Author Archives: Ann & Ben (co-authors)

Not sure where we will be when we publish this, but likely we will be mowing or weeding or painting or cleaning, or any one of a thousand things we need to get done now that we are back in Florida.

After two months of almost no human presence, and an unbelievably rainy spring, the little five acre farm has been taken over by flora and fauna. The wild hogs have rooted up any flat ground we had managed to smooth out over the last few years, the line between the gravel driveway and the grassy yard, once crisp and sharply delineated, is now a blur of weeds and crabgrass with an occasional piece of gravel hiding deep within. We have some catching up to do.

The Airstream is washed free of all of the bug butts that have been splattered across its broad glass and aluminum front end, having earned every smear and smack as it proudly gritted its teeth into the wind across (nearly) ten thousand miles of roads. The interior has been cleaned, all linens washed and put away, and the camper is sleeping quietly in the garage, waiting for the next adventure.

The oil has been changed again in the truck, it has also been washed and waxed after a hard-working two months on the road, the interior and bed emptied of all of the temporary pantry and storage goods that had been stored there, and it is back to hardware store runs and trips back and forth to the farm.

All we have left to do is finish this blog and go through the thousands of pictures we took on this trip.

What an absolutely amazing trip to have been fortunate enough to plan, enjoy, and share! With each other and with family and friends along the journey.

Would absolutely do another long-ish trip again. Perhaps not quiiiiiite this long. That was a long stretch without the dogs haha.

We thought about how best to summarize the experience.

Do we convert all 2500 photos into slides, invite everyone over for fondue, and see how long it takes for everyone to sneak off to use the bathroom and never return?

Do we come up with a list of superlatives, like in high school for the senior year yearbook? Best scenic views? Best wildlife sighting? Best hike? Best park to poop in?

Or, perhaps, do we write a blog and try to capture memories as we went?

As you already know, we went with the blog option.

Thanks for reading and following along as we went on this grand adventure!

We will have the slides ready whenever you stop by, but the fondue will most likely be chips and dip. Or guacamole! That sounds good. Either way, we’ll be ready. 😉

For those of you out there like Ben, here are the totals:

National Parks Visited: 7 (Hot Springs, Grand Teton, Yellowstone, Glacier, Zion NP, Bryce Canyon, Grand Canyon)

Pictures Taken: 10,000+

Pictures Retained after the Evening Sorting and Deleting: 2,966

Total Roadtrip Miles: 9,202

MPG Average: 13.4

Engine Hours on trip: 207

Gallons of Diesel: 687

Highest Price Paid for Diesel: $3.81

Total Price of Fuel: ~$2,400

Highest price we saw for diesel at a place that left travelers no options, that is, travelers that do not have a 60 gallon fuel tank and the ability to look at a map and determine that there will not be fuel out there, and if there is, it will not be cheap: $5.99

Refills of Highly Annoying DEF: 15

Gallons of Windshield Washer Fluid: 4

Oil Changes: 1 (Weatherford, TX)

Bags of Ice for the Drink Cooler (a very efficient way to keep a lot of drinks cold): 53

Highest Price Paid for a Bag of Regular Old Ice: $7

Memories Made on this Adventure: Countless

We stopped through Fayetteville for a few days. We were able to wrap up some projects that we ran out of time to finish back in May.

First on the list…build a CATIO!!!

Yeah. One those. We had no clue what a freaking catio was, but we used that Google thing on our phones and figured it out.

Hannah has two terrific guard cats that have been relegated to being indoor cats. However, both have freely tasted the wide open outdoors in their pasts and they very much enjoyed it. Based on their constant small wounds and skittering back to the house under duress, they must have really sucked at it from a self defense and self reliance perspective, but they insisted they enjoyed it and they kept going back.

But they are indoor cats at heart and Hannah intends to keep the little dumbbells around for a while.

So, we committed to creating her dream catio (we told her not to dream any bigger than 3’x5’).

Remember the old window air conditioners of yesteryear, with the little accordion thing on each side so you could keep it somewhat insulated? They make the same thing but with a pet door in it. So you open the window wide, place the pet door thing in the bottom sill, extend the two accordion sides to each side, and then close the window down to the top of the pet door thing and you are good to go.

So, our job (Ben’s job) was to build the screened in platform that the cats could then access through the pet door window. It had to be large enough to hold two sprawled out cats, secure enough to keep them from escaping, and roofed enough to keep the platform dry.

