Great American Western Road Trip: Intro

Hello Hiveians! It's been a few months since I've seen any of you awesome people!

I've been a bit busy with life as well as been taking a bit of a social media/internet detox, but now I'm back! And I'm here to share with you my latest and greatest adventure!

So a little back story first. I've had in mind doing a Western Road trip for quite a few years, flying into Vegas and doing a loop around a bunch of parks out there, and then flying back out of Vegas. The main issue would be getting it economical enough and plotting out where we'd stay and make it worthwhile enough to justify the cost. So it seemed like a great plan, but it was a bit tougher to execute. Until now.

I noticed the flights to Vegas were even cheaper than usual, like 80$ round trip from Boston! So I reached out to my friend and mentioned the idea of just going for a few days, renting a car, and doing a few parks and then heading back. But the more we looked into it, we found out about renting a campervan. The campervan would be about 80$ a day, which is quite reasonable to say the least, although the miles charges would add up a bit, but even then it would still be a pretty great value.

So fast forward, and now we have planned out an almost 2 week adventure, starting in Vegas, going through Utah and Arizona, and hitting multiple national and state parks! The plan was to get the campervan, and then find public land that we could camp on for free at night to keep costs even lower.

Now to start the story, it's a month later since the trip was planned, and I'm on my way to Vegas. I get on the plane and.....there's no one! I have the plane pretty much to myself. Talk about leg room!

After a long 6 hour flight, I arrived in Vegas at around 10pm. My friend arrived before me from Miami, and picked up the Van earlier in the day. So we met up at the airport, and headed off to our first destination, right outside of Valley of Fire State Park to spend our first night.

It was about a 40 minute drive from Vegas until we got there. We found a dirt road to pull off on and that would be our home for the night.

We folded down the sofa, and turned it flat into a bed. Got the sleeping bags out, and settled in for our first night on the road.

My phone alarm went off right around dawn, because we wanted an early start. I emerge from my sleeping bag to have my first glimpse of where we were through the rear window.

Wow. What a landscape. What an experience. I jumped out to have my first good look at the van and the location.

It was almost surreal to wake up to such beauty and such vastness. I knew this was going to be an amazing adventure! We didn't waste much time, and packed up to head to explore the Valley of Fire! But on the way out, I had to grab a few shots of the long road that lead us here.

We drove a little bit more and then we got our first glimpse of the famous and iconic red rocks of Valley of Fire!

And that's where we'll leave things for today. It was amazing to get back out onto another adventure after these tough couple of years. I really wish I could go overseas again, but with the state of the world, it makes more sense to use this time to explore more of America that I've never seen.

How have you guys been? How has the pandemic been affecting you these days? Have you been traveling and exploring more now? Let me know and I'll catch you on the next post!

-Sean

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