It was dark and late when we arrived at our camp so we had no idea where we were. I stepped out side this morning and was blown away by the view. We had parked overlooking the mountains and a beautiful lake. We were both pretty exhausted, the heat and altitude really taking it out of us, so we decided to stay another day. We had plenty to do as the van was a mess.

I mentioned yesterday we bought a safe to keep our laptops in, so that was Mike’s first task to bolt that down. Then he got the bikes off and gave them a good clean off. I made coffee and worked in a video. 

A man from Texas camping not far away, came over to chat. He asked if he could sit, and then he just chatted away. We were both a bit shocked by his forwardness, but Americans aren’t as reserved as us British/Kiwis. The other thing I find is that they always like to know what you did as a job, as if that somehow defines you. I think I’m gonna start making stuff up. Mike can be an architect and I’ll be a marine biologist. Anyway, he finally left. I’m just glad the conversation didn’t turn to politics.

There is lots to explore around this area, but neither of us had the energy. The mornings are cool, but the days are hot. We’ve been camping at close to 8000 feet, and I think it takes a week or more to acclimatise. My HR is still quite high, and I’ve had a slight headache at times even though I’ve been drinking heaps, but other than a bit of shortness of breath on hikes, we both feel normal. 

The rest of the day we just sat and admired the view, trying to keep out of the heat.  We got the car tidied up, put up some fairly lights, and had bacon and eggs for lunch and a chicken and salad wrap for dinner. 

Today we left our forest camp early to avoid the heat, but somehow still ended up driving in the heat. We crossed into Colorado and stopped at a town called Montrose, which had a Walmart. We needed supplies so did a big shop, enjoying the air-conditioning in the store.

We’d managed to find a park in the shade at Walmart, so as it was too hot to drive, we spent the afternoon there. It was about 5pm by the time we decided it was cool enough to leave, neither of us really wanting to stay the night in a Walmart carpark. 

We stopped at the hardware store, looking for an adaptor to be able to power our starlink as our powerstation here is too weak. We couldn’t find one but ended up buying a safe to keep our laptops in. We really like the safe we have in Bertie, and even though we probably don’t need it, it’s nice to have somewhere to store our laptops rather than having them lying around.

As we continued out of town, I was thinking how it had been a “nothing” day. And then I saw a sign turning off to the black canyon national park. I had never heard of this place, but we were just driving past, it would have seemed silly not to visit. It was 6.30pm by this stage and sun sets at 7.30pm. We don’t like to drive after dark in the fear of hitting deer, so we hoped we might find somewhere to camp in the park.

But when we got there, the campground had completely burned down. A fire had swept through the place leaving eerie looking black trees all over the place. We stopped at the first scenic view point and Wow! The canyon walls were sheer vertical drops down into the canyon. It was like nothing I had ever seen. And the entire drive was like this, it was incredible. 

And you would think we might have planned things like this, but we arrived at sunset point right on sunset. A pure fluke! So, of course, we had to stay and watch the sunset. And it was beautiful. Even driving back under the blood red sky was unreal. We stopped off at another viewpoint and took a walk under the moonlight. The colours at this time of night made everything look surreal, and reminded me a bit of the midnight sun.

Then came the task of finding somewhere to sleep for the night. It was only 15 minutes back to Montrose, so I suggested we backtrack and sleep in the Walmart carpark. Mike wanted to continue onwards. So in the dark we drove, narrowly missing one deer. 

There were a couple of boondocking sites along the way, but we weren’t keen to venture onto dirt roads in the dark with Rodgers poor lighting. It wasn’t until 10pm that we found a national forest campground on the edge of a lake.  We pulled in, absolutely exhausted, and fell asleep. It will be a surprise to see where we are in the morning.

We decided on a days rest in our secluded forest camp. It was just too hot to drive. I got stuck into my next Estonia video, which I had been struggling with, while Mike sat outside enjoying some naked time. 

