hiking

Long(ish) Weekend in Arizona

by besimplyconfident

January should be a great time to travel to Arizona. You go for the sun, warmer weather than where you came from, and the desert life AKA cacti everywhere. However, I am now one for three, in regards to weather, with my trips to Arizona. First trip I made was the coldest week they had had in years.. Second time was summer, so it was basically 120 degrees and we lived in the pool.. This past time it rained most of weekend, but luckily we were still able to do some fun activities around the desert! Here is what we did over the long weekend, while meeting up with friends.

Friday

1:00(ish)pm - Left Vegas to make the drive to Arizona
5:45pm - We have arrived at our Airbnb. This Airbnb I highly recommend, the owners were fabulous with communication and checking in to see if we needed anything. We also had a conversation with them once over the weekend and he explained to us the history of the house. This house was originally a trailer that the previous owner lived in with an outhouse in the back, but the house was built around the trailer. You are able to see the side of the trailer from the living room and you can also see the axel of the trailer in the floor of the kitchen. It had a wonderful history and made the stay that much better, very unique!
8:00pm - Went out to eat in Churchill located in downtown Phoenix. This is a place that has bars and restaurants inside of shipping containers with a seating area in the middle. Music is playing and the environment was great! We ate at the Mexican restaurant, Provecho. I would most definitely eat there again!
10:00pm - Arrived at Arizona Wilderness Brewing Company for a drink and a bite with friends. Environment was so great with wonderful people watching! Highly recommend 🙂

Saturday

9:30am - Uptown Farmers Market. Personally, I love farmer's markets! I also have been blessed to grow up in Minnesota where farmer's markets are abundant and I worked at the largest farmers market in the state. It was multiple blocks and just purely amazing! I was kind of nervous to go there and see what Phoenix had for farmers markets, but I was pleasantly surprised! This was huge and had so many fun tables, so whatever you want, you will find here.
11:00am - Hike time. Friends brought us to McDowell Sonoran Preserve to hike the Gateway Loop Trail. I am an avid hiker in the Las Vegas area, so this hike was fairly easy. There was one or two areas that did make my heart beat a little faster, but overall it was a nice hike that was easy to make your way around! You also get some good views in a couple spots on the trail.
4:30pm - After an afternoon of relaxing and enjoying our Airbnb, we traveled over to Snakes and Lattes in Tempe, Arizona. This place was such a blast! It is a restaurant that you can get coffee in the morning or drinks at night (whatever you are in the mood for) and play board games. It is a $5 charge to your bill to play the board games, if you want, but so worth it! You can try any game you would like, there is a board on the wall that helps you pick games based on your typical favorites, and they also have a 'game master' that will just walk around giving recommendations and teaching you how to play a new game. We spent about 5 1/2 hours here just playing games and have some pretty great drinks & food. Highly recommend and have definitely looked now for some board game cafes in Las Vegas 🙂

Sunday

10:30am - Brunch with other friends before we left from our weekend. We went to Ocotillo and had, yet again, a great experience! The environment was great and they had a gorgeous patio space. Their cinnamon rolls is giant and delicious, but their Iron Skillet Pancake is gigantic! If you like banana bread, this is a great option. However, be prepared to have it for like 2-3 meals or share it with another person... It is the size of an iron skillet literally!
12:00pm - Hike at Camelback Mountain. This was about half hike/half rock scramble, it definitely got the heart rate going but still doable! We didn't have to make any stops going up or down, but we also are pretty avid hikers so know that when thinking about difficulty. We were fortunate enough to not have too many people trying to hike this mountain in the rain, so it was pretty easy for us to get up and down without waiting for others to go over the trickier parts, however I have heard that it is extremely busy on nice days, so beware of maybe waiting and being in close proximity to others! The view of Phoenix from the top was great as well!
2:00pm - Walk around Downtown Scottsdale before heading home. This was fun and it had great shops for souvenirs! It isn't too large so easy to walk around and just a relaxing little place to people watch and enjoy the weather with a pretty view of the river that runs through.
3:00pm - Drive from Phoenix, Arizona back to Las Vegas, Nevada.
7:30(ish)pm - Made it back to good ol' Las Vegas!

