Sweeping Through the Southwest

Our next stop was Carlsbad Caverns National Park. We drove the majority of the day in order to get there from Austin. We camped at a place for the night that we found on Free Campsites. Be careful when choosing a camp site off this website... make sure to read the reviews of other people who have been there. We were originally heading to one called Carlsbad Caverns Desert Boondocking on the site, but after reading people's comments I learned that this land is not owned by the Bureau of Land Management, but by an oil company so there can be dangerous gases in the air. We decided we didn't want to stay there and found another place on the site called Dark Canyon. We used the coordinates from the website on our GPS, but in the dark it wasn't so easy to find. There are no clearly marked signs and this truly is just a bit of desert that you are allowed to park on... no facilities, no picnic tables, no fire rings. We eventually found it because there was another van out there and we figured that must be it. We made grilled cheeses and tomato soup for dinner while moths swarmed about. There were SO many moths--- get a red light headlamp if you are coming to this place, haha.

Descending into the caverns! It's pretty hard to get good pictures
inside because of the dim lighting.

The next morning we set out early for Carlsbad Caverns National Park, because we were also planning on making it to White Sands National Monument that day. When we got to the park, we decided to buy an annual pass, which cost $80 and is good for a year. Two people put their signatures on the card, but it is good for your entire carload of people unless you are going to a place that charges per person (then you have up to 4 free). It really is a good value, we've already used about half the cost of the card and we still have so many parks we plan on visiting! Carlsbad Caverns were insanely immense. I had no idea the extent of this cave system. The largest area in the cave is called "The Big Room," and is the largest known limestone chamber in the Western Hemisphere. It is estimated to be 600,000 sq. feet, which is as big as 14 football fields!! We were walking about the caverns for a good two hours and you could spend way longer in there. The formations are incredible--- stalagmites (growing from the ground), stalactites (growing from the ceilings), soda straws (very thin formations hanging from the ceilings), draperies, popcorns (when the water drips into cave pools and splashes on the rocks it forms popcorn like formations), and columns (where stalagmites and stalactites meet). In the olden days, you'd have to walk up the path you took descending into the cave, but they thankfully have installed an elevator. That would have been a workout! After our time in the caverns, we ate lunch at some picnic tables on a pull-off inside the park. There were trails that you could walk on, but we headed for our next destination, which turned out to be a little farther than we thought. It was about 4 hours from Carlsbad, but we still got to White Sands National Monument with about an hour till sunset.

White Sands National Monument 

There isn't TOO much to see here--- don't get me wrong it was still incredible, but you definitely probably couldn't kill a whole day here and if you did you'd probably get lost in the rolling sand hills. I've never really been to a desert, one with sands and the typical dunes that you picture only in some place like Saudi Arabia, but there's one out here smack dab in the middle of Alamogondo, New Mexico. One thing that is cool about this desert is that the sand is pure white, unlike many deserts with yellowish sands. There are primitive camping spots for a fee, but you have to get there well before sunset because they are worried about you getting lost in the desert, I suppose. We would have loved to camp there, because I'm sure the stars are incredible, but we got there a little too late. Trails can't really be made in sand because it is constantly blowing, moving, covering, and uncovering. There was one permanent trail that is more of a boardwalk with signs explaining things about the animal and plant life in the area. Another cool thing you can do here is bring a sled and sled down the sandy banks! It looked so fun, but we didn't have a sled. Later we found out that they had them at the gift shop either to buy or rent, so it'd be worth looking into! After we watched the sun dip behind the Sacramento Mountains, casting a yellow glow on the white sand and making the plateaus in the west look pink, we headed to our campsite not far away. We got to Oliver Lee Memorial State Park after dark and were planning on paying in the morning but the office wasn't open when we were leaving so we got the place free for the night! This is an awesome little campsite and it's a bummer we didn't stay longer. There were two trails that started in the campground, the Riparian Nature Trail or a more challenging hike on the Dog Canyon Trail. Each site has a covered picnic table and fire pit. There are sites with electricity and water, but they are extra. There is a bath house with hot showers and toilets. When we woke up in the morning, we saw our site was right next to some beautiful rocky plateaus. It was a nice backdrop.

