Tag: Nevada

A Year On The Road – Month 6 in The Independent

The latest instalment of our exclusive series for The Independent newspaper in the UK is now online, highlighting our travels through Nevada and Southern California, including the Mojave National Preserve, Valley of Fire State Park, and Greater Palm Springs.

This section of our Year On The road adventure took us deep into desert territory – both the Mojave Desert of much of Nevada and the Sonoran Desert that runs from Mexico up into Arizona, including part of SoCal.

Our view of the Hoover Dam from our travels around Las vegas

We spent much of the month in Nevada, either from our base in North Las Vegas (the fab Hitchin’ Post RV park) or further south in Laughlin, where Don Laughlin’s Riverside Resort & RV Park provided the perfect base to explore along Route 66 and down into California, where Joshua Tree National Park was another highlight.

There were scenic wonders aplenty, and a chance to see why both one of the Star Trek movies and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Total Recall were filmed here and, for as bright as it shines, we honestly felt the scenery around Las Vegas actually glittered brighter than the city itself.

Read all about it here: https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/north-america/usa/great-american-road-trip-nevada-southern-california-b2503940.html

The superb Joshua Tree National Park

We also want to offer our sincere thanks to both Travel Nevada and Greater Palm Springs for their help in ensuring we saw the best of their areas, as there was a LOT to see!

A Year On The Road – The 5-Month Map

Having just hit the 5-month mark on our grand RV adventure, it is especially illuminating to see that we had by FAR our lowest month for mileage in Fati, with just 474 miles covered from Fillmore in Utah to Kingman here in Arizona.

Month 5 – picking up in Fillmore, Utah, and traveling to Kingman, Arizona
Showing more detail of our Month 5 route from Utah, through Nevada, to Arizona

The main reason for such a low total for the full month (as opposed to the 868 miles in Month 4 and the mind-boggling 2,504 we travelled in the first month!) was because we spent two full weeks in one location (Laughlin, Nevada) , and used our tow car, Nippy, for our more extensive travelling once we were settled.

We haven’t been sluggards, though. Our mileage in Nippy was a whopping 3,718 for this month, which included trips from Cedar City to the Grand Canyon (North Rim) and Palm Springs from Laughlin, as well as our just-completed 779-mile 3-day round-trip from Kingman to the Grand Canyon (South Rim), Monument Valley and Flagstaff.

Fati and Nippy in our current campground, the Blake Ranch RV Resort in Kingman, AZ

Highlights of the last month include Las Vegas, the Mojave Desert, both North and South visitor centers of the Grand Canyon, the Colorado River, Monument Valley, and the city of Flagstaff, which really caught our attention, in addition to a fascinating section of Route 66.

When all added up, we have travelled 6,403 miles from home in Florida in Fati, and another 13,339 sight-seeing in Nippy from our various RV campgrounds.

The first 4 months – from home in Florida to Fillmore, Utah, a total of 5,929 miles

That’s a total of 19,742 miles in and around the US since we left home. And we’re still hungry for more! We do still have another 7 months to explore this half (or two-thirds) of the country, though, and the next month will include more iconic stop-overs, notably Lake Havasu and London Bridge, the RV Mecca of Quartzite, Phoenix, Sedona and Tucson. Stay tuned…