Overall, we had a wonderful time with some great friends and seeing the sights! It was a great little getaway from Vegas and will definitely need to go back in the next coming months before moving farther away 🙂

-Natalie-

Weekend Trips from Las Vegas

by besimplyconfident

I have now been in Las Vegas for close to 5 months! Is that crazy or what?? I have kept busy with meeting new people, trying new activities, and of course my new job. I wanted to take a second to highlight some great weekend trips that I have done or have been told to do! I would love to do more traveling around the area right now, but it is also tricky with the Coronavirus still present and not under control. Look below to see the fun you can have just a few hours away (at most)!

– Kanarra Falls (Utah) was absolutely gorgeous and such a fun way to hike that is not just going up the heights. This hike took us through lots of water, scrambling over rocks, and using ladders/ropes to help ourselves up the taller ones all leads to some pretty falls tucked in a canyon! I highly recommend this hike, especially in the warmer months. We went early in October and it was perfect! It got a bit chilly once you were in the canyon and water for too long, but your shoes dried off just a few minutes after going back into the sun! If you do this hike, pack some tall waterproof socks.. most of the hike is literally through water. On the drive be sure to stop in St. George and eat at Peppers Cantina for some delicious Mexican food and Margaritas! Portions are large and service is great. (~ 2.5 hours from Vegas}

– Flagstaff, Arizona is a small(ish) town that is well-known for its fall colors in the south. We went and took a weekend mid-October to embrace some fall colors while living in the desert. This was a fun trip that we got to embrace breweries, hiking, and of course brought the pups on this one! If you come to this small town, there are for sure some places you need to visit for some good food and drinks. These include Galaxy Diner (50s diner feel), Lumberyard Tap Room & Grille (fun flights of beer), and Civano Coffee House (fun night club vibe and great staff). If you have a big enough group, The Mayor is a great place to sit around a fire and have some drinks! Inner Basin Trail is where we got to see colors of fall. This was a great, not too strenuous hike that I would say anybody could do! It doesn’t have an endpoint with a view, but the trees that you are walking through and the colors of fall in October are so great and beautiful throughout the hike. (~ 4 hours from Las Vegas)

– Zion National Park (Utah) is a great day/overnight trip with some great views! We went and stayed in the glamping tents, on the Northern side of the park, for a full weekend. Zion itself is a natural beauty that you need to drive through and see! The fun part of here is that you can see many different seasons in the southern part of the country. When we went (early November), it was great weather to be hiking! The first day of hikes it was cool enough we weren’t getting dehydrated, but warm enough that we had to strip layers at one point. The second day we did a hike with a little more elevation and ended up hiking through inches of snow. The hikes we completed (and I would highly recommend for those that are not afraid of hikes and are fairly active) would be Angel’s Landing and Observation Point. Angel’s Landing is not for the faint of heart, I am not scared of heights typically and like to think I am active, but that one tested me mentally more than anything! Gorgeous views at the top and small chipmunks that have no social boundaries. The nice thing about this hike is that if you don’t want to go all up through the mentally difficult part, take a left at the Y and continue up the West Rim trail. This is a little bit easier with similar great views! Observation Point is great! For the most part it is a moderate level hike, mostly due to the elevation, because I was for sure heavy breathing at times. This one is also cooler in temperature, so if you are going to hike it anytime after October, layers are key! From this area, you get a great view on top of Zion looking down. It is actually gorgeous! (park ~ 2 hours & 45 minutes from Vegas)

West Rim Trail
Observation Point
Climb up Angel’s Landing

With all of that being said, this is for sure not an exhaustive list! These are just the trips I have taken.. Here are some other places I want to visit before moving that are just a drive away: San Diego, CA (5 1/2 hours); Los Angeles, CA (4 1/2 hours); Palm Springs, CA (4 hours); Joshua Tree National Park (3 1/2 hours); Phoenix, AZ (4 hours & 45 minutes); Lake Tahoe (7 hours); and Death Valley (2 hours & 15 minutes).

-Natalie-

Just Another Week (or two) in Vegas

by besimplyconfident

I am trying to see all of Vegas while I am living here for the next 10 months, but I also have gotten a little bit overwhelmed with the start of therapy tomorrow and I don’t really know what is going on.. little hectic!

Here I am just going to do a quick recap of what has happened in Vegas and the places that I have seen!

