The rest of the "office".

As the end of the season at the North Rim approaches I was reviewing the subjects I had covered while here.  I was surprised to find that I had no pictures of the campground other than a few shots out my front door and rear window.  Insufficient.

I set out on foot to take some snapshots.  But what could have been done in a few minutes turned into a few hours.  Walking past virtually every campsite I was stopped many times to answer questions about the campground, give recommendations on which trails were best for this evening's sunset and then my favorite, pet the dogs that would let me.

But I did get my pictures.  I'll begin with where the campers come into the campground, the registration kiosk.

That is our co-host, Don with his head stuck in the window, talking to the ranger on the desk today.  I found it odd that other than electricity, there are no utilities in this building.  No water, no bathroom.  The rangers have to close the kiosk and walk over to the pay showers/bathroom about a thousand feet away if they need a bio-break.  Underneath the window is a "Campground Full" sign.  It is a rare day when this sign says "site available".  And it is really not a day, more like an hour before it has to come down again.

There are 83 campsites in all, including the tent-only sites.  When you look up the campground online it shows a map that depicts all RV sites to be pull-thrus.  Technically the map is right but what the map does not show is how crowded the driveways are by trees.  Some, well most sites are a challenge to pull through even with a pop-up.

It is hard to see, but in the picture above there is a driveway just on the other side of the rock that goes between the gap in the trees.

This fellow managed to wiggle his 5th wheel in but there is barely the thickness of a piece of paper between one of his slide-outs and a tree.  Consequently, with sites that were designed for equipment that existed in the '30's but are used by modern day coaches, contact between nature and machines is going to happen.

Lots of trees have fresh wounds on them.  Funny, no one ever comes to report their collision with the tree. 

Many of these wounds are up pretty high.  You just know that there are some campers running around out there with end-cap damage.  And the heck of it is, 80% of our campers are international visitors in a 1-800-rent me rig.  I bet the rental companies are keen on inspecting their rigs when they get it back and issue some hefty repair bills.

The next three pictures are of trees that border the road that leads to the dump station.  The park service has left trees so close together that it forces campers to thread a needle to get to the dump station.  A lot of people miss.

Why the park won't take these trees out is beyond me.  They are either going to die from their injuries or continue to grow and get wider which will eventually block the road.  Such as it is with a government operation.

Regardless of this campground being a horribly outdated design, it is a gorgeous place that is sought out by nearly a half-million people between May and October.

This is site #5.  I can throw a rock to it from my front door.  It is also one of the few RV sites that has a tent pad built on it.

This is looking down the ring-road around the campground.  Nice little stand of Aspens.  Whether RV'ing or tenting, there are challenges in setting up camp because nothing is level.

Okay, so maybe there are a couple of level spots.  But the trade-off is that you have to put your tent up on rocks.  No one is allowed to put a tent on top of vegetation.

One of our 80 percenters.  They'll be piled up in one corner of the bed by morning with that slope.  The rent-me-rigs do not come with leveling jacks or even blocks.

A nice look through the center of the campground during the 'tween part of the day.  It is just after check-out time but before check-in

 The North Rim Campground is a dry campground.  There are no hook-ups at any of the sites, the exception being the two campground host sites.  But there are community water spigots placed at various places throughout the campground.  It was one of these that the man from Israel was when he had a fatal heart attack that I wrote about earlier.

We have seen times that an RV'er will have run a long water hose from their rig to this spigot.  They get a knock on the door.

Every night at 7pm there is a campfire program at the amphitheater.  One of the several Interpretive Rangers will give a talk on a variety of subjects.  I liked the one on the prehistoric era of the canyon.

For the whole of the RV and group campsites, there are three bathrooms like this.  Each has two or three toilets and two sinks.  With two to three hundred people in the campground at any given time, lines can be long in the morning.  There are no showers in these buildings.  For showers and laundry you have to walk down the road from the General Store and drop six quarters for six minutes of water.

Each of these bathroom buildings has a single, deep, exterior sink for washing dishes.

The campground has a section that is exclusively for use by tent campers.  This has to be the best spot in the campground by far.  The campsites are luxuriously spacious, large tent pads have been built and filled with sand/clay mixture (no rocks) and they are in the prettiest setting in the park.



This ponderosa is not the tallest in the campground but it is the biggest around, and probably the oldest.  Somewhere upwards of 500 years old.



