Waking up this morning, in Phoenix, was awesome! Once again this was a scene we were still not used to, having been on the road for the prior 15 days and camping the majority of them. This was the day that my first leg of plans came together and we were to all meet in Las Vegas to join on this epic two week adventure. This was very exciting, being the planner that I am, knowing that the schedule I had planned out was about to be tested. We knew we had a very tightly packed car ride ahead of us and had to spend almost 30 minutes attempting to get the car packed so that everything fit for all four of us.
All we had to do, was to get to Vegas safely and pickup my friends who were flying in and our rental car to divide our luggage. Our friends flew in at 9:30am but we had the advantage of gaining an hour driving across the Arizona state line, so that gave us an extra hour to drive, and relax. This is a very exciting morning for me because everything that I planned is finally coming to fruition and coming together to have friends meet us to come along in this excellent journey for a couple weeks. Savanna and Brandon decided to join us in Las Vegas and in my plan I needed to purchase a rental car because both of them were under 25. The cost was significantly cheaper for me to rent and drive it. Fortunately everything went according to plan.
PROTIP: When booking rental cars at airports, it pays to have a friend who is over 25 (in the event that the traveler does not meet that requirement). This is for cheaper insurance rates, and lower rental fees due to decreased liability.
The plan was once the group in the Corolla to dropped me off at the rental area, they would head north to the Cedar Breaks area of Arizona to save time. I told them to stop in Mesquite Arizona so we could have met at the Walmart, and load up on our supplies. When I arrived, I grabbed the other car and Brandon and Savanna happened to be walking off the shuttle.
It was time to drive to Mesquite,Arizona. We would meet the rest of the group at Walmart so we could stock up on supplies for the week. Once we picked up the groceries, even though we had two cars split amongst six people, it was still very crammed and it turned out to be even worse once everyone bought the supplies they wanted. I can vividly remember the back seat of Toyota Yaris we rented being packed to the roof with groceries! Nonetheless we made it work and fit everything into the car.
From this point we drove up I-15 through the Virgin River Gorge, which is exciting in its own right. This gave my friends a taste of what was to come. Since they were from Florida and had never been west of Texas, you could imagine how dramatic this desert landscape was to them. It was time to make another stop on the way to our final destination of the day, The Kolob Canyon. This stop is the west side of Zion National Park, and is often overlooked by tourists, thus the crowds were non existent in this park. We stopped for a quick picture and a short hike for the overview summit.
Now it was later in the day by now, and it was a long drive, but this was the first little hike that I introduced our group too. It was only a quarter-mile long and became kind of humorous as Savanna was almost out of breath by the time we got to the top. It was kind of concerning to see that at first because I knew we had more intense hikes coming up that were between 5 – 9 mile trails!
It was getting Later in the day, so we decided to drive to Cedar Breaks, which is very similar geologic area to Bryce Canyon National Park. This is located west of that park, and was almost a quarter of the size. It features the same geologic structures, however, and is still impressive.
A positive bit of news for the day was we were able to find a great campsite, which had a fire pit, showers, a picnic bench and a great view of the valley behind the monument. We were fortunate to grab the last camp site! This is where we set up camp for only $15. Ashley headed up cooking that night and we had peas and rice and chicken. Ashley turned into quite a great cook this trip.
Once we took our selfie at Cedar breaks, we decided to walk back to camp for dinner and get rest for the next day, as we had an early morning to head to Bryce. At the campsite, we sat around the fire deciding what we will do the next day, exchanged stories, and enjoyed the cool weather. Something funny happened however, Savanna and Brandon did not bring a blowup mattress to sleep on, as they expected to use a hammock each night. I did not realize it was to get so cold, so they had to use our sleeping bag on the ground. They had a very uncomfortable first night of sleep, but as the trip went on, they got better at camping.
June 16th Expenses
24.28 gas
15.54 gas
12.14 mcdonalds
79.32 walmart
7 coffee
Total – 138.28
MILES DRIVEN – 523