Category Archives: Travel

Documentation of my travels

The Grand Canyon

June 25, 2008 Chris 4 Comments

The alarm goes off and after about 20 minutes(remember we went to bed at 3 and this is at 5 am), I drag myself up and continue driving. In case if anyone was wondering why we just didn’t stop for the night, we HAD to get to the Grand Canyon today on Wednesday so we could try to get a permit to hike into the Canyon on Thursday. Chris and I didn’t make any reservations on this trip and had already called the Backcountry office and campground. There was nothing available.

I stopped after about an hour to get McDonald’s breakfast (a treat for myself) and picked Chris some food too. I was letting him sleep until we got to the Canyon. It took me about 2.5 hours but the drive was really pretty. We finally get to the entrance and didn’t have to pay the $25 fee because we had bought a National Park Pass in Carlsbad. (For 80 dollars, you get admission to all national parks and a bunch of other stuff. The card is good for up to 4 people or one vehicle. We already saved 37 so hopefully we will earn the rest back in the next year.)

I have been to the Grand Canyon a long time ago with my family but Chris has never been here. On our way to the Backcountry Permit Office, we stop at Mather Point and jumped out so Chris can get his first view. I don’t even think there are words to describe it. Unfortunately this was a quick stop because we had some major begging to do.

We show up at the permit office and were greeted by a very friendly park ranger. We wanted to put our names on the waiting list to camp overnight in the canyon on Thursday but instead…..WE GOT THE PERMIT. You have no idea how stressed we were (well I was) that we weren’t going to get it. Our friendly ranger gave us lots of tips and advice on how to do the trip properly and safely. After all of our questions were answered, he even gave us free fuel for cooking that a camper had left behind.

After that experience, we were in such a good mood that we thought we should at least try to see if there were any cancellations or openings at the fully booked rv park and campgrounds. (We didn’t want to drive out of the park since we would have to be back here at 4-5 am. to hike) I walk into the rv campground, the only place with hookups for an hour radius, and ask if by any chance they had room for us. There was even a sign on the door that said, “All Booked, Reservations Only.” And guess what, WE GOT IT….haha and the girl working the desk was from good ole Greenville, SC. She let us check in right then (2 hours early) and gave us an awesome shady spot on the end of the row.

So overall, today had been AMAZING. Haha I don’t think anything could have worked out any better. Chris is working outside in the breeze and I started packing for our adventure tomorrow. There won’t be any more posts until Friday night because we will be farrr down the canyon. I am hoping that my knee will hold up (if any of you don’t know I have had two surgeries on my knee, one replacing my ACL).

One last thing before we head out for the day. My Dad’s sister Nuria Serrat died of dehydration while hiking on the trails of the Grand Canyon a couple years ago. We know the dangers and already packed more than enough water and have located the water stations along the trail. I was curious to see which trail it actually was that she was hiking and while I was looking that up, I realized that she began her hike on June 26, 1999. In case if any of you don’t know, tomorrow is June 26. This was completely unplanned and I just remember that she died in the summer and I couldn’t attend her funeral because I was away at a soccer camp.

So along with our permit on our pack, I have attached a note saying that we are hiking in memory of my Aunt Nuria. She was an avid hiker and outdoorsman and I know she will watch over us on our journey keeping us safe. Wish us luck and thank you all for your comments. We love hearing from everyone.

Cross Country Trip, Travel

The looooonggg 24 hour drive

June 25, 2008 Chris 3 Comments

(Carlsbad, NM to Grand Canyon, AZ)

We woke up in Carlsbad on Tuesday around 7 am, knowing that we still have about a eleven hour drive to do that day (which turned into at least 16 since we were going through the mountains) We started to pack up camp and Chris took to dirt bike around before he loaded it up on the back of the rv. While riding in the park he saw 5 wild pigs roaming around. We also saw our skunk friend from the night before and 2 ringtails. Ringtails look like a mix of a big cat with a raccoon tail.

