A small introduction to our roadtrip ‘challenge’…
As we’ve mentioned in
previous posts, setting ourselves some personal challenges was one of the key
goals for us on this trip. Those
of you who saw our extensive travel planning, preparation and spreadsheet development
in the lead up to our departure from Melbourne will know all too well that our
comfort zone sits clearly within the confines of a well documented travel
itinerary. So it seemed only
fitting that the challenge we should set for ourselves in the final month of
travel should be to throw caution to the wind and travel around the United
States without a firm plan. To set some parameters around this travel (so we
didn’t feel completely out of control!), we allowed ourselves to pre-book a
one-way campervan rental to pick up in Las Vegas on February 23 and return to
Los Angeles on March 23 – the day before our flight back to Australia. We had also pre-booked a hotel in Vegas
and arranged accommodation with extended family in LA to ensure the campervan
pick-up and airport departure went smoothly. Apart from that, we had no firm plan or bookings other than
a visit to Alick’s cousin Ally and her family outside of Dallas, Texas – which
helped us come up with the rough idea to try to make it as far as New Orleans
and back...
As our departure from
Vegas approached, we realised we had also attracted a few add-on challenges to
the trip;
1.
Our
campervan (named Jucy Jemima) turned out to be the brightest vehicle we’ve ever
seen, covered in advertisements for the car hire company – attracting attention
and very strange looks everywhere we went. There was no hiding the fact that we are not locals!
2.
Our rough
dates would see us passing through major touristy areas without accommodation
bookings at peak times (ie. US Spring Break week and the Austin South by
Southwest Festival).
3.
In
approaching the end of our trip, our finances had reached the point where we
had no option but to stick to our fairly modest budget for this leg of the trip
– which didn’t allow for staying in pricy hotels in the event no other
accommodation options were available.
Sunday Feb 24th, 2012. Las Vegas, Nevada to Grand Canyon,
Arizona
We rolled out of Vegas
around 9am with a plan to camp in the Grand Canyon that evening. We quickly found ourselves needing to
reload the map on the iPhone and had to draw on one of the two lifelines we’d
been given by fellow travellers – the fact that McDonalds has free wi-fi (the
second lifeline being that Walmart carparks offer free overnight parking - which we didn't need at this early stage!). As the trip progressed, we have become
experts at accessing McDonalds wi-fi without the need to actually eat McDonalds
(ie. one of us would gaze at the menu with painful indecision while the other
loaded relevant maps – after which the menu-gazer would decide nothing on the
menu was of interest). However, as
it took us a few days on the road to master these skills, that first morning
saw us loading the Arizona maps while biting into our Sausage and Egg
McGriddles.
It was a beautiful, if
a little chilly and extremely windy, morning as Jemima cruised along the
freeways through the desert.
Around 20k’s out of Vegas we began to climb, and continued to do so
steadily up through 3,000 and 4,000ft, with the temperature dropping by at
least a degree for each 1,000ft that we climbed. The landscape changed from a parched desert (complete with tumbleweed
and cacti) with mountains in the background, as we neared the mountains
becoming rockier with more substantial shrubs. Soon we were whizzing along with snow on either side of the
road, and signs warning that we were entering ‘Elk Country’! We were lucky to see quite a few elk and mule deer ferreting around in the snow.
After stressing we
would arrive to find the Grand Canyon campsite completely booked out, we were
amazed to find the grounds near empty – a phenomenon that was promptly
explained when we found the campsite covered in snow and the temperature at -2 degrees (let’s
just say we were relieved to still be carrying our Kilimanjaro climbing gear)... Needless to say after nearly freezing solid while watching the sunset we returned to camp and cooked dinner on our external gas cooker with remarkable speed before
bundling ourselves into the car to eat with as many extra layers as possible!
Monday Feb 25th, 2012. Grand Canyon National Park
After waking to find
the inside of the car covered in ice (frozen condensation) and the temperature
gauge indicating it was -14 degrees, we were keen to start our hike into the
Grand Canyon as soon as possible to ensure we still had blood circulating to
all limbs, though made a brief pit-stop to enjoy breakfast at the Hopi lookout
point – simply beautiful!
We decided to attempt
the 19km Plateau Point walk along the Bright Angel Trail, going down the canyon wall 1000metres
in to the canyon wall and, thanks to the recommendation of the visitor centre,
went in equipped with ‘yak-traks’ attached to our hiking boots (essentially
snow-chains for your shoes), given that the first section of the track was
completely covered in snow and sheet-ice.
We doubt we would have been able to complete the walk without
these.
