Chapter 56: RV Trip Out West

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Normally, these travel blogs detail my shenanigans abroad. The first 43 chapters covered my time spent out of the country in the year before I started business school, and the last 12 have covered international trips taken since school began.

This blog is a bit different. Last week, instead of taking off to Tokyo or Buenos Aires, I flew to Salt Lake City with 7 friends, where we spent 8 days living out of a 38-foot RV. Was it a blast? Yes. Will I ever do this again? Probably not. Did it go better than expected? Honestly, yeah. For the most part.

Vamos.

Friday, October 13th

I was supposed to fly out with most of my crew around 6:30 AM Friday morning. Then the former Hamas chief made a global call for Jihad on Friday the 13th, so I decided that flying out the night of the 12th wouldn’t be the worst idea ever.

I stand by that decision, all things considered.

So I landed in Salt Lake City around 10 PM the night before, spent the night at a particularly mid Comfort Inn and Suites near the airport, and passed out.

I realized the next morning that I probably overthought the whole thing, but at least I got decent sleep. I missed hotel breakfast (what kind of airport hotel ends breakfast at 9 AM?), so I walked to a Carl’s Jr. down the road. Unlike New York, where I have become accustomed to walking everywhere, Salt Lake City (and especially the area near the airport) was a suburban sprawl, so I basically walked next to the highway, passing a questionable-looking couple camped out below an underpass on my way to my breakfast burrito.

The burrito was mid, just like my hotel.

After breakfast, I headed back, grabbed my stuff, and ubered to the airport to link with my crew (Brody, Ben, Tanmaye, Guillermo, Marcos, and Toni). We called two Ubers from there to pick up our RV from a neighborhood 20 minutes to the north.

Apparently, we were supposed to watch a 90-minute video about the RV that covered everything from how to drive/park it to letting out the sides, hooking up water and power, etc.

No one had watched it.

When we arrived at the RV, the owner, Weston (his name was something like that. We’ll go with Weston) asked who was driving first. Everyone sort of looked at me, so I volunteered.

Weston: Want to take the jacks up?

Me: crickets

Weston: …Do you know what the jacks are?

Ben and I glance at each other

Me: I could use a refresher.

Weston: Hit this button. Make sure whenever you park it, you redeploy the jacks, but don’t forget to retract them before driving.

Apparently, the jacks stabilized the RV. I had no idea.

Luckily, Brody had left his phone in his Uber, and we couldn’t leave yet, so we had a chance to watch part of the instruction video before taking off.

After Brody got his phone, we hit the road.

I felt like I was driving a school bus. This RV was 38 feet long and had a king bedroom with its own bathroom, a set of bunk beds, another bathroom, a table with two booths that folded into a bed, a pull-out couch that became a queen bed, a full kitchen, an in-unit washer/dryer, and a cot above the driver seat. It was ridiculous.

The views from the front were also insane, because the windshield took up the whole front of the RV.

After stopping at a supermarket to load up on food and drinks, we hit the highway for our ~5-hour trip to Moab. 30 minutes in, I had gotten a decent feel for the RV, and it was smooth sailing the rest of the way.

Brody took a nap in the back, which benefited me as we were always roommates on these trips, and his siesta basically gave us first claim on the king bed. Meanwhile, Tanmaye helped me navigate while the rest of the crew did homework.

One of the pleasant surprises of this first leg of the trip was Marcos being a phenomenal DJ; once he hopped on the aux, the vibes were immaculate.

Toni eventually took over as navigator, then Guillermo joined me as we neared Moab. Guille made us miss a turn, but our u-turn had us facing an insane sunset, so the 15-minute delay created one of the trip’s best photo ops.

Love Generation by Bob Sinclar really set the mood as well.

When we arrived in Moab, we parked the RV in a park a mile outside of town. The guys watched enough of the video to figure out how to set up the RV, so Toni and Guille, the self-proclaimed heads of sanitation, hooked up our water and power.

We had one rule on the RV: no pooping in the RV bathrooms. We actually managed to make it 8 days without this rule being violated, thanks to decent park facilities and frequent restroom breaks while on the road.

The Moab park had surprisingly nice showers and public restrooms, so we showered and then headed to town for dinner. There was one Uber driver with a red jeep who made multiple loops to scoop us, and we celebrated Guille’s (now known as Señor Treinta) 30th birthday before heading to Woody’s Tavern, a local dive bar, for a taste of the nightlife.

Utah nightlife is pretty weird, which shouldn’t be a surprise considering half of the state abstains from alcohol (shout out to the Mormons), and Moab nightlife was doubly weird.

