Goodbye North Rim....for now.

In my last post I said we had to "get crackin'", and we did.  I charged the battery on my drill, put a ladder in the truck and a bag of hand tools.  Kelly came by and we caravanned the 12 miles out to the entrance station to board it up and pull all the equipment out.

I had questioned my rationale for keeping a heavy power tool.  This is one time I am glad I procrastinated and did not jettison it along with other items that were questionable for carrying along as a fulltimer.

 It is as if the buffalo knew something was up.  They had only made a couple of appearances all summer long up by the entrance station.  The last two days the park was open the whole herd just hung out to watch the circus leaving town.

Just as we approached the entrance station, about a third of the herd decided they had had enough to drink at the water hole on the right side of the road and needed to be back on the left side.  Never mind that Big Gulp was coming at them at 40 mph.  Its their road and they know it.

So we enjoyed the display of beastly power and attitude, what's a few more minutes, the entrance station isn't going anywhere.

As we followed them across the road we spotted a small herd of mule deer at the edge of the meadow.  Seems everybody is coming out to watch the exodus.

With our last chore for the park done we headed back to the campground to finish packing up our rig.  We have learned that some cold and windy weather is headed our way so we have decided to try and get out and moved to our new spot before it hits.  We are now shooting for a Thursday morning departure instead of Friday.

It was a whirlwind of activity but Cyndee got all the inside stuff ready to go and I the outside stuff.  When the sun came up on Thursday I was back outside pulling the covers off the tires and getting our frozen food out of the freezer in the cache.  We had just done a large shopping trip in Flagstaff only days ago, expecting to need a months worth of food and now we have nowhere to put it.  If I could get some dry ice that would do but we are more than a four-hour drive, one way, to the nearest dry ice.  I think we'll be cooking up "left-overs" for the next few days.

But soon enough everything had found a place for the 45 mile trip to Jacob Lake and I was getting Big Gulp in position to hitch up.  For those of you that have followed the blog you know that I have been worrying about this day since our arrival.  After a lot of wiggling, we finally got the trailer positioned on the pad.  One thing was for sure, we were not backing out the same way we came in.  Unless somebody with a forklift or tractor came along there was nothing I had that would be able to turn itself in a manner to get out the path we came in.  I tried to talk the park service into removing two or three ponderosa pines but I would have made better progress beating my head against a wall.

And on top of that, the truck was at such an angle to the trailer that the hitch was in a bind and would not release.  I had to pull the pins that held the Binkley head to the towers and use the trailer's landing gear to lift the whole head clear of the truck.  I then was able to get the head to release from the kingpin and carry it by hand back to the hitch where I re-assembled it. But now it was time to hook back up.  Would I be able to get a clean coupling or have to improvise like I did when decoupling?

Since there were no forklifts, tractors or tree removal I am forced to off-road through campsites and the woods to get out.  About a month ago we started eyeballing possible exit paths and came up with what we thought would be workable.  It required the moving of a boulder and that no campers be in three surrounding sites.  The no campers thing is a done deal, they have all been run off, all I have to do now is move a boulder.  It is definitely too big for moving by hand so I pulled out my trusty 2" nylon tow rope and headed for the Polaris.  I wrapped the rope around the boulder, connected the other end to the little hitch on the Polaris, put it in low range, engaged the 4WD and started putting a strain on the tow rope.  As nylon ropes are prone to do, it began creaking as it stretched and shrank from its 2" diameter to 1".  But then the boulder started to move and once it started sliding it was a cake-walk to pull it completely out of the way.

Picnic tables were moved too and soon we had a clear, if not crooked path to the way out.  I backed Big Gulp in through the intended path out, kind of a practice run.  But it also afforded me a much more "square" approach to the kingpin.  I was able to get under the trailer and get a clean coupling.  In the picture below you can see that the designed way for me to depart was around a 90 deg turn.  With that big ponderosa on the inside of the turn and a 1,000 lb propane tank on the outside (that is the blue-green thing at the bottom of the picture), there was no way I was going to exit by "design".

So this is my (only) choice for exiting.  I will have to dodge a power pedestal, trees, low-hanging branches and a fire pit.  I hope my and Cyndee's calibrated eyeballs measured everything correctly.

The orange cones on the driver side is an open trench, there is a power pedestal just in front of and to the left of the passenger side.  If I get clear of those then there are some low branches on the driver side and that black object in the middle of the image is a concrete and steel fire pit.  As soon as the last wheel clears the fire pit I will have to make a hard turn to the right of the image.  My bumper will be a fraction of an inch away from a tree when completing this turn.

No more pictures at this point.  Cyndee is doing some serious hand signaling and running from side to side in rapid succession checking every point to make sure I don't do something expensive as I ease forward through the maze.  She is in total control, I can't see most of the things that need to be avoided, I just do what her hands tell me to.

Success!  Whew!  We are both relieved, hadn't felt that kind of stress since the last time we had a lay-off at work.  Now it is a leisurely 45 mile drive to Kaibab CampeRVillage in Jacob Lake.  And I do mean leisurely, I did not get over 25 mph for the first 16 miles.  Why not?  There was absolutely no traffic behind us, we were not holding anybody up.  We were enjoying one last look at the aspens as they were just beginning to put on their full fall colors.  We did this all the way out to the Country Store, about 4 miles outside the entrance station.  There we stopped and said our goodbyes to the two couples that ran the store and we had come to know in the last two months.

We made it to our new home base about lunchtime.  Great folks here at CampeRVillage, went out of their way to make it as easy as possible to get in our site and get hooked up.  Immediately after, we headed for the Jacob Lake Lodge to make arrangements for them to intercept our UPS packages and get a bite to eat.

As we drove the one mile from the new campground to the lodge we saw one of those big, portable DOT signs from the back, right at the intersection where the road to the Grand Canyon starts.

Our summer adventure is over.