Getting on the air at Kodachrome Basin State Park

We had known before we arrived that there would be no cellular signal at Kodachrome Basin State Park. The reviews indicated that there was good WiFi at the camp store/ranger station, but nowhere else in the campground. It also indicated that Starlink would be good there -- so we had planned to use Starlink. Carl activated service with Starlink via the app on his phone when we were in Page, AZ, and he put "dishy" up when we got to the campground. He had a couple of configuration changes that he wanted to make to the setup inside of Gracie, but soon we were "on the air" with internet and phone service via Starlink, at least when we are near the rig!

He also had enjoyed using his ham radio set up at the Grand Canyon, so he decided to "throw up" (that's the term he uses!) a couple of antennas to see if he could get on the air with his ham radio from Kodachrome.

One attached near the front corner, bungee corded to the driver's side mirror. This is a 20m dipole antenna using 2 20m ham sticks. "20m" indicates that it is tuned to work with the 20m band.

A picture from a little further back -- you may be able to see that he is using our RV outside step upside down to stabilize the base of the antenna.

Another one, with a magnetic mount, he put onto our power pedestal box (the picnic table beyond belongs to the site next to ours). The antenna needs to be on a backplane. This is a 10m vertical.

Carl found that the 20m antenna works well at Kodachrome Basin State Park, but he could not get any signal from the 10m antenna. He determined that this was probably because we were in a "basin" (canyon), and the 10m band is more line of sight and therefore does not transmit into a canyon. He was able to make several Parks on the Air (POTA) contacts on the 20m band.

RO Water system maintenance

When traveling around the country, we encounter various qualities of water as supplied by the campgrounds or fill locations where we get water. We like to ensure that the water we carry in our fresh water tank is filtered and soft and that the drinking water that we use is as pure and clean and bacteria-free as possible.

We have a water softener system on Gracie to give us filtered and soft water for household needs (showers, hand washing, clothes washing, etc.). In addition, we have an RO (reverse osmosis) system to purify the water that we use for drinking, cooking, making ice cubes, etc. Our RO system gets its water input after the water has already been through the softener.

Carl recharges the water softener monthly (every 4-5 weeks). This involves putting two 1-pound plain salt containers into the softener unit and flushing water through for about 20 minutes. 

Carl replaces most of the filters on the RO system once a year (there is one filter which only needs to be replaced every five years). 

We typically use more than a gallon of RO water per day for drinking and cooking. In preparation for being away from shore water (boondocking or in sites where we do not have a water hookup), before heading to the campground, when we still are on hookups, we draw off 7 gallons of RO water into a blue container (that we keep in the shower). If we know that we're going to be away from a water hookup for more than a week, we have a second 7 gallon blue container (stored in Mesa) that we can fill and carry with us. We do this when we're going to Quartzsite and plan to be there more than a week. You can imagine that it is a bit inconvenient to move a 7 gallon containers of water out and in every time we want to take a shower, so we don't keep the 7 gallon containers except when we anticipate a need. In Quartzsite, we cannot generate our own RO water (no hookups), but there are distribution stations in town, so we can take an empty container in the Jeep and fill it if needed. Note that we *can* take Gracie into town and fill our fresh water tank if we need to (and dump our grey and black tanks), but doing that kind of fill only gives us softened water. It takes longer to make RO water, so we do not produce RO water when we're just filling our water tanks and not attached to the spigot for our stay.

Our RO system has had a ~3 gallon pressurized holding tank that keeps the water in the "basement" (under the rig) as it is made so it is available to us via the refrigerator water dispenser inside Gracie without a wait. Carl had a second tank in our shed in Mesa and he decided that it would be helpful to have a second tank for times that we are boondocking - so we brought that along with us to put into the system later at an opportune time. One of the downsides to using from the blue containers is that they do not provide water via the refrigerator; this isn't a problem for water, we just pour from the blue container into a water pitcher. But the icemaker in the refrigerator only fills from the RO tank in the basement -- so we have run low or run out of ice at times when we're away from water hookups for a while.

Friday was the day to accomplish the RO system work...

Carl had both tanks out to get them ready to work together...

The tanks both have an air bladder that serves to allow the tank to be pressurized and provide water up from the basement to the refrigerator. The bladder keeps the air and the water separate from each other. In the picture, Carl is adding air to the bladder of the tank that has not previously been in use.

Carl had the necessary replacement filters on-hand and was replacing the yearly filters (you can see two that he has removed on the left side, and he is working on putting the filter into the second stage of the RO system).

The two holding tanks placed into the bay (basement)

The system with updated filters replaced in the bay -- ready to provide another year of filtered water for us in Gracie.

The maintenance activities on the RO system would be the same in a house-installed system; in fact, the system that we have on Gracie is the same system that Carl had installed in his townhouse before going fulltime in the RV. We feel that having a water purification system is very important in an RV where you have no idea about the quality of the water that the campground is delivering to your rig. Water softening is important as we are frequently in areas where the water is very hard.