Mike kept on spotting wildlife. First a skunk, some squirrels and wild turkeys which were huge. Woodpeckers tap tap tapped on the trees around us. Then he heard a moo. Of course his first thoughts were it was a moose. But no, just some common cows wandering around.

Then, a man with his dog drove in. “Mike,clothes, Mike clothes,” I yelled from inside the van. Thankfully he was sitting on a towel so just wrapped it around himself. But the man looked quite amused. He just came to tell us he was talking his dog for a walk, and drove further on down the track.

I then tried to unlock the doors to get something out, and rather than the normal “click” from the central locking, there was nothing. Complete silence. A sound I recognised from many times last year. I checked the isolator switch that needs to be switched down when we stop to prevent the battery from draining. It was up. Mike tried to start the car but it was dead-as. 

Thankfully we have a jump starter, which we’ve used before. It also was flat. Bugger. We are basically in the middle of nowhere, with a flat battery.  I saw man with dog driving back down the track. “Quick, put some clothes on and flag him down!” I threw a pair of shorts at Mike.

The man stopped and helped. He also had a fancy jump starter thing, but his failed to work as well. We figured the van was just too flat. Thankfully he had a very heavy duty set of jump starters. And this did the trick.

It was way too hot to drive, so we sat with the van idling, quietly polluting the pristine forest. Let’s just hope it starts tomorrow.

The rest of the day I got stuck into finally finishing my video that I started two weeks ago. Now I just need to find somewhere to upload it.

Today was hot! We drove through deserts of rocks for about 3 hours in the heat with nothing in between. It was a beautiful drive, but it was too hot to hike, and there was no shade. So we kept on driving.

It’s so weird being back in Rodger after Bertie. Bertie is so sleek, modern and smooth, whereas Rodger is rough, vintage, and bouncy. At night in Bertie, our blockout blinks snap to the windows with magnets. With Rodger, it’s an elaborate closing of blinds, snapping them onto the window with clips, and numerous pegs to close off the gaps.

But there are many things to love about Rodger too, He just looks so damn cool driving through the deserts of Utah. And I love the fact I can climb through to the back from the cab. I do this sometimes when we are driving even. And the fridge is so big, we can fit a weeks worth of food in there. The bed system is much easier too, and the composting toilet is a game changer.

We didn’t do much today other than drive, and we clocked up over 300km. We eventually found some trees in a national forest, and found a nice free little spot all to ourselves in the shade.

We lazed around our campsite this morning, just taking in the views and drinking coffee. Then we decided we should get out for a walk. There was a short 1 hour walk along a river to a waterfall in the Capitol reef national park , so we did this. By this time it was already getting hot. We have to remember we’re at altitude here and to drink lots of water.

It was an easy but incredibly scenic walk along the river, with big red cliffs towering over us. Apart from one other family, there was nobody else on the walk which was surprising and at the end was a little waterfall.

Then we took a scenic drive through the national park. We did this last year, but only drove half of the road as it was closed. So, this year, we drove to the far end and it was an incredible drive through tall cliffs of so many colours, and stripes. 

At the end was a walk through a canyon where there were some historic markings on the rocks where people had signed their names as a register back in the 1800s.  It’s funny how graffiti is illegal now, but old graffiti is celebrated. It was a really nice walk through the canyon, but it was hot and we were probably a bit silly. We are still jet-lagged, and not used to the heat or the altitude. At the end of the walk we were so heat stressed that we drove until we found some shade and just flopped out for the rest of the afternoon.

We cooked our dinner there and about four friendly deer were grazing in the paddock right next to us. One of them had huge antlers and looked a bit scary. But they didn’t even look twice at us. 

After our bacon and eggs, we returned to the same place we camped last night, as it was less than ten minutes away. Knackered.

Our first night in Rodger was a success, but he smells very dusty. So we spent the morning at the campground, cleaning him and then doing more laundry. There’s a place down the road that we used to hoover him last year when I was sick with covid. I remember it was cheap, only $2 to vacuum for as long as you like. But when we arrived to vacuum him, the guy said it was free. I still don’t quite understand why. But we were happy and gave Rodger a really good hoovering, and he smells much better now.