And that is what we did.

We also spent time working on some other interior and exterior projects and had fun hanging out!

Best of all, we had no tornados in the campground this time!

Wrapping up in Fayetteville, we headed down the road to Hot Springs Village to spend time at Ben’s folks and with David, Katie, and Peter for the 4th of July!

We got to reunite with Charlie and Bailey which was great.

We were able to help with a bunch of projects around the house and we got some lake time in, but before we knew it, the 4th of July was upon us!

As long as the area has been rainy enough so as not to pose a fire risk, we have a little tradition of heading up to our mountain acreage we call Razorback Ridge, to set off some fireworks the day before the 4th. The fire risk was low this year, so we had fun with some new and old friends watching our own private fireworks show, complete with a finale and everything! (The finale was just setting off two of the multi shot boxes at the same time lol).

The evening of July 4th, we went over to the real deal Hot Springs Village fireworks show and watched from the water on a friends boat, and it was one of the best fireworks shows we have ever seen. Especially the finale! The whole show was set to coordinated music ranging from Toby Keith to of course the Star Spangled Banner. Really a well done show, other than a couple of unintentional grass fires by the shore.

We wrapped up the time in Arkansas with a couple more projects, and then headed out on our last leg of the trip back to Florida, via Mississippi and southern Alabama.

Charlie and Bailey were fantastic travelers on their first time back in the Airstream since early May. They rode quietly in the backseat, just content to be part of the herd again. It was so massively helpful and thoughtful that Ben’s folks wanted to dog-sit while we made the big loop, and the dogs really had a great time there. Not surprising, since the dogs have spent most of their summers in Arkansas. They have to do a lot of varmint hunting and guarding to make up for the time they aren’t there.

However…

Something in their diet certainly didn’t 100% agree with them. Bailey was mostly fine, but oh boy, Charlie was cutting some major muffins (meatballs is probably more appropriate).

The first one happened about two minutes after we pulled out of the driveway.

We got to the very first stop sign before leaving the neighborhood, when a perfectly silent cloud of purple death floated forward from the back of the cab. It hit us both at the same time and we scrambled for the window buttons, clawing at the numerous switches and locks and mirror adjustments, all while holding our breath against this most noxious of vapors surrounding our heads and infesting our sinuses.

We finally got the windows down, and sweet, fresh, unfart-y air filled the cab and we could finally breathe again.

After we cleared the truck cab of the offending odor, we rolled the windows back up and just looked at each other in silence. The glance we shared speaks to the time we have spent together over the last 33 years. Without saying a word, we acknowledged that we are now locked in a confined space with this gasbag for the next 1200 miles, that we will have no warning when the next release escapes, and one of us would need to keep one finger on the window trigger at all times. Or at least until we could purge the dog of his intestinal woes. That was the only way to make it through this.

We turned back to the road ahead, and set off for Hattiesburg, 390 miles down the road.

We developed a pretty efficient system.

Whenever one of us “smelt it”, we already knew who “dealt it”, and we would race to get the windows down as fast as we could. One of us, “accidentally” hit the window lock button a few times (naming no names but we all know where the window lock button is located and we all know who drives this rig), causing the other to experience a dog-fart-nado on the closed side of the cab. The victim was assured this was an accident, but after fifteen or sixteen times, this victim is starting to have suspicions.

We made it to Hattiesburg, and while Ben windexed the inside of the windshield to get the purple off, I set up camp for the night. We only have a few more nights to go and we’ll be home! Off to Madison, FL tomorrow and then home!

Hopefully, this guy has gotten it out of his system. Thankfully the airstream has a pretty good ventilation system, but we may still have to trade her in after this… 🤢

27 years ago, maybe a few months after we got married and had moved to Hutchinson, KS, we were invited to a friend’s family house on Grand Lake, just east of Tulsa. We were both not yet 25 years old, so it was a while ago.

It was a short weekend, somewhere in July or August of 1998, so pre-Hannah and pre-Chris. We drove down to the lake house with maybe 7 or 8 other friends from Eaton in Hutchinson.

There were a lot of fun memories from that weekend, as we cruised the lake on the boat, cooked chili as a group and told stories, and generally hung out living the lake life.

For those that do not know, Grand Lake , nestled in the foothills of the Ozarks, is a 46,000 acre lake created back in the early 40’s when they dammed the Grand River. The result is a really pretty lake with a bunch of little coves and inlets, and about 1,300 miles of shore line. It’s a big’ un.

