A Grand Adventure - Day 2 (Hoover, Walmart, and the South Rim)

A Grand Adventure - Day 2
(Hoover Dam, Walmart, and the Mather Campground)

Tuesday, June 13 2017 


With the time change, everyone woke up pretty early in Las Vegas and started packing up to go.  We knew space would be at a premium in the vans so we had decided to put everything we wouldn't need until the end of the trip into our checked suit case and then leave it at the front desk on the hotel where they would keep it until we returned. (Thanks, Luxor!) We took another Uber to the campervan place which was just a few miles away.

At the Escape Campervans office we signed all of the paperwork, and they reminded us to do our best not to get any speeding or parking tickets while we were on our tour of the area.  The employee motioned to a huge stack of tickets on the floor that they were going through (to which they added an additional $45 charge to the fines).

 

Next came our tour of the camper vans.  We were excited to find out which vans we would be driving and scoped out the lot for some of the coolest designs.

 

The guy who showed us how everything worked was very nice and was kind of the laid back adventure-type you expected to be working at a place like this.

 

Before we knew it, we were packed and on the road.  First stop: Hoover Dam. 

Before you can approach Hoover Dam you go through a security checkpoint where you must pull off for an inspection.  The camper van place had already told us they would ask us to pop up the bed and may need to look around the van, too.  It didn't take too long, fortunately.  We chose not to drive over the bridge for the dam itself because we had heard that the traffic there gets really backed up and there wasn't much parking.  Instead, we parked above the dam and walked to a different bridge that gave an excellent view.

selfie time!

This was our first time where we noticed the high number of foreign travelers on the trip.  I would estimate that more than half of the people who we saw visiting from this point were foreign.  The most common foreign languages we heard being spoken were Japanese, Chinese, German, and French.  We also noticed that many Asian people hated being in the sun.  They hid from it by using umbrellas, by being overdressed for the temperature, and even by holding sweatshirts over their heads.

I had never been to Hoover Dam, but Jen was there when she took a huge family trip out west in 1988.  Back then she said anybody could walk in and around the dam.  Today, with all of the security and safety issues, this has obviously changed a lot.  Now, I think you need to pay $10 per person to park at the visitor's center and anywhere from $12-$30 for a tour of the dam.  (We're too cheap for that.)

It is an impressive piece of engineering!

As we got back on the road we came across a huge convoy of tanks and other military vehicles.  We were hoping nothing was going on militarily that we had missed on the news.

 

The people at Escape Campervan had recommended stopping at the super Walmart in Kingman, Arizona for food and other supplies.  The people you see in Walmart are always interesting wherever you go - this one was no exception.

On the way in, Greg witnessed a Walmart employee in front of the store towing his oxygen tank and eating a corn dog.  While shopping, a leathery man dressed in dusty overalls and a cowboy hat walked up to us and asked us which way to the front of store.  I also saw several people with their concealed carry not so concealed including a man with a pistol dangling out of his front pants pocket.  Greg and Luke noticed a man with a cart full of enough Sangria and raw chicken to feed and intoxicate a small army. 

Originally, we had planned to stop in Peach Springs to eat lunch and visit the largest underground dry cavern in the US. 

Looks cool - but we'll have to catch it next time

Peach Spring is on historic Route 66 and is the town that Radiator Springs from the movie cars was supposed to be patterned after.

 

But, we were hungry and decided to just eat in Kingman since there were plenty of options there.  We also wanted to be sure to get to the campground before it got dark.

Our destination was Mather Campground which is the closest and most accessible campground to the south rim of the Grand Canyon.  The total drive was from Vegas probably around 6 or 7 hours hours including stopping for Hoover Dam, gas, shopping and lunch.  With all of our stops, we didn't get to the campground until around 7 PM.  The check-in rangers did a quick group talk to big group of  campers that seemed to arrive at the same time as us.

Everywhere we camp, there is always some kind of pesky, opportunistic critter that you need to be warned about.  In Yellowstone and the Smokies, it is the bears, obviously.  In Colorado, it was Elk (and bears, though they were rare).  In most places out east it is smaller animals like raccoons, squirrels, deer, or skunks.

 

So what was the campground pest here?  Ravens.  Ravens?  That's right, giant, crows on steroids, ravens.  When I saw one by the side of the road driving in, it was so big I thought it was a buzzard.  They were so large that they often hopped instead of walking.  And when they did walk, it was a kind of strut where each shoulder would heave up and down almost like muscle-bound tough guy walking to show off.  What?  You looking at me?

We were also told they were attracted to anything shiny and have been known to pick up car keys or even cell phones.  The rangers cautioned us not to leave garbage hanging on a tree as they soon become what they called "a raven pinata."

After getting our camp etiquette pep talk, we pulled into our campsite and set up the beds for the first time.  Easy Peasy.  All set-up in 5 minutes or less.  Sites at Mather were pretty nice with decent shade from the sparse evergreens.  The terrain was both rocky and sandy.

We then explored the campground a little.  There were pretty nice fairly clean bathrooms, but no free showers.  Showers cost $2 for 8 minutes and were located near the entrance to the campground about a 10 minute walk from us.

The temperature was supposed to drop into the low 40's that night so we all bundled up.  Jen and Mikah were sleeping together on top while Rogan and I would sleep below.

We all woke up in the middle of the night shivering with cold.  I actually put on a couple more layers at 2 in the morning to try to warm up.  The girls up top were even colder than Rogan and I as they had a fairly skimpy blanket and very little insulation value in that tent.  Cuddling for warmth was essential to survive that first night.

It reminded me of this awkward scene from the movie Without a Paddle.

 

"What happens in the cave, stays in the cave."

Tomorrow we see the Grand Canyon for the first time.

