Volume I : Chapter XIV
After all that had happened with the car, all that downtime, and the weather getting colder day by day, we made a run for the state line as soon as we could. We had to head the opposite way we wanted to go. It hurt not to see Montana, or Colorado, or all the states we'd imagined seeing but we were going to be fine. It was time to go.
After turning around in SLC, we took the same road we had been on (something we didn't want to do) and headed back towards Vegas. We couldn't risk cutting across Colorado anymore and hitting snow with the trailer. We saw snow once in Utah, and ended up in a snowbank. Once was enough. We had friends of friends to meet in Phoenix so we decided to head that way.
We started to see the landscapes change again, from the heavily textured backdrop of Utah back down to the soft and light deserts of Nevada and Arizona. The weather was warming up and we were about to head into new territory.
We were making good time, but set aside a day to visit the Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam. Unfortunately, because of the government shut down, the Grand Canyon was closed to the public. Seriously. How do you close the fucking Grand Canyon, it's huge but we couldn't find a secret inroad anywhere. Some other time, we agreed. Luckily, the Hoover Dam was still open.
One of the nights in that junkyard, maybe a little homesick, we opted to have a movie night. We got into our pjs, bought snacks, Jill brought her sleeping bag over to my side of the trailer and we put on the only that remained on my hard drive; "Beavis and Butthead Do America". I hadn't seen it in a long time but it somehow it seemed appropriate.
One of the best scenes is when they visit the Hoover Dam. We did our best to recreate it, making shirts in a Kinko's parking lot in Nevada. People here really liked AC/DC, I learned.
Words by: Kyla Trethewey
Start reading from our first day on the road or see all of our travel posts.