Families with small children or people who sleepwalk are discouraged from staying on this sight.  That is the edge of the Transept canyon just on the other side of the trees.

 

The tent-only sites are not the only ones that are on the edge of the Transept.  At the bottom of the ring road sites 11 through 18 have this kind of view.

 

But being right here on the edge, where it slopes toward the canyon does let campers be creative in trying bring things to some semblance of level.

You can see why the remote location, cramped spaces, poorly leveled sites and no hook ups do not deter everyone from coming.

While I am giving a tour, how about a trip up to Lindbergh Hill where we dump the ashes?  I have written about this place in a previous post.  It is a seven mile drive to the service road that leads to the top of the hill.  Much of the top of the hill has been cleared and leveled into a flat-top.  It is a collection point for cleared trees and brush, fill dirt and of course the campground ashes.  And recently it is also a staging point for reclaimed asphalt taken up from the road to Cape Royal.  Cape Royal is a 15 mile stretch of scenic road that is getting an overhaul.  They closed the road the day after Labor Day and for all practical purposes will not re-open it until next May.

Our little blue truck is backed up to the edge of the ravine where we dump the ashes.  This shot is looking back toward the way we came in.

There was a huge pile of ash right here but with the road crew doing their work, they are bulldozing everything frequently.

 What is not seen in the pictures is about a dozen full hook-up RV sites.  These sites are way better outfitted than our host sites in the campground.  They have 50amp electric (with meters for some reason), level and wide-spaced sites and no trees so that there is a clear shot of the sky, and TV satellites.  We have been told this is where fire crews set up living quarters when they need to be in this area.

Just as a side - On our trip to Flagstaff last week we picked up a new grill while at Camping World.  It is a Weber Q 100.  We had been going back and forth for months on whether we could rationalize the extra weight and space this bigger one will consume over the tiny little grill we have been using for years.

Our little one had worked well for weekends and vacations but depending on it as full timers has made meal preparation a little more of a logistics problem than we want to put up with every day.

The space on the grill was so small that you had to cook food one at time.  And the heat output was so low that cooking times were pretty long.  It was really hard to serve the entrée and sides hot together if they were all grilled.  And with cooking times so long it seemed like as soon as you finished one meal you had to start the next for it to be ready on time.

So we bit the bullet and decided to give up some space and take on some weight.

But just with our first meal we were pretty pleased with the results.  All at once we were able to grill two large chicken breasts, two pineapple rings and an entire, large zucchini.  We were done in a fraction of the time, our food came hot off the grill all at once and we had time on our hands that we were not accustomed to.

Regardless, I am going to have to find some things to jettison to off-set the new weight.

And on our second day off....

We found our way from the South Rim to Flagstaff and the townhome we were lent to use.  What a great place!  Three bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths and a TV that actually received a signal.  Not having seen any TV for the past two months I was itching to get me some couch potato time.  But it was not to be at this moment.  It was late and we had not eaten yet.  Time to find Oregano's.

Since we were in the big city we figured that Siri would be able to tell us how to get to the restaurant.  No way, that ditzy phone had no clue.  Luckily I had looked up the address before leaving the townhome and we plugged that into Big Gulp's GPS.  Ten minutes later and we were pulling into the parking lot.

We had been warned that this was a popular place and that there was usually a line waiting to get in.  But our late arrival worked in our favor, we walked right in and were immediately seated.  We did what we knew we shouldn't, we ordered the Chicago-style deep dish pizza.  We're going to have to hike 50 miles to burn off those calories.

After the 45 minutes it took to cook that thick pie, the restaurant had pretty much emptied out.  Just us and one other table.  When we finished and left, they locked the door behind us.  But boy was it good.  Next time in Flagstaff we'll go again, hang the calories (and salt and sugar).

Time to get back to the townhome and watch some news or something.  Yeah, who am I kidding?  After a couple hundred miles of driving, sightseeing in Marble Canyon, Lee's Ferry, Navajo Bridge, Cameron Trading Post and the South Rim/Shoshone Pointe we were exhausted.  We went straight up to bed.  Our second day off was going to be as busy as the first, we needed some sleep.

