Today we tried surfing. We woke up, hung out at the house for a bit, and then went to Pacific Beach to try surfing. It was about $21/ea for an hour of surfboard and wetsuit rentals. Not too bad. I thought an hour was going to be too short, but BOY was I wrong. We parked at the surf shop, walked down to the beach, and took a few pictures before we started surfing. Molly lost her glasses within the…
Link to San Diego Facebook Pictures Today was our first day in San Diego. Matt had to wake up early (around 5:30 or 6:00), but we slept in until 8:30ish. His dad is in town for a little while as well – they recently did a 100 mile hike in the John Muir wilderness. They summated 6 mountains in 7 days, the highest being about 14,000ft above sea level – the highest in the continental US (Mount Whitney). Molly and…
Today was our last day in Vegas. We had to be out of the room by 11am, so we slept in until about 9:30 and then took showers. We packed the car with all of our luggage, and then left the room keys in the hotel room. I will miss having a hotel room with A/C and a hot, untimed shower whenever I want it. It was a nice treat! We walked around Circus Circus for a bit, to get…
Link to Las Vegas #2 Facebook Pictures Today we went to explore the other side of Las Vegas – the opposite side of the Strip that we didn’t get to yesterday. We decided to buy a bus ticket, which is only $8 for a 24-hour pass. We got that about 1pm, which gave us until 1pm on Thursday to ride around on the buses. We immediately took the bus to the end of the Strip, and then started walking upwards. …
Link to Las Vegas Facebook Pictures So Molly and I were able to check in to our hotel around 2:30pm yesterday. We got there after packing up the tent and car, and decided to go inside to check it out. We were booked for 3 nights at a place called Circus Circus, at the end of the Las Vegas strip. The main building is a huge dome building, with a dome-shaped amusement park-type place called the Adventure Dome. Inside the…
I thought it might be a cool idea to make a separate post about our morning routine, and some helpful things we have learned along the way. Molly and I have both gotten in the habit of setting up the tent FAST. We know where the tent is in the car, know how it goes together, and all-in-all it takes about 3 minutes from start-to-finish. Inside the tent, we have created a little “home” each night. We start by setting…
We woke up today to chanting – but from this odd “Temple of the [something]” that we encountered last night. Once again, we couldn’t make out what they were chanting, but we did hear applause. We just started out about our normal routine, took a shower, and headed towards town. We decided to head to Lake Mead and spend part of the day there. I knew it was a pretty large area, but I didn’t have any idea of how…
We spent Saturday and Sunday hanging out around Las Vegas. We figured it would be too much work to try and go to a different park (like Zion in Utah), only to have to come back after two days. I didn’t think that would give us enough time to experience it, so we are going to put that off until later in the trip. Molly and I slept in a group campground at Mount Charleston – about 20 miles outside…
Link to Hoover Dam Facebook Pictures Today we woke up early and went to the Grand Canyon Park to get our park passports stamped, and also to send some postcards. We didn’t fill up our solar shower because we figured we were going to be staying in a hotel. We got about a half hour into the drive to Las Vegas, when I decided to check my phone. I had an email from my mom saying that the hotels in…
Link to Grand Canyon Facebook Pictures Today we woke up and went into the Grand Canyon National Park. Entrance fee is normally $25, but since I have the $80 annual National Park Pass, it was free. That puts my savings somewhere like $58 for buying that pass – I need to get at least $100 of use out of it to justify it. Upon entering the park, we found the first overlook that we came across – Pipe Creek Vista. …