Confused crazy time with writer’s block

In fact – it’s been a long time – since I last hit the keys. Why are you wondering? Well, on the one hand, I really didn’t feel like writing anymore. I was too lazy. Writers like to call this writer’s block and have a confusing crazy time. 🙂

On the other hand, I wanted to test something. Test if there are people who miss our reports. Since we have in our posts the post series “What we miss from…” I wanted to turn the tables and find out if you – readers – miss our reports. Well, either only a few have spoken out or no one misses these reports. Feedback would sometimes be good. Is the saying “Out of sight out of mind” true?

What have we done in the meantime

On October 9, 2021, we created our last blog entry. There are 10 months between the Thailand Post (August 6, 2020) and the Las Vegas Post (May 28, 2021). So what did we do in the meantime and where were we?

Back and forth

On 1.4.2020 we had to fly back to Switzerland due to a lack of alternatives. Why lack of alternatives? The border with Canada was closed on 18.3.2020. The same applies to the border with Mexico. And the length of stay in the USA expired. Why were the borders with Canada and Mexico closed? Because the global madness and madness has taken its course. And apparently no one remembered the scams of 2002/2003 or 2004/2005 or 2009 or 2013/2014.

So we got on a plane and flew to Switzerland. We first lived in the Grisons mountains for a certain time and quickly realized that the ceiling fell on our heads. So we went to France without further ado and did two housesittings there. Was really great because the one house, built in 1874, 4 floors high, we could renovate. Of course not the whole house because with 13 rooms this was a monster. Beautiful with old tiled floor tiles. A dream house.

The second house sitting was, in terms of land, massively large. Since we also did dogsitting here, we walked around the property 2 times a day with Wooster – the name of the Golden Retriever. This took 15 to 20 minutes, depending on the number of stick throws for Wooster. Pure running time about 8 – 10 minutes. So really big the property.

But after a total of 10 months in Europe, we were pretty fed up. It is cold, windy, rainy and grey in Europe. So we decided to fly back to the US and continue our journey.

Crazy stopover in Mexico

However, we were not able to enter the USA directly. So, with a heavy heart, we had to carry out a 16-day stopover quarantine nonsense in Mexico. The quarantine – and thus also nonsense – was free movement in Yucatan. Beach, sun, sea, cenotes visit, visit Mayan ruins – done. As I said – nonsense.

Back in the USA

Back in the USA, we got our Duro out of storage. Well, going out was not possible so quickly. Despite the main switch on off, something must have pulled somehow still power. And so the starter batteries were totally sucked out. Well, just buy some new batteries, install them, start the engine – Jipiehhh…

Our route in the USA 2021

I want to make it very brief. Therefore, only a few rough stations. Start in Las Vegas. Then to the Valley of Fire (see report here). Lake Mead, Death Valley, Lake Havasu City, Joshua Tree National Park, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, Slab City (totally weird), Quartzsite, Lost Dutchman State Park, Cottonwood, Sedona, Flagstaff, Grand Canyon, Petrified National Park, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Bandelier National Monument, Los Alamos, Durango, Silverton, Ouray, Moab, Arches National Park, Canyonlands, Page, Springdale, Bryce Canyon National Park, Kodachrome Basin State Park, Capitol Reef National Park, Goblin Valley State Park, Nine Mile Canyon Road, Manila, Jackson, Grand Teton National Park, Yellowstone National Park, Craters of the Moon National Park, Shoshone, City of Rocks National Reserve, Ely, Cedar City, Boulder City, Lake Havasu City, Tucson, Nogales.

Ok, the list of stations was not that short after all. But I don’t want to withhold a story, a very hot one, from you. That too was a confusing crazy time. 🙂

Hot, hot, hot – how to survive at 53.3 degrees Celsius

We were on the way of the Hoover Dam heading south. Specifically, in the direction of Mexico as the US residence permit was slowly coming to an end. So we stopped again in Lake Havasu City. Already at Lake Mead, the daytime temperatures were around 45 to 48 degrees. So pretty warm. We thought it was cooler in Lake Havasu City, especially in the canyon where the Colorado River flows. Well, wrongly thought. Here we have – in the truest sense of the word – whistled from the last pores. So we settled into Cattail Cove State Park under shady trees. The daytime temperature then rose to a record-breaking 53.3 degrees Celsius. The walls of the showers in the sanitary house were so heated that their hands were burned. The floor in the duro was just as hot. The breathing was extremely difficult because we only inhaled hot air. The mattresses in the Duro were heated to 44 degrees – just by the hot air. We bought a Mister. No, not human trafficking. But a hose that is equipped with a dozen nozzles which atomize the water so finely that it trickles down like fog – or manure. That was also our main place, which we did not leave for about 24 hours. The second place to cool off was the Colorado River. Everything else was just hot. Every morning when the Americans came out of their 5th-wheelers – all of which were connected to the mains and thus had air conditioning – their eyes rubbed in amazement when they saw us and asked: “How could you survive?” “How could you survive?” Yes, that’s what we’re asking ourselves today. 9 days without sleep in a heat that we have never experienced before. 9 days of scorching hot wind which by no means provided cooling. So we decided to go to Phoenix, to a hotel with air conditioning. Then we slept comatosely for 12 hours.

Back to the initial question: “How do you survive 53.3 degrees Celsius?” Shade, drink water, cool down. There is no real escape from the heat. There is only the possibility to provide relief in some way through cooling. Nothing more.

After we stayed in a hotel for a few days, we prepared ourselves and drove south. More in another report.