Red Rocks
Fun as it is to hike alone in several feet of snow, after Zion we were all ready to be warm again. Las Vegas it was! It’s famously roasting there! We aren’t casino people so we headed out to Red Rocks which is a rock climbing Mecca that had long been on our list of places to visit. All the campsites were full so we took a chance on a road that sounded like it would have good camping options along it. We drove through torrential rain crossing our fingers that this road would be paved as our second option was sleeping behind a fire station. It was paved! We drove up the road as the rain petered out and saw lots of wide dirt pull offs, most already with RVs or campers in them. We found one with a caravan and another car and tucked ourselves into a flat spot with views over the semi-arid Mojave desert.
This spot looks a bit slanted but it’s nice to have your head a little higher - totally intentional!
Taking a walk around the area the smell was overwhelming - it was the best smell ever! Like a posh scented candle, herby and fresh with woody undertones and a touch of that after rain smell. Amy had been dreaming of coming across this scent again but for me it was new. The rest of our stay here we didn’t smell it as strongly, I think it must have been the recent rainfall. It was a really quiet night and we both slept well. In Zion I bought a really nice water bottle and oh wow what a difference! I hadn’t been drinking outside of meals before that and hadn’t realised how dehydrated I was. I think it’s partly that peeing is more of a hassle when you live in a car - but avoiding that hassle isn’t, in my experience, worth turning yourself into a raisin for. Looking back it was really affecting my sleep and energy levels. The next morning we took super easy before Lindsey arrived and we headed out for a walk up the road to check out all the camping spots.
Note the puffy jackets - still not warm!
It was fun to see all the diverse set-ups people had: teardrop campers, huge RVs and caravans, vans and the odd car/minivan. At the very top of the road, a little way off the tarmac we came across two guys trying to dig a van out of a big muddy hole. The owner of the van was really vague on timescales and claimed to have arrived yesterday evening in a driving rainstorm, which didn’t track with me and Amy’s experience of the weather. It was lucky the guy parked near him had some recovery traction boards to stick under the wheels but even then they weren’t having any luck. The guy said that as he was trying to park in the rain his van slipped backwards down the hill and into this hole. It was only a few feet from the cliff edge too - terrifying. The three of us gave the van a push which did the trick and the guy left, saying he was heading back to the safety of a car park! We decided our spot was a great one - a nice balance between secluded and not too far off road/into the mud/over the cliff.
It was still disappointingly chilly in the evenings and mornings for being the desert. But the next day we had a jam packed day exploring the Red Rocks scenic drive. It looks like a huge climbing centre, with routes and climbers all over the place and it was fun to watch them trying hard and taking a big fall or two. We also saw a herd of big horn sheep way up on the mountain ridge. I’d always laughed at Amy for being wary of sheep but these guys were huge and so stacked - they can weigh up to 143kg with their horns alone coming in at 14kg.
Water bottle consistently in tow these days!
Credit to Lindsey and her phone’s zoom function!
After Red Rocks we got some overpriced but delicious ice cream from the outskirts of Vegas and had a shower before heading back to our spot in the desert. It was a Sunday night but so crazy busy up the road! Every pullout was full of vehicles - including our previous spot. We drove up a bit further and found an empty pullout but it was smaller and the last inhabitants hadn’t got the “pack it out” memo about cleaning up after yourself so it wasn’t pleasant and we quickly ended up back in our original pullout just a little closer to the caravan. That evening we watched a tumbleweed blow through our campsite. Cool as they are and as iconically American as I see them, they’re actually invasive here. They destroy the native plant life and contribute to the spread of massive wildfires by bouncing across fire breaks
Rolling on through with a better reputation than it deserves
Amy was working the next day and it was gorgeously sunny so we took the chance to have a slower day and recharge all our batteries off the solar panels (which miraculously hadn’t been damaged by the freak gust of wind a week or so ago). We have the Ecoflow 220w solar panels which fold into a briefcase type thing. We picked these over a panel fixed to the roof to allow us to park in the shade in the summer and to make the van a little more stealthy.
Since this photo we’ve started shutting the door and running the cable through the window so no mice can crawl in!
The day after that it was forecast to chuck it down all day long but we decided to stay put. We’d just have a day working in the van, and with Lindsey with us we had her bigger van to jump into to make dinner out of the rain.
This feels like a less adventurous installment of the blog! I spent a lot of the next morning getting ready for the rain - putting the bed into sofa mode so that we’d have room to sit up and relax; getting a last bit of solar power and making sure everything was stowed away from the rain. When you’re living in a car you live a lot of your life outside so it’s quite a performance setting up for a full day inside - things like making sure the food you want to eat is in reach without having to go round and open the boot in the rain.
A table is on our list of upgrades
It was a nice day! We watched the new David Attenborough, worked and listened to the sound of the rain on the roof all day and all night - it got pretty wild and I was hoping that we wouldn’t have ended up in the middle of a creek.
The next day was one of our roughest on the road. I had a terrible migraine which I’m sure was brought on by the change in air pressure and Amy had a really stressful day at work. It was also FREEZING! We’d massively had enough of the cold and decided to make tracks to the hottest place on Earth - Death Valley. Surely we could finally warm up there….
