On the move... well... a little ways!

On Sunday, we were scheduled to leave the Grand Canyon Camper Village campground in Tusayan. Last Friday, while driving on Desert View Drive in Grand Canyon National Park, we had checked out a "dispersed camping" location in the Kaibab National Forest, just south of the National Park. There were a number of "sites" (no official sites like in a campground, but places where others have parked in the past) and we thought we would enjoy boondocking there, so planned to move just a short distance when we left the Camper Village.

We had seen some of these brightly colored campervans in the National Park on Friday and Saturday...

... and one was parked right across from us in the campground. (https://www.escapecampervans.com/ in case anyone is interested in renting a campervan!)

There was more of a line than we had experienced on the other two days going into the National Park.

Current entrance fees for Grand Canyon National Park. Carl has a Lifetime Agency Senior Pass (he was able to get it before there was a charge for them) -- I will be eligible to get one this year! So we had no fee to enter. But, since Carl's pass only covers for himself and folks in the same vehicle with him, we hooked up the Jeep and drove in together. Normally for this short of a distance, we would have probably driven separately.

This is the Motor Vehicle Use Map (MVUM) that we picked up at the National Forest Ranger Station on Friday. It shows us the roads available for Motor Vehicle use in the National Forest lands around here.

The grey line in the top is Desert View Drive in the Grand Canyon National Park. We took Forest Road 310 to enter the Kaibab National Forest.

We found a beautiful site right inside the National Forest. It has a fire pit and picnic table. Many sites have fire pits (though not any as nice as ours) -- and this is the only site I've seen with a picnic table.

Kaibab National Forest

You can see how close we are parked to the National Forest sign.

We have good sunshine on our roof for much of the day...

... Gracie looks almost hidden in the trees in this picture!

Sunshine on the roof supplies power via our solar panels.

Carl got up on the roof and cleaned the panels to ensure we get as much solar energy as possible.

View from the roof

One of the other campers in view -- there were 4 campers overnight that we could see from our site, and more further down the road.

Clean solar panels and a view toward the front of Gracie. The "main" road is just 30' or so in front of us, but it isn't very busy. We found a lot of wood that we could gather for our fire pit across the road (that area is not accessible for motor vehicles and there are no campsites on the other side of the road).

Since Gracie is an all-electric coach, she can be pretty energy hungry... so, while we were in Mesa over the winter, we decided to get a propane stove to carry with us so we can cook at least some things without using electricity. Carl warmed up some leftover hash brown casserole and made sunny-side-up eggs on Sunday evening for supper!

We're not sure how long we'll stay here... we're making plans (slowly) for where to go next. We need to make it to a rally with our SKP Christian Fellowship friends in northeast Nevada by the third week of May -- so we have about a month to travel and see things before then!