And then we were on our way. As usual we have only a vague plan; to head towards Colorado avoiding freeways. As we left Cedar City, the scenery instantly changed to incredible. Dramatic rocks and hoodoos and all the things I love about America. We climbed up into the mountains and stopped at a lookout. There was a lady at the top walking around with a TV aerial. It seemed an odd place to want to watch TV, but who am I to judge. Mike was more curious and went over to see what see was doing. 

It turned out she wasn’t desperate for a TV signal, but was actually tracking rare North American condors which had transmitters attached. There were about 3 of them flying around. So the moral of the story is, don’t judge until you know the full story.

We kept on climbing into the mountains, and it got much cooler. At over 10,000 feet we came to Cedar Breaks national monument. We had no idea what this was, or that it was even here. Mike was going to keep driving, but I said we should stop, see what it was. And WOW!. It was a viewpoint over the top of the grand staircase which spans 150 miles. I’m hopeless at describing but it was like looking into a mini grand canyon. I’ll post a photo on facebook, or you can wait for the video. We continued driving and stopping at these incredible overlooks. America really knows how to show off its stuff with little effort from the viewer. Sure, we could have taken a walk, and we probably will at some stage, but for now, still jet-lagged and acclimatising to the altitude, this way of sightseeing is fine.

We continued on, up and up to almost 11,000 feet, before we started our descent. It’s a long weekend here and we were a bit worried about finding somewhere to camp, but then I remembered this isn’t Europe. There’s a lot more space, and less people. We stopped at a gorgeous boondocking site just outside of Capitol reef national park. We actually stayed here last year, and it’s still just as nice. And there were only two others camping here which was a surprise. We might do some walks in the park today, and camp here another night. We’ll see how we feel.

I awoke at 5am in our Las Vegas hotel room with a splitting headache, except it wasn’t a hangover. I took a couple of painkillers and tried to go back to sleep, but it didn’t go away. Then I realised I had missed an entire day with no coffee. I didn’t have one on the plane at all. Rookie mistake. And the US don’t have tea and coffee making facilities in hotels.

I googled somewhere that might be open at that time of morning, and Starbucks (gag) was the only place open. But I needed caffeine. Bad. So we wandered downstairs, surprised to see a few people already queuing for coffee. And then I saw the price. $10 USD for a flat white which will probably taste disgusting! So we wandered around the casino looking for somewhere cheaper. There were a few early morning (probably still out from last night) gamblers on the floor, but it was eerily quiet. 

Our mission to find anywhere else open failed, so we decided to suck it up.  Back at the Starbucks counter I noticed they had filter coffee for half the price. This is something Americans know how to do. And I’d much rather have a good filter coffee than an piss-weak espresso.

Sometimes I wish I’d never started drinking coffee, it is quite a severe addiction, but the filter coffee hit the spot, and the headache faded. It was a nice time of morning to be up and about before the crowds. We headed out onto the strip, and were instantly knocked back by the heat. At 6am! But it was still cooler than it was at 10pm the previous night.

We picked up some supplies from CVS. Two snickers bars, a sandwich and some pretzel crisps. Oh, and two cokes, emergency caffeine if we get stuck again. (We could have had breakfast out for $40 usd per person. Yikes. Las Vegas is ridiculously expensive these days)

And then it was time to pick up Rodger. We ordered an uber, and it was only a 20 minute trip to the storage unit, no traffic thankfully. The storage unit has shrunk. They’ve sold off a big chunk of it, and Rodger was crammed in with a few other vans. I just hope they don’t get rid of it completely, otherwise we’ll be stuffed!

It was nice to see Rodger again, but he was absolutely filthy. We hadn’t seen anywhere to wash him before we stored him which was a shame. We opened the doors and dumped our backpacks inside. Rodger had been locked up for about a year, and he smelled quite musty and needs a good clean. And he was really hot inside which makes me wonder if the warehouse is climate controlled. I think not. Either that, or they are keeping him outside without us knowing. But I guess the important question is, did he start?

