Last month we went on a road trip, and I am finally sitting down to sort pictures and pick up the blog again. Let's see, since September...we bought a house. It's super cute and we love it. I'm *still* working on school. I love my job. Now we're up to speed. : )
We flew into Las Vegas and spent a night there before picking up a camper van from Jucy. The van was both our wheels and our sleeping location (it's in the picture below). It was surprisingly comfortable for the two of us, though we packed too much luggage and were constantly moving things around. There's a bed that pops up out of the purple thing on top, and a the table folds down inside for another bed. The rear door opens like a normal minivan and that's where the kitchen is - it has a sink, one burner stove, fridge and some storage.
We drove to Death Valley first. Gorgeous and it was raining a bit while we were there. It was also super windy, which made sleeping in the pop up bed on top of the van very loud from the rattling canvas.
We did a bunch of short hikes in DVNP. This is Golden Canyon (I'm creepin on Steve's selfie).
Also Golden Canyon...
At the top of Golden Canyon you wall out at a towering red cliff face. If you scramble around that a bit, you get a nice view of the 'Valley' part of Death Valley. It was in the low 80s there, much warmer than Vegas was (where it also rained, all day!).
We also hiked Marble Canyon. True to the name, the walls are made of, well, marble I guess, and over many years they have been polished pretty smooth.
After a couple of days we had the great idea to go to Joshua Tree National Park, which is ~4 hours from DVNP by car. It was still windy for the drive, and we passed through a valley that was choked with smog and dust. I didn't really like that part. Ugh.
Joshua Tree National Park was pretty cool. However, it's pretty close to LA and there were a LOT of people there. It was neat to see once. If you were into rock climbing, it would be a pretty spectacular place. Also, there was a pretty major cold snap, so it was about 30 degrees at night. That's pretty chilly for camping! It made morning and evenings tough since we didn't want to get out of bed to make breakfast, nor did we really want to sit around a campfire (also, still windy, so maybe campfires would have been a bad idea for that reason alone). Anyways, it was gorgeous there, and we saw several coyotes.
Cool intrusion of different rock into the big rock. Note the terrible haze/smog/dust in the background.
On one of the hikes we went an old ruin of a mill. There were a couple of old (1940s?) cars broken down and left near the site.
Finally, a picture of an actual Joshua Tree:
Like I said, lots of climbing happening there. It was cold enough that I feel like my fingers would have had a hard time holding on!
Enjoying a nice hike in the abundant sunshine. Even though we were getting out of Juneau and hoping for sun and warmth, we did at least have plenty of sun!
And typical goofy shenanigans.
And, one night we sort of stayed late enough to see the sunset start. Then it got super cold (and still windy) and we packed it in for the night. Lots of cool coyote howls at night though.
