LA to New Orleans

Leaving LA

We packed and left LA on Friday morning to head to Joshua Tree National Park. One thing is for sure - the urban sprawl of LA never ends. We had a good time there, but both felt as though we had been in cities for a long time. We looked forward to getting back to camping. Soon after leaving the city while crossing a small set of mountains we came across fields of windmills. Having never seen them up close I (kathy) was mesmerized. Josh thought they were cool and wants one. The windmills ended and the desolation of the desert began.
We might've forgotten, or never even gave a thought to, what the weather is like in the desert in August. Arriving at Joshua Tree, we were accustomed to National Park campgrounds being full. Josh asked the ranger at the welcome center whether or not we'd be able to find camping. She laughed at him and pointed out that it was the off season for the park. They were lucky if people were spending more than a few hours there. We spent two nights. It was about 100 degrees during the day but fortunately got down to a comfortable 70 at night. The hiking we did either had to be in the morning or early evening, since dehydration and heat exhaustion can quickly become a problem midday. We did one major hike to a mine built at the turn of the century It was pretty impressive, considering we were sweating bullets just walking there. I could never imagine having to work the mine, whether I was outside or inside. The main shaft was 500 ft deep! Joshua Tree was quite a different park than any others we had been to. The other parks had, for the most part, been Pacific Northwest parks with similar, yet beautiful, scenery.



Joshua Tree was the first change of scenery we had since crossing over the Rocky Mtns. It was beautiful but in an entirely different way. The second night we were in Joshua Tree the Persied Meteor shower was taking place. The campsite we stayed at was called Jumbo Rock. True to its name there were sites nestled between huge rock formations that were relatively easy to climb to the top. We climbed the boulders behind our campsite, which I would not have been able to climb without Josh's help, that's for sure. We saw some amazing meteors. They were so large you could see trails behind them. The night sky in general was fantastic. I think we could see the Milky Way the clearest at Joshua Tree. We had been waking up earlier than normal because of the heat so we struggled to stay up past midnight.

Hoover Dam and Las Vegas
After leaving Joshua Tree we headed towards Hoover Dam. We were ultimately heading towards the Grand Canyon and figured we might as well stop and take a tour.

After all, it is where Megatron is cryogenically frozen. (Transformers reference, if you didn't see it, move along) The scenery and the temperature got exponentially worse. What little vegetation was along the road pretty much disappeared and I believe it was 120 degrees at the dam. The tour was, at some times, a huge advertisement for the dam, but interesting nonetheless. The engineering it required in the 1930's was amazing; the scale of it fantastic. The gigantic turbines were cool. My favorite part was the time lapse video of the dam being built.


We weren't planning on going to Vegas, but decided it would've been silly not to stop. For one we were going to about 20 miles away from it. Two, being that it was 120 degrees during the day and 90 degrees at night camping did not sound all that appealing. We drove into the city that night, had a ridiculous buffet dinner and lost all the money we decided to gamble. Josh playing Blackjack and Kathy playing machines with flashing lights. Again, struggling to stay up we wandered the strip for a little while admiring the lights and dodging the people handing out fliers for "escorts." It was big, flashy and impressive but not my (kathy's) cup of tea. We were glad we stopped just to see it. But both of us were looking forward to getting to the Grand Canyon. For one, Josh had never seen it and it would be a whole lot cooler because of the elevation.


We sluggishly left Las Vegas and headed towards the Grand Canyon. It took vast amounts of motivation to get moving because of the heat. The AC in the car barely kept the temperature comfortable inside. It cooled a little as we drove North and the scenery got a whole lot more interesting. We went to the Northern rim of the Grand Canyon since we figured the Southern rim would've been much busier.


We also got to go into Utah for a little bit of the drive.
We got to catch a glimpse of what Utah looks like. It was quite the color combination with green brush grass and bushes, orange mesas and bright blue skies dotted with clouds. The mesas were fantastic, unlike anything we had seen on the trip so far. Once we got close to the Grand Canyon we began celebrating the sight of trees and hills. It also got really cool and rainy, which was like heaven after the dry empty expanse of the desert. We settled into a campsite and drove to the rim. We got there a little bit before sunset and enjoyed the view. The Grand Canyon is truly incredible considering its size and geology. Different striations of rock decorate the walls and cedar trees take up residence of some of the most precarious cliffs. We watched one of the best sunsets of the trip and headed back to make dinner. The next morning we did a small hike to the edge and hit the road. We changed our original plans, and needed as much time as possible on the road.




Our original plan was to visit the National Parks in the Utah/Arizona area such as Zion, Brice Canyon, Arches and possibly Mesa Verde. After spending a few days in the desert in August we determined that the heat was unbearable. We were limited as to how long we could hike and when we could hike. Furthermore we would only really have one day in each of these parks when they really deserve at least two. We were worn out on National Parks, and exhausted by the heat. We vowed to return to this part of the country and visit all these parks sometime not in August.
We then plotted our course and embarked for New Orleans.

We drove two long, tedious days through New Mexico and Texas. For those who told us that Montana and North Dakota were barren and empty, they've got nothing on New Mexico. I think at one point I only saw one car, no houses and maybe a dozen cattle for two hours. And it's flat desert, so there's not even any interesting scenery to look at. We stopped overnight outside of Albuquerque. (which is the most difficult U.S. city to spell) The truly momentous part of our journey to the deep South was Roswell, NM. No, nothing alien related although we did go to the museum. It was rather elaborate. My favorite part was the four X-Files posters framed and hung in the back corner.


We had a significant discovery at the local Goodwill. For the 9,000 odd miles we've been traveling Josh has been searching for cowboy boots. We found some in San Francisco for $250 but those were out of the question. The Roswell, NM Goodwill had a pair that fit him like a glove for 8 bucks. Josh got so excited he locked the keys in the car.
Thank goodness my (kathy's) birthday present this year was a AAA membership. It only took thirty minutes for the tow truck guy to get to us, and about five minutes for him to break into the car.
Our heading to New Orleans caused us to stray from our two lane highway plan too. We spent most of the time on Interstate highways, so the trip through Texas and the Eastern part of Louisiana flew by.





We have until Monday morning here before we start heading back to MI. We plan to arrive home on Weds. Our route home will take us through Graceland and Mammoth Caves in KY.