What can I say about Monument Valley? Just stunning and beautiful and other worldly. We were all just in awe the entire day.
I had canceled our final stay because they told me they had no toilets, and had already re-configured our final days for us to drive home on Sunday as opposed to Monday, since staying on our cabin property Sunday night as a halfway point would have been impossible due to the heat. I found us another RV spot on hipcamp for our last night Saturday night. On our way we stopped at the Lava River Cave which was way longer and gnarlier than I ever would have anticipated. Despite bringing sneakers, warm clothes, and headlamps for everyone, it all went wrong - the headlamps were all dead, and the batteries I’d brought just in case were the wrong ones (why is anything AAA battery-run, honestly? Like, wtf). The H and I had our phones, I had brought a backup flashlight, and there was one more headlamp that was just a black light, so we headed out anyway. On our way down a kind traveler gave me her headlamp, which was amazing, because there was no way I would have made it with a phone in hand for how much climbing and scrambling there ended up being. The H and I had very thin-soled sneakers that were torture on the sharp, pointy rocks, and poor Bobby had to pee and ended up wetting himself before we could find our way out. It just went on and on. So it started off sort of fun and adventurous but ended with us all being exhausted, somewhat in pain, and, for one of us, covered in pee. Good times.
But the good times weren’t over. The owner of that night’s stay property sent us a pin that, after a frighteningly rough and miserable half hour on rocky dirt roads with big pockets of soft sand we barely got through, led us to an abandoned shack that was clearly not it. We went to a house nearby that we thought had to be the right place - but the suspicious owner (who I’m pretty convinced can’t account for his whereabouts on 1/6/21) said he had never heard of this person who owned the land we were looking for and that camping around there was illegal. We (of course) had no service so had to painstakingly make our way back to the highway, another wretched half hour being bounced and rattled and having all the cabinets fly open and throw our items all over the van. When we got on the 40 - by this time I’d found us a restaurant in Seligman since we were all starving and there was no way in hell I was cooking after all that - I tried the owner again and he said he’d come out and meet us, and to drop a pin of our location, but I said forget it, we weren’t heading back up there. Thankfully we made it to the charming roadside pizza place before it closed and I got us a spot at the pleasant KOA nearby so we had a safe place for our final night - with showers!
We went to some tourist spots in Seligman in the morning and then headed out.
Sunday we drove six hours home and then spent what seemed like 24 full hours cleaning out the van and getting the house put back in order. Since we returned the van to a leasing office and not the owner, I’m waiting with bated breath to see what extra charges we get stuck with. I have a lot of anxiety around this.
Overall I think I can say the trip was pretty great - and the constant problem solving and having to be flexible, while exhausting, was a good introduction to what this last month before my event will be like. Would I do things differently next time? I would say yes, but then, I don’t know - the ideal would be to have a place with a kitchen that you can use as a central point to do other things - but you get to see so much more when you can drive around. And being self-contained is great…except when you can’t really use the shower or toilet and there’s no AC and every night after activities all day you’re too exhausted to cook and just have to go out for expensive dinners anyway. Would we have been better off in an RV? It’s hard to say. I liked the agility of the van and being able to park anywhere, and RVs don’t feel less cramped to me, not really. And every one we’ve rented has been in various phases of disrepair. And none of them are cheap. With all the added fees they end up being $2,000 and up for a week, which is about the same as a fancy hotel, plus gas. I do want to go back to that area - still so much to do - but I just don’t know how to do it cheaply and effectively. Tent camping isn’t practical when you’re always on the move. Hmmm. It’s a puzzle to figure out.
I enjoyed the family time, despite Bobby driving us nuts playing the Angry Birds theme on his plastic recorder every five seconds until we had to hide it when he wasn’t looking, and Theo drinking water every five seconds and consequently having to pee every five seconds. We had some rousing games of Uno, something we haven’t done in ages, and I got a kick out of the few breakfasts and lunches I was able to make in the tiny space. I also survived yet another weird perimenopausal period that started just as we left and only a couple of weeks after the last one ended. I guess that’s my life now - a period every two weeks. Thanks, I hate it.
For now, I’m going to focus back on my event, preparing the kids for school in two weeks (I’ve heard nothing yet from the new school which makes me wonder if they’re even going there), and plotting our next big adventure, whenever that may be.
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