Southwest National Parks
In an effort to process old trips, I am slowly reviewing photography and past adventures. I cannot remember why or how we decided to take this trip. It was probably some crazy concoction of my doing. Caitlin flew into Denver and the next day we drove straight from Denver to my father’s house in Phoenix. The drive was ~920 miles from Denver through Santa Fe and Albuquerque.
In New Mexico, we stopped at this scary bathroom where I swore we might get murdered. 0/10 would not recommend it. Otherwise, we ended up going to three National Parks: Pecos, Petroglyph, and El Malpais. Caitlin also got the pleasure of driving my car for the first time and we got some laughs and bobblehead moments. During sunset, we had the opportunity to take some beautiful pictures in Tonto National Forest. This is a scenic canyon forested drive and the sunset made it prettier than normal.
With a really late arrival at my dad’s the next day we celebrated Caitlins birthday.
Continuing on our trip our next stop was the Grand Canyon. We rented a shipping container with some of the roof replaced with glass so we could see the stars at night. Being in my challenger with very little ground clearance it was horrible offroading and getting lost in the middle of nowhere. Thankfully we found the storage unit and I was ready to park my car and sleep in it.
Interestingly there was no bathroom in the container but there was a plywood box outside with a 5-gallon bucket and composting toilet paper - it was an “adventure”. In the morning we went back for some more photos of the canyon before continuing on to Las Vegas.
On our way to Vegas, we stopped at the Hoover Dam. We also had a period of 20 minutes where we got stuck listening to variations of “Wheels on the Bus” before we gave up on our music game of asking Siri to play and stating the funniest part of a song and seeing what garbage you get stuck listening to.
We stopped at the Fremont strip got some adult beverages and had to go to the Heart Attack Grill. It was an experience that everyone should try once. especially if you are over 350 and want free food.
The remainder of our time was spent in the lazy river at MGM along with walking the strip and getting some amazing Dim Sum. On our way back to Denver we crossed southern Utah and stopped at the following National Parks: Zion, Bryce Canyon, and Arches.
Ok… so be real with me - would you fly into this airport?
Guess what? We found Candy Mountain, I wonder if Charlie’s kidney was ever sold?
Our beautiful AirBnb view in Moab Utah.
We did a quick tour of Arches and took some silly photos while there. The ravens were convinced that Caitlin would share her Cheetos and would not stop following her as long as she had that little bag in her hand. Overall this was an amazing trip - Caitlin even got to play in the snow as we crossed the Rockies on our way back to Denver.