Everyone looked like a tourist, a misfit, or a wanna-be biker.

We kicked it there for a few hours, listening to live music and playing foosball (where Ben and I got waxed like 5 times) before heading back and calling it a night.

Saturday, October 14th

Around 5 AM, I was woken up to the worst news possible.

Brody: Yoo, our bathroom is flooded.

I snapped awake, put on my glasses, and saw that the toilet had overflowed, the bathroom was soaked, and the water was spilling into the main bedroom, soaking all of my stuff on the floor.

I still don’t really know how this happened. At first, I thought it was my fault, because I had last used the restroom around 3 AM, and it was fine then. However, we had another flooding later in the week, so I think the issue was really that we didn’t turn the external water supply off at night.

Who knows.

It was freezing outside, but we threw on some shoes, snuck around everyone asleep in the front of the RV, and cut off the water before climbing back on to dry the floors with towels. I got my laptop and other electronics out of my now-damp backpack and dried them off, and thought to myself, “This is about to be the longest week of my life.”

Luckily, this was the worst thing that happened on the trip.

In the morning, I set out most of my clothes to dry outside while everyone else got ready for the day. No one else seemed to care about the previous night’s flooding, for better or worse.

The guys sleeping in the front almost died from frostbite, because we accidentally left the A/C on instead of flipping to heat. We didn’t make this mistake again.

Ben had booked what we thought was “white water rafting,” but it was really a chill raft ride down the river. I excused myself from the trip to work on stuff while the rest of the crew partook in the activity. I spent most of the day being as productive as I could from a phone hotspot on an RV, and the rest of the group circled back around 3:45.

We wanted to hit Arches National Park, and after realizing that we couldn’t really Uber to the hiking trail (the trails were about 10 miles into the park, and Ubers couldn’t get past the entrance), we decided to drive the RV in.

The drive up to the park was insane: I was winding a 38 ft RV back and forth around hairpin turns scaling the side of a plateau, but we made it a couple of hours before sunset.

We hiked for an hour or so from the parking lot to reach some of the park’s infamous arches, where Toni, our in-house photographer, befriended an Italian photographer who snapped some group pics of our crew.

We took a few more pics questionably close to the edge of the canyon before booking it back to the RV to beat the sunset.

We returned to the park to see that RV 2 had arrived.

4 Argentinians: Sebo, JC, Manu, and Agustin (aka, The Baby), as well as Vince were on a similar trip as us.

When we got back, Brody set up his Nintendo Switch (we played a ridiculous amount of Nintendo on this RV), and we played a little bit of drunk Mario Kart (you have to set the can down while you drive) before ripping an hour of Mario Party and calling it a night.

No plumbing issues this time!

Sunday, October 15th

By Sunday morning, factions had started developing in the RV. Marcos and Toni began referring to themselves as the “Middle Men” (super creative, they slept in the middle section of the RV), while the guys at the front referred to themselves as Frontiersmen. Brody and I attempted to call ourselves the King’s Guard, a Game of Thrones reference that was fitting, considering our room guarded the porcelain throne in the back, but everyone else called us Dingus 1 and Dingus 2.

Whatever. The Dingi got a sick bed, they can have their nicknames.

Tanmaye, Ben, Marcos, Sebo, Agustin, and Vince hit a ~50 mile bike ride, while the rest of us rented UTVs to drive through the desert. Guille and I split a 2-seater Polaris Rzr, while Manu, JC, Brody, and Toni were in a 4-seater vehicle.

Guille and I grabbed breakfast at a nearby cafe, then grabbed our Rzr and headed to the trails.

I assumed that the 2-seater would be both more fun and more versatile, but I was entirely wrong. While Guille and I got more driving time per person, the 4-person car had larger, wider tires and a lower center of gravity, so it was virtually unflippable and it could climb over anything.

Guille and I spent an hour climbing rocks and racing through sand-covered paths before meeting the other crew at a river overlook point on Hell’s Revenge. After Brody snapped some drone photos, we hopped back in our vehicles, and I got to witness just how much better the other UTV was.

JC was driving, and after skiing with him last year, I knew he had a propensity for going fast. What I didn’t realize was that he would rip their UTV full speed on 50-degree inclines and around hairpin turns. They blasted past us within 30 seconds, and we didn’t see them again until we exited the park.

We cut through town to another offroad area, which offered smoother, wider dirt paths that allowed us to go full speed. The 4-seater UTV had to turn back to refuel before us, and Guille and I drove for an hour and a half, hugging the edge of a canyon overlooking a river. We stopped for a few photo ops before turning around, and we grabbed pizza and beers in town before walking back to the RV.

