ROADTRIP CONYONS AND NATIONALPARKS

Next stop – Red Rock Canyon 🙂
Finally!! After almost a month in New York, Miami, New Orleans, Texas and Las Vegas, we finally got out of the cities and into nature.
We had rented our big car from Sunnycars for exactly one month to spontaneously drive to the different national parks. But before our adventure started, we had to buy some things from Walmart, to make the camper life easier.

• Sleeping pads
  Since we slept 90% of the time in the car, a comfortable sleeping position was very important. We laid out most of the trunk with our sleeping pads and stuffed the remaining bumps with clothes. At the end of our road trip, we gave the sleeping pads to the homeless at Los Angeles Airport.
• Bowls
  Practical for cereals, fruit, snacks, soup, instant noodles, etc.
• Socks
  In order to not having to wash our socks every few days, we bought an XXL pack of socks from Walmart, which we still wear today.
• Jumper
  In Nevada it cools down at night. We mostly slept in a T-shirt, jumper, long trousers and our wool sleeping bag.
• Water
  For our trip we had planned 40 liters of water for three weeks.
• Fruit
• Cereal
• Energy drinks

We usually thought of where we would spend the night very spontaneously. Campsites can quickly become expensive in the United States. The Americans only differentiate here between a tent site and RV site with water and electricity. As soon as you sleep in the car, which has neither a water nor a power connection, about 65 dollars are due for a RV parking space. After two or three nights at such campsites we googled a bit and came across so-called”campground bureau of land“. These are state places where you can stay for a small contribution. In the morning a ranger drives past these public campsites and collects the money from all campers.
We were sneaky and arrived late at night and left again around 6 in the morning – so we saved a lot of money.
No risk – no fun! 🙂
Besides … let’s be honest – the car is not necessarily the most comfortable place to sleep. We wouldn’t have got much sleep either way 🙂

In total we were in ten different national parks! We really would have loved to see more – but unfortunately you can never do everything. Many national parks do not require entry. However, if you plan to go to several national parks, then it is worth buying the “American The Beautiful Pass”. With this pass, all occupants of one car can visit the national parks for one year. Here you will find a list of all national parks that you can visit with the ATB Pass. Obviously it didn’t take us so long to pass the pass, so we passed it on to our friend in La Grange.

Joshua Tree Nationalpark
Caution !! As the name states, this national park has loads of Joshua cacti. When I was hiking, my leg caught on a cactus lying around. The stinger was so deep that I could hardly get it out.
I panicked and imagined what it would be like if it was poisonous and nobody could help me here in the middle of nowhere. And what was Phil doing during this? Sure! He was laughing at me and filming the whole thing… thanks for nothing! According to Google, the “Cholla Cactus” is not toxic. But the fallen parts can take root very quickly, so the thing had to go out of my leg – even with the barbs!
So be careful where you walk. My leg still hurt two weeks later.

Yosemite Nationalpark
After 13 stops and 7 days we finally went to California. One of my best friends moved to California and of course I really wanted to see her again! She lives in La Grange, not far from San Francisco. We spent almost 2 weeks with her and also made trips and city trips together until we moved on.

You want to know how it went on with our trip?
Go read the post about San Francisco 🙂

Emily