Now that we’ve been home for a few months and have regaled our friends and families with the best moments of our road trip, the jagged memories have softened into a bit of a hazy fog.
Before we forget those jaggedy bits, I want to be sure that I commit to memory the things we wish we’d done differently…
- Visiting southern Utah in late June. This was my fault. I’d always wanted to see Utah. I was sort of crazed by it, actually. I wanted to see the big rocks sticking up from the desert floor (I now know those to be Hoodoos). I wanted to see vast expanses of desert and sand and beautiful swirly red rocks. And I’m sure they were all there, and I’m sure they were beautiful, but the truth of the matter was, at the time it was too dang hot to enjoy much of anything. 103 degrees by 10am was no one’s idea of fun, no matter how “dry” the heat was!
- Leaving our gas grill at home. We were used to camping in Minnesota, where we rarely have a drought and water is close by. It never crossed our mind that we’d be in fire ban areas for weeks on end. At some points it was so bad that even smoking outside was forbidden (not that we smoke, but still). If I hadn’t had an oven in the trailer, we would have gotten mighty hungry. And heating up that oven when it was 100+ degrees outside was no fun. We should have had our grill. I will say, Bret got pretty good at cooking steaks with his blow torch…
- Thinking five of us could “dry” camp for more than two nights. Dry camping means you have no sewer or water hookups. In the summer, when you are sweaty and thirsty and want showers and lots of water, this is not a good idea.
I’m sure there are other things we could have done to make our lives easier, but the truth is, those tough things, those just made the trip more interesting – and I’d do it all again, even the things mentioned above, in a heartbeat.
