The Long Way Home | Free Camping from Idaho to the Grand Canyon

Eighteen degrees, a dead battery, and hard ice at 7 AM.

That's how one morning on our drive home from Idaho to Arizona started, and it's only one stop on a week of camping across four states. We camped on the Clark Fork River in Idaho, in a snowy canyon just outside Dillon, Montana, at Piute Reservoir in Utah, and among the red rock beehives at Lake Powell, then rolled through the Grand Canyon on the last day. Along the way there's a duck boat with a homemade mud motor (The boys shot zero ducks), a two-hour standstill in the snow, Starlink that works even when it's pointed the wrong way, and a couple at Lake Powell with a photo from 2023 that stopped us both.

Then we pulled off at the Grand Canyon's East Rim to see what's really happening with the water situation, from the ground.

Planning a trip through Montana, Utah, or Northern Arizona? The chapters have every stop. And if you've been riding along for a while, our first Piute Reservoir episode is here: https://kerouacscruising.alitu.com/episode/2fea77f3-8557-42b1-aa64-5c07fab50c39. The Drift Yard has shown up on the show before too, in A Broken Shifter, Wildfires & a Blessing in Disguise: https://kerouacscruising.alitu.com/episode/9f961efb-f9fa-45e9-8c12-435c7134e3ad

If a week like this has you wondering what it would take to build a life that looks more like yours, that question has a home. We're working through it together at The Reinvention Project: kerouacscruising.com/reinvention

Want to talk it through first? A Connection Call is free and a full hour. It isn't a sales call, it's where we figure out together whether something more personal makes sense for you: https://calendar.app.google/5A86yjz11VATNEsB8

Notes for clarity:

• We said Hoover Dam went up in the 1920s. It was actually built between 1931 and 1936.
• We called it "Glen Dam." Lake Powell sits behind Glen Canyon Dam, finished in 1963. The flow through the Grand Canyon is set by releases from Glen Canyon Dam upstream. Hoover Dam is downstream, at Lake Mead.
• On the Grand Canyon timeline: the park is targeting November 16 to start pumping and a gradual return of overnight visitors around Thanksgiving. It's not full operations, and every date is still tentative.
• The "100-year flood year" we mentioned comes from the farmers' almanacs and from locals, not from an official forecast.

Find us everywhere: linktr.ee/kerouacscruising

And if the show's worth something to you, Ko-fi keeps the wheels turning: https://ko-fi.com/kerouacscruising