Later that day I was driving and started see rain clouds out on the horizon. They looked really cool because you could literally see where it was raining. Then the lightning began, and we were driving right into the storm. Chris was in the back working and all of a sudden the wind picks up to 40-50 mph and it started POURING. I start freaking out (as you know by now, anything out of the ordinary while driving the rv scares me) and then it starts hailing. Chris tells me to pull over and all of the other cars on the road pulled over too. It was a super bad storm that we waited out for about 10 or 15 minutes. Look at the size of the hail Chris picked up.

So it started to look like we had only seen the beginning of the storm and Chris thought it might get even worse if we stayed any longer. (Remember we have kayaks, a solar panel, dirk bike, etc. on the outside of the rv.) So we drive on and everything turns sunny again. Chris gets out to check on all that equipment and when he gets back in the rv, he sees this huge bird sitting on a rock right outside out window. He gets out the camera and starts to take really close, cool pictures. We later find out (after watching all of the professional photographers take pictures in the Grand Canyon) that this bird is an endangered California Condor. (Chris and I can do and awesome condor impression if you ask us to.)

We continue driving through New Mexico and realize that we are going right through Roswell (the place with all the UFO action). Of course we stop and go to the UFO museum and gift shops. We learned a lot about the government and air force’s conspiracy to cover up the alien ship crash landing in Roswell that contained 4 extraterrestrial beings. Many people swear to its authenticity while the government said it was a weather balloon and 4 test dummies inside. Who is right…..that is for you to decide.

Chris had done a report on UFO’s back in the day and was slightly more interested in all the museum documents than I was. We had a lot of fun there messing around with alien stuff and it was a good stop on our trip.

We then ended up on a 100 mile scenic drive in New Mexico, past Smokey the Bear National Forest (the danger level for forest fires is very high right now, you can’t have campfires anywhere). It was a beautiful drive through the mountains. No matter which window you looked out of, the views were breathtaking. We even stopped in a lava field to collect some rocks for the salt water fish take Chris has.

The only bad part of the drive was that the rv doesn’t go above 40 when going up steep mountains so it turned a 75 mph drive into a lot slower one. Hours later, it was 8 pm and we were driving into Albuquerque, NM. We planned on just driving through but Chris really need to buy some hiking boots. (He had ruined his previous ones while working on the rv and decided that it would be no problem to just scoop up a pair on the road…NOT) We find four sports stores that had Columbia shoes and only one of them was still open. Luckily we go to the Sports Authority just in time to pick up some new boots and a walking stick for me. (Once again me=clumsy which doesn’t bode well for steep grand canyon hiking)

I get back in the drivers seat and continue on past the famous, historic Route 66. While we were going down the road, all of a sudden a truck driver pulls up next to me and flashes his brights. Then he pulls in front of me and hits his break like 5 or 6 times. I freak out and tell Chris because it was looking like something was wrong. We pull off and Chris goes out to check our lights. We realized that for the past 200 miles, when we have our lights on at night, the break lights were permanently on. The turn signals were also wired backwards Oppppsiess. Haha at least we corrected our mistake and didn’t get in an accident during those first 7 states.

I drove until around 1 am and we were still about 300 miles away and was sooo tired. Chris took over the wheel and I went to bed. He drove us another 200 miles while smoking a cigar until he got too tired to drive. Around 3:30 am our day ended and we both went to sleep at a rest stop for a couple hours. Unfortunately, the alarm would be going off in about two hours…..

Cross Country Trip, Travel

Carlsbad, New Mexico

June 24, 2008 Chris 3 Comments

We drive into White City and see one gas station, general store, hotel and not much else. We got there in time to check into our rv park and pay $20 dollars to plug into the night. We park and hang up our cool, new, fun rv outdoor lights and make fun with our neighbors. We bring out the chairs and and our grill (for hot dogs) and started talking to our campsite neighbors. There were a few fun 40 something couple from Montana. Well we shared storied and moonshine until we realized that our hot dogs had been on the grill for over 20 minutes. (they were still yummy) After that we were pretty tired and new we had a busy day ahead of us so we just decided to watch a movies and go to bed.

