Road trip USA: Part 3

Ok, it seems that I posted parts 1 and 2 three times, which is a bit odd. I think I pressed back instead of editing or something. Oh well, it's fixed now. The trip's almost done, but before the stunning conclusion in part 4, you'll need to read...

Desert detour
(Where the streets have no name)

Driving to Joshua Tree National Park took us away from the coast and into the desert regions of the California, erm, desert. We drove through the Coachella Valley, where I had spent a few days about a month ago, to arrive at the national park's southern entrance. Unfortunately, the ranger station had already closed. We got in without paying the parks fee, but we also had no idea what to do at the park apart from what our Lonely Planet guides told us. We soldiered on, however, and stopped at places that looked interesting, including a rather treacherous bit of road (due to road work) to a vista point that overlooked the Coachella Valley.

At that point, the sun was beginning to set, so we decided it was probably a good idea to head to our campsite and set up camp before it got too dark. When we got there, the campsite registration office had also been closed, leaving us rather confused on the procedure for pre-booked campsites. We headed over to the area where we were meant to camp and found it completely desolate. There were barely any facilities, which was to be expected, and there were also no other campers there. This made the landscape under the setting sun behind clouds look very alien, which was neat, but it also made things rather spooky. We were afraid we'd get eaten by coyotes or something. The registration office was closed when we left early in the morning, so we left Joshua Tree National Park as clueless as we were when we entered.

The next leg of the trip was the Grand Canyon, which we were hoping would have more people and give us more information upon entry. The drive to Arizona's most famous national park was quite uneventful with the exception of the car trouble that left us stranded for 4 hours. Almost right after we passed the California-Arizona border crossing the Colorado River, we hit an unavoidable (and quite random) piece of wood on the road, completely messing up a wheel, a tire, and our plans.

We called the insurance company that we took out the car insurance with and they said the earliest they could get a replacement car to us was four hours, since they would have to send it out from Las Vegas. Fortunately, a kind tow-truck driver named Carl saw us pulling over to the side of the road, and towed us to the nearest city, Lake Havasu City, where we would then sit and wait for our new car. We spent our four or so hours there buying more stuff for our trip (mainly really cheap air mattresses - floating swimming pool beds for $1.50) and rethinking the next few days of our trip.

By the time the new car arrived, we had decided to spend an extra night at the Grand Canyon so we would have more time to take in the sights, thus scrapping our venture to a couple of eastern Utah national parks.

The Grand Canyon itself was huge. To our relief, we saw that the campgrounds there were much more populated, meaning no more coyote scares. It immediately showed that this national park was much more popular and thus more organized than Joshua Tree. We didn't get to do much the first night, but we did visit a fair few viewpoints on the second day, and on the day we left.

The consensus we reached was that we would go on to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon for the Friday night instead of going all the way to Moab to see Arches National Park, saving us a lot of time and gas money. We set up camp at around midday at Jacob's Lake, which was really just a tiny little pond in somebody's yard. In contrast to this anticlimax, the highly recommended cookies at the Jacob's Lake Inn were very good.

The North Rim of the canyon was better than the south rim for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the higher elevation meant cooler temperatures, allowing for lush vegetation in and around that region of the park. Secondly, since the northern part of the national park was less accessible from the south (about four or five hours drive from the South Rim), there were generally less visitors, which is always a good thing (except in the case of completely empty campgrounds).

We drove around, again seeing the view of the Grand Canyon from several points, then headed back to our campsite, where we had more cookies from the inn. Bryce Canyon was the next stop, this time being a very forgiving two and a half hour trip across the Arizona-Utah border.

Breathtaking is the perfect word to describe Bryce Canyon. The Grand Canyon may have been amazing in its scope, but Bryce Canyon's beauty was incomparable. The red rocks that got their colour from iron oxide blended with the white/gray sandstone in just the right way to make the rock formations in the Bryce Canyon Amphitheater truly a sight to behold. I wish I could have been here for longer to venture into the bottom of the canyon and see the rocks from there, or been here for the winter when, I would imagine, the cross-country skiing views would be unlike any other place on earth.

The last few nights of sleep had been in very cold conditions, I suppose due to the high altitude. Temperatures reached below freezing on some nights, and I found it hard to sleep with my nose and ears stinging from the cold. In stark contrast, it was very hot when we reached Zion National Park. We were pleased to learn that the overnight temperatures don't often reach under 60 degrees Fahrenheit (around 15 Celsius). The park itself was also different to the two previous ones in that it was situated within the canyon instead of above it like Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon were (well, you could go into the canyon in those parks, but they involved rather hefty multi-day hikes). Zion would be our final desert national park stop before heading to Las Vegas.