Friday, June 23, 2017

Day 12 (The End)

I was up first as usual, packed the car in 108 degree weather, and by 9:30 we had coffee and were on our way out of Vegas.  15 is a pretty shit highway that I don't recall driving on before.


desert driving



 Got to the Caltrain station in San Jose around 6:30pm
All the Stuff they brought

 Long Trip needs to catch up on sleep

All the places we stopped courtesy of Alex <3

Will miss this journey a bunch.  Its been incredible.  4,130 miles traveled, 9 states and 2 provinces visited and lots of amazing memories made.  David and Alex have been incredible traveling partners and our guest appearances by Dwight and Brad made the whole thing feel quite fated and amazing.

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Day 11

It felt good to sleep in nice beds. The hotel also had free hot breakfast. Because of this combo we didn't get into the park till like 10:30. Unfortunately this meant that there was a 90 minute line to get on the shuttle up Zion. That put a big wrench in our plans and sadly meant we chose not to go down the main part of Zion. We all agreed we will have to come back to check that out.

 walking away from South entrance of Zion. :(

Driving around to the north side

Fortunately David had a great idea to explore the north entrance of Kolob canyon which was about 30 minutes driving away. It was basically empty compared to Zion south which was literally like the line for a star wars premier or a theme park ride. If you are reading National Park Service - fix this :).  Anyways the alternative we chose was great as you can see below.











You can see the Grand canyon  north rim in the distance of this and the next pic






We had to say goodbye to Dwight after Kolob Canyon. It's bittersweet but definitely awesome he got to hang out with us a second time. What a legend that man is.

Now we are headed to Vegas where we will put a capstone on our trip and then head home tomorrow. Brad is flying in to join us which is I guess a good trade for Dwight. 


118 in Vegas...ew




Walking through the Venetian





Brad Arrives!

Won some money in poker.  Brad and I were also playing craps.  Wasted a bit of money on some slots too.  We were just wandering various casinos and checking out the scenery and playing tables with very low limits.  At some point it was like 2am and we had still wanted to check out the old strip.

We went to the old strip.  It was nice but it was like 3ish when we got there and we were a bit tired and looking for more crowds but it was also a Wednesday night so not sure what we expected.  At this point and Brad and I had learned a thing or two about how to play Craps while losing a bit of money.

Eventually it was time to eat and we did that before getting back to our airbnb.  The sun was rising as we closed our eyes and we drove back 4 hour later 





Day 10

Well, its blistering hot here.  None of us could sleep past like 8am because we were baking alive in our tents.



We made breakfast and went down to Bryce again for a short bit.  Dwight hadnt seen the park and we wanted to make sure he hit the key points before we moved on to Zion.





Then we drove to Zion which was only two hours away.  The drive in is absolutely breathtaking.






 The roads are red, the mountains shoot up thousands of feet into the air as sheer cliff faces, and we saw a couple goats.  Once we got to the hotel (thanks Marriott points) it was a pretty low key day.



  It was 108 degrees in Zion so none of us were feeling particularly excited about being outside for any extended period of time,  AC is the name of the game out here.  David, Alex, and Dwight went for a bit of a drive through the park when it got cooler and scoped some more goats and hung out.






















 We all went to bed (relatively) early so we could try and do some hiking early in the morning .

Monday, June 19, 2017

Day 9

Today we had a short drive to Bryce canyon which is where we are staying tonight.


Getting coffee and helping the car behind us change a tire


The scenery surpassed all of our expectations by leaps and bounds.  It's a completely different kind of vibe and biome than anything we have visited before. It's also hot which is a nice change of pace.




We hiked a few miles down into the canyon and got some great pictures. The terrain here is very unique and incredible to look at.

















"Wall Street"





It was very hot and hard for a Brit to prevent sunburn without the umbrella

Seems to be what they use to make the trail


View from inspiration point




View from Bryce point

got home from our hike and were very tired

Dwight arrives! (again)  Somehow he decided that he was gonna come visit us on his way back to Austin.  Amazing and beautiful

looks like Brad is gonna come visit on day 11