shrimp, scallop, asparagus, potato, and something a bit stringy and slightly crunchy that I couldn’t identify.

For dessert, we had a warm chocolate lava cake with peanut butter caramel, candied peanuts, and mascarpone ice cream. At first it was a little bit overwhelmingly sweet, but once my mouth adjusted to all the sugar, it was actually really good. I’m also a big fan of caramel and nuts, so the sauce that came with the cake was extra tasty.

I was slightly concerned about this restaurant because, for some reason, people kept leaving reviews saying that this restaurant wasn’t worth the money, and that you were basically just paying for the view. But, after I finished my meal, I thought all the food was great, and I thought the price was also very reasonable, considering we were eating at a restaurant over 700 feet in the air in the tallest building in the entire state.

Herb Marinated Chicken	$ 32.00
Surf and Turf	$ 70.00
726 Cosmo	$ 13.00
Chocolate Lava Cake	$ 9.00
Taxes	$ 12.46
Tip	$ 40.00
Self Parking	$ 5.00
Total	$ 181.46

The tip that I left was a bit aggressive, but the main reason I tipped over 30% was because I left a note in our reservation stating that I would “pay/tip more for a window seat.”

In case you’re not familiar with how these kinds of restaurants work, there are a lot of tables set up across the entire restaurant floor, but only a few of them are window-side. I don’t know what the rest of the restaurant was like, but the table we got seemed to be the only one left in that area of the restaurant, so I gave them the benefit of the doubt, assumed that they had actually saved the window-side table for us as per our request in the reservation, and gave them a generous tip.

This is a restaurant that I think is absolutely worth it for the money… but not necessarily for dinner. Vast has a lunch option that, today, is a flat fee of $22.50 per person for what appears to be a buffet-style meal that also includes unlimited dessert. Considering the quality of food for dinner, if lunch is anything close to that, I think $22.50 is absolutely worth it. That might be a bit pricey for Oklahoman standards, but if such a place existed in Las Vegas where I would have a nearly never-ending view while having an all-you-can-eat meal, I would be going there very frequently.