The Grand Canyon

Still May 13th:
It is a relatively short stretch between Vegas and the Grand Canyon. We happened to leave Vegas just in perfect time to arrive at the Grand Canyon 20 minutes before sunset! In retrospect, there was a small tragedy that made this possible: we somehow missed the last In n’ Out opportunity, a stop we had been set on making from the beginning of our trip since there are no more past Arizona. Alas, we missed the exit in Tucson and there was not another exit until it clearly made no sense to turn around. There was a spontaneous moment of silence in the car. Until next time…

But the sunset at the Grand Canyon was a fair trade. It is such an astounding place – more magnificent than I could’ve imagined. After the sun went down we had to work on setting up camp. We were lucky again to get to the general store right before it closed to get some camp food and then triple lucky when we got the last campsite available! We set up camp, made mac n’ cheese and enjoyed the little fire we made. Camping is so much fun!

Route: Hwy 93 – I-40 – Hwy 64
Major points: Las Vegas, Grand Canyon


May 14th:
We broke camp and took our time leaving the Grand Canyon area, stopping a few more times just to look at it again. It made the long stretch ahead a little longer but again, so worth it. The extra treat was that our route (next stop Carlsbad Caverns) took us through the Painted Desert.

Intermission… 15 hours of driving…

During that time we realized that there is no camping in the Carlsbad area. To keep on schedule we needed to camp near there – really near there. We found a spot in the Guadalupe Mountains, just on the boarder of Texas and New Mexico, on the Texas side. We arrived at 3am. It was a pretty creepy spot; a self check-in campground so there were no on duty rangers and it was out in the middle of nowhere yet really accessible by car. We didn’t really have another option so we set up the tent and crawled in. We lay awaked awhile while strange noises played with our heads and ghosts rattled the tent.

Route: Hwy 64 – Hwy 89 – I-17 – I -40 – Hwy 62/180
Major points: Painted Desert, Tucson, El Paso, Guadalupe Mountains