Less than a half an hour away from the madness that is the Las Vegas strip, you can find the beautiful Red Rock Canyon National Park. Free camping isn’t really possible within the park, so we continued along the 160 W to Lovell Canyon in the Spring Mountains: another lovely desert landscape with plenty of dispersed camping spots accessible to campers and adventure bros with souped up Jeeps alike. We spent the night here before heading toward Red Rock the next day.

Strolling over in the afternoon, we headed to the Canyon Overlook area to snap some cool photos while in a free zone. The vibrant red rocks and the glow of the sun gave the sand an orange hue that reminded me of a cartoon desert. We had our little photo-op with cactuses surrounding us as if they were props, and were set to carry on our way toward the paid area of the park. Unfortunately, Clementine had other plans. Either she loved this view or she’s as cheap as I am and just reaaaally didn’t want us to cough up the $7 to leave her in the parking lot while we climbed on the rocks. She’s a fiery lady so when she sets her mind to something, she ain’t budgin’. And after spending a few hopeful hours trying to get her started up, she made it clear that she had no plans of budging anytime soon. With a tremendous amount of help from kind strangers (and AAA), we realized it wasn’t happening. So we towed her on back to the city and crashed in the parking lot of the garage until it reopened the next morning. Free camping! Lol… A parking lot at a main intersection in North Vegas wasn’t exactly peaceful, but the street noise and crazy drunk people gallivanting by reminded us of home in Toronto.

To our overwhelming relief, she started up fine the next morning. We brought her into the shop to see what was up and after we spent 4 nerve-wrecking hours in McDonald’s charging our devices and eating our feelings, they said there’s absolutely nothing wrong with her. Guess the little lady just needed her beauty sleep to recharge and start fresh – I believe this is the correct technical diagnosis. Happy to be reunited, we headed back toward Lovell Canyon for another night of quieter camping.

We picked a spot deeper in with a crazier view and set up shop for the night. We had a very brief campfire that freaked us both out since the area was insanely dry and the wind was blowing those flames around in a pretty precarious way. Duh, it’s the desert… but this place was seriously dry – some locals told us it hadn’t rained in 90 some-odd days and was going on a new record. Yikes! There’s also signs everywhere saying to watch for wild horses and burros (donkeys) but to our dismay, we didn’t see anything. We even brought out our Stones cassette to summon them, to no avail. The next morning we decided to shag going back to the paid area of Red Rock and head toward Arizona instead.

On the way out, we drove along the Vegas Strip and soaked in all the hoards of tourists and gaudy architecture that would only fly in Las Vegas. The thing I like most about Vegas is how self-aware it is – it’s tacky and over-the-top, but that’s what it does best. We popped into the Bonanza General Store before hitting the highway (cause I just couldn’t resist) and headed back into the Mountain Time Zone. Bonus: we got to drive on that super tall bridge – second tallest in America I’ve now learned – that sits above the Hoover Dam. Sadly it was pretty anticlimactic as the guardrails are just high enough that you can’t see much from the road. Boo, safety.

It’s almost the holidays! Hard to believe we’re wearing t-shirts while Christmas carols play on the radio but we’re loving the warmth of the Southwest and are stoked to explore Arizona. Grand Canyon is a given but what else should we do? Hit us up!

Ok, so the usual Vegas trip is a bachelorette and her gal pals with three suitcases, wearing 6” heels and weird body chains dancing by a crowded pool in the desert heat while paying 15 bucks for a vodka soda. This sounds like my nightmare. That being said, we really needed a reliable Internet connection this week so being in a big city was favourable – where better than the land of fuzzy dice and regret? Spoiler alert: I LOVE tacky shit and have always wanted to go to Vegas. Not for the aforementioned “fun” but for the real grittiness and splendor that is a city going at 100% 24 hours a day.

We knew that free camping and being walking distance to the city would not go hand in hand; we had to choose between being out in the boonies sans cost or forking out a little bit of cash for an RV park. Low and behold, we opted for being able to stumble home from downtown, for a fee. Justin found us a quadruple threat: a casino-hotel-brewery-RV park! Leave it to Las Vegas to home such a glorious concept. For $21/night, we had power/water hook-ups and access to bathrooms, showers and laundry – luxury!! Sure, the RV area was basically a parking lot under a freeway bridge but it was just a stone’s throw away from all the glimmering debauchery we’ve all heard so much about.

With beers so big you need two hands to hold them in our grasps, we walked around the crazy, seizure-inducing tunnel that is Fremont Street. People casually flying by on zip lines, pretty girls on stage with their MacBooks calling themselves “DJs” and parents taking photos of their teenage sons posing with ladies wearing all but pasties and a g-string – this was the place. Needless to say, getting to Fremont East was a relief. The crowds thinning out with tourists quickly turning around to get back into the action cleared the way for dirty casinos and neon signs leading to nowhere.

We spent four nights in Vegas and spent them all downtown. We’re going to come back to walk the strip and hopefully dine with Wayne Newton and receive a lock of his hair in a jewelry box (one can dream). With some recommendations from friends, we checked out some sweet bars and ate some great food. We met a lot of really nice locals who invited us into their worlds, and their RVs.

We did, however, take a break from the city and made the short trip to the Hoover Dam, which was really cool. Being off-season, it was packed so I can only imagine how hectic it gets in the summertime. Free parking was still no trouble to find on the Arizona side of the River and vantage points scattered across the bridge were never too crowded to snap some photos. And snap some photos we did. This thing was huge! It’s pretty crazy and ridiculously impressive to think they were able to build this in the 1930s. As the pattern of meeting people interested about van life continued, we met some really nice people from New Jersey that were keen to tell us about their city and eager to learn about what we’re doing. We played photographer for each other and carried on back to the van to eat some sandwiches with a view of the spillway. Being on the state line was also a bit of a trip, with our phones toggling between the Pacific and Mountain Time Zones.

With our fair share of city for a while, we are heading off to Red Rock Canyon next. But don’t worry Vegas, we’ll be back.

If you couldn’t get enough photos, here are some more.