Enjoying our camping area

We are enjoying our camping area...

We had picked up some firewood so decided to have a fire Saturday afternoon...

Nice fire!

It was a little bit windy, but not too bad so ok to have a fire -- Carl cooked our hotdogs for dinner over the hot coals after the fire died down.

After dinner, when we were sitting outside, a few horses came through -- I think they belong to the rancher who runs cattle in this area of the National Forest, but I think they were supposed to stay on the other side of the fence that is just beyond them. There is a gate that I thought I had seen closed, but it is possible that one of our fellow campers left it open. The safety cone in the picture is at the back of Gracie, so you can see that they came pretty close.

There was one foal in the group - so cute!

We are still thinking this is one of our most favorite campsites!

Flying the drone

Carl got a new drone while we were in Mesa, but had not really had the opportunity to fly it much -- we cannot fly it in our park in Mesa, nor in the city parks. We just didn't find the time to go to an area where we could fly it.

So, Carl wanted to try it out here where we knew that there was a relatively open area (so it wouldn't get caught in trees).

Some pictures from his piloting session... 

The pilot (taken by me on the ground)

The rest of the pictures were taken by the drone:

Wow! It is really way up there!

Nearly right overhead!

My job is to keep an eye on the drone while Carl is flying it in case it decides to do something he doesn't expect -- so hopefully we will be able to find it again! No unexpected actions on this test flight, all went well!

If you're staying within a mile of the Grand Canyon, you should visit it!

On Saturday, we decided to drive into the Grand Canyon National Park and see it once again -- we had visited it 4 years ago, but maybe it had changed!?!?!

The nearest overlook point to where we're staying is Grandview Point, so we started by going there...

... obligatory selfie!

It looked a little hazy when we were at Grandview.

We decided to drive into Grand Canyon Village. We had thought that we might try taking the bus from the village out to Hermit's Rest, but decided against doing that (there was a long line for the bus, and Carl remembered doing it several years ago and found it not all that impressive). We decided instead to walk along the rim at the west end of the village.

Near Bright Angel trail

Another obligatory selfie -- I had remembered to find my visor in the Jeep before we started out on this part of our visit!

Looking down at Plateau Point along Bright Angel Trail

A screen capture of Bright Angel Trail from NPS website PDF file (https://www.nps.gov/grca/planyourvisit/upload/brightangeltrail.pdf)

As we walked back to where we had parked the Jeep, we walked past some of the mules for the mule ride into the canyon.

We decided to check out Market Plaza to see what was there... it turns out that there is a really nice grocery store with relatively reasonable prices (considering that it has a captive audience of people staying in the hotels, lodges, and campgrounds).

I thought that the beginning this saying over the drink cases was very appropriate for the grandeur of God's creation in the Grand Canyon -- it is a quote from Donald Culross Peattie in 1941.

I took a bit of a tumble while we were walking along near the rim -- thankfully, nowhere near the rim, just stepped off the side of the asphalt path and went down in a heartbeat! I skinned up the heel of my left hand and my left elbow, and was just a little shaken by how quickly I just was down on the ground! Thankfully, no serious repercussions, just a little sore, an appreciation that I wasn't badly hurt, and a greater emphasis on watching where I'm walking!

Biking in the area

We decided to get our bikes out and travel around the area where we're parked. When we were here 4 years ago, we had our conventional bikes and biked around a lot of the area... but we (probably more I, Patti) were hesitant to go too much down hill as it would be tough to make it back uphill. With the electric bikes, we have greater latitude to travel places that we would be cautious about with our conventional bikes.

Carl took a picture before we took the bikes out of the Jeep.

We left the bikes in Mesa and did not take them with us last year because we figured we would not have much use for them with the Alaska trip -- and it was a good choice -- we would not have had use for them while on the caravan. We didn't use them much this winter in Mesa, either -- and we debated whether to bring them this year. But, several of the places I have planned for us to stay indicated that there were bike trails, so we decided to bring them. Unfortunately, we couldn't exactly remember *how* we had stored the bikes into the Jeep previously! We figured out a way to get them in and secure, so before Carl took them out for our ride, he decided to take a picture so we would at least have a clue on how to put them back in when we're ready to leave!

Heading out from our campsite -- approaching the information board that is nearby. We wanted to check on what the rules are in the national forest (specifically whether drone flying was allowed, and we did not find any restrictions stated).

Continuing along FR310 toward Grandview Lookout Tower

We continued traveling on a couple of other FR roads (is FR "Fire Road" or "Forest Road"?)....

We saw where the Arizona Trail crossed the road -- not that Mexico is 626 miles south...

...and Utah is 124 miles north (the trail goes through the Grand Canyon on its way to Utah). We decided not to try biking to either of those this trip!

Carl was patiently waiting for me to finish taking pictures (he was cleverly waiting in the shade -- although the temperature is very nice, it gets quite warm in the sun!).

Coming back to our campsite, Carl got a picture of me coming by the Kaibab National Forest sign.

Back at the rig...

... we decided to try out the air popper that we had brought with us. In the house that we purchased, the previous owner left a lot of items - including this air popper and a jar of Orville Redenbacher popcorn. The popped corn wasn't all that good -- we don't know if it was because the popcorn was old or because we don't like air-popped popcorn (with no oil, it won't hold onto salt). We'll try popping the popcorn using our normal method (wok on the cooktop) to determine if the popcorn is bad, or if we don't like air-popping.