It also features a few small cliffs near which locals and visitors often gather in their boats to watch people jump from the 30-40 foot high walls to the deep water below.

Which is exactly where we found ourselves 27 years ago.

We boated around the lake on the first day there and found ourselves in the Dripping Springs cove, watching people climb up the cliff face on a narrow little path, while we watched others stand at the edge, deliberating whether or not to make the jump.

After a few took the fateful step off the edge and lived to tell the tale, we decided, why not?

Dumb.

We were old enough to know that we both were not big fans of heights.

However, we decided to try it anyway.

We hopped into the water, swam over to the very steep cliff face, and began our climb up to the jumpin’ spot.

As we climbed higher, we realized we had made a serious mistake. The cliff path was quite steep, very rocky and tough on the bare feet, and we were finding ourselves far above the normal height at which we preferred to jump in to the water, namely, not very high.

Nothing to be done for it now. We could have scrabbled back down the cliff, but we had our pride to consider. So we continued to the edge.

Scariest moment of our then young lives, looking down to the water far below.

We decided to go at the same time, because if either of us had gone first, the other probably would have chickened out.

Ben counted down, and we both leaned forward over the edge.

It’s funny to think about it, 27 years later, but I remember every second of that fall.

Time seemed to slow down as I stepped off the cliff. As the water rushed up, I noticed I just kept going faster and faster as the water approached. But the fall seemed endless.

As I fell, I felt my body shifting from a straight up and down, feet first approach, to a slightly angled approach. Not good. Definitely don’t want to hit the water on my back, yikes. Despite the fruitlessness of my efforts, I pinwheeled my arms backwards, trying to bring my feet back around to directly under my body.

By the time I hit the water, I had corrected the rotation a little bit, but only to the point where instead of hitting on my back, I hit the water in an almost seated position. The result was a super spanking. Holy moly. It was like the world’s biggest paddle just smacked me right across the booty.

After I surfaced, gasping for breath, Ben was right there and got me over to the boat, where I climbed in with a completely numb posterior. The ride back was in silence, as the pain started pulsing through my stunned rear end. Not only that, but between the fall and the lake water, I developed an ear infection. Later that evening, we got to visit the urgent care to get it treated. The ear, not the butt. The butt was on its own.

Fast forward 27 years, and we are back. Not for cliff-jumping, rather, just to hang out on the waters edge for a few days before dropping back down in to Arkansas and wrapping up our US tour.

We stayed at the Regatta On Grand, a really cool campground with most sites backing up to the lake. We had a little covered patio with a couple of rocking chairs, a couple little sofas, a fire pit, and a nice big grill. Really a great setup!

Hannah came up from Fayetteville to camp out with us for a couple days after a stressful few weeks at her job. We had fun just hanging out and cooking pancakes.

We head down to Fayetteville next to keep hanging out with Hannah and Ty and get some projects done on her house before we all head down to Hot Springs Village and Lake Desoto for the 4th!

Hard to believe this journey is about over!

The sole purpose of swinging through the DFW area was to see Chris while he was spending the summer interning at Ben’s old company, Parker. Chris’ grandparents also came down to see one of their three favorite grandkids in his work environment.

Our campground for the duration of the visit was located really close to Chris’ apartment and really close to the hotel that Ben knew from his many nights here back in his Parker days.

It’s interesting, we have spent a lot of nights at a lot of different campgrounds over the last three years. Every time we approach a new campground at which we have not previously stayed, it is always a little bit like those gamble chocolates, the kind of chocolates with no roadmap under the lid. Just a few rows of small, decadent-looking lumps of chocolate, concealing a mysterious core that could either be fantastic or disgusting. I’m looking at you Orange Cream. Yuck, It’s like eating toothpaste.

Anyway, campgrounds can be very different from one another. We have stayed in campgrounds where we have been blown away by the quality, safety, general care and upkeep, friendly atmosphere, or privacy, while we have also been like, ugggh, well, its only for one night. At those, we have the gun ready and we park the truck as close as we can, or don’t even disconnect the truck at all.

You can usually tell very quickly whether it is going to be a caramel filled type of campground or a molasses chew. This one was definitely more on the orange cream side. Well, it’s only for three nights.

We got to see Chris and his college friend, Quentin’s, apartment, since they are both interning at Parker. We also visited the plant to see what the interns were working on there.

