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Ventura, Santa Barbara, & The Channel Islands, CA
After all our detours through the desert, we finally made it to the California coast! We find the desert very interesting and beautiful and love all the free camping, but these water views were a welcome change. I guess that’s the cool thing about RVing. We landed in the town of Ventura on the Rincon Parkway, where we rented a 46X15ft parking space parallel to the ocean. A bit inconvenient since we are 53ft bumper to bumper. The Rincon is a Ventura County RV Park with 127 parking spaces and is one of the most unique camping experiences we’ve had thus far. On one side are a rock seawall (although…
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Death Valley National Park & Mohave National Preserve, CA
On the last Friday of January, we headed to Death Valley National Park. We had inched closer the night before and stayed an hour away at Preferred RV Park in Pahrump, NV to do chores. Knowing there was no internet, we only planned to stay for the weekend and explore the popular Furnace Creek area. The highest temperature ever recorded on earth was 134F at Furnace Creek, so January was a good time to visit. Neither of us had heard much about Death Valley and we didn’t have many expectations, but we really enjoyed this park! Death Valley didn’t end up being as scary as it sounds, but maybe that’s…
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White Sands National Park
There are only so many destinations you can reasonably drive to in one day from Big Bend NP. White Sands NP, in south-central New Mexico, looked doable (under 400 miles) and was certainly worth a visit. While visiting, we boondocked just 4 miles away from the park on property that Holloman Air Force Base allows. It was not a bad place to spend the work week! The sky was absolutely amazing every night. Unfortunately, you can’t have any contact with the lake since it’s toxic; and sadly, there were a lot of ducks there that can’t read the posted signs. White Sands NP protects the largest gypsum dunefield in the…
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Big Bend National Park
It was nothing short of a miracle that we left NC “on time” in a new tow vehicle and with the same 14-year-old adventure cat, Lynx. The cat had been minutes away from surgery to remove bladder stones before it was determined that the surgery would not have been successful. For now, she will just live with her stones until her behavior indicates that she is too uncomfortable. Also, after finding out that our Ford needed its second expensive repair (both recall items on other models), we decided to buy a new truck. We were happy to find a RAM, during the national truck shortage, that had several features we…
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Zion National Park
When we started out on this trip to the southwest, the only camping reservations we had were 10 nights in early May at the Watchman Campground inside Zion National Park. Zion (actually pronounced Zi-in) was at the top of our list of places to visit since several people had told us that it is their favorite park, and we can see why. Also, it’s RV friendly (we fit!) and there is a great cell signal (because the campground is close to the town of Springdale), both of which are uncommon in NPS campgrounds. Coming from Bryce, if our rig setup had been less than 50ft long, we could have entered…
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Bryce Canyon National Park
We weren’t originally planning to visit Bryce Canyon National Park this year because we would then be backtracking for the reservations we had at Zion National Park right before heading east to North Carolina. Located at the top of the Grand Staircase, Bryce is also at 8,000 feet elevation and still below freezing most nights during Spring and some of their trails do not open until the Summer. However, 4 weeks prior we had been able to snag appointments in the nearby town of Panguitch, UT for our first dose of the Moderna vaccine and wanted to be close for our second. So north on US89 we went and ended…
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In & Around Grand Staircase National Monument
After moving every weekend for the past month, we settled into a boondocking spot on BLM land 15 minutes north of Kanab, UT for two weeks in mid-April. Kanab is a really nice small town in a great location. It borders the Grand Staircase Unit of Grand Staircase-Escalante NM, is 30 min from the eastern entrance to Zion NP, 1 hour from Paria Canyon-Vermillion Cliffs NM, and 1.5 hours from the north rim of the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon NP, and Lake Powell. This entire area is a huge swath of public land with endless places to explore. Sometimes our stay here was frustrating because we couldn’t get to some…
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Glen Canyon & Lake Powell
We spent a warm and sunny first week of April at Lone Rock Beach on Lake Powell, a man-made reservoir on the Colorado River created by the Glen Canyon Dam, that straddles the Arizona/Utah border. This sprawling lake and land to the north are part of the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. The land south belongs to the Navajo Nation. I’m happy to report that we never got stuck. However, we watched other people get stuck multiple times every day and that was equally entertaining and horrifying. During his explorations, John Wesley Powell named Glen Canyon for the now legendary glens, grottoes, and sandstone formations he saw carved into this…
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Lee’s Ferry & The Colorado River
We didn’t even realize how much we were missing the sight and sounds of water until we got to the Colorado River at Lee’s Ferry at the end of March. Upstream from this point is Glen Canyon, the Glen Canyon Dam, and Lake Powell. Downstream is 277 river miles of the Grand Canyon. Lee’s Ferry is also where rafting trips that travel through the Grand Canyon are launched, and after watching groups leave all week, now we want to go! Our RVing adventure was supposed to check things off of our travel list, but instead, we keep adding to it. We stayed at Lee’s Ferry Campground for a week, at…
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Route 66 To The Grand Canyon
With Spring just about to spring, we decided to try our luck with good weather at the south rim of the Grand Canyon. At 7400ft, we knew it was a gamble, but the Grand Canyon is worth gambling on. From Joshua Tree to the spot we had picked out for boondocking was 6 1/2 “Google Maps” hours which was more than we like. Wanting to break up the trip with a laundry and grocery stop, we stayed at Fort Beale RV Park in Kingman, AZ for a week. The following Sunday, we packed up and continued on. From obsessively checking the weather, we were expecting 1-3 inches of snow on…