It was an absolutely
stunning hike down. The early
morning sun was really painting the canyon the most incredible colours, and
every time we looked the scenery had changed, with the rapidly shifting
light. We descended steadily for
around the first 4 or 5 miles, before passing by the ‘Indian Garden’
campground, and out onto the plateau after which the lookout point we were heading
to takes its name. The landscape
and vegetation changed rapidly as we moved deeper into the canyon; from small
conifers surrounded by snow at the top of the canyon, to huge cottonwood trees
at the Indian Garden, and then into a scrubby tundra complete with cacti as we
walked out across the plateau…
After reaching Plateau
Point and having our lunch perched high on a rock looking down over the
Colorado River, we began the long trudge back up the canyon… Needless to say the hike back up was
equally as beautiful as coming down, but was a little more strenuous!! We were pleasantly surprised, however,
at how we had retained some of the fitness that we must have had four months
ago for Kili, as we didn’t find ourselves completely exhausted…
After dinner (and
introducing Tess to campfire s’mores!) we set off for a walk back up to the
canyon ridge, to see the canyon in the light of the full moon. It was an
absolutely beautiful, clear night and on arriving at the ridge we were treated
to the most incredible moonlit vista of the canyon yawning beneath us. Simply breathtaking to see – and made
even more special by the fact that there was no one else there… How lucky we were to have the
opportunity to walk along the ridge of the Grand Canyon on a full moon night,
and to have it completely to ourselves….
Tuesday February 26, 2013. Grand Canyon to
Canyon de Chelly, Arizona.
After a gentle morning
enjoying some final viewings of the Grand Canyon, it was time to hit the road
again.
We realised that we
needed to make a decision on where to actually go next. The choices were seemingly endless! We
eventually made the decision (when presented, quite literally, with a
cross-roads) to head pretty much straight east from the Grand Canyon, along
Arizona Highway 264 towards a place called Canyon de Chelly National
Monument.
Our route took us
right into the heart of Navajo country, as well as through the Hopi
Reservation, an American Indian nation that sits right in the middle of the
Navajo lands. It was an absolutely
fascinating drive and very thought provoking. The experience really made us think about the many
complexities experienced by first nations people all over the world. We had heard quite a
lot about the Indian Reservations from Scilla, Alick’s Mum, who has been lucky enough
to form a strong connection with native peoples in North and South Dakota,
however this was the first time that either of us had experienced the
reservation lands first hand.
We found ourselves a
camping spot at ‘Spider Rock’ at Canyon De Chelly (which was again, near empty
given the extreme weather conditions) and enjoyed more spectacular sunset
viewing. The temperature
plummeted as soon as the sun set, and we decided to snuggle up in bed and have
an early night (nursing our stiff and sore muscles from yesterday’s hike down
into the Grand Canyon!), with the most beautiful array of stars starting to be
bleached out by the rising almost-full moon.
Wednesday Feb 27th. Canyon de Chelly to Monument Valley,
Arizona/Utah border.
Wow. The coldest morning wake-up yet! The ice was about 5mm thick on the
inside of the windows, and even our water bottle (which was next to the bed)
was frozen solid!! Despite the
cold, however, we got up and drove out to the Sliding House Overlook at Canyon
de Chelly to watch the sunrise – and enjoy breakfast (once we got over the
small issue of the water freezing on the bottom of the saucepan while we were
trying to make tea!) The changing
light on the rock-faces was really stunning, and a great antidote to the
freezing cold.
We spent the morning
trekking the White House Trail - the only hike within Canyon de Chelly that
visitors are allowed to do independently, without a registered Navajo
guide. Given that we had limited
time and wanted to get up to Monument Valley by that afternoon, we opted not to take a guide for
the day and to do this quick hike instead. We really enjoyed getting out in the early morning air and
stretching our legs. It was a fairly easy 3 mile hike, going
down about 700ft into the canyon along to the ruins of an Anasazi house from
around 1200AD. All through Canyon
de Chelly are the ruins of dwellings from around that era, all of which are
either perched on ledges, or sit directly beneath the towering cliffs around
them.
We opted to avoid the
major interstates en route to Monument Valley and take some of the smaller
roads instead, and were rewarded with the most stunning scenery and pretty much
empty roads. On arrival in Monument Valley (a tribal park managed by the Navajo
people), we did a small hike around one of the butts – again quite
breathtaking! Walking between the giant stone monoliths we found ourselves
marvelling at how they had come to be, and thinking about how long they will
last into the future. Quite
humbling stuff really! The Monument Valley campground was under construction so
we camped across the road (which took us into Utah) at a place called Gouldings
– named after the farming family credited with getting John Wayne movies filmed
in Monument Valley. The campground offered showings of John Wayne movies each
night – and we welcomed the opportunity to watch ‘Stagecoach’ indoors both as
respite from the cold and to see the area we had just hiked on film. As fairly common with watching movies
from that era, the demonization of Native Americans within the film was quite
unbelievable, and tinged with significant irony given we were in a Navajo
controlled and managed park!