We were able to take Chris out for dinner a few times and show him some of Ben’s favorite local restaurants.

Headed up towards Grand Lake, Oklahoma after Texas, a place we have not visited since 1998.

More on that story once we get there…

As the title suggests, we drove from the Grand Canyon to the Poozeum in Williams, AZ and on through the top of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. We knew these were going to be some tiring days and that’s why we didn’t stitch too many of these long driving days together. Couple that with really bumpy roads, steady 20-30 mph winds pushing us sideways from the south, and zero turns in the road ahead, and you’ve got yourself a long lonesome stretch.

Well, not that lonesome. We had plenty of time to chat and watch the scenery change from rocky rocks to smooth rocks to grassy rocks to grass. We are in the grass and scrubby trees phase of our journey now!

Weatherford, TX was our destination for today. This is where Chris and his college Florida Poly classmate, Quentin, are living while they are both interning this summer at Parker Hannifin in Mineral Wells, TX.

So, in addition to seeing Chris, visiting Ben’s old friends at the Parker plant, and getting some much needed service done on the F-250 (it is DUE for an oil change!), we have an action packed few days planned here in TX! Ben used to travel to this area quite frequently before he retired, so we are going to check out some of the local favorites here in town.

That being said, it will be really tough to beat all of the neat roadside attractions we saw along the way!

– The apparently closed Classic Car Museum at the truck stop formerly known as Russells Truck and Travel Center, but is now just any old gas station, so cross that off your list.

– The famous Cadillac Ranch, which we didn’t technically stop to see, but you could see it pretty well from I-40. Close enough for us at the end of a long day.

– The County’s Largest Arrow in the Ground in Quanah, TX

– The World’s Okayest, Biggest. Non-Functioning Rubik’s Cube in Chillicothe, TX

Despite the awesomeness of the roadside attractions, it was a pretty tough couple of days on the road, as we covered over 1,000 miles, all with really stiff and steady wind directly from the south. Since most of our three day drive was heading mostly East, it meant constant cross breezes. The Airstream is pretty aerodynamic though, so most of the drive was without event, other than when cornering and when passing or being passed by big trucks. Add to that the fact that Ann was feeling pretty crappy, and we are just glad that we are in one place for a few days.

We got all settled in Weatherford, and got to see Chris and his apartment while we were in town!

We are off to run errands, take care of maintenance stuff tomorrow and find more interesting stuff to write about…maybe lol

As we prepared to leave the Grand Canyon last night, Ann happened across one of those little “free magazines” with things to do in the area. In the DEAD back page, very inside corner, near the 1/2 page crease of the magazine, where someone had sloppily folded it in the wrong place and nearly covered it, there was an ad for an attraction that definitely caught our interest. So much so, that we had to rearrange our entire schedule for the next morning, just to make sure we didn’t arrive before it opened. “One of us” is a lot ADHD, so we knew if we arrived, say 30 minutes before they opened, “one of us” 100% wouldn’t have waited for that lock to unlock. Timing for this attraction was EVERYTHING. ⏰

Without further ado, this was our very first stop today…

Yep, the Poozeum, in quaint little downtown Williams, AZ., a museum and gift shop dedicated entirely to fossilized dinosaur poop. The fancy term is coprolite, but we aren’t really that fancy a folk to use a five dollar word when a 25 cent word will work just fine.

The owner and proprietor was very enthusiastic about his museum, and honestly, it was really well set up, really well organized, and absolutely entertaining. We also have to say that his shop front door was constantly opening and more people coming in.

There was a lot to see and a lot to learn about, but there were three clear standouts.

I had to put the pictures in. If that offends anyone, well, if you were easily offended, you probably would have stopped reading quite a while ago. So, off we go!

1) There was a whole display of dino dookie with ancient bites taken out of them. As some of you might know, we sure loved our little wiener dog, Pepper, who passed away this March, but she had one shameful, disgusting habit. She was VERY into “recycling.” But she only liked recycling poop. We felt that the poo biting animal was likely one of Pepper’s dinosaur ancestors. However, if Pepper had been alive back then, there would be no fossil record. NONE. She was quite thorough at her job. 🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮

2) The next crowd favorite was a very girthy nugget that you could tell started as a very relaxing dinosaur dump, and then a T-Rex must have come around the corner, because those dinosaur buns must have SLAMMED shut, and the dookie got pinched off so hard that we bet there was an injury. 

