We are a people who live without running water and air conditioning. Vincent is a van who runs on coolant and a tiny little fan that tries to keep his engine cool.
And we're totally wimps. There's that.
Nevertheless, there is one thing I have not seen in my nearly 38 years, and I felt like my life would not be complete unless I saw it.
The Grand Canyon.
I understood that yes, it is really just a magnificent "hole in the ground." That battling the unseemly number of mindless pilgrims would be a ruthless and painful battle. That there really was no gain for my battle except a "Yup, been there" at cocktail parties.
But I am nearly 38 years old and I have not seen that particular hole in the ground.
I drove from Utah to Arizona, and we managed to find this little diner/gift shop/hotel/cookie bakery in Jacob Lake. I'm pretty sure it's the only business in Jacob Lake, but they make a little sandwich called the Bull & Onion, and the lemon zucchini cookie is pretty amazing.
We camped somewhere off the road, off the grid, and off the radar, and woke up when the sun started baking the insides of Vincent.
The North Rim. We had to wait in line just to enter the park, which I always rate a dismal sign. It's a pretty simple process - you remit payment or show your National Parks card, the ranger asks if you want a map, you drive on. Somehow, we've ended up in line after line.
Regardless, our greeting committee was pretty awesome.
Wild bison, doing their bison thing, and we were being passed by Camrys and Priuses going well over the posted speed limit.
We parked and analyzed the hikes before us. My foot was rocking, but I spied an Easy trail that promised some of the best views in the park. Best yet, there was a substantial drive to get to it. The serious hikers were now finishing for the day, and the tourists were filing into the North Rim Lodge to get their fill of iced tea on the veranda, so we went for it.
I don't want to give away my secret, but I'll tell you this: the trail was very easy to find. It was relatively simple to hike. It took a few hours. It completely paid off. Ryan and I had that corner of the North Rim entirely to ourselves.
I feel pretty comfortable with my 38 year wait. I also didn't mind hiking nearly 6 miles on a wonky foot. It was absolutely unreal. Astounding.
After substantial musing and reflection, we commenced to the second purpose of our trip- the Ales part of Ales and Trails. Onward to Flagstaff!
I actually drove this part as well, and experienced some of the most desolate, blank part of the state I could imagine. There was just... dust. It was scenic, for sure, and unlike anything I'd seen before, but what nothing!
Ryan warned me that Flagstaff was "super touristy," but I really didn't get that vibe. Maybe it was the breweries.
Our first was Wanderlust, where I met a dog named Callie who wanted nothing to do with me. I kept myself busy with a delicious 928 Belgian.
We were responsible, and found ourselves a hotel room central to all the breweries, so at the next stop, I enjoyed two Papago Orange Blossom Ales with an exceptional hummus plate at a brewpub up the road.
Our final stop of the evening was Dark Skies Brewing. We didn't actually plan it to be the last stop, but Dark Skies offered high octane barrel-aged brews and live music, so we stayed a little longer than intended, because the band was really, really good.
The next day, we planned to hit Sedona and do a little wine tasting in Cottonwood.
We pulled into Sedona, and immediately the gauntlet of fudge-seeking tourists began. I had the narrow pangs of an almost hangover, and simply Could Not suffer the tourists. We got gas and beat feet out of there.
By the time we arrived in Cottonwood, the temperature was well over 100. I was miserable. Vincent was miserable. Ryan is impervious to heat. Our first stop was to Arizona Stronghold, where I enjoyed a flight of reds, whites, and a rose. I even bought a bottle of Zinfandel. I didn't mean to - this drunk lady at the bar and her child were whooping and hollering, and I really wanted to get out of there, so I agreed to purchase the wine and left. It was delicious and I look forward to enjoying the bottle in peace and quiet.
Our next stop was Merkin, which is famously owned by the lead singer of Tool. I enjoyed the Tarzan and Jane flight, and even got a glass of The Diddler White while we languished in the air conditioning.
Before long, the sun relented, the temperatures dropped, and we hit the road again to find a spot to sleep. We found a variety of pop-up towns on our way to the National Forest- little dusty clusters of semi-rotting buildings. Mountainside dwellings that made us wonder if we had transported to Europe. One road mainways. Eventually, all of these led to the desolation of wild flatness that dominated the area.
We parked next to this tree. I have no idea where it was, but the sunset was phenomenal.
Amazingly, we also had phone service, and a quick search revealed we could get a hotel room in Vegas for the next night for the low, low price of $23. No joke. That was pretty much a no-brainer.
We rolled into Vegas around noon, and I scouted a place for lunch that touted the best nachos and margaritas around. All of this is fine by me, and that's how we ended up at Nacho Daddy's by Fremont Street.