The Saguaro's were HUGE!!

It's not the best picture, but it's The Growlers!! You can
kind of see the romantic vibe that I was talking about.

We left early because we had to be in Tucson, Arizona tonight to see The Growlers! The plan was to check them out and then to meet up with our friends, Lindsay and Steve, who have been living in Tucson for a minute now. Lindsay is a glass blower and teaches workshops at the Sonoran Glass School. On our way to Tucson, we stopped at Saguaro National Park. The park is literally divided by the city of Tucson and there is an East section and a West section. We went to the East section, but we were told the West section is more spectacular in terms of the density of the cactus. This was hard for me to believe because it seems like there were plenty here! Saguaro cactus are probably the type of cactus you picture when you think of cactus--- tall with arms growing from the sides, but did you know they only occur naturally in a very small region of Arizona, California, and Mexico? They have come to represent the cactus as a species because they have such personality and often take on human-like shapes as their arms grow. In addition to the Saguaros, there are 49 other species of cactus growing in the cactus garden that is Saguaro National Park. It is one of the largest and most diverse cactus gardens in the world. We took an ecology trail where we learned that a Saguaro has to be 50-100 years old before it begins growing its "arms." We also saw a dead Saguaro and were surprised when we realized that underneath the green, spiky, fleshy layer is a wooden skeleton much like any regular old tree. It was fascinating. We did a couple other short trails before our tummies started rumbling. Lindsay recommended a restaurant called La Cocina so we grabbed a quick bite there before we headed to the concert. Our meals were great, I got lemon caper penne with salmon and Kyle got a lemon grass coconut curry quinoa bowl. The place was also super cute--- it had a courtyard lit with bulb lights and heat lamps to stay warm underneath. They had a live band playing, Ms. Lana Rebel and Kevin Michael Mayfield, which had a twangy folk sound that was nice to eat dinner to. We had parked in a garage near the venue and skated to dinner, so we skated back, chugged some beers and went to stand in the line forming outside Club Congress. The venue was romantic and intimate, connected to an old hotel called Hotel Congress. It is apparently haunted and is where the gangster John Dillinger was caught! Interesting little bits of history... Inside the venue, the booths were red brocade vinyl and the stage had iron filigree around it set by heavy red velvet curtains. It was a perfect place to see The Growlers, who describe their music as beach goth. I think that is a pretty accurate depiction. Their music is great to bob and sway to, carefree like you were catching a wave, but their lyrics are personal and oftentimes poignant. I fell in love with their album, Hung at Heart, but haven't gotten into any of their other stuff. They played one song off that album and it made me extremely happy. After the show, we met up with Lindsay across the street at a restaurant called the Hub. We didn't order anything, but it looked pretty swanky and even had a homemade ice cream bar, which I thought added a unique spin. Lindsay was having dinner with Andrew, one of the owners of Outback Kate's (the food vendor we will be working for at festivals this summer). He was there because he just worked a festival called Gem & Jam, which happened this weekend as part of the Tucson Gem & Mineral Show, one of the largest showcasing of this type in the world!! It was good to see everybody and talking about the upcoming festival season just got me all amped up! We slept in the truck outside Lindsay and Steve's house. In the morning, we went and checked out one of the locations that was part of the gem show. Some of the crystals here were unreal: quartz the size of six year olds, huge slab of malachite, the biggest geodes I have ever seen... We got a geode and a amethyst cluster for super cheap. The prices were amazing!

The amethyst cluster I got at the gem show for a friend
for a steal of a price!!

