187sks

So busy_squirrel and myself went on a short but action packed vacation from the 21st to the 24th. I know, 4 days isn't that much of a vacation but we made up for it by packing as much into those 4 days as possible.



We started off by failing to secure shuttle rides to the airport until the last minute. Busy managed to find one but mine was booked so I had to slip wilburisthecoolest some cash so that he would take me to the airport at 3:00am. The flight went well and preperation was informative as we figured out the regulations for taking a firearm in your checked baggage on a plane. I gave up and decided to go unarmed but Busy went through with it and it was suprisingly simple and painless. I was glad we had a decent pistol with us however because it's a little sketchy in some places along abandoned highways in the middle of nowhere.

We got on our plane and left the raining disgusting weather of Seattle and landed in sunny Ontario, California. Here we met up with Busy's grandmother who was giving him our transportation...a 97 GMC Safari AWD. Pimp.


It was a little banged up but not too badly so we headed for Vegas, making a stop along the way for food and pictures.




About halfway to Vegas we stopped for gas at the world's tallest thermometer in Baker, CA in the Mojave Desert just outside of Death Valley. It's 134 feet tall to commemorate the world record 134 degree temperature measured in Death Valley. It was only 107 degrees when we were there thankfully. We didn't much care about the thermometer though at the time because this is when we found out that the van had transmission and overheating problems. I checked the tranny and it was several inches above the full mark on the dipstick and frothy. It had coolant so I left that alone, but bought extra fluids for it while in town. We did however find time to fit in a photo op with Busy scaling a Mojave Desert rock formation.


We continued towards Vegas looking at our stick on replacement mirror on the passenger's side whenever we wanted to see the desert as a surreal painting.


As we drove along in triple digit temperatures with the A/C off to build character and to keep the van from boiling over we started seeing Joshua trees which were pretty interesting to us northwesterners.


We finally came into Vegas and set about finding a place to stay since we had failed to make reservations.


We got off the highway and found a room at the Tropicana. The transmission was worse than ever but the van wasn't overheating since we had the A/C off. We were on the 7th floor and had a pretty good view of the strip.








We showered upon arrival and I found that I had solid salt deposits in my hair from sweating so much and having it evaporate. I was glad to get the crust off of me. Then we went out to walk the strip. I have never seen so many drunk people in my life. I was loving the fact that you could stumble down the street with a drink in your hand without getting arrested. We decided that we should join the drunk people and got started at a roadside bar. I think I drank the most refreshing beer in the history of mankind. We walked some more then looked for a place to eat. Obviously there are lots of places to eat however I'm a meat and potatoes kind of guy and Busy is a vegetarian so trying to find a place that was good for each of us was difficult. After a lot of wandering I talked Busy into eating at the Cathouse mostly because of the scantily clad women in the posters outside and the strip club vibe pouring out of the place. I was in Vegas and I wanted to see some eye candy and this looked like the place.

That's where I was wrong. I don't actually regret going to eat there because it was a very unique experience but if I had known what the place was like I would have picked some buffet downstairs over this place. It was a very romantic, hip, fancy restaurant which featured semi-sexy outfits on the waitresses (although understated way too much for Vegas) and a peep show style window into the dressing room where occasionally a woman would go into and push makeup around her face as if she was getting ready for something. This bored me but at least it was something to look at. Eventually she picked out a new outfit to wear and I was excited but to my dismay she put up a blanket hiding her as she changed into the new lingerie. Weaksauce. This is Vegas, but apparently nobody bothered to inform them. I was disappointed as you can probably tell. Food was fancy, that's for sure but it wasn't incredibly good or even better than average in my opinion. The menu was tough to pick through and find anything to eat. It was bad enough that me and Busy ended up picking the same dish despite our different tastes in food. Oh well, I drank my $6 Bud Lights and Busy drank his $10 7&7's and we got buzzed. We paid for our food and went out to cause trouble.




We walked up the strip mostly people watching and sightseeing but also exploring all of the interesting looking casinos. We watched the water display at the Bellagio which was actually pretty impressive from right below it.

187sks

Busy scaled the side of the Luxor for a photo op and we headed back to sleep off our drinks.


I woke up and my head felt ten times it's normal size but we got up and headed to a shop to get the transmission flushed. We found the place and dropped off the van before wasting a bunch of time at the local McDonalds where we saw what looked suspiciously like Vamp in his white SRT-4 go through the drive thru. Eventually we got the van back and headed to a parts store for tools, a thermostat, some shift improver just in case, and some water wetter. The thermostat had broken and stuck open (making the van run at like 115 degrees unless we were going uphill) but we needed to be able to change it if it stuck closed.


On the way out of town we stopped at a gas station and I went in for ice and maps. This hot little chick kept turning around and smiling at me so I struck up a conversation. It was really too bad we were leaving Vegas right then. REALLY too bad. Damn it. We left for the Hoover Dam.


Along the way there were a large variety of cacti. One of which I thought should come home with me so I chopped it off and brought it up with us in the back of the van. A cactus doesn't make a very good road trip companion after all and if I had it to do again I would have left it there.


We stopped for gas in the desert somewhere and I felt the transmission still shifting rough so I added the transmission shift improver. That seemed to do the job as the tranny didn't misbehave for the rest of our trip. A car load of hotties also pulled up at the same place. One of them was wearing a skirt so short that you could see her ass even with her just standing there. When she walked you could see that she wasn't wearing much if anything beneath the skirt. I approved, but I'm not including pictures. wink.gif

We did however pick up a fitting sticker for the hatch window of the van.


Entering Arizona we had to go through a checkpoint. Gestapo Nazi BS luckily they just waved us through because I would have given them a piece of my mind if they had stopped us for an inspection.


