We took a week off van life

We spent the weekend in Wickenburg, AZ. Well, that's not entirely true. But we cruised there Friday afternoon from Prescott after Mandy got out of work. We found a sweet spot in the middle of the desert off Vulture Mine Rd. It takes a while to get from Prescott to Wickenburg even though they appear deceptively close as the crow flies. The roads connecting them are very ziggy and zaggy, and there are a couple mountain passes to clear. With a stop for groceries on the way, we arrived somewhat late; right around dusk.

We met some friends, Abe and Mel, through Instagram. They're living a similar life traveling in their own self-built van, too! They hit a bit of a rough patch, but we'll get to that in a future post. This was the first time we'd met them in "real life", and they met us out on the road to lead us into their little campsite in the desert. They were also parked up with Sydney and Albert who live in a converted school bus. First we had to cook some dinner, but then we were introduced, given the tour and spent the evening getting to know our new friends. They were all wonderful people. As the night wore on, we all split up to head to our respective beds to get some sleep in.

If you squint, you might be able to see our van all the way down there.

Our goal for Sunday was Phoenix. We started in middle-of-nowhere, Wickenburg, as shown above. We could have driven pavement the whole way, but after a morning stroll, I had a different idea. I don't want to say better because that's not really clear.

We took a hike up a small hill adjacent to where we parked after we had breakfast and all that. It gave us a spectacular view of the surrounding nothingness. But there were roads. "Roads". I mean trails, really. Some of them (like one or two, max) were labeled on Google Maps. We watched a convoy of 5 or 6 Jeeps roll out and the idea struck me that we could do that. We have 4WD, ground clearance, a tow strap, and most importantly, experience. We'll be fine, right?

Google was actually able to find a route from where we were to what I thought was like northwest greater Phoenix. It was only forty-five minutes driving. Great, we got the whole day, clement weather, no deadlines or other objectives, other than laundry. It's the perfect opportunity to get a feel for off-roading this rig. Not that we want to regularly, but it's important to know the limits in case of emergency, you know?

So, we set off down N. Vulture Peak Rd. Southeasterly. Then we set the shocks to middle-softness because the trail was washboard. It's fine if the ruts are in phase. But they never are. The side-to-side oscillations get going immediately, and for whatever reason, magic I guess, the frequency of the washboard always exactly matches the resonant frequency of the suspension. So, we took it very slowly to attenuate the oscillations. We averaged about 4mph. And it took us a couple hours. It was a little tight in some spots. A little sketchy in others. We earned some cactus pinstripes. And we learned where the van doesn't roll over, so that's helpful.

The cacti scratched our van up!

 We navigated to what I thought was pavement. But when we got there, we discovered it was a whole massive "neighborhood" of rough dirt roads. So, we had another half hour or more until we finally reached pavement. Like I said in the beginning - at least we had all day. From there, we took paved roads to Tempe.

We got some lunch at Eat My Taco. Their street tacos were pretty legit. Get the steak or pork. The chicken was good, but the others were great. From there, we drove a bit closer to Sky Harbor to find a laundromat. Another laundry day, but we're getting more efficient at it. We packed our warm weather clothes into our backpacks and put the rest away in our dresser. We packed a few of Loki's things and made a list of morning items to grab. We parked for the night at Walmart just south of the airport. We pretty much just went straight to bed so we could get up early. We had a short drive in the morning to drop off Loki with a sitter on our way to the airport.

Doesn't this image just scream "Phoenix"?

We flew from Phoenix because it was the closest cheapest direct flight to Cancun. We'd never been to Mexico before, so this was another country we got to cross off that list. So that was exciting! We felt like typical American tourists because we'd done very little to brush up on our Spanish before entering the country. This didn't really pose any challenges, but we like to be a bit better at the local language when we visit a new place.

Our week there was very relaxing. A far cry from our typical week vacations which you've read about here previously. Normally, we try to cram in as much as we can into one or two crazy week(s) before we have to hustle back home to go to work. Instead, we tried out something we've never done before. We stayed at an all-inclusive resort and just chilled. It was truly wonderful. That's not to say we stayed on the resort the entire week - we did do some adventuring of course! But we definitely spent more time than we normally do in one place, and we didn't hate it!

Hanging out around the resort doesn't make for great story-telling here, however. We spent a day out on a sailboat in the Gulf of Mexico which was awesome. We did some snorkeling off the catamaran as well as plenty of swimming and sunbathing. The boat tour got us thinking and so we talked a lot of what it could be like to live on a sailboat, too. We're definitely interested, though we're not ready to move out of our van just yet. We still have plenty we want to do in the van first. But stay tuned, maybe someday...

This accurately portrays the relaxing feel of our whole week in Mexico.

We also took a trip to some cenotes in the area. There are tons of them around Cancun. Cenote translates to sinkhole or natural well. Usually they're filled - at least partially, anyway - with water. We took a van from our resort to Cenotes Kin Ha for a day. This is a really cool spot because we got to do a bunch of stuff all in one place. First, we took a guided canopy tour across several ziplines. Our first zipline experience was in Guatemala, and we've enjoyed finding them ever since. This tour wasn't quite as high as the cables in Guatemala, but we had a wicked good time. We even got to zip down one line hanging upside down! It was terrifying! After ziplining, we hopped on ATVs and cruised a bunch of rocky trails over to a cluster of cenotes to do some swimming. Our group was pretty small - there were only 4 of us, plus two tour guides - so the tour was pretty relaxed. We spent a while hanging out in the water, trying to see who could dive the deepest, though none of us could touch the bottom. When we all felt like it, we hopped back on the ATVs and crusied back to the starting point where we ate some of the most delicious tacos. As we finished our lunch, our shuttle arrived to bring us back to the resort.

Most of the rest of the week was spent relaxing around the pools and on the beach. We spent a great deal of that time planning for our months ahead. What we'll do once Mandy's contract is up. We came up with a few plans. One says we head straight to Alaska, hopefully all the way to the end of the road in Prudhoe Bay, then about-face and head south to Patagonia. Another plan says we head back east to see some friends in Florida, then drive to Patagonia and head to Alaska afterwards. A third option is to drive all the way to Cape Cod for a wedding in July and then figure out the next steps. You'll have to keep reading to see which we execute.