On the way back, I noticed that a cop car parked on the side of the street was occupied by not a police officer, but a human-sized teddy bear in police clothing. Honestly, an impressive setup to get folks to slow down without having to station a cop there.

When we got back to the RV, we found out that the other RV had gotten booted from the premises. Apparently, while we had our parking spot for three nights, they were supposed to move theirs to another spot by 11 AM on day 2.

Their whole group was biking/UTVing, so the park manager got in their unlocked RV and drove it out of the park. When the boys got back, he refused to let them park there again, so they had to find a new spot.

After the RV 1 crew showered, Brody pulled up a montage that he had made from our Japan trip last spring. Shout out Polar Productions.

After the video, we played Smash Bros before bed.

Monday, October 16th

The boys packed the RV, the sanitation crew dumped our grey water tanks, and we set sail for the Grand Canyon. I drove again for the majority of this leg, as the rest of the boys did homework and mid-terms in the back. Marcos joined me as co-pilot, where we chatted about career stuff as he curated a diverse playlist of bangers.

We stopped at a gas station for a restroom/refuel break, the restrooms were out of order, and the boys dispersed to the nearby Taco Bell and McDonald’s, where we acquired sustenance for the rest of our trip.

As we approached the Grand Canyon, the time zones got funky. The GC is in Arizona, which, for some reason, doesn’t acknowledge Daylight Saving Time. However, the Navajo Nation, which is largely in Arizona, does acknowledge Daylight Saving Time. So we alternated between gaining and losing an hour as we crossed through Arizona.

Most photos of the Grand Canyon depict a dry, arid crack in the earth, so I was picturing a larger version of Death Valley. The canyon is actually surprisingly green, and the road through the greater Grand Canyon area was surrounded by trees.

We stopped 20 minutes shy of our campground for a photo op, and the views were insane. It’s impossible to convey just how big this thing is without seeing it yourself.

Marcos and I hopped the fence and climbed down to a little mesa for more pics, then we hopped back on the RV and headed to park 2.

This park was way worse than the first. While there was a market, bar, and restaurant within a 15-minute walk of our parking spot, the restrooms were dirtier and the showers were half a mile away, and they weren’t free.

A couple of guys showered on the RV, then we headed to the park restaurant for dinner. Lawrence (aka Larry) met us here. Larry had flown into God-Knows-Where, Arizona from a wedding in CDMX, and he managed to get the one Lyft driver in his area to drive him 90 minutes to our campsite.

After dinner, we headed back to the RV and gamed for a bit before drinking some beers by the fire. The RV was now pretty tight with 8 of us here, and Larry took over the fold-down table bed while Tanmaye doubled up with Ben on the couch.

Tuesday, October 17th

Today was a massive hike day: we were going to take the South Kaibab Trail down the side of the Grand Canyon to Skeleton Point. The guys had a pretty sluggish start, and we met near the market at 10:30. In our rush, we accidentally took the wrong shuttle bus at first (my bad), and it took us an hour to get from our campsite to the visitor center to the trailhead.

Around lunchtime, we began our descent down the canyon. The hike was beautiful: we had an insane, expansive view of the canyon all the way down. It was also pretty steep, and my 2-year-old On Clouds didn’t provide the most traction.

The trail was also covered with mule poop, as ranchers would move supplies up and down the canyon via mule caravans.

We stopped at a halfway point, snapped some pics (thanks Toni), passed a few mules, and made our way to Skeleton Point an hour later, where we had a beautiful view of the river. The crew was split at this point, as Tanmaye and Ben wanted to keep going (Tanmaye’s desire to defeat nature was a recurring theme on this trip), Brody and I wanted to turn back, and everyone else was torn.

The other 6 guys hiked another 15 minutes before turning back, while Brody and I hung out with a middle-aged couple from Berkeley, then we all headed back up. 10 minutes into our ascent, we ran into the RV 2 crew, where we chatted for a bit before continuing back to the top.

The hike back sucked. We were hungry and thirsty, the sun was way too hot, and the stairs felt extra steep. Despite the trials and tribulations, we managed to make record time on our way back.

We took the shuttle back to our camp, and we ordered burgers and beers at the onsite bar. An elk was strolling through the middle of the road, holding up traffic, and Toni got some way-too-close pics of it.

Another group of CBS folks, primarily the Brazilian representatives + Juanma and Majo (Colombian, but I think they speak Portuguese if they were traveling with the Brazilians?) were on an RV trip as well, and they joined us for dinner.