3) Worlds biggest coprolite. Certified by Guinness, no less. This is a Tyrannosaurus Rex blambo that was so big it has a name, for goodness sake.

Meet Barnum, a prolonged poo measuring over 26.5” long (longer if it hadn’t had to make the right turn to get out of his poor bottom), 6” wide, which means something else was 6” wide 😳(The only bigger buns holes that we know of are the people that parked next to us in the Zion campground) and it weighs in excess of 22 lbs. 😮

I bet it was a massive relief to drop this load off during this fella’s early morning hike. PURE RELIEF! “We” 😉 can relate.

We finished our tour of the collection and we both decided that it is going to be very hard to top this experience. I mean, the National Parks are great and all that, but they didn’t have a finely curated Poozeum to explore.

We congratulated the owner on his establishment, bought our souvenirs (we had to get a Poozeum sticker for the Airstream door!) and we headed back on the road to our next destination, the Meteor Crater State Park, in Winslow AZ!

If you can see the pic above, that is the famous meteor crater, on the left. You can sort of see the raised edges where the meteor impacted and displaced a bunch of rock and dirt.

This site was about 5 miles off I-40, so if you are ever in the area, you can just skip it, like we did. We got to the lobby of the heavily secured site and were funneled into the line for the cashier. At $29 per person, we hesitated for about a millisecond, and said, nope, not that important to us. We made an about face, and headed back out to the truck.

So here is a pic of us in the Meteor Crater State Park parking lot, pleased with our smart financial decision. And smart use of our time.

And here is a google image.

There you go.

The rest of the day was spent gripping the steering wheel with both hands, as we bounced along rough highway with 20+ mph winds pushing us around.

We made it to our stop for the night, Grants, NM, where we found that it had gotten so hot in the airstream with 6+ hrs on the road, that our butter had gone funky. Learning experience while traveling in hot sunny weather, put anything melty in the cab of the truck or in the fridge.

We have a few nights like this on the road, while on our way to Weatherford TX. We plan to hit a few more really cool roadside attractions along the way. We already see that we will be going right by Russell’s Truck and Travel Center (with a classic car museum) and Cadillac Ranch. We may even dip down to see what’s what in Roswell, NM! 👽 More to come. If we don’t disappear. 🚀

As we reflect back on the fantastic National Parks we’ve been fortunate enough to experience over the last month or so, it is impossible to pick a favorite. They all had such unique layouts, ecosystems, wildlife, different habitats for outdoor pottying and activities to do.

We really didn’t give the Grand Canyon as much of a shot as we should have as Ann wasn’t feeling the greatest for the last few days. Plus, it’s also complicated logistics due to this park having a huge hole right in the middle. Because of this GIANT hole, you essentially have to decide if you’re doing the Grand Canyon in two days or over a week because it’s a freaking four hour drive between the north and the south rims. That’s a LONG day of driving, just to get a glimpse of the other side.

We chose the south rim to explore for one reason and one reason only. The south rim has “Mather Point.” Yes, our decision was that simple lol. But if you’re planning to do the rim to rim hike through the canyon, any kind of riding through the canyon, either by mule or rafting, then you’re going to need more than two days.

This canyon system is so large and so wide and so deep, that it really defies your ability to wrap your head around what you’re seeing. To look across the canyon and say, ok, cool, there’s the other side right there, is one thing. To try and comprehend that what appears to be relatively close is actually 10 miles away, that gets a little more difficult. If you’re standing at Mather Point, looking across to the North Rim, it’s approximately 10 miles. And if you look down to the little river way down at the bottom, it’s about a mile down.

Like I said, a bit hard to wrap your head around. I tried to grab a video, zoomed as far in as the old iPhone would go, and then zoomed back out to standard. Its just such a GRAND canyon, as most already know.

Couple that with a constant, heavy, lumbering flow of tourists who crowd their way to the railings along the wide, level concrete sidewalks leading from the bus parking to the gift shop to the visitor center and to the rim, and you get the sense that everybody pulls up, buys their trinket, takes a wizz, wanders to the canyon’s edge, takes a picture, and heads back to the busses. The place is built to facilitate and funnel the flow of people, to and through the park smoothly.

Actually, we (Totally Ben. He completely dorked out over the railings lol) noted that the railings along the edge of the canyon receive CONSTANT wear and tear from thousands and millions of hands gripping tightly or sliding along down steps and of course toddlers and young children climbing them with exasperated and overheated parents nearby just trying to stop them! Each hand sweaty and sticky and oily (you might want to grab some germ-x just from reading this post. We did while writing it).

