RV Life In The Southwest: Zion, Bryce Canyon, Valley Of Fire, Cathedral Gorge

We are back in the United States. We are in Nevada right now. We just visited Seven Magic Mountains. But today we're headed to Las Vegas. There's a few things there that we have to do. We have to pick up an Amazon package. After that, we're going to go to a place called Nelson Ghost Town. We're making some breakfast because we woke up at like 5 a.m. to drive here. After that, we're going to head on out of here. One for Ollie. Not really, that's not your worst intention. Past 6 a.m. We're about to drive into Valley of Fire State Park. The sun's about to come up. We're going to get some filming done and also just do some really fun hikes that I've been looking forward to for a while. You must pay the toll. The sign says they do not accept the annual National Park Pass here at Valley of Fire, which is interesting because a lot of state parks usually do. And we literally just spent $80 on the annual park pass yesterday. But 10 bucks for the whole day. We're going to take some pictures at the like the main strip for sunrise, and then after that, we're just going to go around and do different trails. Well, there's iconic things here. One is there's a picture that's right off of Mousetank Road. Everyone takes pictures here. It's really cool. Elephant Rock is a cool little stop. It's a rock that literally looks like an elephant. There's a fire wave, which is very similar to the Arizona wave, which you need a permit for, but here at Valley of Fire, you do not. And then the fourth one, there's a slot canyon called the White Dome Trail. So we're going to be doing all of those things today. So I'm sure everybody has seen the wave, like the famous wave in Arizona. So that one, you have to get a permit, and there's only like 66 people out per day, which is an odd number, I thought. But this one, you just come here early in the morning and no permit needed. Just got to get here early before all the people. How are you feeling? Hungry. Hungry? Me too. Starting to feel like we're on a different planet. I think we're getting close. I think it's down there. We've just been running up and down these big rocks trying to get videos and stuff for our Instagram. Oh, sorry. My water bottle went away. It's really cool here. Not too many people here. It's like, what, eight o'clock? Yeah. Yeah, it's not bad. It's absolutely beautiful here, though. Definitely worth the stop. We also got stopped by a one of the rangers here, and he asked us for, you know, the ticket that we had, and I gave it to him. And he asked us if we were residents. I said, no. He said, well, it's five dollars more for a nonresident. So I missed that on the way in with the little kiosk. Electronic one is just so early. I think I just spaced out. But yeah, if you come here, you're not a resident. Make sure you get the nonresident one because then you get a different ticket for your window. It's $15 nonresident. There's remnants of a movie set called The Professionals. Filmed in 1966. I've never heard of it. Have you heard of it? No. I've never heard of it. The old movie set will be up here in the Salat Canyon, which is what's in this picture is a little further north. Yeah, let's go check it out. That was pretty cool. That is crazy, the the temperature change. It felt like it was like 60 to 65 degrees in there. And now we're in the sun. It's like it was like a day and a half. We are back. That was about three miles. We didn't go the three mile route. That was the sign whenever you walk in. Said like 1.1, I think. Yeah. Yeah, the sign said 1.1. And I think there was another one that was like three miles. That was pretty cool. I'm glad it wasn't three miles because it was getting really hot, really fast. It was a sign literally said hiking is not recommended. So I don't know what that's about. And now we're going to leave here and head to Cathedral Gorge State Park, which is just north of here. And so we'll do another sunrise hike tomorrow morning. Yeah. It is six a.m. We are like a mile from the Cathedral Gorge. So we're going to bring the slide in and just drive to it. Should be there in like two minutes. We just made it to the parking lot. We're the only ones in the parking lot. That's why you come early. Trying to get to this place called the Moon Caves. I think it connects with this trail. There's two entrances, the one up here called Miller's Landing, I think. And then there's like the main one over here. There's like a little campground right there. So you can park over there. I read online that it costs like $15 to get into this place. But I have not seen a kiosk. Just going to figure it out. We're