On the Road Again

Las Vegas to Yosemite

Back in the air again. My 4^th flight in less than 2 months. Who knew a “vanbatical” required so much flying? This time, I am on my way to Vegas. On landing, the West Jet flight attendant is playing some Elvis Presley tune and telling us to behave ourselves in sin city. But after getting my suitcase (which I could barely close after Mike told me to pack the orange and black sleeping bag), I am not taking a cab to the strip but instead looking around the passenger pick up area for the van.

Making the decision to get back in the van after deciding to not finish off the trip in the van wasn’t easy. And even up till the day I left, I was looking for excuses to cancel the flight and stay. Not that I didn’t want to go and see Mike but I had kind of gotten into a nice routine in Kenora and leaving felt disruptive (remember that I like routine!). But once getting here, I was happy to be here and grateful to be touring some pretty impressive sights. The time frame of 3 weeks felt manageable.

So maybe not surprisingly, we didn’t spend any time in Vegas. Instead, we headed straight to Red Rock Canyon National Conservatory. This is still in Nevada and easily a 20 minute drive from Vegas. I am sure guidebooks will tell you that it is a great way to get away if you are feeling a bit over stimulated on the strip. There are many well marked trails in the park or you can just do a scenic drive through it (although if you are going to pay, you might as well stop and explore). Mike had already been doing lots of desert walking with Dawson but this was my first time back in it since Osoyoos. It wasn’t as hot as it was in Osoyoos when we had been there in June (in fact the Visitors Centre staff member we spoke to said temperatures were cooler than normal) and luckily the rain held out while we were hiking (yes it also rains in a desert – especially in winter months). Cactus and gnarly trees and red rock cliffs and climbers (who looked like lego figurines on those cliffs) were the sites of the day while Mike and I hiked the trails and got caught up on the past month apart. The nice thing about this park was they did allow leashed dogs on the trails (we were soon to learn that many parks in California do not want any dogs at any time on any of their trails).

After 2 nights in Red Rock, we moved onto Death Valley National Park and arrived in mid afternoon to +20 degree Celsius temperatures. This is a whole other level of desert. I think Death Valley is the 2^nd largest National Park in the US. And because it is so hot in many parts of it, nothing really grows very tall so you can see forever – cliffs and valleys and salt flats and more desert. And what are the salt flats? It is a huge area of the park that is 282 feet below sea level and made up of, well, salt. As I write this, I realize I should have paid more attention in the visitors centre but I seem to recall that since it is so stinking hot in Death Valley, the water evaporates that would normally pool here, leaving behind salt (although why the water is salt water and not freshwater is the part I should have paid more attention to).

As I mentioned earlier, since this is a National Park, Dawson wasn’t allowed on any of the trails. Although walking on roads isn’t what I imagined I would be doing in a National Park, one of my favorite “road hikes” was a winding switchback style road that led to a campground from where a 7 mile trail began to the highest point in the park (telescope peak). The road was fun as it had been recently been closed to vehicles due to snow. Snow in Death Valley where it was 20 degrees the day before? Yes, because Death Valley also has areas of high elevation (telescope peak sits at 11000 feet). So Dawson had a blast running through the snow (busted – we might have let him off leash here) and Mike and I were still rewarded with great views along the way.

From Death Valley we made our way to Sequoia National Park. This will likely be one of my highlights of this trip. Not because of any epic hike but because those Sequoia trees are amazing. They tower above you so high and their trunks are so wide and the bark is this stunning golden reddish colour. They are also brilliantly adapted to a very specific elevation (I think between 5000-7000 feet) and to fire. Their bark is actually fire resistant because they need fire to burn the forest floor exposing the soil so their seeds will germinate and also to open their cones Sequoia National Park is also a place of learning from mistakes. In the 1950s, it was a full of towns with multiple gas stations and hotels and roads and infrastructure but in realizing this was harming these magnificent trees, they took it all down. It is inspiring to see where Nature got to come first.

Sequoia National Park is attached to King’s Canyon National Park so we continued on to the smaller part of King’s Canyon Park that was still actually open in the winter. A friendly ranger at the visitors centre, recommended we leave the National Park boundaries and go into the national forest area (about 20 km away) so that Dawson could join us on a hike. King’s Canyon was also our first night of 4 nights camping at elevation. So although it didn’t go down to -7 degrees Celsius in the van that Mike experienced in Utah, it did go down to +3. This is where my frustration of having to stuff that orange and black sleeping bag into my suitcase back in Kenora turned to gratitude to Mike for ensuring that I packed it. And what is so magical about this sleeping bag? It is rated to -29 degrees Celsius and it definitely kept me warm when that temperature went down.

On to Yosemite. If I had to guess, this will likely be Mike’s highlight of this portion of his trip. With good reason. You are in this beautiful valley with shear 3000 feet rock cliffs surrounding you on every side. With cliffs like these, you can understand how rock climbing was born here and still captivates climbers like Alex Honold who solo climbed El Capitaine (one of those cliffs) documented in the recently released movie, Free Solo. The history of Yosemite is also pretty amazing. Although not the first national park in the US, it was the first area of land to be protected anywhere in the world back in the 1870s and sort of set the precedence for both national and state park protected public land in both the US and other countries. The famous explorer John Muir was then also instrumental in establishing Yosemite as a National Park in the early 1900s.

And where to from Yosemite and those cold nights at elevation? I hear the coast is warmer – let’s head there…