The railings get so much use, in fact, that a thoughtful engineer designed the railings to have very stout bases, anchored firmly in concrete in order to withstand the force of thousands of tourists leaning against them, but the railings themselves are just 2” steel pipe. Once the steel pipe gets worn out every few years, the pipes can be removed easily from the stanchions that hold them in place, and new pipe can be re-installed pretty quickly. A thoughtful approach to lowering long term maintenance costs while also keeping bumbling tourists from inadvertently wandering off the edge to fall to the canyon floor a mile below. I mean, its not a straight drop, but you certainly would not enjoy the journey down by that method.

Our last day at Grand Canyon National Park was spent rather mundanely. Ben washed the majority of the bugs and road dirt from the Airstream this morning. Once Ann was feeling up to it, we ventured down to the canyon again to ooh and ahh a bit more. Then we read a bit in the shade of the Airstream canopy, while the hot dry wind swirled around us, as we started planning the next leg of the journey.

This was the last National Park on this trip, and we will soon be back in Arkansas to both work on Hannah’s house in Fayetteville, and then we will join Ben’s brother and his family back in Hot Springs Village for the 4th of July at Noni and Poppop’s house.

But we are not yet finished with our explorations…

We are still 1,200 miles west of Fayetteville. So, over the next few days, we are grinding our way across the top of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas on our way to visit our son, Chris, at his internship at Parker Hannifin, the same company from which Ben retired a few years ago. Chris is spending the summer working just west of the DFW area at a fantastic business, where he is learning about the real world applications of mechanical engineering. He graduates next spring, so this is a three month long interview!

On the three day drive to Texas, we’ve scouted out a couple of must see sites on the way. An exciting lineup, including a museum dedicated to poo (dinosaur poo, but still poo), a giant meteor crater, Cadillac ranch, and we are still holding out hope that we can find a worlds largest non-stick frying pan, worlds largest toothbrush or something as equally dumb, yet entertaining.

For our last night here at the Grand Canyon, we decided to go see if we could catch sunset and then stick around to see the stars! We hustled over there, which was a three minute drive, parked in the commercial bus only area close to Mather Point, and headed over to the rim. The place, unsurprisingly, was packed! We made it in and checked out a couple of the views, grabbed a few shots, but it was just a tough place to photograph.

It is just so dang big.

If you see an interesting rock or shadow, or vein of sunset really lighting up a surface, it is tough to isolate amongst EVERYTHING else just as beautiful behind it. In the photo, it’s too much going on with zero depth difference between the subjects in the photo.

You just have to put down the camera and just take it in.

Until you get sick of all the people crowded around you, which is about 30 seconds later.

We headed back to the truck and snapped out the folding chairs and just waited for the late sunset twilight to finish dissolving into the black horizon. Almost everybody that had been parked in the bus parking area for sunset eventually straggled out to the parking lot and left. It was down to about four of five cars there when the stars really started coming out. It was such a clear night. Not a cloud in the sky and literally nothing in all directions to block the view of the sky.

After the parking lot got nice and quiet, we decided to fold up the chairs, lock the truck, and wander over to the canyon itself again.

There was almost nobody there, and it was the darkest of pitch black. We ever so slowly shuffled across the now open plaza toward the stairs that descended to the point. We made it down to the lowest area and made our way to the center. Five minutes later, we were laying flat on our backs on the rocks, looking up at the stars. It was dead silent, and even the few other couples sitting close by were just whispering quietly to each other, if they were speaking at all. It was a very respectful and almost solemn moment amongst strangers in a setting that starts to approach the real meaning of awesome.

After soaking it in for a while, we still hadn’t had enough of the gorgeous stars. We had certainly had enough of the sharp rocks under our backs though, so we packed it up and headed back to the truck and to the campground.

We got back “home” and sat outside for a few more minutes, just enjoying the silence and the starry night. We had been seated for no more than 30 seconds when a big old motor home came careening in, well, maybe not quite careening but definitely with a lot of confidence. It was 10 pm and it was already very dark, so these folks had been motoring for a while. Likely all day.

The rig turned into its assigned space and came to sharp stop. Two men got out, each working independently of each other, just doing their jobs and they seemed to really know what they were doing. It became apparent that it was a family of at least four, we only saw the father and the 17-22 year old son, but we could hear the ladies in high gear inside on whatever their roles were for getting things settled. Whoever was inside wasted no time. Before the vehicle even came to a full stop, the slides were starting to go out on this 35-40’ motor home.