standing in Cathedral Cave. Oh, can you walk through it? Yeah. So here's the slot we found where you can walk through. It's eerie. It's just a mud wall. It's just dirt. It is. It's just like packed in mud. I don't know how far back this goes. I think this is the end of this one. Yep. Let's go see how far this one goes. Oh, my goodness. It's so tight. This is crazy. As far as it goes. Well, that's not as far as it goes, but it gets really skinny. That's about as wide as it is, so. Nope. Looks like we've arrived at the Moon Caves. I honestly have no idea what this is. I didn't look it up beforehand. So I mean, we're surprised. Oh, here's the pay. Self-pay fee station. We found it. I can't even put this in my window anyway, because our car is way down there. I don't know if this is it. It looks like everything else. Maybe we got to keep walking. Maybe it's over here. It's that way. OK. All right. Apparently it's this way. I'm going to go back. Wow. This is really cool. This might be the end of the road. Yeah, if you're claustrophobic, you probably do not want to come through here. This one's really far. Like this one. We're headed back now. That was definitely worth the stop. I think we've only been here for less than two hours. Definitely worth a stop. It's like 10 bucks for the day for non-residents. But we are headed back to the RV. We're going to head down towards Zion and find a boondock spot for the weekend near Zion. We're not going to go to Zion for the weekend, though, because that's when the crowds go. We're going to wait until Monday or Tuesday. Then there'll be less people. Here we go. We out of here. We're going to go to the Utah sign. We are back in Utah again, probably for the fourth time since we've been on the road or something like that. Currently, we are in a parking lot in Zion National Park. It's 7 a.m. And we woke up about 545 to get here. Wanted to make sure we got a spot. We are making breakfast this time before hitting the trail because the last few times, I think it's just been kind of rough without eating. Yeah, we're here very early. It's very cold. Oh, it's not too bad. It is 44 degrees out. But yeah, I got some breakfast going, coffee, about ready to go. Cooking in this little waffle maker. Such a great travel sized waffle maker. Look at all those people who just come in already. And it's 7.16. Crazy how much the parking lot filled up in just the time that we were eating breakfast. I know the parking lot. We were the like maybe second ones there, like got six more RVs in there. A couple of those Cruise America ones, too. So since Zion National Park is extremely popular, the only way to really explore the park and the really popular hikes like Angels Landing, the Narrows, things like that, you do have to take the shuttle. And the first shuttle is at 7 a.m. and they have it like every 10 to 15 minutes. There's a shuttle that will take you to different spots around the park. So to avoid the shuttle, there's two hikes that we're doing that are still really beautiful. And this one is the Pirus Trail, and it's only three miles and it's completely paved, so it's really easy. The second one we're going to do tomorrow, which is the Canyon Overlook Trail. We're going to have to figure out if we can go through the tunnel because our RV, it might be a little too big, but we'll go to the visitor center to measure to 100% make sure. But that's kind of the bad thing about visiting really popular places that it is harder to get around, especially if you have an RV. Pictures in Zion often exceed 100 degrees. Currently, it's probably 35 degrees. So. Finally, in the sun. I think we are nearing the end of this trail. It was extremely easy. It's more like a sidewalk. We're going to turn around and head back here, back to the RV. Go back to our campsite. Back in the parking lot. As you can see, it is completely filled up now. There's even cars that have come over here and started parking in the RV section because that parking lot is probably filled up to go into a coffee shop now called Feel Love Coffee. Get us an afterhike latte. We just stopped by Feel Love Coffee. I got the salted caramel latte. I got the Feel Love Coffee or the Feel Love Latte. It's just, I think, a regular vanilla latte with honey. It's very good. I looked up what the best coffee place is near Zion National Park and Feel Love Coffee was number one. So I definitely see why it's very good. It is really good, yeah. Now we are going to go to the Grafton Ghost Town that is in Rockville. So it's very close to Zion National Park and see. That's like one of the top things to do in the area. And apparently they filmed. What is it? Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Yeah, in 1969. One of the most photographed ghost towns in the West. Which that's pretty cool. So we're going to go check that out and then we'll call it a day. Yes, they have the duck just to go under. It was up here. So from what I've been reading here is this town and it looks like there used to be a few more houses and a few more buildings. Like there's an old saloon next to the church that's completely gone. So it used to look probably more like a town. Now it's just like a few buildings. I think it used to be pretty populated because they there was a sign that said this girl, she was writing a letter about her memories in Grafton growing up as a kid. And I won't read it. You have to come and read it for yourself. But she recalls memories of her in this one room schoolhouse. And she said there was about 40 to 50 kids here, give or take. So it seems like there used to be more, a lot more people here than what it looks like with the buildings. But definitely a very cool place to come to. Definitely worth a stop. I wonder how old that is. This says 1963. So this is the Grant Cemetery. I didn't film a whole lot of it because like, you know, I didn't want to be like disrespectful or whatever. But interesting. That gravestone in there said this person's name and then they were killed by Indians. So, yeah, in the mid 1800s. We are back in Zion again, making some breakfast again before we go to this next hike. We are hiking to Zion Canyon Overlook. This morning should be the last hike that we do here in Zion. It's been fun. We're on the other side of the tunnel in this little parking spot. There's like three spots. There's like Handicap and then these two. We got the end spot. That's why the slide is out. We're on the end. It should be an easy hike, like a mile, I think. Doing this little breakfast. You're going to stay here and guard the RV. Canyon Overlook Trail. There's a tunnel. We didn't park too far. Just follow the road right around this corner. This is a relatively easy hike so far, but there are some there's some pretty steep cliffs right here. So kids definitely have to be watched for sure. We are back in the RV. That was a decent hike. Pretty easy. Like when you say very easy, it was less than a mile. 0.9 miles. Yeah, there started to get quite a bit of people on the trail. So there were quite a bit of people when we arrived just because it's such an easy hike. We really came here early so we could get a parking spot. That's the main thing. We're going to head out of here, head into town and then probably stay at a Walmart tonight. We are in Bryce Canyon this morning, walking on the Navajo Loop Trail, three miles in the snow. Your idea. This is the Queens Garden portion of it, so hopefully there will be less people. Yeah. Being here early in the year with snow on the ground. Such a cool color. Like you've got the white of the snow, green of the pine trees and then the really like red rocks. So it's like a really cool contrast of colors. It feels like we're on another planet. Quite a bit of these tunnels here. This is the third one, I think, that we went through. This part of Utah is really nice because it's like you are in the desert kind of, but we're still hiking in the trees, so we're not really desert people. We like to hike in the trees. So this is like the perfect balance. We're still heading down. So at some point, we got to start going back up and we haven't hit that. That was weird. That sounded like an earthquake. You think it was? I don't know. It was just like a rumble. That was weird. I don't know what that was. I'm not trying to be down here when rocks start falling. I mean, it felt it was just a rumble, like kind of in my ears a little bit. That was weird. I definitely felt it under my feet. You did? Yeah. Making our way back up finally. Starting to get muddy. Starting to? It's been muddy. That was it. My phone says we did 3.2. 3.2 miles. Not bad. Oh, the first half was fine. That second half was, that was tough. Well, coming up the hill. Yeah. Yeah. And it got muddier, too. So that wraps up our adventure in the southwest. After that, we headed to Jackson, Wyoming for a month to enjoy the rest of the winter. Our next video marks the beginning of our journey up to Alaska. We'll be spending quite a bit of time in Canada on our way visiting Waterton Park, Golden, Jasper and Banff. Then we'll head up to the Alcan Highway, starting in Dawson Creek and eventually cross the border into Alaska. I've dreamed of visiting Alaska since I was a kid, and I can't believe it's finally happening. So be prepared for a lot of Alaska type videos from here on out. Thanks for watching.