Mike got into the drivers seat, I got the GoPro out to film the moment. And first time, he roared into life, rearing to get out on the road again. So we climbed onboard, and off we went, into the desert heat, no air-conditioning. Even with the windows down, it was like a furnace was blowing in. We just wanted to get out of Vegas, and into the mountains.So we took the motorways and got out as quickly as we could.

It was weird being back in Rodger after Bertie. Bertie is modern and smooth and doesn’t smell like damp, whereas Rodger likes to bounce all over the road, but the seats are like armchairs.

In the drive I got a bit peckish so I reached for my snickers bar. But guess what? Yes that’s right. It was a sticky liquid gooey mess. I drank it down as best I could making a mental note not to make that mistake again!

It took us about 3 hours to get to the mountains, and even though it was still about 33 degrees, we noticed the drop in temperature. We stopped at Cedar city, at the same campground where we spent a week last year with covid! But it seemed like a good place to stop and get things done. Rodger badly needed a clean, we needed food, and we also needed to do laundry. So that’s what we did for the afternoon. 

Tomorrow? No idea, but we’re heading towards Colorado.

We had a great time in the UK and the weather was perfect. We set up camp in Bertie outside Nick and Ems house, and spent time catching up with family, swims at the beach and visiting an aeroplane museum.  We had both been putting off booking our flights, both a bit nervous about visiting to US due to nightmare stories I had heard about the border. But we decided to push paranoia to the side and go for it anyway.

I decided to book a flight directly to Las Vegas, just to make it less stress. And it was actually considerably cheaper to book return, so we also have a return flight to use at some stage if we choose. We’d been given a chance to order our meals in advance and we both ordered the chicken tikka masala.

We’d only been able to book middle seats though, so I was keeping an eye on our booking for any window seats coming up. Every time I did this, it offered me an upgrade to upper class, but it was quite expensive, so I ignored it. But then, with less than 24 hours before our flight, they offered us an upgrade for a very small amount. We did um and ah, but eventually decided, fuck it, let’s do it! That’s what credit cards are for! 

The next day we left Bournemouth at around 8am and had an easy drive to London, virtually no traffic. We arrived at the airport 6 hours early for our flight, but no surprise there.  This is where the upper class upgrade comes into its own. We went through the upper class security, no queues! Then straight to the Virgin clubhouse lounge. This is also pretty cool. Everything is table service. You order through an app and they bring you food, drinks, anything you like. I had a terrible headache, so I went and had a lay down in the chill out area. Calm music and aromatherapy soothed my headache away.

Then we boarded the 787 dreamliner. The seats are at an angle like on AirNZ. We sat down and prepared for take-off, only to be told there were storms, and we’d be an hour late taking off. When we finally took off, there was a little turbulence, but it soon died down and was calm. 

I looked at my menu and was very disappointed to see there was no chicken tikka masala on there. There was only a choice of haddock, and two other dishes with lots of cheese which didn’t sound appealing. So we both opted for the haddock. I had a fish dish in the lounge and it was really yummy, so I figured this would be nice too. After all we were in “Upper” class.

Anyway, our fish arrived and it was disgusting. I couldn’t eat it. Mike forced his down. I told the cabin crew I had ordered a Chicken tikka when I was in economy, and asked if they still had any. She went and had a look, and sure enough, there was one left. So here I am eating an economy meal in “upper” class, and it was infinitely better! Even Mike agreed. I think sometimes they try to be too fancy.

It was a smooth flight, and we both watched the Bob Dylan movie which was good.

We landed in Las Vegas, and there was nobody there! The queues were empty, a start contrast to LAX. So we got straight through, no wait. We arrived at our hotel about 8.30pm. It was still really hot in Vegas but we went for a short walk anyway. There are way less people here this year from last year.