Starling Travel

I went to the Salt Lake Farmer’s Market in July 2012 and saw this AWESOME camper turned food truck. It’s called Ramblin’ Rose Cafe.

Their camper is adorable and they were so friendly.

The next time you are cruising around Salt Lake City, check out the Farmer’s Market. You might just find the Ramblin’ Rose Cafe.

Back in March 2012, the Sahara Hotel was closed and we snapped a few photos of it while we drove past on the strip. I thought people might like to see them to remember for old times’ sake.

In its spot, they now have a hotel called SLS. They really just washed off all the personality and reused the building. They tore out the roller coaster and made everything white and boring. I really miss the Las Vegas of the Nineties and wish they would go back to the kid-friendly thing. Since I’m basically just a grown-up kid, all this “sophistication” is just lost on me…

I found these photos of The Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada in my collection and I thought I’d share them with you.

I don’t know why we keep visiting The Luxor Hotel over and over. There are hundreds of hotels in Las Vegas we could stay at and have a different experience. I guess we like the familiarity of a hotel we’ve stayed at before.

Then again, I don’t know why we keep visiting Las Vegas over and over. Part of it is location. It is close enough to be not too long of a drive and far enough to feel like a get-a-way.

I keep thinking we should visit someplace else, but how can I when Las Vegas is as beautiful as it is time and time again?

I didn’t know it at the time, but the anniversary trip Mike and I took in August of 2013 was The Last Prius Campout. We camped at Wasatch State Park in Northern Utah and had I known it was our last campout with that car, I would have taken more pictures.

I was looking through photos the other day and I found the few that I took.

We had a great time on that campout and I wrote about it when I talked about camping fondue: Starling Travel – Camping Fondue

Right after this, we bought the Crosstrek and we have adored it, using it for all our camping trips ever since, but the Prius was a great car for camping and it pulled that tent trailer like a trooper.

Here are a couple more shots:

When we went to Legoland last year, I snapped some shots of the RVs that they had built in their Legoland towns.

If you would like to make some campers like this with Legos, they have made some sets:

• LEGO Friends 3184 Adventure Camper at Amazon.com
• LEGO City Town Car and Caravan 4435 at Amazon.com
• LEGO Friends Summer Caravan 41034 Building Set at Amazon.com
• LEGO Creator Volkswagen T1 Camper Van 10220 at Amazon.com
• LEGO City Great Vehicles 60057 Camper Van at Amazon.com

We might not be able to own the RV of our dreams, but we can build one from Legos!

I ran the Color Run in Las Vegas last weekend. While we were driving to pick up my race packet, the sunset was amazing.

I took this photo from the Boulder Highway near Flamingo. It was a beautiful evening and I just had to share it. Sometimes travel shocks us into joy because we see the same sunset that we would see at home with a different skyline.

I took this photo last August on our anniversary trip to Las Vegas. I have NO idea where I was standing when I took the photo, but I adore how it turned out.

Sometimes when I feel like I need a vacation, I pull up my old photos and look at them, remembering my good times. It’s usually just barely enough for me to get back to work and perhaps plan a trip in the future.

This time lapse video of Yellowstone is STUNNING!

I love the view of Grand Prismatic Springs from above because it’s so hard to get there on your own. When you see it, it’s usually from the bottom, where you can’t see the whole thing. It looks so good and makes me miss Yellowstone.

This photo just made me wish so hard for a time machine.

I really believe that if I invented a time machine, I wouldn’t use it to kill Hitler. I would use it to travel to a Yellowstone that was filled with bears and retro campers. Is that wrong?

I adore this photo I found on Flickr today.

• Flickr: Campers in Keep River NP by spelio

Keep River National Park is in the Northern Territory of Australia. Here is a map:

Yesterday, I said that RVing gave us a freedom to travel that we didn’t have before, but I was fibbing a bit. We had that freedom of inexpensive travel when we tent camped like the people in this photo. The freedom that the camper gave us was the ability to travel almost all year long. With the tent trailer, we can travel even with temperatures as low as 28 degrees. We could have never done that in a tent because I froze every night the temperatures dipped below 45 degrees and that was in our nice Springbar tent.

I love this picture because the tent has a solar panel and the kids are just climbing the trees like monkeys. I don’t want to go back to tent camping, but I do love seeing a well-pitched tent.