Feb 16-29,2024 Arizona, California and Nevada

Our last day at the Craggy Wash, we decided to do some exploring and went on a nice hike up and over some of the small mountains in the area. It was a beautiful sunny day for a perfect hike.

Today we are heading out of this spot and driving about an hour west to another Harvest Host location in California. This means we lose an hour again which, as I’ve mentioned before, is a little annoying plus the gas prices are outrageous!!

But we do want to head that way because another YouTube channel that we follow is having a meet up and fire department fundraiser in the Death Valley area this weekend that we want to go to plus there’s some beautiful hot springs over that way for Greg to enjoy.  

The Harvest Host location was totally awesome. It was an outdoor museum in the Mojave Desert with art installations and historical restorations of buildings. Plus they had camping spots where you camp right among all this stuff and also lots of hiking trails. Everything is numbered and they give you a book with descriptions of each numbered things. It was really well put together. And on top of that they had HOT SHOWERS!!!  This was one of our favorite Harvest Host locations.

Next day we headed out and stopped for a little lunch at this cute roadside park. 

We got to the Wonderhussy meetup around 1 and it was kind of a bust. There was a line of people to meet her and we weren’t really that interested so instead we walked around the flea market and donated some money to the fire department and then had lunch. 

Greg decided against the Hot Springs so we just drove on to Pahrump. Stayed in the parking lot of the casino for a night and then headed to Vegas.

Vegas was crazy and we realized why. It was because it was winter break so people flocked to Vegas for Presidents’ Day. It was mobbed. We found free parking at Circus Circus Casino and went casino hopping by foot. The slots were very tight and we both did terrible. It’s really not fun when you lose. But we still enjoyed our time there. Had the Italian Buffet and really walked and walked and walked all over the place. According to my Apple Watch we walked 12 miles one day.

We stayed three days and then the rain came so we headed south to warmer and dryer weather to a town called Laughlin.

In Laughlin we stayed in the Tropicana Parking Lot. They charge 10 dollars to stay the night.  We walked along the Colorado River behind the strip of Hotels and Casinos. It’s a cute little town and the best part was I won back all the money I had lost in Vegas. We found this Pink Donut place. I think it’s just a west coast thing. It’s awesome, so many cool varieties of donuts.

The next day we traveled a bit East on I40. Some very cool scenery along the way and some major altitude and temperature changes. We got off and travelled on  Route 66 for a bit and stopped at the Roadkill Cafe for lunch. They have super funny names for all their items on the menu and also some of the most amazing cream pies I have ever seen. 

We headed a little further west to the town of Williams which is the gateway town to Grand Canyon. We are gonna spend the night at the Loves Travel Stop because it is at 7000 feet elevation and it’s actually snowing here. Our original plan was to go check out the Grand Canyon but this weather is ridiculous so I think tomorrow we will head south again. 

We woke up to 27° and the van was pretty much frozen over. And on top of that we could not put the Webosto Diesel heater on because we were above the 5000 elevation so we just stayed comfy and warm inside our zero degree sleeping bags. When the sun popped up above the mountains, the van started defrosting and warming up. I went into Loves to take an $18 shower. It was absolutely wonderful. The best!! Worth every penny. 

Next day we drove to Sedona which was much lower elevation and also just one of the most beautiful places in this country. Our first stop was to do the Sacred Seven Pools Trail. We parked at the shuttle area but were unable to get on the shuttle bus thanks to a cranky park ranger that gave us ZERO information. We decided to walk to the trailhead from the shuttle instead of waiting for the next shuttle bus. It was a nice walk about a mile long passed some million dollar houses. We got to the Soldiers Pass trail head and started the hike. It was amazing. 

After the hike we headed into the town and had some lunch overlooking the beautiful scenery of Sedona.

From there we headed about 20 minutes out of town to the dispersed camping area. They changed things up quite a bit here regarding the dispersed camping area. Dispersed camping is supposed to be dispersed, hence the name. So you basically drive down these forests roads and see pullouts to camp. It’s dispersed so you’re sort of on your own figuring it all out. Well, in this area of Sedona which is extremely popular, they changed how they do dispersed camping as compared to the rest of the country. They decided to put big boulders up closing off all possible roadways and pull offs and instead they corralled everyone into like a holding area. There was about 6 or 8 of these holding areas. The first 2 closest to the main road were packed out and then the further you drove on the dirt road the less crowded the holding areas were. We wound up pulling into the 3rd or 4th one called Cockscomb. It was, I think, the best one with the best views. We walked to the other ones that were past us and I think ours was the best.

The next day, the guy in the big RV in the photo above left and so we jumped right into his spot and the view was even better for us. That next morning we looked out the window and 4 hot air balloons were heading our way. 

Sedona is really amazing. We hiked a bunch of times in this area and Greg went on a bike ride to a Heritage sight down the end of the dirt road. It’s a beautiful country for sure. 

We headed a little further south chasing the warmer weather and had plans to visit the Montezuma Castle National Monument but when we got off the exit there was this Huge American Indian festival going on so we parked the van and headed over. There were all kinds of tents selling things and cultural dances and songs. It was pretty cool to watch the festivities and the way they pass things down from generation to generation.

The festivities were on the grounds of the casino so we went in and had dinner at the buffet, did a little gambling and then stayed the night in their parking lot. They give RVs a pass to stay as long as you have 100 points on your players card. It takes about $20-30 on a slot machine to get 100 points. So I still mark this as free camping because we would have gambled regardless. 

So the next day we continued in to that National Monument. It was a pretty short hike to the Montezuma castle which was old cave dwellings built in the 1400’s by the Indigenous People.

The place was on a small river with the biggest Sycamore trees I have ever seen. 

From there we headed further south and east down do some more camping in the Saguaro Forest again. This time in a forest called Tonto. This was actually dispersed camping and we managed to get a spot among some HUGE saguaro cactus. 

We took a nice hike down to the river and saw a bald eagle. There’s supposed to be wild horses in this area but we haven’t seen any yet, the only wild life we see is the guy across the ways dog that comes to visit us every 10 minutes. 

We headed out in the morning toward Phoenix and a shower at the community center. In the way we did see some wild horses which was pretty cool and we also stopped at a giant food and flea market in a town called Fountain Hills. Really cute town. We had some Backlava and a honey crepe.

We then went to the community center which was beautiful but unfortunately the showers were BARELY WARM. It was not a pleasant shower but for 5 bucks, what do you expect. I got through it and feel like a million bucks right now. I’m currently sitting in the library across from the community center in a town called Apache Junction. This library has super fast WiFi so I’m going to upload the blog a day early because it’s a leap year this year so officially there’s still another day in February but I can’t pass up on such super fast WiFi.

Below is our monthly calendar. We only spent twenty dollars thius entire month on Lodging. Diesel came to #313 for the month. Its been an amazing February for us. We have no idea where we are staying tonight of tomorrow night. Thats how we roll.