Road Trip!!!

5 Days + 1377 Miles + >0 Beers = ∞ Awesomeness

What? You want to see a summary of the trip in two pictures? Well here you go...

Background:

The sleeping man is my friend Hamish. I met him while working in New Zealand as a chef. He is the guy who hired me. I am grateful.

Recently he came out for a visit. He found very cheap flights (~$500 US roundtrip) and the timing worked well w/ my class and teaching schedules. He arrived on the afternoon of Saturday, May 30, which wasMemorial Day weekend. I wanted to make things as difficult as possible for Hamish (jet lag, fatigue, etc.) so we took of on the road trip first thing Sunday morning.

Note: If you want to see a picture in more detail, click on it and it will become larger.

Death Valley:

Our first destination on the road trip was Death Valley, CA. Here is a picture of one stretch of road. Must have been at least eight miles of perfectly straight road.

Death Valley holds the record for the second highest temperature ever recorded at 134 degrees F. We weren't fortunate enough to experience record heat, but we experienced heat nonetheless. We decided to purchase this classy thermometer at a gas station to get an idea of what kind of heat we were up against.

This temperature reading of ~106 degrees was taken just after noon down in Death Valley. I am sure the temperature got a few degrees hotter, but the thermometer broke after only a couple hours of use, probably because it got too hot and gave up.

We pulled over to view the scenery a few times, but we didn't last long outside of the car. A strange phenomenon that we noticed was that when the wind blew, it actually made us feel hotter.

We took Tara's car because my car's air conditioner is on the fritz. About 2 hours into the road trip we were very glad to have it.

We pulled over at the lowest point in Death Valley and walked around for a bit. Again, we didn't last long because we thought we were gonna melt.

There is a tiny sign 282 feet high up on that mountain side, which shows sea level. Whoever said hot air rises was definitely lying.

Tara's car is about 100 yards behind me. That was the most difficult 100 yards I have ever hiked.

Death Valley is actually a town. Who knew?

We set up camp the first night in a small camping area. The park ranger told us that it would still be 100 degree at 9 pm. Unfortunately he was right. We decided to light a camp fire to cool ourselves off.

At about 11:30 pm we gave up on trying to sleep. We had just layed the tent out on the ground as a tarp since it was so hot. When I turned the lantern on to pick everything up, I saw two very large cockroaches scuttle away. Then when I went to grab the tent bag right next to us, I found this terrifying white spider thing. Its body was longer than an inch and when I went to scare it away with a stick it raised its arms up and attacked.

We were definitely glad to get out of there. That night we ended up sleeping in a Walmart parking lot half-way between Death Valley and Vegas. Amazingly, it ended up being one of our best nights of sleep on the whole trip.

Las Vegas:

You know what they say. What happens in Vegas, gets blogged about.

Since we were staying in Vegas on a weeknight, we got a really good deal on our hotel, which was on the strip and only cost $20 for the night. We did a bunch of walking along the strip and into various casinos.

Here is a picture looking down the strip.

We were doing the road trip on a budget so we didn't see any shows or eat at any fancy places but we did make an amazing discovery. I have a feeling that someone is going to come into my house and break my kneecaps for saying this, but in all casinos along the strip, drinks are free as long as your are gambling. And yes, 1 cent slots count. Needless to say was spent a few hours playing the penny slots. Slowly.

Grand Canyon:

On the way to the Grand Canyon, we stopped at the Hoover Dam. It was very large. The first thing we saw was this new bridge being built to bypass the hoover dam. Traffic gets backed up for a long ways on either side of the dam because security needs to check vehicles that cross it. I'm not sure when the bridge is supposed to be finished, but it was a very cool sight.

Here are a couple of pictures of the bridge from on top of the dam.

Here is a picture of the dam. It's hard to tell how huge it is so you will just have to trust me when I say it is very large.

When we finally arrived at our campsite just off the south rim of the Grand Canyon, we quickly set up camp so we could get to the canyon before sunset.

This time we actually took the time to set up the tent.

When viewing these pictures of the Grand Canyon, it is hard to get an idea of its size. To give you an idea, the area of the canyon that we were at was about 10 miles across and about 5000 feet deep.

