Touring the West – Day 1 – San Diego to Zion

Western Road Trip Day One – Images by Will Parson

The first week of July I was in San Diego, itching with wanderlust. I had been craving a road trip for weeks, and having left on my own grand tour abroad exactly a year beforehand, my restlessness was at a peak. Europe a year ago was a vivid memory even as I completely forgot my relationship’s anniversary, which my girlfriend and I spent in Dusseldorf last year. The two of us packed our bags and bicycles and headed north the first week of last month.

I’ve now spent the last two Julys tucked in a car, traveling hundreds of miles a day for weeks on end. This year’s trip was dwarfed by last year’s 10,000-mile saga, but at three weeks long it was like reuniting with an old friend that had settled down and lost some weight.

San Diego in July is not at its best. The dreary weather has barely recovered from what locals call May gray and June gloom. We left early enough on a Sunday that I never found out if the thick marine layer happened to burn off that day or decided to blot the sun well into the afternoon.

My day belonged to the desert. The sun quickly gained strength and our car was a bottle of hot moisture floating across the Mojave. We sweated past Las Vegas without stopping, kept watch for racist Arizonans for 30 miles, then popped into Utah and a geologist’s wonderland of canyons and exposed sedimentary layers. Zion National Park that afternoon was a patchwork of rust red and verdant green. With the baked rusty sediment and the cool leafy trees it would have made a fairly accurate thermal infrared image. After finding a shady campsite coated a dusty iron-rich monochrome we waded into the Virgin River. Our remaining energy flowed downstream, so the rest of the day was filled with books and macaroni.

Here’s a video of day 1 on the road.

Touring the West – Day 1 – San Diego to Zion from Will Parson on Vimeo.

Touring the West – Day one through Zion National Park from Will Parson on Vimeo.

“Touring the West” is an ongoing travel series by Will Parson on MeridianCollective.org that will feature photos, video and text over the next three weeks. Look for a post from day two of Will’s travels tomorrow.

I've now spent the last two Julys tucked in a car, traveling hundreds of miles a day for weeks on end.