Day 1 - 7/9/16 (Dash For Donors 5k):
Sean and I had to wake up early today to do a race we'd registered for quite awhile back. The race: Dash For Donors untimed 5k (technically 3.45 miles) fun run at Craig Ranch Regional Park in Vegas. No medals or anything and everyone ran the wrong way because the route wasn't marked well enough but we got cool freebies and the money went to a good cause!
After the race, we went home to load the car up and then headed out on another mini trip to the Phoenix area!
We stopped by the post office on the way out to ship a few packages and ran into our friend Dylan who was shipping stuff too!
We were on the freeway out of town around noon. We got some free coke at the Hoover Dam Lodge in Boulder City and we paid a 1 hour visit to the Goodwill Clearance Center in Avondale when we got to the area. We only spent $11 at Goodwill but we left with tons of badass things!
It was 110 degrees outside on our way through Arizona so we decided it'd be worth it to book a hotel for the night rather than try and rough it in the car overnight. (We'd already booked a cheap hotel stay for the next night.) We couldn't find a deal quite as good as the following night's but we DID get a room for about $55 here:
Econo Lodge
951 W. Main St
Mesa, AZ
Once checked in and settled, the first thing we did was hop in the pool to cool down. The pool wasn't very cold but it was coldest we'd been all day and felt good. In fact, we were even able to enjoy the hot tub for a bit after it! We were too tired to use the tiny fitness center there and the sauna they'd claimed to have was now long gone but we had fun watching some crappy TV in the room while munching on food and snacks we'd brought from home til we were finally ready for bed.
Day 2 - 7/10/16:
In the morning, we went down for our free hotel breakfast. They barely had anything though. We had to ask them for yogurts and we were told they didn't even have bread, bagels, or bananas and their pancake - making machine was broken. They just had milk, coffee, orange juice, tea, apples, one type of donuts, 1 type of mini muffin, 4 types of cereal, some cocoa packets, 1 oatmeal packet, and a few condiments. That's it. Not satisfying at all. We made the most of it though and took some bits up to our room for breakfast in bed with TV. Then Sean used the WiFi to finish some online work he'd left running overnight while I did some work on my phone and packed up the room. (Kinda got paid to stay in a hotel!) We showered and checked out and then got a little food at Burger King on the way to a waterpark we'd bought tickets through Groupon for:
Big Surf Waterpark
1500 N McClintock Dr
Tempe, AZ
The waterpark wasn't huge and didn't have a bunch of spectacular slides but it had some fun slides and water attractions and was exactly what we needed at the time. We went down a couple of the best slides and played in the wave pool til we felt like we'd much more than gotten our Groupon deal's worth (probably around $25 for both of us after discounts!).
We still had another $10 credit left for Tropical Smoothie from a Groupon we'd bought a couple of months back and I had another $10 free in credit for getting the Tropical Smoothie app and referring a friend so we drove there for a wrap and smoothie each.
I'd promised to take Sean to play some PIU so we went to Main Event in Tempe next to use another $10 voucher we'd gotten free for registering.
Then we drove to our second hotel this trip to get checked in:
Sheraton Crescent
2620 W Dunlap Ave
Phoenix, AZ
The previous hotel was alright for a low-end one but this one was sooo much nicer and actually cost us less than the other! We'd probably paid under $40, no more than $50, for the night through Groupon after discount codes and rebates. They had tons of amenities like a fitness center with racketball courts, saunas in the fitness center's locker rooms, multiple pools including one with a waterslide (which was closed for the evening when we arrived but would open again in the morning), a hot tub, basketball and volleyball courts, tennis courts.. Our room was SO big and nice too and the Groupon deal had even included $25 dining credit for the on-site restaurant. Once we'd settled in our room, we decided to go exploring. We'd prepared well and brought sports equipment from Vegas. We played some tennis, worked out in the fitness center, enjoyed the saunas for a few minutes, and went for a dip in the main pool and the hot tub. In the fitness center, they even had a bowl of complimentary headphones in case guests forgot their own (but we'd brought ours!) and a treadmill with some really awesome Google video interactive course things. Sean and I both tried the treadmill course thing and LOVED it! It kind of sucked us into the scenery and even changed incline (not very accurately but it didn't matter to us!) to correspond with the video taken of the scenery we were running through. So relaxing!
Hungry after all that, we drove to a nearby QuikTrip then and got some big drinks and roller grill sausages to take back to the hotel and eat with food we already had while watching TV. Then it was time to get some much needed sleep.
Day 3 - 7/11/16:
We woke up at 10am. We didn't need to check out til noon so we went downstairs to the restaurant to use the dining credit we had and get some breakfast. Then we got ready to go, checked out at noon, and got on the road home to Vegas. We'd be leaving to North Carolina the next day so we didn't have much time for stopping on the way home but we did get gas in Kingman and a few treats en route before getting home and re-packing for North Carolina!
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