Nate and his family visit an Atlas Obscura memorial site in the Arizona desert where visitors leave strange mementos, then chase sunrise at the Grand Canyon in 26-degree cold before warming up at Lake Havasu. They talk about full-time RV life and managing their daughter Evelyn's meltdowns on the road.
Chapters
You gotta be kidding me. Whoa, whoa, wait on. No way. What have I gotten us into? Like, the most hipster Arizona out in the desert thing I've ever done.
Off the map.
We are. There's no map.
There's no map! Pick it up, babe.
Uh, no. Not if you still want to have stuff. Hi!
I counted my ants. I have 16 baby ants.
All right, so this morning we woke up to this beautiful sunrise and, uh, looked on Atlas Obscura, which is a pretty cool site that we found that has all kinds of crazy weird stuff. Since we're out in the middle of nowhere and we'll never be back here again, probably We decided we're going to take the Ruckus and we're going to go for a little, little trip. All right, we think we found it. So we drove up this road about, what'd you say, like a mile or two?
Maybe like half a mile.
Maybe half a mile. We found this dirt road this way, so we're gonna, we're gonna give it a try.
Also, uh, it's so cold and I don't have like gloves that I've lost all feeling in my fingertips.
It is so cold. Let's see what's, what's ahead of us here.
Well, we found it.
All right, we found it. To honor outgoing Atlas Obscura CEO David Plotz and his 5 years of service to the company, we leave behind here as a memento in this growing museum. It's the locker room.
So this is what it's called? The Plotz-a-Plotz. Can you tell us why they picked this name?
So Plotz was the CEO of Atlas Obscura last year or the year before he transitioned in and he left the company, and one of the employees found that they could buy this beautiful lot of land here in the desert in Arizona, right next to Highway 40 for practically nothing on eBay. And so he bought it sight unseen, drove out here, built a shed. This is not the shed, but they built a shed, put the CEO's backpack into the shed, and then just invited anybody from Alice Obscura, any visitors or anybody who looks at the website to come out here and leave a token of your former life if you're going through some sort of like transition or something like that. Oh, people came here before us. Oh man. Okay.
Wow.
All right.
This is awesome.
So this is the CEO's backpack. Look, so many people left other things. A key.
Picture. Seat. Whoa, what's this?
Dark crystal.
Can I touch it?
I guess. I don't know.
Oh no, fell apart. TV remote. Bullet. A bullet? I can't see the bullet. Oh, there we go.
Pin. A shoe. Master key to the Harley-Davidson motorcycle factory and the keychain that came with the keys. Oh, it's relocated to Thailand. Oh man, lots of people came. Fun. We'll sign it. Let's do it.
All right, we found something famous.
That's fun. We found some of the old stuff. This is what it— yeah, look, it says— oh, you know what we should do? We should take one of these inside and leave it.
Yes, right?
Yes. Nice. We left a little Pete.
Because the old shack's over there.
I know, but we left a little pee.
I do have to pee.
It's cold at the Grand Canyon.
We like our face masks. They keep our face warm.
Brrr.
It's really cold here.
Beautiful views though. I haven't been here in 25 years. It's amazing. It's chilly in late October, but not a lot of people comparatively.
Yeah, that was actually really great, not having any crowds or lines to stand in. Um, it was amazing. We just sat on like this beautiful park bench overlooking the Grand Canyon and ate lunch. Um, it was cold, but I'll forget about the cold, right?
Right. You won't even remember this except for this video that's showing how cold we are.
Wow, there's an elk!
It was 26 degrees at night and we came to Lake Havasu. It's pretty nice. I mean, palm trees. Uh, it's kind of a— I'd say it's a hidden gem, but we, we could only stay here for one night because I don't think it's quite so hidden anymore. To feel the difference between going from 26 degrees to 86 degrees and sitting in, you know, with your coat on and snow and frost on the ground. I mean, we woke up and got ready with frost all over the back of the truck, then drove for 4 hours, and now we're in the middle of this desert with a lake that, you know, everybody's boating and it's like perfect temperature. This lifestyle is not so bad. Still looking for ways of setting up our life you know, normal life. But there's some normal life right there. Yeah, trying to figure some of it out and how to deal with these monkeys. So—
I was crying.
If you can hear that in the background, that's Evelyn having a meltdown because it's nap time. It's time to go. This place is gorgeous. Yesterday we met a couple that are also doing full-time families type of thing in RV, and they're, they're actually in a van. And that was the first time that we had met a couple along this last 6 or 7 weeks where we really felt like we were doing something that wasn't quite as crazy as it seems. And it was great to hang out and chat. Anyway, good morning. Here we go, we're going home. You found a pile of sand in your bed again?
Mm-hmm, apparently coming from my hair.
Rough, rough life. Good morning! Oh, I ruined it with my finger. Try again. Stay there.
