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!