A Grand Adventure - the planning and day 1

The day you leave for a big trip is always full of excitement and, in many cases, nervousness.  This year the Pranskys and the Halls had taken on our most ambitious camping trip to date - one with a lot of moving parts. 

The planning for this whole adventure all started when we asked the kids where they'd really like to go that we haven't been yet.  The kids are going into their senior year, and we knew that our family trips together were going to be winding down and becoming less frequent as they go to college, start working, have families, etc...  
 

Over the years, we've narrowed down the bucket list of places to see a lot.  Our camping trips have taken us to Traverse City, MI, Savannah, GA, Fort Desoto, FL, the Smokey Mountains, Rocky Mountain National Park, Acadia, ME, the Adirondacks of New York,  the White and Green Mountains in New Hampshire and Vermont, Custar State Park in South Dakota, and the Tetons and Yellowstone in Wyoming. That's just off the top of my head.  I'm sure I missed a few.
 

Rogan didn't really have an opinion about where to go, but Mikah has said for awhile that she really wanted to see the Grand Canyon.  So, I started planning the trip like I usually do - by going to google maps.  Yikes!  29 hours and 1,900 each way.  That's a long way to pull our pop-up camper!

Driving there seemed to be out of the picture.  We'd lose 4-8 days of the trip just driving out depending on how long we were willing to drive.  

Okay, time for Plan B.  Many people fly to Phoenix or Las Vegas. Vegas seemed like the best option because it is relatively cheap to fly there (<$400/person) and its often very cheap to stay there for a night of two (The rooms we booked at the Luxor were $39/night)  Plus, its Vegas, baby! Anything we spend, we can make back at the casino, right?

From there we could rent a vehicle that we could camp in and see as many of the sites around the Grand Canyon that we could.  Here was our map of what we wanted to see on the trip using the awesome Roadtrippers website/app.

 

Click image above to see more detail of our trip in Roadtrippers

In all, we'd cover around 1,200 miles driving this loop around the canyon.  My first thought was to rent an RV from Cruise America RV's.  We saw tons of these around Yellowstone.

It was not a bad option, but to get one that sleeps 4, you'd have to get a big one and we knew they would be hard to park or go out to eat anywhere.  Plus, they were also pretty expensive.  

Next we looked at the Jucy van.  It has a pretty cool modification to a  Dodge Caravan that allows two people to sleep on top and two to sleep inside.

 

It also had a small kitchenette in the back with a gas-powered Coleman stove and a mini fridge that worked off of solar power.  Again, this was a decent option, but this is not what we settled on. 

Ultimately, we decided to go with Escape Campervan.  These were our Escape Campervans that we slept and traveled in for 8 days.

The set-up of the vans is similar to the Jucy van except with a bit more storage space for your bags behind the bench seats in the back.  Each Escape van is individually painted with a range of wild designs.  Ours were named "Fish Tank" and "Dogtown."  (Dogtown is a nod to the birth of skateboarding.)

We were hoping for a cool design like one of these:

Instead we got this:

 

A bystander at some point asked if it was "Saved by the Bell" themed. It definitely had a distinctive 80's feel to it.

  Here's a video showing a walk through of some parts of the van:

If our trip had a theme song it would have to be "On the Road Again." This is not the Willie Nelson tune of the same name but the lesser known yet still recognizable tune by a band called Canned Heat.  This song was appropriate for some obvious reasons and some not.  First of all, for some random reason we heard this song 3 times on our trip.  The weird falsetto tone of the singer stumped Greg and I as to who sang it.  When we found out they were called Canned Heat that seemed appropriate as we cruised the west in a "can" of sorts in temperatures that were in the triple digits daily and reached as high 117º.  

Apparently we were trapped in what meteorologists call a "heat dome."

The temperatures in Vegas the week we left.

One of the nerve wracking parts to planning this trip was, would these camper vans work for us?  The answer was, a definitive "yes."  Most importantly, they were dependable for us as we drove 1,200 miles.  Where we drove you did NOT want to have engine or tire trouble because in most cases there was nothing around for 40 or 50 miles and the temperature was in the triple digits.  

The vans got decent mileage, maybe around 18 mpg, and had a huge gas tank.  This was important because when you did find a "town," it was often very limited in what it offered in terms of food or gas, if they did at all.  Importantly, the escape vans had a decent amount of space for our bags inside.  This was one of the reasons we chose them over the Jucy vans, and I think we were all glad we did.  The beds themselves were pretty comfortable, all in all.  Now, the temperature swings at night, that was another story (to be told later.)

Day 1 - Monday 

We flew into Vegas with the maximum that we could pack and carry while still only checking one bag.  We knew space in the van would be limited, but we also had to pack for almost 2 weeks.  We also knew to be prepared for extreme temperature swings each day.  We took an Uber from the airport to the Luxor.  (Greg texted us to on the way, "Just tell the driver to turn left at the obelisk.")

Jen had checked us in online so we just picked up our keys and went up to the room.  The room was nothing special, but we didn't care.  We did discover they have a major problem with unreachable dust on the other side of the glass outside of our room.

 

EW!

Since the kids had never been to Vegas, we decided to walk around the hotel and the strip to see some of the "sights."

We took some pics outside the hotel on the way to the tram.

We saw guys cleaning the windows of the hotel.

That job does NOT look fun.

We watched the fountains at the Bellagio hotel and observed some of the oddities that come with people hanging out on the strip.

Greg's comment: "Crippled Elvis is my favorite Elvis"

We decided to eat at a place called Bruxies where most of us had chicken and waffle meals. While there we watched some of the NBA finals as the Warriors defeated the Cavs to win it all.  From there, we went back to Luxor to call it a night.  Tomorrow the real adventure begins.