We spent a night in Zion National Park but because it was the beginning of the spring break season, we didn’t pre book the campsite and it was reservation only no first in first served, even though spring break is only one week for the students, it takes 6 weeks for all the schools to rotate through so we moved on to Death Valley. Death Valley is famed for being the hottest, lowest and driest location in the country so you would think no one would want to visit, but it is one of the most iconic landscapes in the world.

One of the leftover relics is the Harmony Borax Works these works use to produce 3 tons of Borax a day and they would ship it out in 20-mule teams.  Borax was used in detergents, medicines, food additives, household cleaners and cosmetics.

Digby had to take me out to the “Racetrack” just so I could experience the bumpy ride, but I must admit that it really makes you wonder how these rocks move.  I also had the pleasure of being buzzed by the fighter jet, Digby said he had organised it for me but I think he is full of it.

We spent a couple of days in Las Vegas preparing for the next couple of legs, as we will be spending a lot of the time in the National Parks and we needed to ensure that we could get camping spots.  Las Vegas is still crazy, you can even play the pokies at the grocery store.  We headed into Bass Pro which is a major sporting/hunting store in the US and it was chockers, a lot of people buying bullets.  There was one bloke there who was in full camouflage gear, helmet on and carrying a rifle – and he was just out shopping.

On our initial trip to Zion National Park Digby did a quick trip around the campground and because he a sticky beak, he befriended a lovely group of people from South Carolina who travel with motor bikes, and have a pretty impressive set up.  We have had pretty good luck with travelling except for Digby’s last trip to Zion where he dropped and cracked one of his camera lens and then lost his glasses in the river but not to worry that was only two out of three for bad luck.

We have a good routine with our camping set up and each of us have our own tasks but Zion was not finished with Digby’s bad luck, that afternoon he hung the car keys up on the clothes hook in the back of the car which he normally only does once we are snug in bed.  I have a habit of hitting the lock button on my side of the car which locks my side, or so I thought until we went to open the doors and all the doors were locked with the keys sitting on the hook in the car.

My initial response (besides what was written on my face) is to call AAA, but luckily for Digby he had popped the small back windows of the car open (about an inch), again not something we do until going to bed.  Digby went over to visit our new friends Rob, Bob and Pauline to see if they had any wire, again luckily for Digby, Pauline had a wire coat hanger (something she doesn’t normally carry) and he was able to get the keys out of the small window, which was great because I thought I would be sleeping in the toilet block.  We spent the rest of the evening socialising with these guys and comparing our different aspects of living.  We did happen to get a few shots in before heading off.

Unfortunately the virus has caught up with us and we are in the process of returning home.  We were hoping to stick it out by staying in the National Parks but they are closing them down.  We needed to get back into Canada to sell the car, but Canada will not let us in the country because we cannot self-isolate for the 14 days.  So the only option we had was to return to Las Vegas, secure a car storage locker and then try and return to Australia. Digby and I had a lot of contingency plans for death, illness or an emergency at home, we just didn’t plan for a pandemic outbreak, oh well we will know next time.  I want to thank Digby for taking this journey with me and I didn’t think we would be celebrating our 31st wedding anniversary planning an escape route from the USA.