Arizona and Nevada (making moves to warmer weather!)

 

Where has the time gone?!  As of writing, we have spent 145 days on the road (and 167 at time of posting).  This number makes sense as I have vivid memories of so many locations that are far away from each other.  However, every time we sit down to document what we have been doing for the past 10 days it seems ridiculous how quickly time has passed.  

November 16^th – Returning to the Grand Canyon

We left Page at a reasonable time.  We had hoped and would like to spend more time in the Page area specially to check out Antelope Canyon, a location that everyone recommended we see, but three big things made us need to leave.  The first was no secret; it was cold, meaning another night in a hotel.  The second is our budget, although we budgeted more per day in the US then other countries, we still routinely came up to or surpassed our daily budget, and the cost of a tour was beyond our budget.  With our budget we just can’t always do everything.  Third was time as we wanted to be in LA by the end of November to meet up with a friend. 

We entered the Southern Rim of the Grand Canyon from the east (near the lookout tower) and worked our way west, with each view getting better and better, and the temperature slowly rising but still hovering around 0 Celsius.  If you ever go to the Grand Canyon the best views are on the Red Bus Line towards Hermits Rest.  Time went by ridiculously fast as suddenly the bus driver was talking about sunset and if we leave now we can see sunset at any their recommended locations.  Well, we couldn’t not see sunset in the Grand Canyon again.

We spent sunset walking between two viewpoints, which was perfect as it gave an unimpeded view without any people which had us end up at the bus to take us back down to the parking lot.

By the time we returned to the van it was dark and cold, with a forecast of -10.  We had to find a hotel again.  Kendra searched for hotels in the area while Paul cooked dinner in the visitor center parking lot, much to the amusement of passersby. 

We found a reasonable, Motel 6, in Williams, Arizona. This seemed like a reasonable jumping off point close to Flagstaff and other areas we were hoping to check out, plus the hotels were $20+ cheaper than in Flagstaff.

November 17^th – Want to see a meteor crater?!

We spent the morning looking at various different options of things to do.  Today marked a bit of a milestone in our trip, the end of our “must do America attractions”, which were a collection of the national parks and famous hikes that we have previously written about.

When Kendra told some of her students about our plans one student said if he was in Arizona he’d want to see the meteor crater.  When Kendra realized we were a little over an hour from it we thought, that would be awesome to see.

The drive was a lot like driving from Banff to Medicine Hat in Southern Alberta, with the land becoming more and more flat.  When we were a couple kilometers out we could see some odd hills in the distance; they ended up being the hills created by the meteor impact.

This location’s claim to fame is that it is the best, most well preserved meteor crater in the world, and it looked exactly like we thought it would look, but in a good way.  We’d never seen something like this before, and it looked like what you’d imagine an artist rendering of a meteor crater to look like. The meteor itself is the attraction but there has been a lot of investment into the information centre around it.  Some Apollo astronauts have been trained in this crater before being launched into space, so they also had some space themed paraphernalia to check out. We also learned that there is a meteor crater like this outside of Whitecourt, Alberta – although it is probably covered in trees. We now have a new place to check out once we are in that area, although we are sure some of you reading may check it out before us.

We spent the evening eating ice cream for dinner in the hotel watching trashy TV to celebrate us getting to this milestone. Again, we questioned “Is this our life?” as we enjoyed ice cream for dinner, knowing our past childish selves would be proud of who we have become, plus with no freezer access we had to eat all of the ice cream because we couldn’t save it for later.

 

November 18^th – Standing up to “Influencers”

Today was a good reminder that we don’t know where all the cool spots to see are, today we went to the town we had never heard of: Sedona, Arizona.

The drive to Sedona was beautiful and the town itself was huge and full of tourists from all over the world.  The town is supposed to provide really good spiritual energy attracting the people who believe in that sort of stuff.  There were mystics and psychics complemented by people who love looking like they are hiking.  There were so many “influencers” photographing and videoing everything (literally EVERYTHING!).

The hike Kendra wanted to do, and one of the most popular hikes in the area was a hike to the Devil’s Bridge.  At this location you can actually walk on an arch. This was on Kendra’s list because all the other arches we have visited do not allow you to walk on top of them, so this was the opportunity to walk on an arch.

When we started the main part of the hike-aka the parking lot- we were almost surrounded by people taking photos of anything.  Instead of walking the 4x4 road to the trailhead, we decided to take the Chuckwagon Trail and it was quiet and had some nice views of the hills and red rocks.  We encountered 5 other people and one mountain biker on this trail so we foolishly thought we had picked a quiet day to do the Devil’s Bridge hike.  Once we reached the Devil’s Bridge Trailhead (there are 2 parking lots you can hike to, or drive a 4x4 high clearance vehicle to the trailhead) we realized how foolish we were in thinking that the trail would be quiet. We again encountered “influencers” who felt they had the right to take pictures of anything they thought looked cool, including Rupert, especially when he was being carried in his hiking backpack.