I woke at my usual 5:30am and slipped downstairs while Cyndee lingered a while longer.  I finally got to see some morning news and wouldn't you know it, there was nothing to hold my interest.  I guess I have not missed that much by not having access to TV broadcasts.  But it worked out as I had lots of prep work to do for the things you still have to do even if you are retired.  There were several things banking related that we had to do in person at the bank.  Flagstaff is one of the few towns left in the west that has a branch of our bank.  We had a number of things that had accumulated over the last few weeks that we were going to take care of now that we could get into a branch.

We had also brought along a large sack-full of items that we had accumulated for Goodwill.  The bank and Goodwill are literally within sight of each other.  Made for efficient use of our time and fuel.

It was not in our original plans but the lead supervisor for the North Rim found out we were going to Flagstaff and told Cyndee about all the shopping and Navajo made turquoise jewelry in Sedona.  With a new opportunity in her quest for earrings, Sedona was now on our itinerary.

We plugged Sedona into the GPS but I found the results to be odd.  It showed a traveling distance of only 31 miles but a traveling time of an hour.  How could it take an hour to go 30 miles across a sparsely populated roadway?

We soon found out how.  Our passage through Flagstaff was quick and easy and as we approached the edge of town on the Sedona highway the road began to narrow and the land on either side was National Forest.  Then we saw the signs warning of a steep grade ahead and many cautions to use a lower gear with speed limits reduced to 25mph.

We had no idea that there were these deep, mountainous valleys south of Flagstaff.  With our poor understanding of the local geography we thought that it was going to be a flat drive, mostly through desert.  We could not have been more wrong.  If you look closely in the above photo you can make out the thin ribbon of road that will take us to Sedona.  But first, we have to get down there.

Our GPS will display the route by highlighting the road to take in blue.  Usually it is just a blue line across the screen but today it was a line leading up to a blue blob and then a line leading away.  We have done mountain passes where the road shows squiggly lines depicting switchbacks but you could always see separation in the road.  Not today, this road was so tight and each level was practically on top of the next.  In the above picture you can see the road coming around a steep, tight bend.  But this is about the only place that it is not almost straight below the guard rail.  Cyndee and I both said simultaneously; "Thank goodness we are not towing the trailer!"

One of the many, tight switchbacks.  Lots of wheels drop off the inside edge of the pavement here.  Cyndee is doing a good job of keeping all 23 feet of Big Gulp on the pavement while I take pictures.

The trees crowded the road so badly in some places that branches hit the mirrors.

There is a pull-out at the top, right before the descent begins.  On this day there was a Native America craft show going on.  Another earring opportunity and a very nice park to get some photos.

USF Ranger Station, a hut really.  A place to buy trinkets or ask an interpretive volunteer questions about the area.

Wildflowers are still peaking in this part of AZ.

We finally rolled into Sedona, it took every bit of the hour the GPS said it would.  As we came into town we both commented on how Sedona reminded us of the little mountain towns of Red River, NM and Helen, GA.  Pretty much a single road in the bottom of the valley with buildings on either side, their backs hemmed in by the cliffs.  Very little existed outside of what was on this one road.

Looking north back towards Flagstaff.

Looking south towards the far end of Sedona and access to I-17 fifteen miles away.

Sedona is known as an artist's community, having an abundance of Native American jewelry and art as well as the typical kitschy tourist traps selling tissue-thin t-shirts and hats.  Another reputation they are building is one for spiritual crystal lifestyle.  There are a number of crystal shops and crystal healing centers.  Jeep and Hummer tours seemed to be a big thing as well, there were several tour companies in each block of town.

The store fronts and main street itself have been updated and remodeled and kept looking fresh.  Walking around and window shopping seemed to be the thing to do.

As advertised, there was lots of places to shop for local Navajo artist jewelry.  Cyndee had so many places to look for earrings that her head was spinning.  At one shop I noticed a change in her posture, she lingered a little longer than usual and her expression from the I'm just looking look to the this may be what I'm looking for look.

Purse off her shoulder and on the counter, wallet in hand.  Could this be it?

Money on the counter, it's getting serious now.  Turns out what was on the counter was just a start, she kept pulling money out of that wallet and laying it down.

Score!  She found just what she was looking for.

Treasure in hand, it was time to find some lunch.  We flipped a coin to help decide between bar-b-q and Mexican food.

Mexican food won.

The weather was mild so we opted for the roof-top seating.  The breeze was gentle and warm...

and the view was not bad either.

