Vegas, Utah & Southern Colorado

Best regards from Petra, Rudolph (her car), and me :)

If my adventure in the USA hasn't really started yet, it definitely is in full swing now!

On Thursday, Petra, my Czech friend whom I met in Canada, Rudolph, and I met in Las Vegas. And what can I say? Vegas is simply the craziest place I've ever seen! Everyone is in party mode and perfectly styled, everything glitters and is artificial, like in a fairytale world. Bars, restaurants, clubs, and casinos are everywhere. It takes a lot of time to process all the impressions because everything seems so surreal. However, since I will be visiting Vegas at least 2 more times during my trip, I will provide more detailed reports elsewhere.

What is much more exciting, in my opinion, is how our adventurous road trip is going. After a night of partying in Vegas, we returned to Rudolph and started our road trip adventure. Rudolph consists of 2 front seats, cooking equipment, and a huge mattress. Our luggage and food supplies just fit into the nooks of the car. So we sleep in the car in a very small space and look for the most secluded places where nobody could find us. After Vegas, we set out at night and found our first sleeping spot in the Nevada desert. While we could hardly recognize where we were sleeping at night, it was an amazing sight to wake up in the middle of the desert in the morning, incredible! And believe it or not, the desert has its very own charm and appeal, beautiful! The cacti, the rocks, the sand, the tranquility. A unique and calming atmosphere.

After shopping for enough supplies (in the desert and in the countryside, you never know when the next supermarket will come), we set off for Utah to hike Lower Calf Creek. Our final destination is actually New Mexico and Arizona, so we only wanted to pass through Utah for this one short hike (thankfully, I will visit Utah's national parks in a few weeks). And what can I say? I think Utah surpasses Colorado for me. The landscape is unbelievably beautiful! The rocks, the mountains, the lakes, the canyons, the deserts, the green meadows, the animals, .... Amazing!

Although we spend a lot of time sitting in the car and driving, which is not really my thing, I can only marvel with an open mouth and enjoy the scenery. I have rarely seen anything more beautiful and calming.

And every mile in the car is pure adventure. Will we find a toilet in the middle of nature? A gas station? Water? And most importantly: coffee? Where will we sleep, where can no one find our car? These problems are so far removed from everyday stress that they somehow relax and liberate. During the endless drives with good music, you have so much time and peace to reflect on yourself and your life, like never before in everyday life. Driving through endless landscapes truly frees the mind immensely.

The next day, we took a detour through southern Colorado and visited Mesa Verde National Park on our way to New Mexico. And how can this park be anything other than magnificent, after all, it is in Colorado? ;) During our hikes in the park, we saw not only magnificent landscapes, mountains, and canyons but also ancient remains of houses that people built in the mountains tens of thousands of years ago. We were also able to admire their hieroglyphs on one of the hikes, fascinating how people thousands of years ago could paint such thick rocks. I am incredibly grateful for this huge adventure and for being able to experience nature up close. I am very excited to see what New Mexico and Arizona have to offer.

The only disadvantage of the road trip? Unfortunately, I'm pretty cut off from you. Finding a Wi-Fi source is quite rare... so I will probably provide you with most of the pictures afterwards because the Starbucks Wi-Fi stopped uploading after a few pictures :( In the meantime, I am enjoying my adventure with Rudolph and Petra and trying to send you some of my sunshine here to Germany!