As we approached Hoover Dam we saw the new road they're putting in to allow you to bypass the slow road driving over the top of the dam. It was pretty cool to see a highway that was new and had never been driven on plus the incomplete bridge.




The dam itself wasn't that impressive. It's tall and thick, but it pales in comparison to the Grand Coulee Dam across the Columbia.






We arrive at the Grand Canyon.

187sks

After we had our fill of hiking around the Grand Canyon we continued towards Four Corners. For those who don't know that's where Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico all meet in one point allowing you to stand in four states at one time. It's on 2 seperate Indian reservations and they charge admittance so we knew we couldn't go there in the dark even though that would have been fine with us. I was driving along admiring the total darkness. A lot of the time I couldn't even see the glow from a city in the distance. It was wonderful. I almost ran over a wild chinchilla. That was awesome. I wanted to catch it and bring it home but I didn't think a scar from a chinchilla bite would impress the ladies so I left it alone. Along the way we enter a reasonably decent sized town and look for a place to get a bite to eat.

We were in the metropolis known as Tuba City, Arizona. Henceforth known at "the TCA". We nicknamed it the TCA because it was full of little wannabe gangstas with AutoZone riced out Civics bumping their music at the Sonic. I realized that it had been several hundred miles since I had seen another white person and it was getting to where people were looking at us funny when they saw us. A drunk beggar I could barely understand begged me for change in the drive thru and didn't want to take the hint that he wasn't getting anything. He was pretty persistant. I thought for a minute that there might be trouble but he went on his way finally and we got our food and left.

We continued on our way with our food. Eventually we came to the last place to stop before Four Corners, Teec Nos Pos. We were going to sleep in the van in a store parking lot or something but to our dismay there was no real store in Teec Nos Pos. There was a health clinic complex though so we went behind it and pulled the van onto a dirt road where we spent the night.

I woke up at dawn like I always do when I can see the sun and found that we had slept in a cow pasture.




That was fine by me. We got up and headed to Four Corners.

187sks

We bought some souvenirs and went to get gas at the gas station we had seen right up the road from the turnoff. We go to the store and it's thouroughly barred up and looked closed. Busy went and checked just for good measure but it was truly closed. No biggie, we'll just pay at the pump with plastic. Unfortunately the pumps were ancient and didn't even have provisions for paying at the pump. We had enough gas to continue on to the next town though so we did. Well we tried to. We get to the main highway and we see this dingo looking dog charging the van. He gets to us and won't let me go around him. He is VICIOUS. I am glad to be safely inside the van with the windows rolled up. I'm driving along at probably 20mph with the dog running in such a way that he can bite the front bumper and block me from going either left or ahead any faster without running him over. Here's where I would normally run the dog over, but being on an Indian reservation laws are different and for all I know that could be punishable by death here. I managed to guide him to the far shoulder with a crowd gathering to see the racket. I cut hard right and floor it to get away, narrowly missing the dog still. The dog stops chasing us. I see two more cars coming and watch because I think it'll be funny to see him chase them down. To my suprise he looks at them and ignores them altogether. We were chased out of New Mexico for being white.

We head off to Mesa Verde National Park and decide that we really like Colorado along the way.






We arrive at Mesa Verde. This is a park dedicated to preserving the ruins of the Anasazi people often referred to as "cliff dwellers" despite the fact that 90% of the Anasazi lived on top of mesas or on the valley floor. The cliff dwellings are the best preserved, most obvious, and unique structures which led to the non-cliff Anasazi dwellings being mostly overlooked.


This is Cliff Palace.
















It was a crazy trail down to and back up from Cliff Palace but we had some wonderful views.

187sks

There were many other dwellings within Mesa Verde and many great amazing vistas.








From Mesa Verde we headed to Arches National Park via the Devil's Highway (Route 666)








Arches National Park was breathtaking. Different than the Grand Canyon but equally awesome in it's own way.

187sks

As the sun set on Arches we headed back home. We had to make it from Arches in Utah to Our homes in Washington. It was going to be a long drive and we weren't sure if we were going to be driving straight through or if we would stop to sleep on the way. I drove the first leg from sundown in Arches to sunup in north central Oregon. I managed to get 1,250 miles in that night before I gave up the wheel to Busy around Pendleton Oregon so that I could take a nap.




We came up along the Columbia River gorge.

187sks

Mt. Hood in Oregon.


Looking north across the Columbia at western Washington and it's typically lush evergreens.




Busy got me home about 2:00 in the afternoon Sunday. I ate then went to sleep for 13 hours just in time to go to work. It was a trip I will never forget, we put on over 2,250 miles in those four days of driving and we hiked several miles on top of that in 7000ft+ elevations in 100+ degree temperatures. I can't wait to do something like this again! smile.gif

Whiplash

That is amazing. I don't think I could do as much as you guys did in a week, let alone in 4 days. That cliff palace looks like something out of a fairytale. I really want to do something like this next year.

jsharptooth91

Dude, I was in LA last week, visiting the inlaws.

187sks

It was so much fun. It was brutal in some ways but it was exactly what I wanted and needed. Cliff Palace is so cool. You can't go into the buildings but you can look in the windows of a few and look up at the pictograph I included a picture of. It doesn't look like it but there are over 200 rooms at the Cliff Palace site. Most of the structure is several stories tall.

If you end up going somewhere that'll cross within a few states away from me let me know and maybe we can meet up. If there's room maybe I'll come along. lol.


Damn too bad I didn't know or we could have met up too and done something in the LA area. We pretty much just got In-N-Out then left for Vegas. We really wanted to hit the beach but didn't have time.