The Arizona desert, Grand Canyon, Vegas and Death Valley, USA
Don’t run out of gas in the desert, at night, when it’s 45 miles to the nearest gas station. Or ever really.
Immediately after a 4.5 day cross country Amtrak trip that preceded a 2 day road trip down through Big Sur to LA, we journeyed into the southwest. With only about 4 days left in our 10 day trip, we had a lot of ground to cover in a short amount of time. 1,400 miles to be (almost) exact.
Our plan was to hit the Arizona desert, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Death Valley, and the southern end of Yosemite.
Our ride through the desert started out just fine. Getting out of LA took a while because of traffic, but once we got away from it, it was smooth sailing. With the open road we could legally go 80–85mph and ride on even roads with the periodic dips and curves. There was nothing around us for miles in every direction during sunset, which was actually pretty freeing.
And then night fell. Followed by the sobering, and honestly frightening, realization that we were running out of gas. Our primary mode for turn-by-turn directions was my cell phone and my grandfathered-in plan of unlimited AT&T data. But that of course meant we were reliant on this data for any random searches, forced detours, or emergency calls. So when the red light came on, our gauge read EMPTY and there was nothing but our high beamed headlights shining into the darkness, my brother panicked a bit. I panicked a lot.
We dug through books and papers in the glove compartment to try and find out just how long we could ride on E. In the intermittent spots of service I was able to receive, we found out our little Honda could go for up to 40 miles while reading empty.
Problem: the nearest gas station was 45–50 miles away.
We tried to be as efficient as possible with whatever fuel we had left and utilize the dips and rises in the road to propel us forward. After 20 minutes, we finally hit the deserted gas station, refueled with quite a bit more drama, and then continued on to our hotel at the Grand Canyon.
We were staying at the Grand Canyon Railway Hotel in Williams, Arizona that was close to Route 66. We chose this location for a few reasons: 1. it was affordable, 2. the cost of lodging also included a train ticket and full-day trip to the Grand Canyon, 3. the rooms looked comfortable, and 4. it had rooms available on New Years Eve. On New Years Day we boarded a train for a 2 hour ride to the canyon itself.
The Grand Canyon is 18 miles wide, 277 miles long, and a mile deep. In January it’s cold, snowy, kinda frozen and amazing. Photos seriously don’t do this place justice. However, as beautiful as it is there’s really only so much you can do. Mainly if you don’t wanna do some serious hiking, rafting or camping inside the canyon.
After 3 or so hours of checking out the canyon, we took the train back to our hotel, picked up our car and began driving to Vegas. It’d take about 3.5 hours to get there and with a majority of the drive being in the dark, it was pretty uneventful.
We stayed at the Signature at MGM Grand in Vegas, which was booked with the app Hotel Tonight. I mentioned it in my previous post since we used it to stay at The Garland in LA, but it worked out even better in Vegas. For $165, we stayed in the penthouse on the 38th floor. We had a full kitchen, office space, giant bathroom with jacuzzi tub, huge bed and a balcony with 180º views of The Strip. That room normally goes for $800.
This was the first time I had been to Vegas. The difference between the city during the evening compared to during the day was huge…and weird. Turns out, I feel pretty meh about it all. It’s like Times Square and Atlantic City merged, moved to the middle of the desert, and made a law to only allow cheetah print, leather and hair gel on the streets.
Our last stop was Death Valley, but this time we’d get to see the landscape a majority of the trip. The views didn’t disappoint.
My brother and I wanted to camp outside to sleep under the incredible stars, but it felt like a better idea to sleep indoors. There were 3 lodging and camping grounds inside the boundaries of Death Valley National Park, and they all didn’t have that many rooms. We opted to stay at Panamint Sprints Resort all the way on the west side of the park.
This “resort” was literally as bare minimum as you could possibly get. No heater, no wifi, no tv, no phone, and no real beds. Our beds were air mattresses and our shower had a water heater that’d only work for 10 minutes at a time. There was also no general store past 10pm, gas was $8 a gallon, and the restaurant shut down at 9pm. That room was $130 for the night. Seriously.
After 10 very long days that took us from NYC to San Francisco on Amtrak, from San Francisco to Los Angeles on Highway 01, and from Los Angeles to the Arizona desert, the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Death Valley, Yosemite and back to San Francisco, we finally headed home to New York. And thankfully, on a plane.
My final thoughts for that 10 day trip that magically turned into 3 Medium posts? This country is gorgeous and the west coast is seriously the best coast. I’d wanted to do a cross country train ride for a long time and see everything that we covered on this trip. So I’m very glad it happened, but I’m also completely okay with never doing a cross country trip again.