After lunch we walked around town a little more and got some pictures of the buttes and cliffs bordering the town.

We had seen about half of the town when we realized that if we were to get the rest of our things done, we were going to have to get back to Flagstaff.  We'll have to save the other half of town for when we come back to camp host the North Rim next year.

Cyndee had a list as long as my arm of things she needed to do at the Flagstaff Mall and we were also going to do our full-bore grocery haul.  By the time we got to everything it was almost 10:00pm before we got back to the townhome.

Tomorrow we were going to pick up some items at Camping World and return to the South Rim.  But we are beat, we'll just get to Camping World and leave from there for the 5 hour drive back to the North Rim.  We should get home before it gets dark (and the mule deer and buffalo start jumping out on the road).

South Rim, Grand Canyon

After gorging on a Navajo Taco at Cameron Trading Post we are on our way to the South Rim.  There is a road, highway 64, that enters the South Rim at the extreme east side of the park.  We turn off of highway 89 about a mile and half south of Cameron Trading Post and follow this narrow little road with a 45 mph speed limit for next 30 miles.

Our patience and taking most of the day getting here was rewarded with some really nice weather and great scenery.  Although I will have to say that the South Rim experience is really different than what we have come to know the last couple of months on the North Rim.  The big difference is people, lots and lots of people.  Then there are the services and facilities for all those people, far more developed and "commercial" than anything on the North Rim.

We found and visited with the host at Desert View Campground.  Wow, there is no way I would volunteer for that job.  In the first five minutes we met him he told us enough "experiences" that he had had to curl our hair and make our heads spin.  He dealt with more things in three days than we have in two months.  Cyndee and I both have suspected that we had been very lucky to work with a great bunch of folks and in a campground with a good "culture".  Our few minutes visiting with Charlie at Desert View has confirmed our suspicions.

But enough of that, there were sights to see and hikes to be hiked.  Our first pleasure stop was the Desert View Watchtower.  This iconic attraction is about 26 miles to the east of the hub of the South Rim.  While it is an attraction in and of itself, it is also surrounded by great vistas.

Mary Colter, a famous architect from the 1930's designed several of the National Park System's most famous lodges, and Desert View Watchtower.  When you first see Watchtower you think it is an ancient structure, but Mary did a great job of building a modern structure to look ancient.

It is still summer time on the South Rim.  Our flowers on the North Rim are al but gone now.

The tower is not really leaning, it is just the effect of the wide angle lens.

If you want to squint your way through it, here is the placard explaining how Mary Colter designed the watchtower.

The size of this shot is too big to fit on most screens but I like being able to see so much of the detail in design, even if I have to scroll to see it all.

There is a ledge nearby the watchtower.  A short walk through some brush and you can step right up to the edge of the canyon with no railing to spoil the view.

Looking back to the east from Desert View there is what I think is an ancient cinder cone.

I kept edging my way along the rim and the view would change quite a bit in just a few feet.

This is something we don't get to see from the North Rim except in a couple of special spots, the Colorado River.

Scooch over just a few more feet, zoom in and a whole lot more river is visible.

Standing on the edge and turning to face back towards the tower and the canyon behind me.

The next several shots are from the foundation deck of the watchtower.

Going inside the tower at the foundation level is the gift shop.  The ceiling of the gift shop is the floor of the first level of the tower.  I bet the carpenters that had to figure out how to get all these logs to fit together had some choice words about Mary Colter.

There were no earrings to be had in this gift shop but that did not stop Cyndee from looking at every single item in the store.

In the gift shop is the entrance to a one person wide stairway that climbs through three levels in the tower.  Each level has a collection of wall art, replicating cave, cliff and other ancient paintings.

Standing in the first level, looking up to the second.

Artwork on the first level.  Can you fans of Ancient Aliens find the spaceman in this picture?

Standing near the center of the tower on the first level and shooting all the way to the ceiling of the third level.

Zooming in on the ceiling.  Somebody did a Michelangelo at the Sistine Chapel thing.

Here we are on the second level, looking up at the third.

And this is Cyndee taking the last of the 184 steps to get to the third level.

Now we look down the three levels.

The views out of the small windows on the third level are not too shabby.

After enjoying the views from the top of the tower we descended to the visitor center grounds much faster than we ascended the tower.  I could not resist one more flower picture before getting in Big Gulp and heading for Shoshone Point.