We found out this morning that The String Cheese Incident is playing 3 shows in Las Vegas over Valentine's weekend at the Brooklyn Bowl--- a Sin City Incident. We decided this would be the perfect Valentine's Day present. :) Our original plan was to spend another day or so in Tucson checking out some hikes Lindsay and Steve told us about, but we decided to head out after the gem show so we could still hit up the Grand Canyon. By the time we got close to the Grand Canyon, it was dark so we stayed in the Kaibab National Forest for free. We wanted to get an early start on some hikes in the morning. At night, the pull-offs for the forest were kind of hard to find, but in the daylight they were much clearer. Along AZ-64, there are many areas within the Kaibab National Forest that you can stop and camp so just look for the signs! In the morning, we headed to the Grand Canyon National Park. This park is by far the biggest we have been to so far, within the grounds there is a general store with anything you'd need grocery wise, camping, lodging, and miles of trails. It cost $25 per vehicle, so we were especially glad we had our pass. The hike down into the Grand Canyon would've taken too long, considering our time constraints, so we did part of a trail that leads down to a view of the Colorado River: The Bright Angel Trail. We stopped at the 3-mile rest house to eat lunch and then head back up. So in total, we hiked 6 miles totaling about 4 hours. Going down it is fairly step, but there are a bunch of switchbacks so it makes the going down easy... the coming up, not so much. The views are incredible the whole way down and the whole way up. The trail hugs the sides of the Grand Canyon. It's breathtaking. Our plan after the Grand Canyon was to go up to Escalante in Utah, but there was no good route and we thought we'd be too pooped to rage a String Cheese show on Sunday after all that, so we decided to catch the Valentine's Day show. So it was off to Vegas!! After finding out that there is no camping in the city, not even at a KOA, we stayed about two hours outside the city at a KOA in Kingman, AZ. We got a steal considering we payed $27 for a campsite in San Antonio... we paid $27 for a cottage!! The cottage was precious with icicle lights on the porch with a swing, a mini-fridge and microwave, a full bed AND bunk beds (so you could cram this little place if you needed/wanted), wifi, a picnic table, a grill, and a water spigot out back. There was a shower house with bathrooms and hot showers nearby. There was a pool and a hot tub here, but the pool was closed for the winter... the hot tub was so nice!! It was an awesome Valentine's Eve.

Our little Valentine's Cottage. <3

Chillin' with a cardboard cutout of Rick at
the Pawn Stars Shop!!

Before we set out for the city that never sleeps, we were due for an oil change. We have driven 2,000+ miles so far, probably much more than that because we haven't taken the most direct routes. We went to a cute lil oil change shop called Oil Can Henry's. It's worth mentioning because they had amazing service, so if you're looking to get an oil change in Idaho, California, Arizona, Colorado, Oregon, or Washington, find one of these! It's super old school: they give you a newspaper when you pull up and their uniform is caps and bow ties. Plus, they were honest. When we got an oil change in St. Augustine they told us they recommended we change our air filter, but here 2,000+ miles later they said that the air filter looked fine but could probably be replaced NEXT oil change. When we got to Vegas, we had quite a bit of time to kill before we needed to go to the venue to try and score tickets (the show was sold out). We decided to go to Pawn Stars, because we love that show. There was a line out the door, but it didn't take long at all to get inside. It really wasn't as cool as we were expecting, but hell we were in Vegas, so why not?! We parked in the Caesar's Palace FREE parking garage! We just followed the address on Google and it took us straight to the garage. You are allowed to park here all night for free and since we had curtains in the back of our truck bed, we knew we'd be fine sleeping there for the night. I will say that the clearance is VERY low... we have a storage box on top of the truck and were barely making it, even scraping in some places. You definitely could not bring an RV or a truck with a big camper top in here. They also keep the place lighted obnoxiously throughout the night and play equally obnoxious music throughout the night, probably to discourage people from sleeping there and for safety purposes (the lights at least). It wasn't that bad, especially with our curtains and you can find a spot where there isn't a speaker so it's not too loud everywhere. The best part was that it was free and most of the hotels cost way over $100 around here, so we wouldn't have been able to make this night a reality if it wasn't for that. We had a ton of quarters accruing, so we decided to use these on the quarter machines. Note: none of the slot machines take change, which is a total scam to get you to spend at least $1. So we ran around Las Vegas trying to find a Coinstar to no avail. If you need to cash out some coins before you hit the slots, all the Coinstars are not within walking distance from the heart of Vegas, so take care of that before you get there. We ended up just using $10 we had on us. This was my first time gambling and boy, it was the stupidest thing ever. At least the slots are... I could see how the tables might be more fun because with the card games at least it's a combination of strategy and luck, but on the slots you just hit a button and wait to lose or win. Not my cup of tea and a waste of money. There were caricature artists who were doing free couples for Valentine's Day so we got one and it looked JUST like us--- we tipped the guy $5 and were very happy with the outcome.

