We finally cooled down in the airstream after the long hot sunny day. We were able to sit outside for a bit in the evening. It was still very dry and warm, but there was a lovely breeze that gently sighed through the valley, as the sun slowly settled down behind the mountains.
We even caught a pic of the shadow of a mountain to our west being cast on the mountain to our east thanks to the setting sun!
The canyon cooled down quickly as the last rays of lights lit up the sky, so we hung out for a bit, and then called it a night.
Wanting to beat the heat of the day the next morning, we departed Zion at the bright and early hour of 8 am. We knew that we needed to get stocked up, as we would be mostly away from civilization for almost a week. We hit the Walmart in Hurricane, loaded up the airstream, and headed down towards Arizona.
It was a really quiet and pretty drive, winding through slowly shrinking sandstone mountains, rapidly widening plains, and very few residents or even any structures in sight. Widely spaced, low fence posts set far back from the highway were the only indication that we were driving through ranch land as well as reservation land.
It was a good thing we have the big 60 gallon diesel tank on Ben’s truck, as there were no places to fill up for long stretches. We didn’t see a gas station that didn’t look abandoned, for what felt like 200 miles. Since we have close to 900 miles of range with the truck and we had just filled up back in Zion, we hardly even needed to glance at the fuel gauge.
Of far more importance, on this trip, were our biological tanks. Bringing a full, functioning bathroom along with you is just about ideal, honestly. Especially way out here on these wide plains with few services.
We can just say, “Hey, any need to stop?” as we pass a “historical marker ahead “or “scenic view” sign or if we see a wide spot on the side of the road coming up. If so, we just slow down, whip the rig in there, and we take care of business. It is also a good opportunity for Ben to walk around the rig and check the tires, lights, and just make sure everything is holding together. The roads out here are mostly pretty good, but there have been some rough and lumpy-bumpy stretches today that really had an impact on our bladders and our airstream, so we kept an eye on everything and just took it easy.
We finally pulled onto 64W and that took us on the road to the Grand Canyon.
As we cruised down the peaceful, quiet two lane highway, we started seeing more cracks in the wide flat plains to our north. We’re talking big old cracks. So deep and abrupt and right in the middle of what looked like grazing land. We’d been wondering how often cattle just forget or don’t see the cracks and whoooooooped right down to the bottom!
After 40 miles of increasingly wider and deeper practice canyons, we finally turned in to the park entrance of the granddaddy of them all, the Grand Canyon! This was the first time at the Grandest of Canyons for Ben. I was here when I was just a little girl, riding in style in the backseat of mom and dad’s Ford LTD, with the blazing HOT dark maroon vinyl seats and the 55 mph air conditioning. That car was a TANK! I don’t really remember much of anything about the Grand Canyon from that early 80’s visit, but to be fair, the drive from our hometown in Illinois was a LONG WAY in that boat with no A/C and we only had four different 8-tracks to listen to between the stretches of no FM radio stations. As a child, I was always completely annoyed by my backseat companions, which were flapping grocery bags that my mom insisted MUST be on the floor of the backseat and not in the trunk. 🙄 They were bags of mom’s stockpile of cleaning supplies (no one entered the Motel 6 room until Mom had it 100% sanitized), plus there were other bags full of her favorite canned soup and potato chips. Anyway, enough of that tangent. I’ll write a book someday about fond childhood memories 😆 The point of all that was I don’t remember crap about the Grand Canyon from the year 1980 something, except for flapping bags, hot seats and The Kingston Trio on repeat.
Basically, Ben and I are both experiencing this for the first time together. Like curious kids, we pulled in to the first view point we saw, named “First Viewpoint of the Grand Canyon,” which was an appropriate name, and parked the rig in a wide open parking lot for RV’s.
We hit the facilities, saw the big old canyon, made the appropriate “ooh” and “aah” sounds, and hopped back in the truck to go get set up and cooled down. Don’t interpret that as irreverence for the canyon and its natural beauty. Rather, this was just a sneak peak to satisfy our curiosity about the grandness of the canyon. It’s grand as all get out, but we needed to get the airstream on shore power!
We motored another 25 miles into the National Park on our way to Trailer Village Campground. This campground is just about the only one with full hook ups in the National Park. No frills, but nice shade on a handful of the spots. Ours was one of those with a little shade tree covering us from the west. We got the airstream all setup and I’m telling you, we opened every window in that thing and just let it cool down and air out! It was just a beautiful day in Arizona!
We settled in for the evening and spent our time chatting with the neighbors, including dodging what was starting to develop in to a LOOOOOONG conversation (Ben saw an opening and we DIPPED out of there), looking at the park maps, and planning out a loose schedule for the time here in the park. This is a very low key campground, and once the sun set, we were able to sit quietly outside, looking at the stars and watching satellites cruise by, far overhead.
There is also a pair of elk that have claimed this campground as their own personal grazing pastures, and we got to watch the mama elk startle a few of our unsuspecting neighbors.
Boy, we sure did get a kick out of that dude’s little jump when he looked up and the elk was right there. Although fairly calm and tame, they are still big wild animals and can be unpredictable.
Later in the evening, as the sun was fully down and the stars were shining brightly and innumerable up above, Ben went to go step outside to see what could be seen. After checking for curious elk, which would be nearly invisible in the dark campground until it was sniffing your hair, we got a couple of pics and then shut the airstream down for the night.
We will do a bit of exploring and check the place out tomorrow, but for tonight, we are just hoping to enjoy the cool air!
Oh, and one word of advice. When you are traveling between varying elevations, there will be an impact on anything you have in a sealed or semi sealed container. We bought this bread before we drove into Zion, right around 3,000 feet above sea level.
Now that we are just over 7,000 feet, there is significantly less air pressure, so anything that is sealed suddenly has less air pressure pushing against all sides.
As we sat there, reading quietly, just before going off to bed, we kept smelling bread. After a very brief investigation, we determined that the entire stock of sealed up loaves of bread and packs of buns was just farting away as the pressure inside the bags far exceeded the pressure outside. We both agreed that when comparing the many things that can and do fart in such a small, enclosed space, gluten free bread was probably the least heinous of the possible sources.
TaterTotTales 