Shoshone point is a little known place on the drive between Desert View and the South Rim Village.  Many maps don't even show it, but a few of the more highly detailed ones do.  The point itself is about a mile from the main road.  There is an unmarked, dirt parking lot that you have to know to look for to be ready to slow down and pull into.  From this parking lot there is a locked gate across a narrow, rough dirt road that goes out to the point.

The point is "owned" by the Grand Canyon Association.  They hold special events out there and people can even work a deal with the Association to have weddings or other special occasions at the point.  But in the days before we were to leave for the South Rim, rangers here on the North Rim started telling us that there was this "secret" spot that we just had to go see.  Our co-host, Don was also adamant about us getting out to the point.  He pulled out maps and showed us where the parking lot should be and gave us landmarks to look for so we would know if we had missed the spot.

Don gives good directions.  We recognized when we were approaching the parking lot and were tee'd up to make the turn in.  Cyndee and I both changed into hiking boots, I pulled on the backpack full of camera gear and binoculars, we hopped the fence and started the mile hike to the point.

The sun was getting low and the ponderosa pines and scrub oak was pretty dense so our walk through the forest was long shadows and dense shade.  But shortly we could see the tree line end and nothing but blue sky beyond.  The rim was at hand.

It was pretty fun tromping around this beautiful spot and then there was the added bonus that we were the only people in sight.  There was absolutely no one else even close to where we were.

For awhile I thought that the "point" was just this little jut of land we were standing on.  But as I moved around and was getting different angles for my shots I spotted this:

It was a narrow, sheer finger of Coconino sandstone standing proudly out in the canyon.  And with the balanced rock perched at its tip, this had to be Shoshone Pointe.

I worked my way closer to where I could get access to the pointe.

There was a tight little path through the brush that looked like it might get me there.

It did get me there.

And I got some nice shots from this viewpoint.

Looking back the way I came.  I have no idea why Cyndee would not come out to the point with me.

It was at this time that the sun had dipped low enough to touch the top of the trees.  Cyndee was already worried about hiking back to the truck in the dark and had started in that direction without me.  Time to hot-foot it out of here.

We made it back to the truck with a comfortable amount of daylight left.  Just enough to get us to Grand Canyon Village so we could carry out a couple of missions.  One of our volunteer supervisors had asked us to get her mail from the South Rim Post Office so we found the post office, which was next door to the general store.  I went in to get the mail, Cyndee made a beeline to the General Store/Market.  After retrieving the mail I caught up with Cyndee in the store, I was shocked.  It was not the little log building with a couple of refrigerator cases and short shelves sparsely stocked with basics.  No, this place was like a full-fledge grocery store.  Stocked shelves with a variety to choose from and freezer isles and refrigerator isles and fresh fruit and vegetable isles.  Wow, just like a real town.  The one big difference from a real town was the prices.  We saw stuff that was 200 to 400% higher than what we pay at Walmart.  At those prices you could spend the money on fuel for the drive to Flagstaff and still come out ahead.

Another mission we were on was to deliver some laundry.  Scott, one of the young rangers that was part of the North Rim crew got reassigned to the South Rim this week.  In his haste to get packed and relocated he forgot he had a whole load of laundry in the dryer at the laundry cabin.  Not realizing his load was a little lite until he arrived at the South Rim he called back to the North Rim desperate for someone to retrieve his laundry from the dryer and bring it to the South Rim.  The volunteer supervisor, Nancy and I pulled his stuff out of the dryer and folded his shirts and put them in a laundry bag, neither of us were going to fold his underwear, that just got shoved in the bag.  By the time we were done there was a good twenty pounds of laundry in the bag.  Scott must have had nothing but uniforms to wear since leaving 5 or 6 days ago.

All I know is that when we caught up with him at one of the main entrance gates and he was really glad to see us.  I got about three big man-hugs before I could hand the laundry bag over to him.  Before we left he was offering us a place to "crash" anytime we were ever at the South Rim and his first born.

We told him that we had a place to stay in Flag for the night and that we might take him up on his offer (of a place to crash, not the first born) another time.  That is when he recommended that we have dinner at Oregano's, a pizza place.  Remember what I said in an earlier post about having had enough Navajo Taco that I would not have to eat again all day?  Well, the temptation of a Chicago-style, deep dish pizza just put all thought of that out of my head.  We now had a new mission.