Afterward, our crew headed back to shower on the RV, and we played beer die (the greatest afternoon pastime known to man) until it got dark, then we lit a fire and kicked it outside for a few hours.

Wednesday, October 18th

On the road again, this time to Zion National Park. I woke up, grabbed coffee and cinnamon rolls #ForTheBoys, had a staring contest with an elk, then headed back to the RV.

We loaded up, the sanitation boys dumped the tanks, and we headed north to Zion. I drove the first leg while Ben and Guillermo finished some homework, and we made a pitstop at another park called Antelope. Everyone in our RV, plus the RV 2 crew, went on a 90-minute guided tour while I finished up some work.

When they returned, Ben took over as driver, and I was able to enjoy my first RV beer. RVs are cool because open container laws don’t apply to anyone sitting behind the cabin area, and we had a slew of Pacificos, Arnold Palmers, and White Claws.

An hour later, as I caught my first (and only) RV buzz, we pulled off the highway to stop again at a beach on Lake Powell. I stripped down to my boxers and jumped in the lake, and we set up chairs and the world’s smallest beer die table by the water.

We kicked it on the coast for an hour or so, then the boys got on top of our RVs for a drone photo shoot (shout out Brody).

Between the photographers and the writers, we do have a creative bunch.

We got back on the road after an hour, with Captain Levine continuing in the driver’s seat as Brody, Marcos, Lawrence, and I did the opposite of driving in the back.

Several adult beverages later, we dropped Guillermo off at a bus stop somewhere in Utah. Guille had to catch a shuttle to Vegas to catch a flight to Panama to catch a flight to Colombia for his best friend’s wedding, and we certainly didn’t want to be the reason that he missed that.

An hour later, we arrived in Zion. Ben pulled the RV into a restaurant, and we had our first real meal of the day (for me, a quesadilla and a spicy marg). I tried to direct him out of the parking lot when we went to leave, but I was probably more of a nuisance than a help in my current state.

I hadn’t been paying attention as we approached the restaurant, but the RV park was actually right next to where we were eating. We checked in, parked the RV, and Larry and Toni took over sanitation duties with Guille gone.

Up until this point, Larry had been on door patrol, yelling at us to shut the door when we were getting on and off the RV to keep flies from getting in, but he soon realized it was pointless. By this leg of the trip, windows were left open, people kept forgetting to close the door, and flies were taking residence in our mobile home.

We hung out by the fire for a bit, then got ready for bed. Big hike in the AM. This was also, unfortunately, the night that Tanmaye and Ben displaced Brody and I, kicking us to the front of the RV. Brody snagged the pullout couch while I slept in Guille’s loft. It had a weight limit of 200 pounds, but it managed to support me at 225.

Thursday, October 18th

Today was, by far, the coolest hike of the trip. We were going to explore the Narrows in Zion National Park.

The Narrows, as the name suggests, are a series of narrow canyons. What makes them unique is that they are filled with constantly flowing water. The area is susceptible to flash floods, but the forecast was clear today, and the water would range from knee to waist-high in different sections.

We rented waterproof overalls and water-resistant boots and made our way to the bus stop. The lady renting us the gear said that XLs were “5’5 to 5’10”, which seemed ridiculous. We tried them on and they fit fine (which means that either we are collectively lying about our height or her recommendations were seriously off-base.)

At the last second, most of us went back and grabbed walking sticks as well. I’ve never thought much about walking sticks, in fact, I thought they were just for old folks and hard-o’s, but my stick probably saved me from slipping at least a dozen times.

We shuttled to the entrance of the Narrows and walked a mile down a path before entering the water.

I knew we would be walking through some level of water, but I was not expecting to spend a few hours with my legs submerged. Ben, Tanmaye, Marcos, and the baby trotted ahead of everyone, and I spent most of the first hour kicking it with JC.

We got caught up on our respective job stuff (he’s been a ghost this semester!), and then Vince and I made a urination pitstop on one of the few patches of dry land. About 10 minutes after we resumed the trek, I slipped on a rock and went all the way under the water.

Cold is an understatement. The canyon is filled with shade, and in late October, the temperatures were freezing. The worst part was that my bag got soaked as well, and I was worried that my phone was toast. Luckily it was fine.

It took me 10 seconds of unathletic floundering to stand back up, and I resumed my now miserably cold trek onward.

Luckily, we hit a few patches of sunlight, and my upper half dried off (my lower half, sadly, stayed drenched inside my pants until we returned to camp).