It also became apparent that there was a priority sequence for the setup process. Number one, electric. Number two, getting the potty pipes hooked up and working. Pronto.

The guys were very focused on what looked to be a fairly complicated sewer connection system. We really couldn’t tell you how it worked, as ours is really simple on the Airstream, but it looked like what happens when a fire engine shows up at the scene of a fire. The kid was the fireman carrying “hose” (rolls of brown potty hose, which in RV lingo, the “Stinky Slinky”). The dad was working on the sewer connection like the fireman with the big-ass wrench who sprints to the fire hydrant to get it opened up and ready. The kid was back at the controls for this rig and asking operational questions and the Dad was clearly and concisely directing the kid. They were working together like a pit crew.

Once the kid confirmed from the inside panel that the tank was in fact almost empty now, you could see the tension slide out of Dad’s shoulders. You could tell the dad was still scratching his head trying to figure out how they filled the RV potty tank so quickly while he was truckin’ down the road all day.

Meanwhile, the chatter and shuffling noises coming from inside the camper NEVER STOPPED. It appeared as though the remaining family members, inside the RV, were just waiting with bated breath, for the tank to be empty so they could use the toilet again.

As our new neighbors discussed the day and days ahead, we shamelessly eavesdropped. We gathered from their schedule that they are going to do tomorrow what we did over 8 days. We lovingly refer to that as the “ADHD tour.”

As for us, we’ll be sleeping in a bit tomorrow, then pulling up stakes and heading for exciting roadside attractions! 🚌 🏜️🌵

Today was a bit of a rest and recovery day, so we just made a few trips around to the scenic views and to the shops for our sticker for the Airstream.

All of these parks and travel destinations have definitely figured out marketing. There are people that collect patches, stickers, pins, shot glasses, plates, hats, shirts, etc. Well,. I guess every place does that, not just national parks. Great way for the business to make some high margin impulse sales, and fun to look at the collection and remember when we went wherever etc.

Two years ago, we decided to go with stickers.

Whenever we have visited a national park or a cool place, we find a sticker for the inside door of the airstream.

You can even do a little amateur investigative work and assume that we mostly put them on like a sane person, left to right, top to bottom. (We did sneak in some smaller stickers to fill in the space.) From that, you can see that our first trip was to Key West back in 2023. In fact, we actually bought this 27ft International on our 25th Anniversary two years ago, hence the “25” on our plate.

Our first trip was a little wimpy trip from our house in SW Florida down 75, across Alligator Alley, around Miami, and down Highway 1 all the way to Key West. That was sure a bumpy trip and quite the learning experience! We have come a LONG way in terms of destinations, trip distances, and certainly finding the bumpiest roads we could!

Back to the stickers…What do we do when we sell the airstream and go to a little longer unit? Well, I guess we have to start over! Actually, we will probably just replace them. I bet we can order them on Amazon. (Bloop, they’ll be here tomorrow!)

While we were checking out the stickers, we also wandered over to see the Grand Canyon again. We were really close to Mather Point, and honestly, that was one of the main attractions Ben wanted to see here. The namesake of Mather Point was not a relative, as far as we know. His name was Stephen Mather, an American industrialist and conservationist, and he was the first director of the brand new National Park Service back in 1917. The point is also a very cool view from that perch.

However, the REAL reason we came to Mather point was for the pictures below. What a couple of dorks.

Speaking of pointing, we also stumbled across a book in the gift shop that hit just a little too close to home…

We flipped through it quickly and were very relieved (but a tiny bit surprised, honestly) to see that Ann wasn’t mentioned.

Shew, we didn’t get busted!

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.

Today is our last day in the Zion area, and holy guacamole, summer is here! Every single RV spot at this campground is filled with mega busses and uber fifth wheels, we think we even saw a sixth wheel in there somewhere. And it is one toasty mofo outside today. It’s 103 ° in the shade and not a single cloud in the sky. Even at 4% humidity, there is very little going on outside the various campers, trailers, busses, Jeeps, and whatever else is in this place. The AC units are going full blast and thankfully, there is a gentle breeze coming from the vicinity of the electric meters, whose needles must be spinning at 30,000 rpm. We would not want the utility bill here with 190 RV’s sucking down power as fast as they can.