After the sun went down, we headed back to our campsite. We got a fire going quickly. It got down to upper 30's that night so we actually needed a fire.

Once we got the fire going, we cooked a whole chicken in the coals. It actually tasted really good. After dinner we hung out by the fire. The air was so fresh and clear up there. It was nice to get out of the smog of LA.

The next morning, we hiked around the south rim of the canyon. It was a perfect temperature for hiking with great visibility.

This was a scary mine way down in the canyon. I think they used to mine copper from it.

After a couple hours of hiking and taking pictures, we headed back to the car and took off for Phoenix.

Phoenix:

On the way to Phoenix we stopped at Sedona, an area with very interesting rock features.

When we were nearing Phoenix, we actually drove through some rain.

We experienced extreme heat, cold, wind, and rain in a very short period of time. I think all of these extreme environments were especially hard on Hamish since he was coming from his winter in NZ and he was still suffering from jet lag. Every morning, I would get up at around 5 or 5:30 am and wake him up soon after. I am pretty sure that every morning he said something to the effect of "Yep, I am definitely getting sick", but fortunately he stayed healthyish.

When we arrived in Phoenix, we did a little hiking with my cousin Andrew. He took us to a remote area filled with cactus near his house.

Here we are standing next to one of the tallest saguaro cactus in the area at dusk.

That night we stayed at a condo near Andrew's place. It is owned by one of his relatives so we got to stay there for free. We were very grateful to have a nice, quiet place to stay.

Salton Sea:

Thursday was the last day of our road trip. We left Phoenix early that morning after a tasty breakfast made by Andrew's wife Becca and headed to the Salton Sea.

The Salton Sea, like Death Valley, is also below sea level and also very hot, but with the added humidity from the sea. The sea is about 40 miles long and 15 miles across.

It was once a resort/tourist area, but for whatever reason people mostly stopped going and now it resembles something like a nuclear testing site.

These dead fish were a very common site along the shore.

We stopped at a little town called Bombay Beach along the beach to see if anything was going on. We saw many old campers like these. The were all corroded and sinking into the earth.

Here is an old dock abandoned long ago.

More dead fish along the shore.

I don't know what kind of liquid is in the Salton Sea, but it definitely isn't water.

On our way out of the small town we stopped along a few streets. There were some new cars around and some strange buildings, but we never saw anyone.

On our way out, we saw a sign that said "Cold Drinks" on the front of an old broken down building. We decided to check it out even after a lifetime of seeing horror movies. Hamish, being the wonderful gentleman that he is, gave me the privelege of going in first. I took a step inside and nearly stopped in my tracks. There were about about 10 sets of 70 something year old eyes staring right at me and into my soul. The man nearest me must have weighed about 400 pounds with an eight inch beard and was shoveling a large serving bowls worth of popcorn into the area of his mouth.

After the initial shock, we bellied up to the bar and each got a beer. The bartender was actually a really nice guy and beers were only $2 a piece. The place was covered in one dollar bills with people's names written on them. We weren't sure if they were from previous customers, victims, or both.

After leaving Bombay Beach, we headed over to Slab City, a place that I had originally read about in the book "Into the Wild". The first place that we stopped at was Salvation Mountain.

It has been made over a 20 year period by a guy named Leonard Knight. He mixes his own paint and does all of his own work.

He has gather tires and sticks from the desert and has made a series of caves and other structures.

These blue birds are apparently very popular with tourists and get photographed by everyone who visits.

These flowers can be found all over the mountain. He makes these by soaking clay from the mountain overnight. He then throws the wet clay against the mountain and punches it, resulting in the flower shape.

After leaving Salvation Mountain, we headed into Slab City, which is home to 2,000 to 4,000 people depending on the time of year. It is basically a trailer park/campground where people live to get away from the worries of the world.

Here is a common sight.

This place, called The Range, has live music every Saturday at sundown. I would like to check it out sometime.

We took one last picture and headed back home.

On our way back, we passed through a large windfarm with thousands of these wind turbines.

Conclusion:

We finally got home Thursday evening. We were very tired from the five days, but the road trip was a blast. Having Hamish around was a perfect excuse to take a long trip and get out of LA for a while.