After another hour or so, we caught up to Toni, JC, Sebo, and Manu. They were approaching a steep climb to a deeper part of the canyon. Vince and I decided, after the 2.5-hour hike we had just completed, that this was a good time to turn around.

20 minutes into our return, we heard a “Hey guys!”

Brody was chilling by himself on a big rock off to the side of the water.

I hadn’t seen him all day, and figured he was ahead with Ben and Tanmaye. He had actually fallen behind, as a combination of a bathroom break and his subpar footwear (they didn’t have size 16 hiking boots, so he was rocking his normal boots with worse grip). He joined Vince and me on the return hike.

The water level was lower on the way back, which meant 50% of our hike was now on bare rock. This should have been easier because our footing was more visible, but it was also more perilous because falling on open stones hurts 10x than falling in water.

Brody caught a loose rock and took a pretty tough fall. To his credit, he bounced back quickly, but all three of us knew that he was going to be sore in the morning.

After another hour or so, we neared the mile-long trail that took us back to the bus stop. JC and Sebo had caught up to us, and the five of us headed back to town. We dropped off our gear, I bought some more waters (and an ice cream) from the market, and then we showered and set off for dinner.

Toni, who got back around the same time as us, had found a dank burger spot 15 minutes away. All of us except Ben, Tanmaye, Marcos, and the baby (who had, as far as we knew, decided to spend the night in the canyon just to prove they could) grabbed burgers and beers.

The baby showed up 45 minutes later and grabbed a burger right before close. He told us that they nearly made it to the very end, and they actually hit a patch where they had to swim 50 or so feet without being able to touch the ground.

It sounded sketch.

Ultimately, they decided that it was getting too late, and they turned back about 45 minutes before reaching the end.

As we were finishing up our dinners, an elk walked through the restaurant’s patio, leaned over a short brick wall near our table, then scampered off across the street.

National parks are weird.

As we walked back to the RV, we discussed logistics for the next day. The RV 2 crew (Vince, JC, Manu, Sebo, and the baby) were headed to Vegas in the morning for a day of gambling and a night watching U2 in The Sphere, and my crew was going to drop their RV off in Provo on the way back before our flights on Saturday.

However, Tanmaye, Toni, Marcos, Brody, and I had 2 PM flights (originally it was just Tanmaye and Toni, but after Mr. Maye mentioned how much nicer a 9 PM arrival would be than a midnight arrival, we changed our flights too), while Ben and Larry had 5 PM flights, and we were 5 hours from Salt Lake City.

A 6 AM wake up Saturday morning, + the logistical hurdles of returning an RV in Provo and ubering an hour to the SLC airport, sounded awful, so Brody and I booked a hotel room in SLC for Friday night, and we planned to drive RV 2 to Provo a day early.

This decision wasn’t necessarily popular with the group, largely because the group wasn’t consulted on the decision (I didn’t want to leave it up for a debate, tbh. I was not down for a 6 AM wake-up). However, it all worked out, and the rest of the crew planned to ride with Ben in an early Saturday trip back.

We spent the rest of Thursday night chilling by the fire, then I called it a night.

Friday, October 20th

I woke up around 9, and instead of entertaining a potential hike, I headed to the one wifi-enabled coffee shop in town to finish up on some school work. I spent most of the day in the coffee shop, where Ben, Toni, and Marcos walked by on their way to hike number 19354674 of the trip, and Lawrence, Tanmaye, and Brody joined me that afternoon as well.

At 4, we headed back to the RV to clean up, then Brody and I packed up, hopped in RV 2 (which was much easier to steer than RV 1!), and set sail for Provo.

We split our driving time around 2 hours each, stopping once for gas and Burger King on the way. We arrived in Provo around 10 PM to meet the RV owner, John.

John was an interesting cat, to say the least. In our 15 minutes of awkwardly waiting for our Uber at his house, John offered us local beers, told us how he met his Canadian wife (who he now has 2 kids with) over a mobile video game during the pandemic, explained the logistics of driving to the Montana border to chill with his e-girlfriend-turned-wife-and-mother-of-two in 2020 (I’m impressed by the speed at which he turned a mobile game encounter with a Canadian woman into a loving Utahan mother of two, tbh), and went down a rabbit hole of his life as an ex-Mormon.

Nice guy, but man, it was a weird story.

Anyway, Brody and I got our Uber around 10:20, reached the hotel in downtown Salt Lake City at 11, and enjoyed a nice, relaxing, air-conditioned 10 hours of sleep just a few miles from the airport. Not a bad way to conclude the trip.

Catch you guys later.

- Jack

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