Day 1: California to Utah

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the cats began to yowl.

Today Yesterday was our first day on the road, and it didn't get off to a good start. We had last-minute packing and cleaning to finish before picking up the RV, pictured above, at 11am. Lugging all our stuff from the apartment to the vehicle took ages (a big shout out to our neighbour Mark for the much-appreciated help) and packing it away took even longer. We had planned to get on our way by noon and ended up leaving promptly at 3pm.

The traffic out of California was the usual nightmare and it took us ages just to negotiate the 55 and 91. The 15 soon cleared up, leaving us free to enjoy the mind-numbingly tedious drive to Las Vegas.

If you've ever wondered what it's like to drive an RV with four dogs and two cats in it, just imagine lots of whining, yowling, trembling and random barking. Now add in a fairground ride that's basically you sitting in a huge metal box loaded down with lots of precious things (Kindle, laptop, your fave t-shirt, girlfriend) that's being shaken all over the place. If you want to know how shitty California freeways are, drive them in an RV. Every slight bump of the 15 — at my estimation there's one every three centimetres — is transported through the tyres, suspension and seat, into your arse, up your spine and straight into you brain. Luckily Nevada seems to have grasped that making freeways from randomly sized layers of concrete sucks, so they use tarmac. And they're a dream to drive on.

After a few hours we stopped in Barstow for food. Well, I say food, it was Chipoltle, but by that point I'd have eaten at Denny's if it had meant getting out of the RV for a bit. After the dogs had relieved themselves on the nearest tree (in Cadbury's case the nearest five trees) we were back on the road. Our plan was to share driving, swapping every four hours, but I was enjoying it so I stayed in the driver's seat once I'd kicked Erebus out of it.

One thing about driving to Vegas is that from Barstow on it's bloody boring. As it was night at this point, there is literally nothing to look at... not that there's that much to look at in daylight. You just go along, eating up the distance, with no real sense that you're getting anywhere. By the time we hit Vegas it was 9.30pm and Alicia decided on a change of plan; instead of making for Richfield, Utah, we were going to stop at a Walmart in Cedar City. Just north of Vegas we stopped for petrol. The RV has a 56-gallon tank and gets NINE MILES to the gallon, so five minutes and $84 later we were on our way again.

On the way we passed through a slice of Arizona, meaning we're crossing 12 states on this trip. We went through a place called Virgin River Gorge, which one of my friends assures me is beautiful. Unfortunately, as it was pitch black, we missed the natural beauty and instead had to concentrate on the windy and steep road. Oh, that's another thing; driving east from CA means you're basically going uphill for hours. The RV coped really well with it, better than my Mini would have.

At around 1.20am we made it to Cedar City and after a couple of wrong turns found the Walmart. There was a contingent of RVs already parked there, so we joined them as there's safety in numbers. We I drove 436 miles in 10 hours, a feat I've never before done and never really want to do again. After walking the dogs for 10 mins we went to bed, which was an adventure in itself as the dogs wouldn't shut up whining until around 3am. I woke up at 7am to freezing temperatures, meaning I'm wearing jeans for the first time since March, and after picking up more water in the Walmart we're off again in a few minutes to the next stop on this adventure, which we're enjoying but are very bloody definitely never doing again.

If any of the three of you notice that the font changes size in this post, I'll try to fix it. (Me from the future: I fixed it.)