Today we woke up around 9 (since we are now in the mountain time zone) and closed Illstreet for the day. Chris answered the first few calls but since we were going to be 800 feet below the ground, we knew we couldn’t get phone reception. We hiked down the natural entrance to the National park after driving the 7 mile scenic route on the way in. The natural entrance was awesome and definitely worth the hour walk over the elevators.

Yes mom, it was steep but my knee held out fine and Chris made sure to keep and eye on me. We took TONS of pictures today and even paid for a group tour of a restricted part of the cavern. After a few hours of hiking, we went to a very expensive grocery store and then hung out for an hour until the bats were released. Around 7:30 at night, hundreds of thousands of bats exit the cave to go out and eat for the night. The exit in huge swarms and it was really cool to see. Unfortunetly no cameras at all were aloud because they mess up the bats flight. Sooo we got to see it, but if any of you want to see it,you will have to go to Carlsbad.

We had fun riding the dirt bike in that area because the weather is just so perfect. We are happy to be our of the humidity of South Carolina. After the bats, we were really tired from all our hiking. We snuck back in the campground from the night before and built a fire overlooking the desert. It is not that easy to find firewood when a. its dark b. there are prickly things everywhere c. there is hardly any trees in the desert. Chris took his machete and started to cut down a dead tree so we made it work. We met 2 people tent camping by us when we went to warn them about the skunk action. They were a guy and girl only 17 and 18 from Wisconsin driving across the country doing a similar trip to ours (except they don’t have a sweet rv). After the fire, we just put a movie in and went to bed since we knew it would be a longgg day tomorrow.

Cross Country Trip, Travel

I’m the first one in New Mexico!!

June 24, 2008 Chris 2 Comments

(inside joke with my family that has spread onto a game with me and Chris)

We made it out of Texas. The rest of our drive was pretty uneventful until we realized that we were in the middle of NO where. We finally found a town to stop in and buy gas at that was under 4 dollars. We also stopped at Subway to get some food. It was WAYY better than any other Subway we had been too; they even had guacamole! After lunch, we realized the rv was making some funny noises so Chris stopped and changed the gear oil right in the middle of the auto zone parking lot making a HUGE mess. We stopped and took some nice scenery pictures and pictures of oil wells.

We do have one question though….where are all the people in Texas?? I get that we were in the middle of no where but we literally never saw anyone. Well we got an hour away from Carlsbad and we had a decision to make; which one of the one hour drives should we take to get there? We could either take the nice smooth highway that goes around the city and further or we could take the direct route on a rocky country road. Guess which one we choose….

Well I was scared on the bumpy road at first and Chris was loving it. I was just scared something was going to break. We passed by a bunch of cows that were right next to the rv and also stopped to take pictures. It looked like we were basically driving into the sunset. We got out at one point and Chris said we were far enough into the middle of no where, so we decided to shoot the gun. It was crazy because this was my only second time shooting ever. We each shot once into the lighting on the Horizon and it was exhilarating.

(Cactus picture above is a big joke in my family) I started to loosen up after that until I realized that we were 4 miles from the end and we rolled up to a creek! We got out to check out the depth of the water and Chris said that we could make it; and we did. From there the rest of the drive went well except that we were worried the gate or something would be locked by the time we got there. It wasn’t; we made it there safe and sound. Driving 15 hours wasn’t as bad as we thought it would be. It was unlike any other area of the country that Chris and I had seen before.

We have arrived at Carlsbad.

Costs for the day- A good bit in gas (exact numbers soon) Subway $15, RV stuff $20

Cross Country Trip, Travel

Driving Through Texas

June 22, 2008 Chris 3 Comments

So it is almost 3 in the morning and Chris and I are driving down i-10 in Texas and he just called 911 because there is an EXTREMELY drunk person on the road. We are not trying to give anyone a DUI but we don’t even want to pass him at this point. He is swerving worse than anyone we have ever seen before. And now he just got off the exit. Sooo up until this second, our drive today has been pretty uneventful.

