#TravelHacks with Em & M
So, You’re Traveling with A Friend Across Fictitious Mountains and the Jello Belt to Deliver a Wedding Dress and Suit
Welcome back to Hashtag Travel Hacks with Em & M, and by welcome back, I of course mean, this is in fact the first time I have ever written a travel blog, but the rom-com energy of the premise of this entire pitch necessitates such framing.
The context is as follows: My friend Em is one of a half dozen friends I met in undergrad that I have regular communications with and once a year, I make it a point to visit them and their partner in Denver for “Spooky September” where we spend the weekend catching up in person, eating all sort of vegan food, and watching a spooky movie. We did Hocus Pocus 2 back in 2022 and We Have a Ghost in 2023.
This year, our mutual friend was having a wedding at the end of September, and given that I had PTO to burn and Em is also… fascinated is the word they’d use, obsessed is the word I’m going to use with Mormons and always wanted to visit Salt Lake City, I proposed a week long road trip down through the Jello Belt: Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, and our actual intended destination of Tustin, California (the wedding itself was in Aliso Viejo).
Now, the bride and groom also lived in Denver and were stressing about the transportation of the wedding dress and suit due to the fact that modern airlines don’t have closets to hang garment bags which could necessitate a pressing/dry cleaning at the city proper. At this point, Em suggests that since we’re driving that way that if they trust us, we could transport said dress and suit across several states. The bride apparently trusts us and thus our road trip gets instantly blessed with rom-com energy.
So what follows is a series of vignettes about the trip. Enjoy.
The Origin Behind #TravelHacks
On the drive back to their house from dinner on Saturday, Em recounts how at one point they jokingly suggested having a child to board planes earlier as a “Travel Hack.” I took it and ran.
There is no light in Utah (because there is no light in Wyoming)
Our travels begin in earnest on Sunday 9/22 as we undertake the longest stretch of our trip from Denver to Salt Lake City, a roughly 8 hour drive mostly through Wyoming. It’s a relatively uneventful trip. We spend most of it re-listening to Dimension 20’s Magic and Misfits s1 in preparation for the new season. We jokingly say “Drink” every time we see a billboard for fireworks and even run into some deer friends as we stop in a small town for dinner. On our way back onto to the highway, we note the dearth of lights on the highway and roads and drive in growing darkness as we approach our destination in Park City (about 20 minutes out of Salt Lake City).
As we turn onto Ute Drive (shout out to my crossword friends and those nice letters), we immediately clock the shocking lack of light and jokingly state that there must not be light in Utah, which stands to reason given that there wasn’t much light in Wyoming. We park, go into the hotel, and as we see the clerk with a head lamp we finally clock that in fact there was light in Utah and that in fact the lack of light was due to a blackout due to a car crash. As we settle in our dark hotel room, we immediately laugh at the fact that “blackout” was not even remotely on our radar and we just thought Utah really hated light pollution. Thankfully, power was restored about 15 minutes after check in, and our first day was a success.
I’m sorry it has come to this friend.
Due to the nature of the schedule, we only had one day proper in Park City/Salt Lake. We grabbed breakfast at the Vertical Diner and made a quick pit stop to the mall in order to get pants that fit because as it turns out weight loss due to diabetes means none of my pants fit and that holding them up for the full duration of our was quickly going to become tiring for everyone involved, and after ignoring that for a year, I had to like… address it.
After the outfit change, we hit up the Tracy Aviary, one of the last two freestanding aviaries in the US (most other aviaries are part of zoos) where we fed lorikeets and saw lots of good birds. After that, we visited the Mormon temple and museum and I realized how much ambient religious trauma I had from Catholicism till being in a Mormon church for an extended period of time. My friend had a good time with their Mormon anthropological study and we got some pub food and watched FX’s English Teacher and NBC’s Brilliant Minds.
As the night wound down, a spider made its approach to the wedding dress, so I stated “I’m sorry it has come to this friend” to which Em immediately had to ask that “are you saying that to me or the spider?”
“I SAID HEY, WHAT’S GOING ON”
The Salt Lake City to Las Vegas trip was uneventful. We had breakfast as Five5seeds before making our way down south. At this point, we are doing bad singing renditions of random songs including a repeat of the chorus of “What’s Up” by Non-Blondes just because.
After navigating through Las Vegas traffic we are immediately bombarded by the excessive stimulus of the Excalibur resort, before managing to get a late reservation at a vegan restaurant Crossroads.
We also get to see the famed Vegas Sphere (I mistakenly called it the Vegas Orb for the majority of our visit). We returned back to the hotel and continued watching television of questionable quality.
Did you know about the second moon?
The morning starts with Em asking if I knew about the fact that Earth was going to be getting a temporary second moon as an asteroid was about to get stuck in our orbit for 53 days. I give them a funny look saying “I asked if you about this back in Denver and you said you knew about it” to which they say “I thought you meant a second full moon.” Language is fun.
