Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument

Finally we reach Organ Pipe Cactus NM. It is very close to the Mexican border. Lots of border patrol vehicles and posts on the road. The park (oops, you're supposed to call it monument) looks a bit like a desert, cacti and all, but the rangers say it's a cactus forest. Anyway, we like it! Temperatures are not too cold, the environment is quite strange, we've never seen cacti in the wild and now there are sooo many of them. Really beautiful!

The campground is set up quite nicely and despite it being peak season for the park it's far less than half full. This means nice spots for the RV, bit of privacy and absolutely quiet for most of the day except generator hours.

We are staying for 3 nights. Most of day 1 we use for a 1.5 hour walk to an old silver mine, no silver left and not much to see as well, but still a nice walk through that incredible landscape.
Day 2 brings some more walking and a 2 hour fruitless effort from the male part of our party to start a barbie on a cheap BBQ that has a starter pack called idiot-proof. Hmmmm, in the end the steaks go into the frying pan and the barbie burns off over night.
Day 3 we're booked into a trip with the rangers to a road that we can't travel with Shorty, too long. too wide. The rangers give some interesting comments on flora and fauna during that trip, so it's not a bad alternative anyhow. On top of that it's free. Can't ask for more!

Grand Canyon

Sure, we knew that the North Rim of the Grand Canyon was closed in winter due to snow, but is that a reason to have the South Rim snowed in as well?
Anyhow, after a long drive trough Indian reservations we arrive at the Grand Canyon to find the roads and car park free of snow, but pretty much everything else snowed in. Bugger! We had hoped to do some day-trips around the canyon. Same for our spot at the NP campground. It's fine for us in our RV, heating works great, bed is cozy, so no problems at all, but there are people camping in a tent. One of them we see in the morning packing up the tent and stuff in shorts! We thought, Kiwis are nuts, but that guy was more nuts....
At the visitor center we check the weather forecast and it's for about 10 - 12 inches ( 25 to 30 cm) more snow within the next 3 days. Sooooo, we have the choice to dig in and wait it out or again just bugger off the next day.

Easy choice as we would not have any power hookup where we are, generator hours limited to 4 per day, no internet, only one book left to read, so it's off to our next stop : Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.
On the way, it shows that our decision was right: we travel through a snow storm for most of the day through Flagstaff and Phoenix. Only when we reach lower elevations snow turns to rain, yay. So, this is a good day for driving. We had a few nice looks into the Grand Canyon on our drive to Grand Canyon Village, so that's ok.

Lake Powell

Lake Powell is just a station for the night on our way to Grand Canyon National Park. Still, some quite impressive views on the way and a beautiful spot for breakfast close the shore. Still cold, at some stage we need to get out of those high areas!

Meikel, have a look at all those houseboats in the picture on top! :-)

Our trip so far

 

This is our trip so far, 1160 miles (1866 km) across cities, mountains  and deserts. Shorty has served us well so far, no major problems. A leaky tranny cooler has been replaced, that's all. 

It seems that we have chosen the right vehicle for our needs. It is incredibly spacious inside, yet still just 30 feet long , so it's easy to drive and park. We will see how it runs for the next 8 1/2 months.

Zion National Park

It's only a short drive from Vegas to Zion National Park, probably around 140 miles. After leaving I-15 the scenery gets better and better, it's the beginning of canyon-land. It sometimes feels like being in one of the old Western movies with John Wayne leading the treck to Tipperary.

Claudia and I had considered bypassing Zion NP, but now we're happy we didn't. Absolutely stunning weather, wind a bit nippy at times (it's just mid February) and temperatures going down to a couple degrees Celsius above freezing. Absolutely beautiful! We had bought a nice duvet for those chilly nights as we don't want to have the furnace running all night.
First thing in the morning is starting the heater, 5 or 10 minutes later the motorhome is nicely heated up, so next is a cup of coffee from Claudia's espresso 'machine'. That's what real camping is about, a nice, cozy bed and all the luxuries you could wish for :-P.

Life can't get much better especially as the camping ground is in a stunning location, rather empty and absolutely quiet.
We will definitely be staying here for at least 3 nights and do lots of walks. It's hard to imagine that around 2.5 million visitors are coming to Zion NP every year, must be 2.499 million during summer :-).

Las Vegas

From Death Valley we are going to Las Vegas. Not that we believe this is a place for us, but as we're in the area we have to have a look! We have chosen an RV park right in the middle of Las Vegas, 5 minutes walk to 'The Strip', Las Vegas Boulevard. This will be a first for our ear plugs as the site is right at a 6 lane bridge.

