Christmas 2016 - Utah, Arizona

Day 1 - December 22nd Thursday 

Michelle and Kevin arrived in Ontario around 7.15pm and then we started driving towards flagstaff for our Friday night stay. We reached Flagstaff around 3am Mountain Time. Decided to surrender to bed as soon as we reached our rooms.

Day 2 - December 23rd

After grabbing brunch around 10am, we started driving towards Petrified Forest national park.
On our way we saw the signs for Volcanic Crater. We decided to make 5 miles detour to visit the crater.

After spending about an hour at crater we started driving towards petrified forest and reached national park around 2.30pm.
This is a very different national park compared to any other national park that I have visited. Its a must visit for one time experience.
It was a beautiful day, so we got some really good views. Following pics don't do enough justice to that view!

Around 5pm we left national park. We decided to go to Monument Valley UT instead of going to Farmington, NM - per the earlier plan. We made change to hotels on the go - while having dinner at Gallop NM. We reached to monument valley around 11pm.

Day 3 December 24th 

View out from hotel window gave us an idea that we are off to see something great today.

View from hotel room

Reached monument valley and met with Vishwanath, Aman and group at the visitor center. Then we decided to go to 13 miles loop drive in the valley. The views were just amazing!!!
After doing the drive we did a small 3 miles loop hike and experienced the valley from up and closer.

After spending good 6-7 hours in the valley we started driving towards Page, AZ

Day 4 December 25th 

Visited Lower antelope canyon in the morning and did 9.30am tour.
Tour lasts about an hour. Lower antelope canyon gets fewer visitors compared to Upper canyon which is more popular and beautiful. But lower canyons have their own beauty and worth visiting.

We visited Horseshoe bend after visiting lower antelope canyon.

At around noon we started heading towards Vegas.
We stayed at Vegas to break the journey. We decided to stay at south point to save time on next day.

Day 5 - December 26th

We made our way back home on day 5 and beat holiday traffic!

This was a memorable and fun trip!!

Thanksgiving 2016 - Wild west

This marked as yet another eventful thanksgiving trip. Drove about 2,200 miles in 5 days, drove through 4 states - California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, and visited 3 national parks - Saguaro NP, Carlsbad Caverns NP, Guadalupe Mountains NP and 1 national monument - White Sands National Monument.

November 23rd

Vish, Anuj, Aman and Sajeev reached my apartment at Ontario at 3.30pm. Vish had rented a Chevy Suburban, so we were able to sit comfortably for this 5 days long trip. We started driving towards Tuscon, Arizona.
After grabbing dinner at Phoenix, we reached Tuscon at 1am.

November 24th

This day got eventful right after 30 mins of waking up. Sanjeev was the last person to take shower. Aman had already complained about slippery bathtub.
While Sajeev taking shower, we heard a loud noise. That definitely was a noise of toilet seat. After 2-3 mins Sajeev comes out of bathroom with broken left arm. Vish and Anuj helped him to bandage his wound and dress him up. Next stop was a ER on a thanksgiving day.

Sajeev got hungry while waiting for doctor at ER. So Anuj helped him getting a sandwich from vending machine. This snack delayed some of his treatment. He got discharge after spending about 2.5 hours in ER and getting preliminary care on his fractured arm.

There were no flights back from Tuscon to SoCal on that day, so we decided to continue our trip. Sanjeev decided to stay at his friend's place at Las Cruces, New Mexico and fly back to LA on next morning. So we drove to Saguaro national park and reached National park at around 1pm.

Explored national park for about an hour. Sajeev started feeling dizzy at this point, so we had to get help of park ranger to ensure his wellness. Probably his medication was making him dizzy. The ranger recommended us to leave the park and allow Sanjeev to take rest.

We left the park and continued our journey towards Las Cruces. Reached Las Cruces around 6pm. We left Sajeev with his friend and continued our journey towards El Paso, Texas.
Picked up Anu at El Paso airport, grabbed dinner and continued onward journey to Carlsbad, NM - our stay for the night.

It was time for yet another event of the day. About 15 miles east of El Paso we were stopped by Border Patrol. None of us had our passports. It took us about 45 mins to get cleared by the Border patrol. Luckily they were able to track all our information from our Driving Licenses.

By 3am we made it to Carlsbad, New Mexico.  

Saguaro Cacti

November 25th

We spent entire day in spending the Carlsbad Caverns. Its a very beautiful national park inside the earth, literally!
Luckily no more surprises on this day!

November 26th

We decided to make a slight change in our initial plan and decided to visit Guadalupe Mountains National Park, which was on our way back to Alamogordo, New Mexico - stay for the night.

Made it to National Park at 9.30am. It was an overcast day. There isn't much to do in the park apart from exploring Guadalupe Peak (8,749 feet - highest peak in state of Texas) and El Capital. So we decided to do 8 miles round trip hike to Guadalupe peak.

It a steep hike and took us longer than what we expected. It was cloudy by the time we reached top and didn't really get the view of West Texas the peak is known for. Never the less, I had another state high point in my kitty!
We returned to trail head by 3pm.

Then we continued our drive to Alamogordo. Grabbed dinner at an Indian restaurant in El Paso.
North of El Paso there was one more Border Patrol post. Again we spent about an hour getting past this point.

(L-R) - Vish, Anu, Aman, Anuj and Myself

Guadalupe Peak.
Bottom (L-R) Vish, Anu, Anuj Top(L-R) Myself and Aman

El Capitan

November 27th
Plan for the day was to do the zipline near Ruidoso, visit White Sands National Monument and then head back to home.
By 7am we started driving to Ruidoso. By the time we reached Ruidoso and about 20 mins away from zipline, we realized that the zipline is closed due to high wind.
So we explored the town of Ruidoso and at 10.30am we started driving south towards White Sands National Monument. After spending about couple of hours in the park, we grabbed lunch at Las Cruces and we started driving back to SoCal by 3.30pm. We made it back to Ontario by 2am pacific.

Yet another memorable thanksgiving!