We listen to the new Beach Bunny song Clueless and get hit with 90s nostalgia vibes and get lunch at Nacho Daddy. We had out to a small Vegas Bird store because all of the traditional touristy things were a little pricey given our budget, and then double back to Crossroads for their happy hour and we partake in vegan calamari amongst other delicious things. We spent the night catching up Magic & Misfits S2E1 and 9-1-1 Lone Star.
“If you’re not a bird, you don’t need to get it”
As we check out of Vegas, I make jokes about proficiently speaking Em. The exact line of dialogs are lost to time, but I did jot down “If you’re not a bird, you don’t need to get it.”
We stop by Ronald’s Donuts on the way out for vegan donuts before our last major leg of the trip. We start singing Phantom Planet’s California very, very loudly. I take notes about what Em likes and dislikes about California.
Likes:
U-Turn signage
Pinhole Windows
Dislikes:
No turn lanes
Housing prices
And then we completed our mission and delivered the dress and suit to the hotel of the sister of the bride.
We then stopped by our hotel for a hot second before going to the bachelorette party, which included an Escape Room, Italian food, and Karaoke. I did my go-to of Blink-182’s All the Small Things (a song that features multiple segments of 27 NAs, several musical breaks, and is a questionably good karaoke song), while also discovering Season of the Sticks by Noah Kahan was also a good song for me as well as Semi-Charmed Life by Third Eye Blind, although I discovered that I was the only one actively aware the song was about crystal meth addictions. Comically enough, the karoake machine we were using also attempted to censor things with x, resulted in things like sxx and fxcked, which… is honestly not better, but wanted to note that.
The night ends, and now it’s time for *wedding things*
Misc. Rigamarole
The morning of the rehearsal, Em and I watch the last available terrible television available: 9-1-1’s Bee-Nado Season 8 premiere and Doctor Odyssey. I watch the 21st season premiere of Grey’s Anatomy because I hate myself just a little. And then it’s time for rehearsal things.
Now, Em is actually a part of the wedding party and I’m attached to Em. During the rehearsal, while everyone else was touring the venue, I was dogsitting the pup of the sister of the groom.
After all that, we do a quick visit to a nearby beach before dinner and have some Peruvian before making sure that the bride knows that all of her friends are willing and able to help with anything that comes up.
So You’re the Friend of a Member of the Wedding Party Promoted to Part of the Caravan Promoted to Running Interference for the Bride’s Mother
Now, in the original conception of the plan, I was going to drop off Em at 8, stay for a couple hours to do a couple small things, and then hang out of the hotel before meeting up at the venue.
We get there. Em gets to work on their tasks and I ask if there’s anything I can do to help and immediately get tasked to help hem the reception dress, iron and steam things, fold the table cards, make a run to Target for some supplies, and then eventually get asked to be part of the caravan to the venue. So after a quick trip back to the hotel for my suit, immediately turn around to pick up some folks, do a quick pit stop at Staples for a last minute thing, and then take Em, two other members of the wedding party, and a series of dresses to the venue.
Three hours to the wedding, I decide to change into my suit before meandering back to my friends and see if there is anything they need and immediately get told to run interference on the mother of the bride to minimize how much work she did. And so I did. I ended up doing a lot more physical labor than expected as I began to:
Attach additional fake flowers to the arrangements
Deliver pictures
Moved 4 trays of lumpia, 24 bottles of apple cider, 6 containers of Arizona Sweet Tea, and 2 bags of Ice to the correct location
Hand out fans
M(ikkel) & Em
The ceremony itself was wonderful. The reception was fantastic. The dinner included a Mexican and Filipino buffet, and a bubble tea bar and mini pancake station. A beautiful day and night.
Epilogue
Em decides to spend the morning of our last day of travel together doing a hike with another friend in the area for the wedding. I spent the morning sleeping and packing. We discover that we had accidentally taken a hotel hanger so we make a quick stop by the happy couple’s hotel to drop that and Em once again offers their services as a caravan to take several miscellaneous items back to Denver via road trip. For my services as general utility, the couple gives me a plush Tanuki. I have named them Tustin because that seems correct.
Our last leg of the trip together is a quick trip south to San Diego. I have family in the area and two additional friends, so the plan was a few hours of the zoo before I meet up with my cousin and aunt for two more days. The drive to San Diego is uneventful and we spend a few hours at the zoo before Em and I bid each other farewell as I have a direct flight back to St. Louis on Tuesday and they have a two day drive back to Denver with a pit stop in Utah to visit a different bird sanctuary.
I am writing the bulk of this on Monday morning finally having the time and coherence to write things. You are likely reading this while I’m on a plane, unless you’re Em, in which case you’re reading sometime on Monday because you asked to get an early preview.
And that’s all for this week. We’ll see what happens next Tuesday.