Having been on full hookups with all the electricity and water and easy dumping of our waste tanks for the last 7 months means we're on a bit of a learning curve to ensure we are using electricity and water efficiently! But, we're figuring it out!

Cleaning up so we get more power!

We had not gotten around to cleaning our solar panels while we were in Mesa, and since we aren't hooked up to electricity here in Kaibab National Forest, we decided we'd better get the solar panels as clean as we could so we'd be able to generate as much electricity as possible.

A "before" picture so I could see if they got better with cleaning...

Carl took a few pictures while I was cleaning...

... the pictures also give you a view of our campsite...

... in these pictures you do not see any other RVs, but we do have neighbors. They have parked closer than we would have anticipated that they would, but... it is up to each camper to decide where they want to park!

                             Before ....                                               ... and after... I think it should help!

Here's a screen capture from the solar controller monitoring tool:

The red jaggedy line is the solar power -- you can see on the left side that it was increasing with a pretty much straight line (the one small dip may have been a cloud). Then a bunch of dips happened while I was cleaning (I shadowed the panels and interrupted the sun providing power). But then you can see the line straightening out again, but at a higher power generation amount than if the earlier line had continued on its trajectory. We figured that the cleaning improved the power generation by about 10%.

We appreciate getting "free" power from the sun ("free" if you don't consider the cost of the solar panels, controller, wiring, etc.!). 

On the road again!

When we left Mesa, we headed north to the Grand Canyon to a camping area that we visited several years ago and which we count as our favorite boondocking spot together.

We headed north out of Phoenix on I-17. When we looked at Google Maps the night before, it indicated that the roadway was closed at a point north of Phoenix. We looked up information, and found that the northbound lanes are, indeed, closed, but they have recently completed new "flex lanes" that will allow for additional lanes of traffic flow -- and since they need to do some major construction on the northbound lanes at this point, the northbound traffic is being routed onto the new flex lanes.

We were heading northbound in the flex lanes. From what I read (https://www.improvingi17.com/flex-lanes/), the lanes will normally operate northbound Monday-Saturday, and operate southbound on Sunday, but can be dynamically altered when traffic volume requires.

The existing freeway had only two lanes in each direction, and the northbound climb up to Sunset Point is challenging for trucks (and large RVs!), so theoretically, once the northbound lane construction is completed, the slower traffic can take the main lanes and traffic that can go faster can take the flex lanes. However, the information about the flex lanes clearly indicated that there would be no restrictions on which kinds of vehicles can use which lanes.

A little south of Flagstaff, we changed drivers and I drove for a while.

The view of a mountain ahead with bright snow on it was so beautiful! I think it is Humphreys Peak and, at 12,633 feet, is the second highest peak in Arizona.

We drove west a little ways on I-40 (to Williams, AZ, no relation to us that we know!) and then north to the Grand Canyon.

We pulled into the Kaibab National Forest a little south of Grandview Point on the Grand Canyon, and found the site where we had stayed back in the spring of 2021 (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2021/04/on-move-well-little-ways.html).

All set up for a few days!

Gracie with Carl sitting out in the shade, and the Jeep just beyond -- beautiful blue skies!

We were happy to find "our" spot available, and, at least when we got to it, not too many people camped nearby. As the evening progressed, more people came in, but there's plenty of forest land!

Packin' up and movin' out!

We had planned to leave on Wednesday, but ended up leaving Mesa on Thursday morning...

We had moved all of our patio furniture onto the patio of the casa, covered the tables, and tied them together with a cable and lock, just for safety. We put the golf cart under the cover of the patio and covered it too. We also have our propane heater under there, its top also covered.

Carl was finishing up last tasks with dumping and filling fresh water, and disconnecting the electricity. We had brought in the slides previously (always a source of a little concern on whether they will come in successfully or not!), and brought the jacks up (another potentially problematic task). We have been stationary for 7 months (!!!) -- the longest we've ever been parked with Gracie. We have noted that the longer we stay somewhere, the more "roots" grow; it was definitely a time consuming effort getting everything packed up and ready to travel this time!

As we were driving the Jeep around the park doing a few last tasks, we saw these pretty blooming trees -- we think they are two Joshua trees in the yard of one of the folks in our community.

We drove by our new park model one last time -- we've spent quite a bit of time during the last week taking things over there from the rig and the casa. (in case you missed the news about the new park model, we blogged about it here: https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2025/05/and-weve-done-another-thing.html)

We have certainly enjoyed our season at Venture Out Resort in Mesa, but we're also excited to get back on the road and have new views out our windows each few days!

Getting last things done

We're trying to leave Mesa before the hot weather moves in -- 100sF are coming in the next few days...

We had a window that was fogged "at times" -- depending on the temperature or humidity or something -- and it was the window that the driver needed to look through to use the left rear view mirror. Sometimes it can be important to be able to see out of that window!

We knew it needed to be repaired, but we also knew that the repairs only last a few years, so didn't want to do it when we first got to Mesa -- why waste 6 months with a new window when we're not driving and needing it? So we called the repair place and they scheduled to come on Tuesday...

We forgot to get a "before" picture, but this shows the window opening after the technician had taken the window out...

... and there's the frame sitting up against his van...

... and the specific pane where the seal had broken on his work surface for him to work on.

The opening for the window from the outside

The window back in place with the newly sealed pane -- we had this same pane done 3 years ago. They give a 1 year guarantee.

We were glad to get it done at our site in Mesa so we can not be concerned about having a foggy window while we're driving in the next months.