Traveling the West Part II

And, after much delay (for a good reason - more on that to come), here is Part II of my 3-week teaching trip out west.  If you missed the first Part (days 1-5ish), click here.  I left my notes/schedule elsewhere so I'm going to do my best to recall days/hike lengths.

I left off with day 5 - leaving Zion National Park.  After leaving Zion, we headed through Vegas to end the day in Sequoia and King's Canyon National Park.  Let me cover Vegas first.  Vegas is not my thing and I was NOT looking forward to going.  The stop was more or less a quick trip through to see the strip and have lunch.  It was fine.  I had no plans to ever go back (more on that later too).

We camped in King's Canyon in a pretty nice NP campground, though the lack of lights in the bathroom at the campsite was challenging at night!  I hiked to Mist Falls, which was a nice easy hike, about 9-10 miles.

Sequoia National Park



Sequoia National Park

King's Canyon National Park



Hike to Mist Falls in King's Canyon



Mist Falls, King's Canyon



Bear on the Mist Falls trail

After a couple of days in King's Canyon/Sequoia, we headed to California and stayed in Santa Paula for three nights.  Our first day in the area, we took a boat out to the Santa Cruz (part of the Channel Islands), where we went on a guided hike on Nature Conservancy land (estimated 3-4 miles).  The topic of the hike was mostly biogeographic in nature, which was awesome since that is my specialty!  Very interesting!  One downfall of the hike is that there were loose rocks on steeper slopes and I slipped.  And fell.  And hit my tailbone hard enough to knock all the air out of my lungs.  And gashed my arm pretty good (I have a very nice scar).  It took me 10 minutes just to sit up in my tent the next morning.  If you've hit your tailbone before, you know that it is an injury that is hard to come back quickly from!  It took nearly 4 weeks for my tailbone to stop aching constantly.  Never-the-less, the Channel Islands are very cool:

The next day, we headed for LA.  I drove a 15 passenger van in which the breaks were dying while attempting to follow four other vehicles.  It was awesome (note the sarcasm).  We hit the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Chinese Theater, and other such touristy places, a conservatory, and Venice Beach.  To express how I felt about LA, I will share exactly how many pictures I took over two days.  I took 16 photos.  Can you tell how much I loved it?  Hah. 

I love White Christmas!  :)

After a few days in the LA area, we headed out through Needles, CA to the Grand Canyon.  After three days of driving said van through LA traffic (which I am not used to - I was living in a town of 10,000 for the past three years and I drive a Versa hatchback - not the same thing!), I was tired.  And then one of our big 15-passanger vans broke down with "total catastrophic failure". 

I made a trip back to Vegas (where I had said I would never go back to about a week earlier and about 100 miles one way) to pick up a new rental van, then drove the 100 miles back to where the van broke down to gather the items that couldn't fit in the vans that headed straight to the GC, and then to the Grand Canyon.  We were held up by a major accident on Highway 40 in northern Arizona and by the time we were driving north to the Grand Canyon, it was around 2am (I had driven from 8am-about 11:00pm with about a three hour break for lunch/van checkup) and the elk were out in insane numbers.  We ended up driving 20-30mph for about 60 miles and made it to the campsite around 4am.

I was up at about 6am and then needed to drive a student to Williams on the first day in the GC.  The second (and last) day in the GC, I needed to drive to Flagstaff.  I had a couple of hours at the end of the second day, and since I was working on about 4 hours of sleep total in three days and had yet to see the GC yet (though I've been there before), a few awesome students went on the shuttle with me.

So, my goal of hiking the Grand Canyon did not happen.  I had been training for my half on hills to get ready to hike the GC (though I don't know if I could have ever trained for that type of hike!).  There was no way it was going to happen on this trip with so little time and sleep and so much stress!  It's okay though, there was a lot going on that was more important.  I'll get back one day and do it. 

After the Grand Canyon, we headed towards the four corners area, New Mexico, Great Sand Dunes, and then back through Kansas to head home.  After all that went on over the week before this, I was exhausted and not really taking many photos.  I was still getting up early to go for walks.  I was glutened in California and then again in New Mexico and Kansas so I was feeling awful and everything I did felt like a lot of work.  Let's just say that when you are glutened with Celiac, life is pretty rough for a while (still dealing with the effects).

Border of New Mexico and Colorado

Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado - so much fun to climb!

So that's it!  Three weeks of awesomeness!  It really was a great trip and I'm very happy I went.

While I was gone, I was also attempting to close on my new home (which was supposed to happen 1 week after I returned home from the trip but was pushed back a week after I got back)!  Talk about adding a little stress to the mix!  I will be working on a post on my whole home buying process because it was insane.