We had just moved to Arizona and were basically living in a closet (still are, actually). I told Kitty there was no way I could just sit around the house all day for the next several weeks, so we planned a roadtrip. We had originally planned to start in Tucson and go east to New Mexico, then up through Colorado before heading west, but things never really go according to plan. Luckily we're pretty good at winging it (at least I think I am, Jose made sure we had a water jug, diesel heater, first aid kit, gas cans - all things I said we'd be fine without, but definitely ended up needing). Instead, we cut off the first week of the trip and went north to get back on track with the rest of our itinerary. I say the rest of our itinerary, but only three of the fourteen nights were booked.
We left on Monday, December 9th, and spent most of the day getting last minute supplies, and then shot up to Flagstaff, AZ, just to break up the drive to our first real spot. It got down to 16° that night and luckily Jose didn't listen to me when I said we'd be fine in just sleeping bags. The diesel heater was 100000% worth it. Thank you random stranger on fb marketplace as we were already en route.
Next was supposed to be Arches (key words "supposed to" - remember that thing I said about winging it?). As we were driving, knowing we still had another hour and a half on the road with about half an hour of daylight left, we passed a lake. Both of us were immediately like "Should we turn around and just camp there?" So we did. It took a little off-roading to get to, but we ended up at the most magical spot with not a single other soul around. The lake was glassy and the sunset was beautiful. Bones got to run free and definitely enjoyed camping a little more that night. I'm going to make sure camping at that spot becomes a tradition.
From there we made it to our first planned spot. We ended up renting a room in Moab so we could take hot showers after absolutely freezing the previous two days (although mildly regretting that now because I forgot my favorite pair of jeans there and the owner isn't responding to my pleas). We hiked to Corona Arch and only ran into a few other people. Perks of taking a roadtrip in the middle of winter, I guess.
Next up was a quick drive by through Provo, UT (hi amber) and onto the Salt Flats west of SLC. Bones ended up cutting three of her four paws on the salt (shout out first aid kit), but we got some cute family photos. We continued on to Mammoth (I completely forgot to look at the GPS and drove us the wrong way for a solid 20 minutes) just as a little storm was rolling in. Kitty got some time in on the mountain the first day, but the second day's storm came in hot. Total white-out, blizzard conditions with winds up to 45mph, so we hunkered down in a brewery and watched countless cars get stuck in the intersection. We ended up extending our stay in Mammoth since the snow was so chaotic on Saturday, and stayed Sunday night as well so the boys could get some good snow that day.
We left for Yosemite early Monday morning and ended up getting sucked into another snow storm on our way. This one was quite a bit heavier, and at one point when we were driving, the wind blew so much loose snow around us that we literally could NOT see anything but white out the windshield for a solid 10 seconds. Talk about terrifying. We ended up making it without a scratch and got to stay in my hanai family's gorgeous air bnb in Yosemite West. We spent the next day wandering the valley with her and the girls. I truly have never seen a more beautiful day in Yosemite. We camped that night in Wawona and didn't see any bears!
We made our way to the coast next to camp in Big Sur. The highway is still shut down so we couldn't go all the way through, but had planned on driving in, camping, then driving back out and around to continue on. We got lucky with weather again and Big Sur was flawless. We camped in Pfeiffer State Park and had a campsite tucked away in the corner. We bought Bones a sleeping pad and bag and she finally relaxed around the fire with us. We did the typical Big Sur sights - driving down the coast and McWay Falls, and did 17 Mile Drive in Carmel. Oh to be filthy rich and living in one of those homes!
After Big Sur, we camped in Jalama for the night (as I'm typing this, the more I realize the California Coast portion was just me reliving my college breaks roadtripping and camping in all of these places). Love that place, but honestly not much to do there, so we went to bed at like 7pm. We woke up around 3am to a ROCKET launching into space from a little ways up the road. Honestly would have been really cool had we known about it beforehand, and not just waking up in the middle of the night wondering if we were about to get nuked.
We didn't really have a plan for the next day, so we ended up booking a hotel in Santa Barbara. Hotel Milo was the cutest little hotel on the water, just a couple streets over from Downtown SB. We decided to kind of go big that night. We barhopped for cocktails before Kitty surprised me with a reservation at a (very boujee) Spanish restaurant called Loquita. We had the most amazing carpaccio and NY strip with bone marrow melting all over it. It was such a great way to almost end the trip. We left the next morning and continued on to Joshua Tree.
Joshua Tree is best in the winter. Cool enough during the day to not really think about snakes (remember, snake phobia), but nice and warm in the sun. We kept it mellow that night and just picked up a pizza on our way into Indian Cove, but did tap into a bottle of wine that we had picked out together a few weeks earlier (obvi I kept the cork for a future shadow box). We packed up the next morning and headed back home to Arizona.
This truly was the most amazing trip. There were definitely times where we argued (mainly while playing the alphabet sign game - I'm competitive, ok), but we still like each other after spending two weeks living out of and confined to a car. We asked each other's favorite parts of the trip and we both agreed on just driving around and talking and giggling with each other.
We're back in Arizona now and trying to figure out what comes next. Stay tuned, I guess!