Rather than trying to squeeze in all the shots of balloons and our experience on the balloon field into the last post, we decided to write a separate one to show you what it was like. Like a lot of amazing experiences in your life, pictures rarely do them justice.
After meeting up and spending the night at the Albuquerue Camping World parking lot with our friend Kyle, we woke up to hundreds of Airstreams lining up to make their way to the balloon field. We didn’t really know what to expect and thought most people would not be there until much later but we were wrong.
We woke up at the Walmart in Gallup and now we are officially in New Mexico. We have a couple of days to explore before we need to rendezvous with the WBCCI group for the Balloon Fiesta. This whole government shutdown has taken out a lot of exploring options for us on this leg of our trip.
The news of the government shutdown became official this morning as we woke up in the parking lot of Cliff Castle Casino in Camp Verde, AZ. The whole reason why we stayed here last night is because of Montezuma Castle National Monument down the road.
When we left Salvation Mountain, we decided to make the drive all the way to the Phoenix area. We made the 250 mile drive which is a long ways for us in one night. We decided to check out Buckeye Regional Park which offers free camping in designated sites. It was kind of tricky getting to a new spot at night but we managed to find a good spot.
Last fall when we were in Las Vegas I spend the time and effort to repack all of my bearing on my own for the first time. We have always had it done by others in the past but it feels good to know that the job is done and done well by myself. I documented the job on one of the wheels to illustrate to you my process. Click here to read all about it. Enjoy.
(FYI, I am not a professional mechanic so please do this at your own risk!)
We came back to California after a few nights in Las Vegas in order to attend a friend’s wedding in Santa Barbara. We left nearly 2 months ago knowing that we had to be back for this special event. Even though we are only here for a week before heading back out, it was worth to trip to come back.
I have been asked many times about tips and tricks to boondocking. How do we keep batteries charged? How to minimized our water usage and where do we fill and dump our water tanks? All that and more is discussed in a new page I created for this blog. It will live as one of the main navigational links on the top of the each page. I plan on writing more resources like that to go under a new resources section in the navigation in the future. Click here to read all about boondocking.
We left Zion after dark and made the 150 mile drive to Las Vegas for a night of boondocking before checking into one of its many cheap, full-hookup RV parks for a few days while we take things a little slower before heading back to Southern California for a friend’s wedding.
We are at one of our most favorite places in the entire country. Southern Utah. When we came through here in 2012, we did not get to see Zion because of the hot weather in the lower elevations. Bryce Canyon is significantly cooler but we knew that we will need to come back to Zion. Today we did.
After such an amazing time in the Tetons, we sadly parted with our friends and started to head south. This loop is winding down to the last few days before we will find ourselves back in southern California. Until then, we will try to make the best of the road between here and there.
As many of you know by now that the blog is still way behind but we promise we will catch up soon. In the meantime, here is a cool video Josh made of our time at the Joshua Tree Dry Lake Bed BLM spot. This was from our stay there last week. If you do not follow us on Facebook or Instagram, the video gives you a glimpse of what we’ve been doing lately. Enjoy.