We stopped in Gonzales, LA to go to a Walmart and buy a new battery. Which always turns into spending over 200 dollars. There was a HUGE thunderstorm (although we didn’t get any hail like at my little sister Amelia’s high school graduation party today). The storm turned the gas pumps off right as we were in the middle of filling up. For some reason we haven’t had the best of luck with gas stations on this trip (faulty credit card machines and pumps that won’t continuously pump) and it always gets Chris really frustrated. He then decided to replace a belt so we stopped at Auto Zone and he did it right there in the parking lot.

We were finally on the road and I drove the first 4 hour stretch. Chris took some amazing photos out the window of the sunset over the swamp lands.

This just happened to include a LOT of bridges and construction, both of which scare me. But we survived and made to to Texas!! We are going to try and drive until we get too sleepy to drive anymore. It is really nice to drive this late because we can drive a lot safer with no traffic and trucks. So hopefully in the morning we will have made a lot of progress and knocked out of 15 hours of driving until we get to Carlsbad, NM. Goodnight!! (sorry that I couldn’t see everyone at Amelia’s party today, I miss you all and wish I could have been there…)

Around 4:15 Chris and I decided to stop in San Antonio because I have never been there and Chris said the Riverwalk there is very cool. We pull into the city and it is empty because it is so late. We find an outdoor parking lot and take a quick glance and see that parking for under an hour is $2.00. We thought that was a good deal so we pull into the empty lot and go for a walk. We walked Riverwalk for about 45 minutes and Chris told stories of when he was there with his family a couple years ago. It was really neat and I am really glad we stopped to see it.

So we get back to the RV and it is 5:15 in the morning. We start up the RV and take our ticket up to the gate, only to find out that the woman there wanted to charge us $20.00 for parking!!!!!! We thought that was insane because we were literally there for less than an hour. She points to the sign and says that any entrance to the lot after 5:00 pm is ten dollars per car. She then tells us that since we parked in more than one spot she had to charge us double (Chris had just pulled in right under a street lamp and didn’t bother to try and fit in one space because the huge lot was EMPTY). Chris and I were IRATE because first of all, we do have a budget and that is wayyy to much money to park for 45 min; we could park and plug in at an RV park for less than that. This woman was horrible and told us no check, no credit card, cash only. We didn’t even have 20 dollars cash on us other than in our emergency lock box stash and plus we were refusing to pay it. Chris asks to speak to her manager because we think we was just trying to charge us double so she could run our ticket and pocket the other 10 dollars. She said the manager won’t be available for another hour or so. Chris said “That’s fine we will wait right here. Hell I can even go back and take a nap until they get there.” He proceeds to put the RV in park, right at the exit gate, completely blocking it. This woman was the rudest person because at first we tried to be really nice and explain that we were trying to get to California and we just graduated college, but she didn’t care. Finally after about ten minutes, she realizes that we truly are not leaving. The window slides open and she said “fine, I feel sorry for you so I will let you out for just ten.” She did not feel sorry for us, we think she just realized that no matter what, we were not giving her twenty dollars. So we go in the back and dug up 8 dollar bills and 2 dollars in change to give her. Overall, it was a HORRIBLE HORRIBLE experience at South Bank Public Parking.

The only good thing that resulted in this encounter was that it fired us up and woke us up. We kept driving for a little while longer and then decided to pull over at a picnic area off the highway to sleep for a few hours. It was actually a pretty decent nights sleep considered we had just the fan running and no ac. Around 11 am, it started to get pretty hot so we woke up and walked outside the door to see cows and a donkey about 20 feet away. I thought that was a pretty cool thing to wake up to.

We get on the highway and then I realized that we are in Kerrville, TX were my Great Aunt Nancy lives. I immediately call my grandma and get her number to try and call her. We were so out of it last night that I didn’t even realize that we were that close. We pull off and walk around Lowes for about 45 and I kept calling without being able to get in touch with her. At this point we had to get back on the road because we were still over 7 hours from Carlsbad and had to get there before 8 i we wanted to stay in the RV park for the night. I was really disappointed I didn’t get to see her.

The terrain here is really interesting and the drive is pretty scenic, although it is also VERY LONG. We will be happy to get break when we get to Carlsbad.

