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.