Day 15 - 17 Las Vegas and The Journey Home

We are home! There was a lot of driving and very little wifi so I am writing this from our kitchen table at home. The total kilometres 7,000 give or take a bit.

Back to day 14 - Las vegas. We did go out for dinner but we didn't get the prime rib for 8.99. It was Friday night which was sea-food night at the buffet which was $20 per person. We thought about this a lot and decided to just go to TGIF as there was no way Ryan was going to eat $20 worth of food and I didn't feel like stuffing myself just to feel like I got good value.

I was not a fan of Sam’s Town. Jenny may disagree with me on this but she is not writing the blog so there you go. I found it to be dirty, very smoky (smoking is allowed everywhere) and a bit of an old, dingy casino. Also, I felt like what are we doing here when the main strip is just 10 minutes drive away? Enough complaining, we ate up and headed over to the strip. We drove up and down Las Vegas Boulevard, took tons of photos and parked at the Mirage.
We took a wander through The Venetian, watched people get paddled around in gondolas and bought some cakes from Carlo’s Bakery (Cake Boss).

We decided that we had seen enough of Las Vegas and at 10:30 the following morning started to make tracks north. We drove about 7hrs to prove, just south of Salt Lake City.

The next morning we were up at 5:30 and drove 12hrs to Pendleton in Oregon. The Watermans go hard! We were tempted to push on to Vancouver but with our trailer tail light still playing up we decided to stick with the plan.

Finally, on Monday morning we did our last 7hr drive up and back into Canada to be welcomed by Nanny and a home cooked coke ham dinner. Yummy.

In summary, we had an awesome time. Here are our top favorite experiences.

Best Disney rides - California Screaming, Indiana Jones and The Tower of Terror.
Best beaches - Ocean beach and Coronado
Most beautiful place - Sedona
Hottest Place - San Diego 36C, Coldest Place - Grand Canyon -4C
Best overall experience - watching James Bond movies in the trailer

That’s it for this trip. God Bless.

The Watermans.


Here are some photos were were unable to download till we got home.

A bit blurry but we were driving at the time.

Eugene, Oregon during our unscheduled stop

Hiking Cathedral Rock

It really was a 'scramble'!

No safety rails!

A good picky at the Grand Canyon

Our first go on the Tower of Terror!

Compare the 'fake' mountains in the background at Disney with the mountains in Sedona

Zoomed in from the photo above. Cool eh?

Day 14 - Grand Canyon to Las Vegas

Holy macaroni it was cold last night. Of course I had to get up in the night to pee so I got so see some amazing stars at 4:00am. There was ice on the outside of the trailer so who knows how cold it was. I know. We woke up at 7:00am, walls dripping with condensation, to find it was -4C. You gotta be kidding me! Our hose was frozen solid. I took it in to the washroom to try and defrost it so it wouldn't leak all over the trailer. No chance. 

Jenny told me later that her sleeping bag had frozen to the inside of the trailer!

-4C Ccccccold!

We packed up and headed for Vegas. We had originally planned to spend some more time at the Canyon but we decided to head for warmer weather. We crossed the state border into Nevada right at the Hoover Dam. What an amazing feat of engineering. It is a very cool sight to see and a warm 24C. Thank the Lord!

The Grand Canyon 

The Hoover Dam

Las Vegas

We pulled in to Vegas at 1:30pm after getting gas and doing some grocery shopping. I’m typing this from our hot little trailer while Jenny and the kids lounge in the pool. We are probably going to pick up a prime rib dinner for $8.99, hopefully kids are allowed.

Day 13 - Sedona to the Grand Canyon

The RV park we were redirected to, called Lolo Mai was just outside town. It was a nice, friendly, family campsite. This place is stunning! There are so many good hikes but we only had time to hike one so we chose Cathedral Rock. Cathedral Rock is located about 30 mins form the campsite on the other side of Sedona down a road called ‘Back o Beyond’. We hiked the short 0.7mile hike almost straight up 700ft. A lot of it was a scramble up rocks and crags. Ryan wa sin his element and was our guide most of the way. We took the good camera and took tons of great photos but I don't have the cable so you can only see this one picture I took with my phone. This is at the top, along a ledge and yes, it was as scary as it looked.

Once safely down we went back to Lolo Mai RV Park and packed up and set off for the Grand Canyon. Not a very long drive, just a couple of hours to the KOA. We stopped long enough for a snack and headed out to the Canyon at 5:30pm. Lucky we didn't go any later as the sun was setting over the canyon and the temperature was dropping like a rock. We had gone form 36C in San Diego to a pleasant 24C in Sedona to 8C at the Canyon. The trouble with the Grand Canyon it is so big it’s really hard to take in. In Sedona you could drive out to a rock and climb it in an hour or walk around it in a couple. With the Grand Canyon, all you can do is look and take lots of weak photos. Anyhow, too cold to hang around so we high tailed it back to the camp site. Too cold even for a fire.

