When I talked about spring break with local students or international students, many of them told me that they were staying in San Francisco or going to visit their families. But most of the exchange students use this break to travel. I was no exception. The limited time we have here gives us the need to see as much as we can while we can. Two other people from my home university and I decided to drive to Las Vegas, where we would spend 4 nights, then drive to the Grand Canyon, where we would spend 2 nights, and before returning to San Francisco to visit Death Valley for one more night. While everyone else had everything set up weeks in advance, we didn't start planning until less than a week before we left. That doesn't give you much peace of mind. But we managed to get everything set up. You know that feeling when it's the day of the trip, you have planned everything, but nothing goes according to plan? That's exactly what our departure day looked like. We were delayed at the rental car place (where we had reserved the car) much longer than we wanted. The other driver was so expensive (under age 25) that I decided I'd rather do the driving myself. We couldn't connect my phone in the car, so in the end, we resigned and decided we'd rather go without connecting the phone. On the very first day, we had to travel about 900 km (circa 560 miles), which was less than 10 hours of net time. But for one driver it is really long, and you have to make stops. We didn't leave San Francisco until 12:30pm. With a few stops, the trip stretched out to almost 12 hours. We arrived at our hotel in Las Vegas a little after midnight and I was completely exhausted. No wonder we slept a little bit longer the next day. But when you have so little time to see
and do everything, you still cannot sleep too long. On the list of one of my co-travelers was to be able to walk the main street, go to a nightclub, experience a pool party, go to a casino and more. We had three days to do all the things from the list and it was quite challenging. It's fascinating how you can find all sorts of sights from different countries in Las Vegas. The Egyptian pyramid and the Sphinx, New York's Statue of Liberty, Paris' Eiffel Tower, and even Italy's Venice. In the end, we managed to do everything, but the cost was incredible exhaustion. For me, as an introvert, it was twice as tiring because we were together almost 24/7 and I was already feeling signs of cabin fever after the first day.
Grand Canyon and Death Valley National Park
The drive to the Grand Canyon took about four and a half hours. The Grand Canyon is huge, and it is impossible to do everything in one day. That's why we decided to visit only the most famous places that were not so far from our accommodation. Antelope Canyon is a beautiful place that looks almost like a fairy tale. The sandy walls make irregular waves and the light plays in the different colors of orange and red. Horseshoe bend was a bit of an adrenaline rush for me. Finally, we visited the Wahweap Overlook, Navajo Mountain Viewpoint, and Lone Rock Beach. After spending so much time in the car, you want to get a good rest, but unfortunately, I couldn't get much rest. The last stop was Death Valley. We spent about 8 hours in the car that day. On the way, we stopped to see the Artist's Palette. It really looks like some artist decided to paint on these rocks. And the sunset there was just beautiful. But Death Valley is mainly for stargazing and seeing the Milky Way. When one of my co-travelers asked me to drive almost three quarters of an hour in the middle of the night to a place that is recommended for night sky viewing, I firmly refused. I was really sleep deprived and needed to rest for the return trip. So they woke me up in the middle of the night to go stargazing at least in our campsite. Not only is there no signal in Death Valley, but there's no light smog. We may have even seen a Milky Way, but it will forever remain a mystery to me if it was a Milky Way or the fine clouds where the Milky Way was supposed to be. Soon, however, I preferred to go back to bed to be really rested for the trip to San Francisco. The drive went very smoothly, but I couldn't wait to finally get home. In this week of spring break I spent over 37 and a half hours driving and drove over 2,900 km (over 1,800 miles), most of the way I had cabin fever not to mention how much I walked and that I didn't get much sleep. It was definitely an amazing experience, but if you expected to get some rest over spring break.... that definitely didn't happen.