And the AC unit on our little airstream is absolutely not able to keep up with this outside temperature.

We had planned to use this last day in Zion for laundry, a bit of cleanup and organization, and maybe visit a couple of the local shops, looking for T-shirts etc. We did all that and we even shamelessly stopped at a bike rental place to get educated on which e-bikes are best because they had a wonderful misting fan.

So what to do next?

A nap is out since it’s 93 degrees inside the airstream. Do we go to a museum or to the visitor center, just to casually soak in the cooler temps? That would involve mingling with more sweaty people and their armpits, so no. Do we go wedge ourselves in to the little campground pool, along with all of our other camper friends? With as many kids that are hopping around in there and undeniably peeing it up, nope. Or do we sit down at the laptop and bitch about the heat and stupid people in our daily blog?

We’ll give you one guess as to which one we did.

As a matter of fact, our plan for tomorrow was to head down to Las Vegas for a night before continuing on to the Grand Canyon. The forecast for Vegas? 110 degrees and 3% humidity. This is the first time I’ve looked at a weather forecast and have seen a negative chance of precipitation. Like, there is so little chance of rain, that they took the possibility to negative territory. But, as they say, it certainly is a dry heat. As we were walking to the local stores, we were careful to keep our thighs from rubbing together and unwittingly sparking a forest fire… yeah, it’s that dry and dangerous.

It’s one thing to be all set up at a campground, in the shade, with the air on overnight so that the airstream has a fighting chance of staying cool during the day. It is another thing entirely to shut the power down, and drag the closed off metal tube through the desert for four to five hours, only to plug in at the Vegas campground and try to fight what is now probably 120 degree temps just soaked into every metal panel and structural component inside the camper.

Plus, no offense, but we’ve never done anything but lose money in Vegas, so we used our time between griping about how hot it is in here to find a campground somewhere cooler. Anywhere cooler.

That is how we ended up cancelling Vegas and instead, we are going to head down to the south rim of the Grand Canyon a day earlier than planned. Thank God, when we called, they had an RV spot open up, so we are good to go.

The weather forecast at Grand Canyon calls for highs in the mid 80’s and lows in the mid 40’s. If you had asked us if Ann would have ever been excited about heading in to a forecast like that, we would have said, nope, not excited.

But today, we’re both very much looking forward to some 40’s at night!

Ironically, one of the things we organized this morning was putting away all of our cold weather gear haha. Think we will need it again? Nah. Guess we were a bit premature on that. Luckily, everything we have with us is pretty much within an arms length or two, so a little rustling around and shifting of various totes and bags and we will be able to fish out our cold weather stuff whenever we need it.

But that day is NOT today. Today, I don’t want to even look at a pair of pants or a sweatshirt.

We did need to shift camping spots this morning because we extended our stay by a day and the spot we were in was booked for the last day. So we said goodbye to the mega-bus, inconsiderate buttholes next to us. We won’t say what state they were from, but Nosy Nora in the Colorado campground was nothing compared to these folks. About 5 minutes after they backed their bus to within an inch of the wall that ran behind our line of camping spots, we had all five of their kids’ e-bikes parked on our site and behind our Airstream.

Our Airstream isn’t a behemoth, so we felt ok about the 5 ft of space we left behind us so we wouldn’t have to look out our dining window directly into a huge wall and fence. Instead, we got to watch five children come and go on their bikes about 100 times a day. One of their boys even entertained us during our dinner on their first night by peeing on the block wall behind our camper. Guess he didn’t see us eating right there. 🙄 Boys! Plus we found out on the morning we moved spots that they were charging their bikes using OUR electrical panel. To add to our misery, their pudgy chocolate lab kept laying out doggy snicker bars by our truck and the kids kept walking in front of our starlink, breaking the signal so we couldn’t work on the blog. UGH!

So this morning, we hauled the camper a couple hundred feet over to the only spot available in the campground. We miss the tree we were parked under but not the assholes lol. The shade, or lack thereof, makes a massive difference in this direct sun. The positive is that we did get our view back of the Zion peaks.

So, no Vegas for us this time, which means that we have now driven as far west as we are going to on this trip. Our travels start taking us back east and ultimately towards Florida, but we still have three weeks left on this trip.

Next stop, Grand Canyon! And cooler nights!

We are headed out to cook dinner as we speak. The grill is so hot from being in the direct sun all day, I doubt we will even need to turn it on to cook the chicken tonight!