Kodachrome Basin State Park

We are camping near Cannonville, Utah in Kodachrome Basin State Park. Some information about the park (from https://www.visitutah.com/places-to-go/parks-outdoors/kodachrome-basin):

About the Name

In 1948, members of the National Geographic Society visited the scenic park to photograph a feature for the magazine, and gave it the nickname “Kodachrome” after the popular Kodak film of the day. It became Chimney Rock State Park when the area was recognized as a state park in 1962, but was changed to Kodachrome once Kodak granted legal permission. The first official name, “Chimney Rock,” refers to one of the most popular and unique features within the park, along with the area’s 67 monolithic stone spires, called sedimentary pipes. Their multicolored sandstone layers are beautiful and seem to glow in juxtaposition to any sky, be it a cloudy gray or a clear, bold blue. Some geologists believe that these spires were formed because the area was once filled with hot springs and geysers. These eventually filled and solidified, while over time, the surrounding Entrada sandstone eroded. The pipes range from six feet tall to 160.

Coming in to the campground

Spire just outside the campground

The next several pictures illustrate beautiful views as we walked around the campground...

This is the view we have out of our front door at the campground.

It really is a beautiful park!

Utah!

We entered Utah coming in from northern Arizona -- 

It really looked stormy as we passed the "Welcome to Utah" sign! We ended up getting a few drops on our windshield, but not a big rainstorm.

 

We headed mostly west and a little southwest as we headed toward Kanab, Utah.

We had visited this area back in the spring of 2021...

... but we still enjoy its beauty!

We turned onto route 12 "Scenic Byway 12, All-American Road".

This area is known as Red Canyon...

... for rather obvious reasons!

We just love the red rocks against the blue sky!

We had traveled this road back in 2021 as we stayed outside Bryce Canyon -- so we knew Gracie could fit under this arch!

This was along the area where we stayed back in 2021 -- Tom's Best Spring Road.

We headed past Bryce Canyon...

... still seeing beautiful views...

Beautiful rock structures all around us.

We eventually made it through Cannonville, Utah, and about 7 miles further south from the small town...

... came to the entrance of Kodachrome State Park.

Things to note: 

- Day users of the park need to pay for passes, but that cost is included in the price for overnight camping. In many state parks (other states), you must pay for daily use fees separately from the camping fees -- usually about $10/day. Some states (Wisconsin) require you to pay a separate fee for each motorized vehicle, so, while a truck and trailer would only require one daily fee, a motorhome towing a car requires two daily entry fees to be paid, in addition to the fee for the campsite. Many times, public campgrounds have a pretty reasonable fee for the campsite, but when $10-20/day is added for the daily fee, that really increases the cost of the campsite!

- At this particular campground,  "hook-up sites" have either full hook-ups (electric, water, sewer) or just water/electric. "Standard sites" have no hookups. It seems that $10 more for full hook-ups ($45) is pretty cheap compared to $35 for boondocking (which we just had for free in the Kaibab National Forest). They do have services here -- really nice bath houses, water spigots that boondockers can use to get water, a dishwashing station at the bath house, dumpsters, laundromat, and a camp store -- which, of course, we did not have at the national forest.

The view right in front of us while we were stopped at the entry station of the park...

... driving into the park to get to the campground area.

It is a beautiful park, though signage was a little lacking for us to find our campsite. We ended up driving all the way through the campground loop, much of which was pretty tight for our big class A and towed vehicle. But we eventually found our site and got parked and are finding the campground to be very nice.

East and North to Utah

After leaving the Grand Canyon by the east entrance, 

We continued east -- no trees, no canyons.

After we had turned north on US 89, we started seeing these mounds that almost looked like they had been created by humans piling up sand, but they seemed to be natural.

We were coming into an area where there were more red rock hills,

... beautiful against the sky.

Along this route, we saw the turnoff for 89A to go to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, but an information sign indicated that the road south from Jacob Lake was currently closed. The North Rim does not open until May 15 (and we were traveling on May 14).

It looks like our road is going to run us straight into the mountains!

Whew! it turned! but the road is climbing...

Views out to the west...

... as we continue climbing.

I think this is coming up to Antelope Pass...

Antelope Pass

Coming out the north side of Antelope Pass

Coming into Page, Arizona

We knew that we would be on full hookups at our next campground, but that there were not very many options for groceries once we got there (I had read 50+ miles away). So, we decided to stock up at the Walmart in Page -- 1+ hours and $300+ later, we had gotten the groceries that we thought that we would need!

We also decided to fuel up Gracie in Page -- there was a Maverik that participates in the Open Roads diesel fuel discount program that we use -- this particular station didn't have a great discount, and it wasn't very easy to use (required multiple trips inside the station and one visit out to the pump by one of the service station staff to get the pump going). But, we were glad to get fuel as we had used a bit while we were boondocking for generator fuel as well as heat, and we weren't going to find good prices on diesel for a while as we would be away from civilization in Utah.

Coming up to the bridge over Glen Canyon

Glen Canyon dam -- if I had done a little better planning, I think we would have enjoyed having a few days near Page or Glen Canyon to do some exploring.

Continuing north -- it looked like there might be rain in our future...

... though it also appeared that the rain may not actually be reaching the ground.

We had not been through this area of Arizona before -- maybe we can get back to it to do some more exploring in the future!