Cathedral Rock, Sedona, Arizona

The Grand Canyon, AZ

Day 12 San Diego to Sedona

The alarm woke me up at 5:50am. We were on the road less than an hour later (just getting light so I didn't have to worry about the rear light) and headed directly east toward Yuma. We stopped for a nice greasy brekky and again for an excellent gas station pizza. Seriously, it was better than pizza in Maple Ridge. We steamed through Pheonix and headed north up into Sedona. Coming to Arizona we saw so many classic three pronged cati. We wanted to get a photo standing next to one but next thing we knew the cacti were no more.

Unfortunately, the Ranch Sedona was full so we had to go find another place. We finally pulled in at 6:00pm and cooked a healthy dinner. The RV campsite was actually really nice, set alongside a creek. The views coming in to Sedona were breathtaking. Even better than the Cars ride in Disneyland.

Watering cati at a rest stop

Sedona, Arizona

Day 11 - San Diego

So we didn't end up going to Tijuana so if there are search parties looking for us you are looking in the wrong place. Tijuana would have been nice but really, what were we looking for? Did we want to go to busy Mexican street sellers peddling t shirts and ornaments that we don't want or need. Did we want to leave our passports on the beach while we take a dip. Not really.

So, after much deliberation and consideration of all the attractions in San Diego we decided to go to the USS Midway. An aircraft carrier decommissioned in 1992 and the primary ship in operation Desert Storm during the Gulf War.
There was a great audio tour, some awesome short movies about how important Midway (the place in the South Atlantic, not the ship) was during the second world war and some veterans actually recalling flight operations on the flight deck. The kids had an opportunity to try out a flight simulator. I dont know how they dd it. I video the whole thing. Jenny almost peed her pants watching as the simulator went over and over, upside down and backwards. There was a monitor next to the simulator showing the kids faces and you could see Jemma’s hair and the seatbelt strap going straight up as they were upside down. The funny thing is they were controlling the simulator!
We started late as I had to go to a hardware store and buy some new hinges for our pantry door. That was surprisingly easy and the door is now hanging again in it’s rightful place. I also spent some time troubleshooting the electrical. I was hoping to find a loose wire and pop it back into place but no luck.

Jemma and Ryan practicing before going on the simulator

Day 10 - La Jolla and Ocean Beach, San Diego CA

Happy Birthday, Jenny!

OK enough resting! Off to La Jolla (pronounced La Hoya) beach this morning. Great beaches and snorkelling. NOT! We didn't have any snorkelling gear so we were unable to take advantage of the great underwater life but the beach was quite crammed and there was an awful smell of something dead where we were sitting so that put a damper on things. Sorry, no photos of La Jolla, well, here are a couple that show how uninteresting it was.
No worries, we went form La Lame to Ocean Beach. This is more of a hippie and surfer dude hangout and proved to be an amazing beach. We applied lots of sunscreen but managed to fry ourselves anyway. It’s still a steady 32C here.

We finished the afternoon off with a couple of margaritas, a seafood bucket and fish tacos. Yummy. We are so stuffed!

La Jolla

A seal on La Jolla

Now we are talking!! Happy Birthday, Jenny!

Yummeeeee!!

Coming up..

The plan for the next few days. We will pop over to Tijuana tomorrow. Apparently, it is easy to walk across the border and take a taxi on the other side. The following day we will be off on another 8hr drive through Yuma, Pheonix and Sedona. Then pushing on into the Grand Canyon for at least one night's stay and then the start of our return journey via Las Vegas. We plan to be home a week tomorrow.

Day 9 - Balboa Park and Coronado, San Diego, CA

Another gorgeous, unusually warm day in San Diego. We spent almost all day Sunday 15th lazing by the pool at the KOA Chula Vista, a suburb of San Diego. We needed some time to decompress after a gruelling 4 day drive down, being beaten up by the I5 - seriously they need to do some major repairs, poor trilly has been taking a beating. Currently our rear driver side signal light works ok (on the trilly) during the day but at night nothing works. I have tested the bulb and its fine. We will have to get it looked at when we get back to Canada. Also, our pantry door, the one with the wolf etched into the mirror is completely off. The hinges are mangled.
Anyway, back to my rant, after a long drive down and three long days in Disney we were in some serious need of some downtime.
In the afternoon we headed over to Balboa Park, a huge park in Downtown San Diego and location of all the major museums and the zoo. We parked and took a shuttle to the centre of things. There were street performers, Museum of Art, Natural History, Museum of Man and Botany but we decided to just wander around.
From Balboa we took a long windy drive over to Coronado Island home of a US Naval station and beautiful beaches. We wandered around, ate ice cream and the kids splashed in the surf. The sunset was beautiful.

Balboa Park Botanical Gardens. A carp.

Balboa Park, San Diego. Cooling off in the water park.

Coronado, California

Balboa Park is the green rectangle right in the centre of San Diego.
Our KOA in Chula Vista, is located just to the south only a few kilometres out of downtown.