Reunited!

It’s not every day that I get to roll through McCarran Airport and pick up somebody in an awesome vehicle like Taco Negro. And luckily, that “somebody” was Michael.

In case you’re wondering, originally we were supposed to go on this two-week trip together. But when Michael went to check with his brother about watching our dog for us, JD politely reminded him that his entire family was headed out for Spring Break during the first week of April – and that Michael had already agreed to watch all of their pets.

So.

In the end Michael was able to book a cheap one-way flight from Santa Maria to Las Vegas for April 6th, so all I had to do was be at the airport Sunday morning. I was excited to see him – I mean, I’d had a fabulous week, running around Utah solo, but I was absolutely ready to continue the adventure with Michael.

As you might guess, we did not immediately high-tail it out of Vegas. No, we wanted lunch first. And lunch happened at a sweet little spot called Carson Kitchen. This selection was not random. A friend of ours from back in our Denver days, Jon, lives in Las Vegas and works at Carson Kitchen. We didn’t know it, but this funky spot is one of the top restaurants in town – with good reason. The food, served family style, was delicious and I wanted to try everything on the menu.

I kind of wish Las Vegas were…different, somehow. Not so soulless. Because the food scene there looks pretty damn amazing. There was a place called the Donut Bar (famous for their oversized donuts, apparently) next to Carson Kitchen, and we figured we’d stop in when we were done with lunch.

Except, when we walked past it an hour or so later – they were closed. Already sold out.

On the way back to the truck I spied what looked like graffiti on an alley wall, which actually seemed a little unusual for the area. As in, there wasn’t any other graffiti nearby, and it didn’t look like a tag or anything. I took a closer look:

Turns out this was strategically placed on the side of Santos Guisados Tacos & Beer.

Well played, Santos. Well played.

Maybe next time we have some money we’ll book a couple of cheap flights and head out to Vegas. We sure don’t have to stay on the strip – there are enough stellar restaurants in the east side of downtown to keep us happy and full for days.

We headed out of Las Vegas in the afternoon and watched the gas prices drop as we headed further north. It felt just like old times, loading up on groceries at the Hurricane Walmart. Our chosen campsite was called Eagle Crag and one of the main reasons we went to check it out was because of the wildly different reviews we’d seen on freecampsites.net.

It’s listed there as Eagle Craig, but the trailhead parking lot we passed just before the camping loop said Eagle Crag. In case you don’t want to click on the link above, I saw everything from “For the adventurous and 4WD equipped!” to “horrible horrible road” to “managed it in a very low VW Beetle convertible.”

Of course, Taco Negro is a 4WD, high-clearance vehicle so we weren’t so much worried as curious. And honestly, I can see the validity of two of the above reviews (it’s hard to get behind someone who repeats “horrible” for emphasis). I wouldn’t want to drive this road during the rainy season, not even in Taco Negro. The road is steep and, in one spot just past a cattle guard, deeply rutted. Luckily for us the dry season had begun and we saw evidence of the road even being graded along the way. We didn’t have any problems getting to the camping area.

And we were rewarded with this view:

Yeah, that’s a cell phone tower on the left. There were actually two different towers up there. We probably could have used our Netflix account if we’d been so inclined.

Both of us were super excited for the morning, though. We were headed to Zion.