First, you will see here some girls that I have been fortunate enough to hang out with while in the crazy city they call Vegas! Met them all via Facebook and I don’t think I have appreciated social media as much until this point lol

I’ve gotten a few hikes in. I have been averaging between 1 & 3 hikes per week.. There are literally so many to do and I am going to try get a good chunk of them done!

Hike #1: Lone Mountain at sunrise – This hike is a great one that it isn’t very long (only about 1.2 miles there and back), but it does get your heart rate up! This mountain is also a good place to make friends, everyone is so nice and wanting to talk. I mean we also sat on top of this mountain for 3 hours, so that might have had something to do with it too! But sunrise was beautiful, since you got to see the whole city with the sun shining over it.
Hike #2: Gypsum Ridge at Sunrise – This hike was not as crazy as I was expecting. It was about 4 miles, but the first like 2 miles are just at the base of the mountain. I had almost missed the sunrise by not knowing it just went around the base, but it still was a hike I was able to accomplish fast enough to catch the sun! I do recommend this for a nice leisurely hike. It has a little bit of going up the mountain (and you kind of have to slide at the end), but other than that it is fairly flat!
Hike #3: Cathedral Rock Trail – This one is located about 40 minutes outside of Las Vegas, but looks like we were in Colorado! This one kicked me in the butt endurance wise.. It had the highest elevation that I have done yet and it was strictly just straight up.. Worked those glutes that day! But it was also an amazing view on all sides, definitely worth the sweat going up. Fun part is once you reach the very top (depending on where you park) you can see your vehicle haha
Hike #4: James Brown Trail – This trail was not too strenuous, but definitely have a map because there are a lot of random hikes in this area. We had come here for the sunset, which was pretty and the weather was great! However, it was cloudy, but also when the sun sets here, it is gone. You have about a 20 minute slot of the sun setting, but then it is pitch black. So, needless to say, I have encountered my first rattlesnake!

A friend and I also took a little day trip to Lake Las Vegas (about 30 minutes from our apartments) to paddle board. This was a blast! The company we went through had so much to do, but we just took the paddleboards out, sat on them for the entire time, and went back in. It was the best decision I made that day!

I went and played some Top Golf for the first time as well. Although this isn’t only a Las Vegas thing, it did have a fun view of the strip, since it is only about a block from the actual strip. I would highly recommend going with a group and embracing it all. This one has a pool that I am now waiting to open, it is an amazing facility!

Our big group went to a rooftop brewery on the strip one night. We got dressed up and embraced an evening in party city! This brewery was fun, because it is located right across the street from the Bellagio. That means while you are sipping on your beers and eating your food, you can watch the fountains dance and people watch! It is also a great environment that is always a good time!

About 30 minutes south of Vegas, there are some colored rocks in stacks. These are called the Seven Magic Mountains. They are a fun, artsy spot in the middle of literally nowhere. They are just off of a highway too, so you can just do a drive-by. However, I would recommend just stopping real fast, because these are massive! We went as the sun was setting, so it was nice as it got quieter. Pictures were a little better too after people had left, obviously!

Some random other things I have accomplished besides work:

  • Wine and Paint Class
  • Ate at In ‘N Out Burger for the very first time
  • Got groceries at the Downtown Summerlin Farmer’s Market
  • Ate at Vickie’s Diner (the last day it would be open at its location)
  • Found and ate at a secret pizza place in the Cosmopolitan Hotel

Unfortunately for me, I am a busybody and trying to see everything I can see and meeting everyone that I can meet! It has been a whirlwind couple of weeks, especially with my job at the school picking up. I start sessions tomorrow!

I have been so thankful for this chance to travel and meet the people I am meeting. There is just something so exhilarating about moving to a new place not knowing a soul! I also am slightly thinking ahead to how I will be doing this so often. It is kind of a terrifying thought that I will be having to go through all of this again when I get to a new spot, because it is a lot of work! But I also know that I am either going to grow my network and friend groups world wide, which will be great! I could even find some people that I end up traveling with.

Again, if there is anything you have heard to do in Vegas, let me know! I would love to give it a try and let you know if it is worth a stop. I am down for anything! Well… for the most part 🙂 Bungee jumping will not be in my books anytime soon!

-Natalie-