Marietta, GA

 This was a brief stopover before flying out of the Atlanta airport. It was okay but still felt like a big city. You know what? We've had enough of big cities. The drivers are chaotic, the people are impersonal, everyone is busy and in a rush. We're South Dakotans after all, we're use to smaller towns and lots of wilderness mixed in. There's no herds of deer in people's backyards here in Atlanta for sure!

We did stay in a pretty cool Airbnb before flying out. This place is from the 1800s and had serious Winchester House vibes, complete with Stairway to Nowhere.

The best restaurant in the area (maybe closer to Cartersville) was The City Cellar and Loft. We got the spinach dip appetizer and this has to be the best spinach dip anywhere! Even comes in a little cast iron pan. It was closer to delicious fondue than your typical spinach dip and that made it awesome.

Favorite places:

Cellar and Loft - loft part is a bar, cellar part has good food 

Wei Sichuan Authentic Chinese - super good Chinese food, excellent soup dumplings 10/10 would recommend 

Vegas! 🤑

What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas so no blog post.

JK

 While traveling around we don't want to forget family too much. And why should we have all the fun to ourselves anyway? So with much arm twisting and begging (😉) we met Evan's family in Las Vegas!

We flew in early because we're nomads and flying on a random Wednesday definitely beats coming in on a chocked-full Friday flight. 

And that’s when the problems began.

No the problems didn't start with our early morning drive to the airport, or getting long term parking for the car that holds our entire lives in it, or checking in to the Busiest Airport in the World™️. They started when we landed. With our pre-made and pre-approved rental car reservation. This was supposed to be the easy part. But we have a saying for situations like this... "learned!"

Vegas is touristy, so the airport rental cars have a massive fee attached. If you don't mind Ubering, you can go a tiny drive away and knock a ton off the rental prices. Vegas is also weird, so the casinos have their own tiny itty bitty rental car kiosks. Don't use them. Never use them. This was a mistake and everyone who's been there knows it. So anyway, we used one. Or tried to. They close super early and make it a habit to never answer the phone. Especially when they know you're calling for help with your reservation because you're going to be 30 min late thanks to baggage kerfuffles. We finally make it to this tiny one-person building to pick up the car and low and behold, they don't have any of what we rented! Despite having a reservation for it! And you know what? The dude was gonna help us out. For a modest daily fee he'd give us a larger car. What was the fee? He didn't know either, it was up to him and he was trying to decide how much to overcharge us.

So we did the thing you always want to do in this case. We walked out. A shouted voice followed us out, promising an even better "discount", but no dice, the suckers got away. Sketchy is sketchy and made-up prices are a bad sign. Oh how we missed big cities and being marks.

So we learned, you go to the suburbs to rent a car. You know, where the real Las Vegans go. Also recommend suburb hotels if you’re just passing through and don’t want the full Vegas experience.

Anyway the family arrived for the weekend and the fun began! Most memorable was the Circ de Solei show “Ka”. There are a few words I can use to describe it: astounding, awe-inspiring, palm-sweaty-ing, EPIC. This is one of the best performances I’ve ever seen in my life!

So as someone who’s never seen a circ show before, what was it like? It transcends every preconceived notion you have about the limits of a live performance. Gravity? That doesn’t matter. Visual effects? Yeah, no CGI here. Immersive experience? Better than IMAX baby! I found out later it’s known to be the most technically advanced show in the world, and that’s easy to believe. I was skeptical of the hype around vegas shows, but turns out they earned that reputation!

I don't want to say too much about the show, it's an experience you have to, well, experience!

Seeing the fam was great and exploring Vegas with them was great, a lovely stop on our nomad trails.

Nevada has mountains!

So California has this thing that once you move away you’re not really welcome back for a long time, which makes sense but makes it hard to keep up with friends. Luckily we have some awesome friends that were down to explore some new places with us and get a little taste of our travels. We said, “Have you seen Reno?” And they said, “We’d like to!” And thus our next destination was… destined. 

So we didn’t know what to expect in Nevada. We’ve heard there are aliens and a whole lot of nothing and that’s about it. Turns out they were kinda right and also wrong. The “whole lot of nothing” was actually beautiful open desert with snowy mountains on every horizon, who knew Nevada had mountains?? And the aliens? That was us, who else is excited to go to nowhere 🤪

Our friends are super adventurous and risked the 4+ hour drive from the Bay Area, past Tahoe to Reno. (Why the plus? On busy weekends this drive is known to be almost 13 hours... which is a part of our old life we definitely don't miss. Hope I'm exaggerating? Exhibit A, Exhibit B)

We really enjoyed seeing them and catching up, and sharing a bit of our traveling nomadic life. We’ll see, maybe a few new nomads will be ‘madded into existence.

Below is a picture from the past, when the Boarding Bros would make annual trips to Tahoe to shred the gnar! (Obviously we’re not all men, but we are all programmers and you know the rule)