Late in the afternoon it's off to see Las Vegas. The plan is to hop on to one of the tourist buses and drive the 12 miles of casinos, bars, shops  and see the lights at nighttime. Great idea, problem is that this is Presidents Weekend , so Vegas is crowded as and so are the buses. Maybe this is just the normal state for Vegas, I don't know.... So, it's walking for us, we've been sitting too much anyway.

What can I say? It's Vegas, for us rather an anti-climax so after 2 1/2 hours we've had enough and return to our trusted home for a good night's sleep :-) . We're looking forward to leaving the place tomorrow for Zion National Park!

One good thing happened, though, in Las Vegas. We realize that a motorhome of the size of ours is called short in RV terms. We were looking to name it but didn't like any of the names we thought of. Now 'Shorty' springs into mind and that's what it will be. Actually, it is rather short, just about 9 meters long. On the other hand Shorty fits into almost all RV parks or NP camping grounds we're going to!

Death Valley

 

We arrive at Death Valley after not too long a drive shortly after lunch time. Actually, I believe the Death Valley  doesn't look that deadly at all. Apparently there was quite a lot of rain the week before, so most shrubs have fresh leaves and there is a glint of green over the otherwise rocky desert. We stay at Stovepipe Wells for the first night and continue to Furnace Creek for some short walks to Gold Canyon and Natural Bridge. 

The road to the car park is gravel only with a small incline, nothing to worry about. Still, we get the thumbs up from a couple of 4 wheel-drives for driving up. So it's no surprise that ours is the only motorhome up there.

Now, what would other people do here? We had done a 1 1/2 hr walk in the morning heat, so possibly a short catnap and lunch afterwards, a coffee or so.... Not so with Claudia:  She had bought some wholemeal and other ingredients a couple of days ago, so she thinks this is the place to bake some wholemeal breadrolls! The first German bakery in the middle of Death Valley!

At the lowest part of Death Valley, at around 280 feet below sea level, there is currently a lake, I would believe for the first time in years. Locals tell us that the week before they had more rain than they usually have in a year.

After lunch another 1 hr walk up the hill, really amazing landscape with those snow-capped mountains around the valley, before we head to our last sightseeing point for the day: Zabriskie Point, famous for its views at sunset. Finally back to Furnace Creek Camping Ground for a good night's sleep before we're on our way to Las Vegas tomorrow.

Joshua Tree National Park

After a long drive we reached Joshua Tree NP in the evening just after dark. Next morning we went for a nice walk (1 1/2 hours)  up to Mastodon Peak early, beautiful scenery, lot's of huge boulders, cacti (that took a while to find :-) ), always wary of the old rattle snake, although it would probably be too cold for those .

Later off to the visitor center to check on other walking tracks, only to learn that there is a forecast for a snow storm for the afternoon in the area we wanted to do our walk. Hmmmm. not good. We don't want to be caught by that storm so we decide to just drive through the NP and get on our way to the Death Valley. Sitting in the snow at Joshua Tree NP without internet or power  ( the generator is allowed only for 6 hours a day!) wouldn't be too much fun.

First longer trip on roads other than free/highways. Very relaxing drive despite some strong winds and rain later. The GPS works wonders!

Carpinteria

Carpinteria is a smallish town, beach Ok, not too shabby, nice sunsets on the Pacific ocean, pelicans, seagulls and all..... For us this was just the right spot to relax and get ready for our trip. All shopping is done now, some beer and groceries are on stock, so we're all set to go tomorrow. It will be a 250 miles trip to Joshua Tree National Park. We are happy to leave LA behind now. 1 week is definitely enough for us.

Our 1993 Fleetwood Southwind 30 feet motorhome

So here it is. Jim has stood up to his promises, everything works and/or has been fixed, even new wiper blades have been fitted. Best of all, he has even filled it up with fuel and refilled the LPG tank, absolutely brilliant.
Claudia and I are actually pretty knackered after all that searching and driving and jet-lag and.... so we decide our first trip will be to Carpinteria north of  LA to stay for 2 or 3 days on the beach, unpack all that stuff we had bought at Wal-Mart , just move into our new old home for the next nine months and have a good long rest before we start our trip. Some photos of our Southwind:

