After seven days on the road, we’ve finally gotten ourselves back to California. We haven’t escaped the heat, though. The heat has followed us all the way:
through St. Louis
through Amarillo
and through Las Vegas here to Barstow, but with a nice respite high up in New Mexico and at the Grand Canyon:
We haven’t seen a single Westy since Elgin, much to Juan’s chagrin. We’ve even stopped at a couple of junkyards, but no Westies.
One of the big deal improvements we made on the Westy was to change the old tent out for a fancy new one with side vents. Unfortunately, it’s been too hot to camp most nights, rendering the side vents purely decorative. We did get a 12-volt fan to use after a breeze-less, miserable night spent at Table Rock State Park in Missouri. But it was cool up in Bluewater Lake State Park in New Mexico (where we awoke in the middle of the night to the sounds of wild horses–which we were able to see through the SIDE VENTS), as well as at the Ten-X National Forest campground about 3 miles outside the entrance to the Grand Canyon. That night we heard coyotes in the night, but they were too far away to see.
After two nights of camping in the desert, getting into Las Vegas was pretty jarring. It reminded me of our trip to Southeast Asia in December, where we spent a lolling week in Laos before showing up in rush hour in Ho Chi Minh City and feeling like overwhelmed country bumpkins. It was also back into the heat, as Las Vegas is 100+ degrees every day this week. It took all of our energy to navigate from the parking garage through the crowded registration and then out to find dinner. It feels good to be back in the middle of nowhere tonight, before a busy week (for Juan, at least) in Los Angeles.
There is way more nothing in America than I realized. Miles and miles of it.
jbuhler