When we got to the top of the bridge we found a large line of people all waiting for their turn to get their pictures at that location.  The first group on the bridge when we arrived was a large Chinese family who, while a drone flew around them, took more pictures than there are angles to take a photo at. They also took individual pictures plus pictures of just the kids or just the parents, so their little photoshoot was a glimpse into how long our wait would be.  The next few groups did every pose we’ve seen on Instagram, and then next was a guy making a video for Tik Tok that wanted everyone there to scream something at him.  We missed the memo, but maybe we can find him being influential online one day.

The worst was an “Influencer” that didn’t follow the well understood expectation that everyone must wait their turn.  The group with said “influencer” had jumped a small crevasse to end up at the other end of the Devil’s Bridge, with one of the guys walking into other people’s photos, doing a backflip while 3 of his cronies tried to capture everything from three different angles.  We were set to take some pictures of the couple in front of us who happened to be from Calgary and as they walked onto the bridge these entitled influencers took their spot! I was blown away that in a group full of people we were just allowing this to happen and everyone was shooting death glares toward them, so Paul, as politely but firmly as he could asked them to leave.  They had a few stupid quips but shortly left.

When it was our turn to take our photo, just after Paul asked the influencers to leave, many people cheered for us.

 

November 19^th – Enough of the cold!

Although Sedona would have been great to better explore, even there it was cold at night.  It was time to actively drive to somewhere that is warm, we decided on Las Vegas.

After one hopefully final night in -3 weather we woke up to venture west. The drive was longer than most days, but before we knew it we were pulling into a camping spot on Lake Mead.  Lake Mead, like so many lakes and rivers in the US are at record lows.  It was crazy to look at Google to see where it thought we were spending the night.  Google thought we were swimming!

 

November 20^th – What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas…or gets posted on the blog.

You have to do Vegas at night!  We knew this, and knew if we wanted to do Vegas justice we needed to get a hotel near the strip.  Although we looked at the Bellagio and New York New York, right down to The Excalibur, we ended up doing the fiscally responsible thing and staying at the Howard-Johnson right across the street(ish) from the MGM.  The reviews, not great; the price, okay; the location, perfect.

To kill time before we could check into the hotel and leave Rupert to explore the strip, we ended up going to the Welcome to Las Vegas sign.  We knew the wait would be long, and by God it was, but the pictures look sweet; besides what better things could we be doing in Vegas?

Thankfully sunset is at 4:30pm, so shortly after 6pm, we were on the strip walking to different casinos, going into the touristy shops and having a few White Claws on the street.

Although this may be a bit boring, our favourite things we did was eating Taco Bell watching drunk people walk by, and watching the fountain at the Bellagio.

 

November 21^st – Kendra’s Bucket list item

Paul had previously been to Vegas before, but he had never gone to Fremont Street. 

In 2003 Kendra saw people swinging/ziplining down Freemont Street on Fear Factor and thought that looked cool. So being in Vegas for her first time, she decided then that ziplining down Fremont Street was something she had to do.

We decided to see Fremont Street tonight, but with Kendra wanting to zip line down it, we decided to go during the day to get her ticket. We also thought it would be good to see Fremont Street during the day as well.

At Fremont Street we learned that our van is over 7 feet today.  Paul was sure it wasn’t so when the parking garage said under 7 feet Paul turned in, just to hear a BAM.  Thankfully it was the BAM of our tire on the roof hitting a yellow swingable barrier.  It was pretty embarrassing reversing back under the barrier for one last bang.

Fremont may be our favourite.  Its hard to describe why, but something about the energy, the street performers and the constant people flying through the sky gives it a dope feel.

We did a bit of gambling and lost, and did a bunch of exploring, but in the end returned to our hotel to wait for Kendra’s time slot.

We returned an hour before Kendra’s time and once again took in various street performers and casinos, but before we knew it, it was time for Kendra to do her zip line.  Kendra left Paul to start climbing up the stairs- don’t tell Paul there was actually an elevator to get up to the 11 storeys tall launchpad, and Paul found the predetermined spot to film Kendra.

Within no time (43 minutes to be exact) Kendra was zipping down Fremont Street, Kendra recommends doing the Slotzilla 10/10.

 

November 22^nd – A Hot Spring in the Desert

We decided to leave Vegas and head to the nearest National Park, Death Valley, which we assumed would be comfortable to camp in and warm.

We never quite made it to Death Valley as Kendra found a warm spring near by that we could camp besides, so off we went.

The warm spring was small, enough for maybe two people and there was already a family enjoying it, so we relaxed.  We pulled out the awning, played some games and waited our turn. 

Just as the sun was setting and it was getting colder, the family left, which was the perfect time to go into a hot spring in the desert. We scared off a couple from Holland and had the warm spring pool to ourselves. It was an enjoyable soak in some mineral rich water and the perfect place to ask ourselves again “is this our life?”.