Thursday Feb 28th. Monument Valley to Albuquerque, New
Mexico.
After getting up early
to watch the sunrise, we made our way down the highway, out of Arizona and East
to New Mexico. By this stage we
were both craving a ‘real’ (and warm!) bed, so decided to make our way to Albuquerque
and treat ourselves to a hotel. Feeling like different people after nice hotel
showers (and with Alick having discovered that Albuquerque was a hub of craft
brewing activity), we headed out on the town – wandering between Marble Brewery,
tasty food trucks and a micro-bar of a brewery called Chama River – it was at
the final place where we came across a fellow traveller called Thomas – who was
working his way West from his hometown near Lafayette, Louisianna doing a
‘tour’ of US National Parks.
Thomas encouraged us to ensure Lafayette was on our travel itinerary and
to go to a live music venue called the Blue Moon Saloon there – this advice
turned out to be quite fortuitous later on in our trip...
Friday March 1, 2013. Albuquerque – Taos, New Mexico.
We spent the following
morning exploring Albuqurque’s Old Town, including a visit to the Rattlesnake
Museum, before making our way north to the beautiful town of Taos, New Mexico –
where we very quickly decided to base ourselves in an RV park for the next two
nights. We found Taos to be a lovely change from both the secluded parks that we
had been in for the previous week, and the big city of Albuquerque where we had
spent the previous night… After a
quick dinner at a literal hole-in-the-wall taqueria (amazing ceviche!) we were
feeling the effects of the late night the previous evening (we can’t quite
recover as quickly as we used to!) and headed back to our campsite for an early
night…at the grand hour of 7pm!!
Saturday March 2, 2013. Taos, New Mexico
After a great sleep
and a slow morning, we made our way gently out across the Rio Grande river once
again, to check out the highly recommended ‘Earthships Biotecture’ community, about
20 miles out of Taos itself. This
community of homes is designed and built to have minimal environmental impact,
and aspires to reach a point where it can operate completely ‘off the grid’. Earthships aim to take the 'off the grid' notion a step further than simply being energy independent, by also building
the dwellings oriented to catch the sunlight (more in winter, less in summer)
both to heat the house, but also to provide optimal growing conditions for indoor fruit
and vegetable plots – which in turn use recycled water from sinks and showers
for irrigation. As such, in a
perfect Earthship world, a family living in one of the dwellings would not rely
on commercially produced food, would be energy independent, and would be
efficient enough in their water use (and re-use) to only need what they
collected from the roof. Overall
we found it a great concept, and are already talking about how we might be able
to integrate some of the design features into any future home that we may live
in!
On the way to the
Earthships we had noticed a small brewery by the side of the road, so on our
way back to Taos itself, Alick persuaded Tess that it was a good idea to check
it out. It turned out to be a
fantastic experience, and the folks at Taos Mesa Brewing proved to be not only
really good people, but also very inspirational in how they had managed to
bring a long-held dream to fruition.
It was great to see their set-up, which they had built from scratch from
the ground up, and hear about their plans for the future as well as how they
were managing the day to day operations of a fledgling brewery. Above all, the beers were delicious,
and on hearing they had a band playing that night we decided to return later in
the evening!
A day in Taos would
not be complete without a walk in the hills, so after our lunch we headed back
through town and went for a short hike up behind the town itself.
We spent the evening sampling more delicious New Mexican fare and headed back to Taos Mesa Brewing to watch the band later that evening. We felt it was particularly fitting that we were spending the eve of our first wedding anniversary ‘back where it all began’ so to speak – in a small, warehouse-like brewery, drinking good beer and enjoying each other’s company. The only thing missing was all of our friends and loved ones!!!
We spent the evening sampling more delicious New Mexican fare and headed back to Taos Mesa Brewing to watch the band later that evening. We felt it was particularly fitting that we were spending the eve of our first wedding anniversary ‘back where it all began’ so to speak – in a small, warehouse-like brewery, drinking good beer and enjoying each other’s company. The only thing missing was all of our friends and loved ones!!!
So came to an end the first week of our road trip! We'll try to post another update soon on the subsequent weeks - more photos on the way soon too...
