Driving from Ohio to San Diego
- Rachel
- Sep 17, 2021
- 3 min read
Updated: Jun 14, 2023
In late August, my boyfriend Brandon and I drove from Dayton, Ohio to San Diego, Calif. over the course of seven days. The first day we drove through Indiana and Illinois and camped in a conservation area in Missouri. It was a rural campground, meaning the only "amenity" there was was an outhouse. It was also a little bit of a rough start as there were bugs everywhere (I had the misfortune of learning what sweat bees are), and we found a tick on the sleeve of my T-shirt. Luckily nothing got in our tent and we were both exhausted from the day of driving, so we had a good night's sleep.
The next day we drove to Kansas. Let me tell you, there's basically nothing to see in either Kansas or Missouri. They collectively have like, four cities in total. Three if you don't count Kansas City, Kan. and Kansas City, Mo. as two different entities.
We camped in the tiny town of Ellis, Kan. It was over 100 degrees this day and both Brandon and I felt pretty lousy because of it. It was so hot I took the first real cold shower of my life in the campground's bathrooms, even though I found a giant spider right outside my stall. I was simply too sweaty and overheated to care.
The next day, we drove through the rest of Kansas and finally got the boring states out of the way. Then we were in beautiful Colorado. Colorado was probably my favorite states that we visited, and the only place we visited I could actually see myself living.
We got lunch at a vegan restaurant (because they don't have those in Dayton) in Boulder. Then we attempted to hike the Flatirons, but we were really feeling the altitude difference and gave up about 10 minutes in. We are also out of shape.
From Boulder we drove to the mountain town of Fairplay, which Brandon wanted to camp in because it's where "South Park" takes place (I very nicely didn't even mention it was two hours out of the way). To get to our campsite we had to drive down a very scary, unpaved, rocky road. It was another primitive one, so the only thing we had available to us was an outhouse. It definitely felt hard to breathe in the mountains, and I guess it's always cold in the mountains because that night I was was freezing. It was so cold that morning, when we woke up we immediately packed up our stuff and drove back to town for breakfast and coffee.
We made a quick stop in Breckenride, Colo. before making our way to Utah. There we went to Arches National Park.
We left the park and drove to our next campsite which was in Green River, Utah. It was a KOA campground which meant it had very nice bathrooms and showers, but it was super expensive and we had to pitch our tent in a weird patch of fake grass.
The next morning I drove for six hours straight to Horseshoe Bend in Arizona. The hike from the parking lot was only 20 minutes, but I was so hungry, tired from the drive, and overheated I almost didn't make it back to the car. After leaving, we immediately got Mexican food. We were both feeling so worn out from the trip that we got a hotel in Page, Ariz. at around 3 in the afternoon and stayed there for the rest of the night. I fell asleep around 7:00 p.m.
Next morning drove to Grand Canyon, then Phoenix. There's a phrase you'll hear a lot in Phoenix.
"It's a dry heat."
The most infuriating thing about this is that they'll say it when it's 105 degrees outside, as it was when we were there. I would take 90 degrees with humidity over a dry 105 any day.
They did have Mod Pizza, which is a restaurant where you can make your own custom pizza (the pizza version of Chipotle/Subway/Fusian, if you will), which was the best part of Phoenix for me.
Finally the last day of our trip arrived, and we got to San Diego the next day.
This is a video we filmed on the way. Brandon used it as a music video for one of his songs (I sing on the chorus).
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