Cross Country Trip, Travel

New Orleans, LA

June 19, 2008 Chris 3 Comments

We made it to New Orleans!!! On the drive in we saw that there were still a LOT of fema trailers and destroyed houses everywhere. After reading reviews of the RV parks that are still open and calling a few hotels, we decided to stay in this gangsta rv place a block from the French Quarter. It has a pool/hot tub and it probably nicer than any hotel we could afford. Although it is pricey at $62.00 a night to stay here, (with my AAA discount) is is definitely worth it to be safe. All of the other cheaper parks were in very bad areas and full of FEMA still.(not really my style) Here there is is some extreme barbed wire that goes around the top of the fence and security controlled gate entrances. Well we are going to go to the pool before we shower up, eat dinner, and head out to Bourbon Street for the night.

Well we had A LOT of fun last night. We showered up in our RV parks super nice bathrooms (seriously this is nicer than staying at a resort) and got the security guard to drive us past the movie sets (they are filming two movies nearby). We were dropped off literally a block from the French Quarter. Chris has never been to New Orleans and I have been here twice, although never when I was of age to to go out and have fun. We ate dinner at Johnny White’s on the upstairs balcony literally overlooking Bourbon Street. Dinner was really good and not too expensive. We ordered fun drinks and ate for right around $50 dollars.

After Dinner, we hit the streets. Instead of going into all the bars and clubs, we would just get drinks and walk around (drinks like the cool hand grenades seen above). The street is closed down so you can walk up and down, watching all the crazies around you. All of the souvenir shops are also open so we looked through all the fun merchandise with drinks in hand. One thing that I didn’t remember was how many strip clubs there were (There is even a strip club filled with Trannies!!!). Overall, it was such a great night that we decided to stay another night.

One thing that Chris and I love about this city is that the cops are really friendly and actually there to keep people safe. The police station is right down the street from us and on our walk back to the RV park, the friendly security guard that dropped us off, came back and picked us up from the end of the street. On Bourbon Street, there was a Cop Van sitting there in one of the intersections and all of the people that they arrested from the night were thrown into the van until the bars closed. Two guys were even handcuffed to each other.

Well today is going to be our sightseeing day. Of course Chris had to put in a few hours of work in the morning but now we are going to head to the pool and eat the FREE STEAKS that the RV park is giving us for lunch (they look and smell really good too :)) Hopefully we will made it to Riverwalk, the Flea Market, and some of the other places around town before we go out tonight!!

UPDATE from Friday

Chris and I headed out on Friday and one of us (ahem not me) wasn’t feeling too well since he is old and can’t handle New Orleans like I can…haha I am totally kidding. Well we had our steaks and fully catered lunch which was AMAZING. It was acutally a FQRV police appreciation lunch, which was fine with us since we already thought to cops there were really cool. We ate poolside and then started off walking for the day.

First we went and walked the French Market. We were not really impressed because it was basically all of the stuff we had previously seen in the gifts shops the night before for like a dollar less. We were hoping there would be more local and original items there. The market just opened back up so it was only half full with vendors. We looked at some of the stores around there and bought a really cool bumper sticker for our rv. It says “Don’t tailgate me, I’ll flick a booger on your windshield.” You would be amazed at how many people just creep up right behind you just to fly right around. Future note to all of you: Be VERY courteous to RV drivers, it is not an easy thing to drive.

While we were shopping, Chris found this miller lite hat with a bottle opener built into it that he fell in love with, and decided not to buy. About ten minutes later he was already on ebay looking it up. After the French Market we went to Cafe Du Monde to get our famous beignets (which were deeelliiciouus).

We kept walking along the river until we passed by the IMAX theatre. We decided to go see a movie and rest up before our walk back to FQRV. We watched Hurricanes, which we thought would be about Katrina. Instead it was more of a wetlands conservation movie with a few news clips from the hurricane. It was really interesting to see (the wetlands really are disapearing because of many man made things like canals, boatways, and leveys that are contaminating the freshwater and promoting erosion.)