When we arrived on Fremont Street, I was pumped and feeling the energy of Vegas. After a couple hours in the 104F heat, I just wanted a hotel room and a fan and an endless supply of ice water.
We tried. We showered and dressed and put on a good face, but we never made it out of the hotel's main floor. We enjoyed our free drinks, we dutifully sacrificed $20 to the slot deity, and we came back to the room and passed out. Total time: 50 minutes.
And that was it. The next day, we loitered as long as we could. We watched a movie. We had Mexican street food for lunch. We even went to Target.
But, as our plans for Hawaii have us leaving from Seattle in just a few short days, we had to put a hustle on our plans, and that was it for Nevada as we headed further west to California!
Since the travel portion of this entry was so short and terribly unexciting, I'm going to take this opportunity to answer some of the questions I get about van living.
The first thing anyone says, when they learn I am Van People, is "What's that like- I've always wanted to try it?!" I usually say "It's awesome- go for it." I truly believe that. If you want to be a Van People, do it. Try it out. But be super-prepared.
It is isolating. We go for days without directly interacting with other people, except at gas stations or stores when we're picking up supplies. The only news we get is when our phones pick up service and we catch a glimpse here or there of the real world. I keep social media updated so folks at home can follow along and not worry about us, but they get the 30-second recap of what has happened all day, squeezed in when I find a miraculous bubble of cell phone service long enough to upload photos and say something about them.
We drive. A lot. We typically don't do more than a 2 hours stretch at a time, but there are days where the most significant thing we've done is drive. Wine tasting in Cottonwood took an hour, tops. The rest of that day was driving. Ergonomics was not a thing when Vincent was designed in 1985, so sitting and flopping around and crash-banging down bumpy roads can lead to neck pain and bum discomfort.
The bed is basically a mattress from a futon on a platform of two-by-fours. We sleep with the windows open, and bugs come in. The other night, I played Mah-Jonng on my phone with a moth perched on my finger. It didn't improve my times, but it felt very zen.
Most Van People consider it cheating if you pull into a pay campsite or hotel for the night. Most Van People also have running water in their vans. Vincent was not set up to have running water, ever, so we don't have that option. We have a spray bottle of water, and bottles of water, so we can brush our teeth and spot clean ourselves on the road, but we do enjoy stopping for a shower and flush toilet now and then. We also recycle the melted ice in the cooler to keep cool in the desert, since we don't have AC. We have some solar-powered hand lights that we use as torches when we need to move about at night.
The strangest part really is the isolation, though. Not only is there the lack of human interaction I mentioned earlier, but you don't realize how empty this country is until you've spent several hours in a row driving through the desert in silence. Vincent does have a stereo, with a cd player and Bluetooth, but he's very picky about playing cds, and you can't have Bluetooth when you have no cell phone service. We mostly drive in silence, windows down, air rushing around us, pointing out interesting things along the way with a grunt or a nudge, since little can be heard over the wind circulating in the cabin.
The depression game is real. This is a far cry from Home. I am effectively Home-less. My permanent address is in Ohio. The place I lay my head changes every day. I don't get naps. I don't get drinks with my friends. I don't get to cuddle with my cats. I don't get to have my nightly panic attack on my custom-made sofa while watching Netflix with Ryan- I have to have my nightly panic attack in the dark, somewhere unknown, listening to my heart race and wondering if I'm going to die while Ryan sleeps away the past 16 hours of driving. It is very, very lonely. All of my friends are just a text away... when I have phone service... but I can't actually reach out and spend a few hours with them.
You also get a feel for how unreal the world is. How petty and puny each of us is, in the grand scheme of things. Nature is this huge, whopping, unfathomable force, and we're paying $30 a carload to eat Doritos by a hole in the ground. I want to shake people awake and tell them they can't take this for granted- that this is miraculously created by a force they can't even imagine, and they're whining about tan lines and the queue at the giftshop. Make life a priority. The number one thing you can do is be good to each other and good to the world, but most of the people I've seen, wandering self-importantly in traffic, pushing people off trails, forcing cars off the road so they can speed down mountains at unnecessary breakneck speeds... I don't believe for a second they can experience compassion on an existential level. You can offer them a $70,000 fine for going off-trail, and they'll still wander into the bushes and step on a rare lizard to get the best photo shot.
So I don't know. I don't know if it's good for me, bad for me, or if none of those things really exist, and this is just a moment in which I exist. But I'm here, and I'm there, and I'm exploring everything, and doing my best to document it so others will come along, too.
Pictures are amazing. Since most of the time the only person I talk to his Cassie anyway, I think that we may want to do this someday. I know when we drove down from Seattle to Austin it took us 5 days and the trip was amazing. Of course we stopped in the hotel every night. LOL
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