Can you spy the Boognish?!

We went and found the Brooklyn Bowl around 5:00pm, because the doors opened at 7:00pm and we wanted to give ourselves plenty of chances to score a ticket. The Brooklyn Bowl is on a little walking street that is part of a complex called The Linq. Do not follow your phone GPS, it will put you in circles. It's literally right across the street from Caesar's Palace. Outside the venue, it seemed as if everyone was holding their finger up for a ticket. We were getting a little antsy, especially after it was getting closer and closer to 7:00pm without even seeing one person selling a ticket. It was odd to see a hoard of String Cheese fans, with their dreads, heady pendants, tie dye attire, and patchouli fragrances, mixed about the rich vacationers there in suits, body con dresses, and heels that could stab someone. SO many people were coming up to us asking why we had our fingers up... what squares. We had to explain that this is what you do to make it known to ticket sellers that you are in search of a ticket. People were walking by us looking up at the sky trying to see what we were pointing at. Sometimes when they asked what we were pointing at, instead of what we were doing, we just replied with "we're pointing at space." It gave us a chuckle. We finally got some tickets for about $30 about face value, but I wasn't going to turn 'em down. It looked like everyone was trying to get tickets and this was our Valentine's present to each other. They had already let people in, so we went straight into the venue once we got our tickets. They still hadn't opened the stage area. We inquired about bowling, because we had never been to a Brooklyn Bowl (at these venues you can bowl during the concert, it's a pretty neat idea). But all the lanes had been reserved, so if you want to bowl at one of these venues you should call in advance to figure out how it works. On their rental chalk board, with prices for games and shoes, someone had drawn a boognish which is the logo for my favorite band, Ween. It follows me everywhere!! We were sitting in line to get into the stage area with another couple we saw holding their fingers up outside and they gave us a beautiful crocheted rose. Valentine's kindness right there! When they finally allowed us to go into the stage area, we got probably a row or two back from the stage... it was a sick spot UNTIL someone puked before the show even started. He ruined our dance spot and threw up on some body's back. I hate people who get that messed up at shows. First off, I would never get on that level, but if I did I would puke in my own shirt before I puked on the dance floor or somebody else. The place was already packed so it was too late to relocate, so we all dance this weird tribal style dance around the pile of vomit for the whole first set of the show. Thankfully, someone stepped up during the break between sets and got a towel form the bar. The setlist was amazing! Since it was Valentine's Day they did some special covers, like It's Not Unusual and Could You Be Loved. They also played Colorado Bluebird Sky and Let's Go Outside from their new album, Song In My Head, which I really like. I don't really like the chorus for Let's Go Outside, but it has a funky beat and cool rap versus. They had DJ Logic come out to build of the beat for Let's Go Outside and it was sick. I love String Cheese, because even during their slower, more intimate moments you can still shake it. They were getting galactic. You can see the whole setlist and download the show here. It was an incredible performance. Afterwards, Lotus was playing in the same venue for no extra cost, so it was like a double whammy. Our bodies felt like Jell-O, so we sat on some leather upholstered wrap-around couches and watched the show from a live feed they were streaming on about 10 TVs in the lounge area. We watched about half the shows before our bellies started rumbling, so we left the venue in search of food. It was about 3:00am at this point and nothing was open, which I found odd since all the casinos were still charging full steam ahead. We settled for White Castle and were satisfied enough to go pass out in the truck until the morning heat woke us up. It was an amazing Valentine's Day. :)

String Cheese SLAYIN' it. :)