Now the real story lies with Chris trying to get some popcorn about ten minutes before the movie starts. He really wanted popcorn so we stood in line for concessions and they served everyone up until the person in front of us and then this woman said “Sorry we are closed.” She proceeded to start to pack everything up and there is a huge line of furious customers waiting. We though it was crazy that a concession stand would close before the movie even started?!?! Chris stood there and tried to convince her not to throw away the popcorn and to just sell it to him, along with a few other people. I went off to try and find a manager and by the time I came back with the upstairs manager saying we wanted to file a formal complaint, Chris and this other guy were FINALLY given their popcorn, for $4.00. By this time the movie had started and we had to try to find seats in a packed theater in the dark (for those of you that have never been to an IMAX they are really dark and I am very clumsy).

After the movie we walked back, jumped in the pool for a little while, and then my good friend Tim Furffy came over to visit our RV and go out for the night with us. I met Tim before classes even started our freshman year and he was part of our Clemson Family. He took us out to get some yummy jambalaya. Chris ordered muffaletta, which was a HUGE sandwich that he couldn’t finish. He decided that he would wrap half the sandwich up in a napkin and carry it around with him for the rest of the night in case he got hungry.

After dinner we went to a few bars on Bourbon Street with Tim. We spent most our time in the Cats Meow watching karaoke, hanging out on the balcony (where we saw a guy almost get his head taken off by a falling beer bottle) and basically just people watched (guy in striped shirt hit on this girl and her friend all night). We walked the streets and took pictures with the Police Officers on horses (they were basically a tourist attraction).

Overall, New Orleans was soooo much fun. We did some laundry before we left FQRV and as soon as I had it all dry and folded, it started POURING down rain… Luckily they let us stay a little while past our checkout to finish packing up so we can continue our LONG drive through Texas. I was so happy I got to see Tim and finally experience New Orleans as a 21 year old!!

Check out our pictures from New Orleans here:

Cross Country Trip, Travel

Dauphin Island, AL

June 18, 2008 Chris Leave a comment

We made it to dauphin island. we got the lady at the rv park to wait for us a half hour after they closed. the springs proved to be a great $454 investment. the campground where we are was crazy hard to find online. it is literally on the beach with trails through a bird sanctuary. The only problem with the island is everything closes at 9 or earlier. We drove around aimlessly at 930 until we finally decided to pull over a cop and ask him. coincidentally his name was officer triple A. sike! I don’t know his name but he sent us to a bar for a liquid dinner. we’re staying another night here so we will have all day on the beach tomorrow which is awesome because so far this isn’t very relaxing. keepin it real …posting from the bar -chris

Touring Dauphin Island

We finally made it to the beach!!! We got in last night and Chris already wrote about the cool bar we went to. Since no place was open to eat, we made my parents favorite road trip meal; spaghetti with little pepperonis in it.

The place we are staying in is Right on the beach. There is a boardwalk that leads to a private beach and marshy area. We walked the beach and build cool sandcastles during the day and then Chris beat another level in Grand Theft Auto 4.

After a little sunburn and all that excitement, we took the dirt bike to go get Chris some local seafood (since I don’t like seafood, I got a hamburger) We ate right on the water at the Crab Shack. I went upstairs to get margaritas from the bar up there and guess how much our two drinks cost….$18.00!!! We got to watch the sunset and then rode around the Island. We realized how much damage Katrina did 3 years ago and half of the Island looks like it is either for sale or empty real estate.

Overall, Dauphin Island was really pretty and we enjoyed it here. It still looks underdeveloped so if anyone want to rent a huge beach house for cheap….go here. It’s about 9:00 now and we are just going to lay low and probably walk on the beach and have a fire outside later before we head to NEW ORLEANS tomorrow. Luckily, it’s a short drive. We are learning a lot about how these campgrounds work and how to reserve the best ones, hopefully we will start finding cheaper ones.

Costs for the Day– $72 two night stay at Dauphin Island Rv Park, $35 seafood dinner, $18 for 2 margaritas

View all of our Dauphin Island Picture Here: