So, I am way behind on posting anything of our travels and/or vehicle mods/repairs form the last year or so. I am real tempted to post recent things, but if I do that, I know myself well enough to know I'm not going to go back and post the skipped stuff. So instead of regaling you with pics of our trip last month, you are getting stale pictures from a little over a year ago. Not much either of us can do about it, so let's see if we can enjoy the ride. We had a fantastic time, hopefully you will enjoy the Readers Digest version.
As usual, the only plan for sure was I had a cabin paid for the next night (Sunday). Other than that, it's on-the-fly navigation. So we departed on a Saturday late morning for points north of us. Before we got to Flagstaff, I am reminded why I hate traveling on weekends. [SOAPBOX] Weekend warriors with their minimally maintained equipment that they are not familiar with handling-wise, driving like they have to get to the forest or lake before it closes. Safety is of no concern whatsoever. It's one thing if it is what you do regularly and know how your equipment reacts in specific situations, but to throw a trailer on and hit the left lane with the hammer down is extraordinarily dangerous--to you, your vehicle occupants, people around you, first responders who have to come deal with your situation, and highway patrol who have to deal with the rest of the drivers on the road trying to keep them away from you. I'm not trying to sound holier than thou, I'm not perfect, but I also know to respect the limits of my equipment. I try to do a thorough pre-trip before moving each day, if not possible, I will do a solid walk around at a minimum. The safety of my passengers and equipment is worth the few minutes that it takes. Oftentimes, when we hit a coffee shop for my wife, I'll do a pre-trip while she's getting her coffee. Works out well. I see the results of poor equipment maintenance (smoked wheel bearings on the trailer on the side of the road), I see the results of driver inexperience (driving like the trailer is set up for 1g turns and road track style braking by following way too close), I've seen the results of combinations of that, plus others, all too often. It saddens me when I see it as I can empathize with the occupants because I have the same goal--go somewhere and have fun. A few minutes ago they were not thinking about being in a tow truck heading to some strange town for repairs (best case scenario) or a helicopter heading to some distant trauma center hoping to survive. Things can go wrong in an instant. SOMETIMES there is no preventing them. By keeping equipment maintained and using it in a reasonable manner can give you the best chance of minimizing the possibility or at least minimize the effects of things going wrong. I really hate seeing things like this:
Did an overloaded tire blow out?? Did the vehicle ahead of it stop too quickly to react?? Did some other weekend highway hot rodder cut him off?? I don't know. The ONLY things I do know is they are not in their vehicle heading to their fun weekend destination anymore and seeing their gear spread out on the side of the road saddens me enough to include all of this in MY travel thread hoping to help prevent someone else from going through a scenario like this. [/SOAPBOX]
So my boy had lamented to me a couple times recently that he had never seen the Grand Canyon. There's a reason he hadn't seen it. I really don't like going there (to the south rim). That got me to thinking of a possible solution to his problem. The north rim would be a great solution. None of us had been there before, it is much higher in elevation, and it is reportedly much more scenic than the south rim. Win, win, win. Here we go!!
On our way there, we pass the south end of Vermillion Cliffs National Monument overlooking House Rock Valley:
So we arrive up on the Kaibab Plateau and navigate our way out to an area where we set up camp right on the edge of the canyon. Seriously. Don't take too many steps out of the truck or you will experience a rapid loss of altitude. We set up camp and then rode our bikes around for awhile before dinner:
The aforementioned altitude difference; 8300' (+/-) lends itself to much colder (not cooler, colder...) temps. The first thing I realized is when I was packing and sweating my ass off in 105F+ temperatures earlier that day, I forgot to pack a jacket. It is an easy thing to do while pouring sweat and it isn't the first time I've done it. Ugh. Easy enough. Wear a blanket while sitting in front of the fire. So we ate dinner and headed into the truck for our first night on some new sleep pads I had recently gotten. It wasn't long after getting in the truck that we realized its getting colder and more uncomfortable. No worries. I grabbed the Webasto heater key fob and hit the heat button and in just a couple minutes we had a nice warm breeze filling the truck. We all slept well and the new sleep pads passed the test very well.
We rode the bikes some more the next morning. Fantastic views are everywhere:
After riding a while we loaded up in the truck and started wandering a bit further. Gratuitous truck shot:
We entered Grand Canyon National Park in the middle of nowhere. There was no attendant to take our money at this entrance:
We wandered around the area a bit and then headed out of the area with the North Rim Visitor Center as our destination. I had reserved a cabin for the night figuring it would be a good second night stop to see the developed north rim area and camp in one of the old CCC cabins. The cabin was neat, but the bed was junk. I woke up at about 0200 and was tempted to travel all the way out to the truck to retrieve my sleep pads to sleep on the floor. I didn't, but I should have.... A funny side note; the cabins are not near the parking area. There is a golf cart shuttle service that you can use to haul your stuff to the cabins or vice versa. On our trip to the truck the kid that was driving was regaling us with the story of how he has had three concussions (he might have been 20 y/o??). One was an impressive fall, another was a beating he took for his brother and then something else for the third one. Good stuff. Better than the typical "where are you heading" BS. So we got to the truck and he parked the cart close to the truck and a normal swingout would have hit it. He was going to move the cart but I stopped him and showed him the foldable swingout and how it would clear with plenty of room. He was impressed and proclaimed to my boy that I was a genius. Ever since then I have reminded my boy that I am a genius on multiple occasions because Kid Concussion said so. Fun times.
There are some great views to be had from the trails around the lodge as well:
We even went out to check out the sunset that evening:
So that concludes our second day of travel and our only scheduled stop for the trip. The only other item to be scheduled is meeting up with someone somewhere sometime. I know who we're meeting, but we have no idea when or where. Stay tuned for more adventure. There may be delays in posting along the way. Feel free to throw electronic stones my way if you feel they are not being posted quickly enough. It may speed things up, then again, I may catch them and throw them back. One never knows. One thing I do know is some good times are in store.