Hikes in the American deserts

Since a couple of days, we finally managed to escape the heat from the deserts and are currently travelling next to the Canadian border. This is the perfect time to look back on a few hikes we did in the deserts and arid American lands. These lands include Death Valley, Canyonlands, Monument Valley and Valley of Fire. 

For the adults, these hikes provided gorgeous sceneries, but as you'll see in the video, these landscapes are for Clarisse and Antone, only piles of rocks and sands. Hiking in this environment, with such heat, is most of the time a non-sense for them 😀

Ready for adrenaline in Moab

The first pioneers came to Moab by the end of the 19th century as gold prospector. Although they could not find any, they finally discovered some Uranium. 

Uranium extraction then became the main Moab activity until the end of the cold war; the city then started to focus on fun and adventurous activities. It is today considered one of the best MTB spots in the world and for this reason, it was on our planned route 😀

We stayed a few days there to chill down, visit the Arches National Park and also go for a rafting ride on the Colorado river. Because of the virulent winter this year, the Colorado river is today 4 times bigger than its highest point from last year. This made the ride exciting !

Lake Powell, a nice surprise for us

Lake Powell was not supposed to be on our planned route but we've met several travellers who convinced us to stop there. And we did not regret ! 

We met two lovely families at Lake Powell: the Jobard family travelling with their 2 cute blond girls for 6 month on the American continent, and the Rhoton family originating from Salt Lake City who very kindly invited us several times for wake boarding.

  

Lake Powell and its neighbouring city Page is also famous for some very photogenic and colorfull canyons.










We went to visit the Antelope Canyon-X, which is not the most popular one but we wanted to avoid the crowd of the other ones and Canyon-X was definitely worth it 😎

Grand Canyon by fair means

Grand Canyon is huge, not really "nice", but amazingly HUGE ! 

To visit the Grand Canyon a bit deeper than simply showing up at the various viewpoints, you can either book for a helicopter tour, a 4WD tour, or visit by less noisy means.

We stayed 3 days at Grand Canyon and went for the less noisy options 😀 as shown in this new video:

Wakeboard and wake surf session at Lake Mead

Lake Mead Recreation Area is located a few steps away from Las Vegas and is centred around the Lake Mead, biggest artificial lake of North America. It has a pretty Marina where we could see 2 eco-friendly sail boats and some 500 powerful and noisy Motorboat 😳

After a long period of hesitation between both categories, we went for the Motorboat option !




This is the video of our wakeboard and wakesurf sessions:

Here we are at Grand Canyon

We recently managed to find enough electricity to cut this video about our stay at Joshua Tree National Park:

Since this visit to Joshua Tree NP, we've seen a lot ! Sceneries from the West USA are gorgeous but they are not priceless and we've suffered a lot due to the heat during the last week. It barely went below 30°C during the night leading us to sleep outside the camper. The good point is that we were awake early enough to see the sunrises.

We finally found descent temperatures yesterday evening while approaching the Grand Canyon. We slept in the wild on the plateau at 2'000m elevation. Find the right spot, make the fire pit, get some wood, grill the diner and the marshmallows ... these are real holidays 😀

This morning we finally reached the Grand Canyon South Rim. It is difficult to describe the feeling of being on the Grand Canyon's edge; the dimensions of this canyon are amazing !

Tomorrow will be hiking day for the kid's pleasure 😩

First week in the RV: San Diego, Joshua Tree, Dead Valley and Las Vegas

One week in the RV ... already ... and we have already seen amazing sceneries from the West USA. As expected, everything here is HUGE: distances, hamburgers, cars, trucks, campers, shops, packagings ... everything is always bigger, nicer, faster, louder ... Welcome in America ! 😎

After a few days visiting the Pacific coast South of Los Angeles, we drove to our first National Park: Joshua Tree. 

 

We've spent 2 days there hiking along cactus gardens in the desert. Clarisse and Antone have spent hours climbing the boulders from each spot we stopped by. Joshua Tree is a rock climbers paradise and we understand why; routes are short but very ludic and nice.

The Garrigues family, trying to hide in a dried tree:

The sunset from Keys View.

Driving the RV can be exhausting, specially in case of strong wind or high trafic conditions. However, it can also be pretty cool when driving alone on such straight roads !

Our first plan was to drive North to the Yosemite National Park and then drive back East of the Sierra Nevada, but since the Tioga Road is still closed due to heavy snow falls last winter, we have changed our plans and finally headed towards the Death Valley, valley of the extremes !

Arriving early in the morning to avoid the heat during day time, we hiked at Bad Water Bassin - the lowest point on the western world (85m below sea level) - and Natural Bridge Trail.

The heat usually rises up to 50°C during a summer day in the valley but we were lucky and had a couple of clouds that limited the temperature to a reasonable 38°C, which already transforms small hikes with the kids to real expeditions !

Breakfast on the way to Last Vegas at a horse ridding show for Clarisse 😀

Finally, after a week spent in the desert, we stopped for 2 days at Las Vegas. No words to describe this crazy city and the opulence that we observed all over the city. We finished our exhausting day on the Strip with the MJ One show that completed our ear's destruction 😬

 

Next: head towards Red Rock Canyon Park before driving to the Grand Canyon.