Days 2 to 4 in LA

Still looking for the perfect motorhome. So far we had no luck with our inspections, quite a lot of 'optimistic' descriptions re. the state of the vans. One almost made it, 10 years old C - class Winnebago in excellent condition except a lot of delamination around the cab-over and on the drivers side panel of the house. Often you'll find dry rot behind the delaminated walls, so we decide to give that one a miss and keep looking. So far we have driven around 500 miles around town in LA.
Day 4 morning: from Jennifer we had heard about a dealer in Northills, so we go there to check an older A-class that he had on his website. It's the only on stock that's not above the $40,000 mark.  Once there we see a 17 year old Fleetwood Southwind, older than we had planned to buy, but what the heck, let's have a look. Open the door, enter and whow! That looks fantastic. The interior is in  pristine condition, better than everything else we have seen, even on rigs that were 10 years younger. Mileage is just 36,000, again a very low number. Engine starts up straight away, so does the generator, everything else works perfectly. New tires and the promise to fix everything that might come up before we take it over plus the impression of absolute trustworthiness is more than enough to convince us that this is the one. We bugger off to see another motorhome, but this is actually just to improve our position  in the following price negotiations.
Two hours later we are back, price negotiations take about 5 minutes, Jim Royal, the dealer's salesperson is just amazing. We bought a motorhome, yay, so on Friday we will be on our way to explore the States.

January 30, 2010:

Day 1 in LA. No time to waste! I had a long list of interesting RV's from Craigslist, ebay and other online advertisers. At 9 in the morning we went off for our first round of inspections. The GPS receiver  I had brought fromAustralia for use with my laptop works really well, so navigation in LA is no biggie. Traffic however is! Highways with up to seven lanes in each direction, unbelievable. First job is to organize a physical address in LA. No problem at all, you take your passport and go to see the nice guy at the Mail Service centre on Santa Monica Boulevard and ten minutes later you're done. Brilliant!
Thanks to our lovely landlady Jennifer we already had our HSBC debit cards, so the next step is to buy a mobile phone and try to get a reasonable plan for mobile broadband. The first is easy, the second pretty much impossible. Even after offering to pay upfront for the service for 9 months we could not get the desired 5GB a month at $60. Best we achieved in the end was a prepaid 1 GB from virginmobile. Oh well, what the heck, at least we could activate our debit cards. So, on we go to see motorhome vendors, yay, finally! On Saturday we see 2 dealers, not too impressive. Jet-lagged as we are, we decide to call it quits for the day and return to our flat.

Los Angeles, finally

29 January 2010:
Yay ! We're in the States. After a long trip from Dusseldorf to Munich and on to LAX ( 15 hours in total ) we arrived in LA at 7.20 p.m., slightly disoriented after the changes from heat to cold back to warmth, from  Asia to cold Germany to the hustle and bustle of LA.
First hurdle: immigration! After a short wait in the perfectly organized queue at the immigration booths we stepped in front of the officer and uttered our wish for a 9 months visa. First response: nope, can't do, max he could do was 6 months. Hmmm, not good. The officer - always polite - sensed our disappointment and offered us to talk to a supervisor, but this could involve quite some waiting time. 'Do you really want to wait that long?' he asked. Yes, we certainly did. Not two minutes later and after producing evidence that we could support ourselves financially for 9 months in the States, the supervisor appeared and within a few seconds we had a 9 months I-94 permit. In the end that went better and faster than we had hoped. USA , here we come!
Luckily, we had booked a special for a rental car beforehand, so that was easy - not as cheap as advertised, though. They always find a way to get into your pocket for more money - and kind of quick. At 9 p.m. we arrived at the flat we had rented via VBRO, excellent for cheaper stays. And off to bed, sooooo tired....

Finally there

I haven't written at all for quite some time now, mainly due to the fact that there was nothing going on related to our road trip through the USA. 
Ok, where do I start.... After a great 4 weeks in New Zealand and attending our son's graduation in Dunedin we made it to Thailand. Just a couple of days in Bangkok, then on to Chiang Mai for almost 5 weeks. We had a fantastic time there, very relaxed, and met quite a few nice people, most of all Jazz, the host at Yindee Stylish Guesthouse, where we stayed for 4 weeks.
Christmas and New Year went by with a couple of trips to the Golden Triangle, a visa run to Myanmar, day trips to an elephant camp, bamboo rafting, whatever. On January 19 we travelled to Germany for 10 days to see our relatives. Germany was sooo cooold, -8 degrees Centigrade at some stage, so we were really happy to go on to Los Angeles on January 29.