Part-Time Paradise

8 hours ago, Robin said:

Congratulations!

thanks

5 minutes ago, ImDownWithDisney said:

Wow. That was an epic trip. I'm sure that made a big impact on the kids. It did when I was a kid. 

Yes.  Still need to get 2 more parks documented.  Such an impact, that we just closed a loan for a TT and take possession THU.

Day 5 - Bryce Canyon NP.

 

The campground is a few minutes away from the boundary of Bryce and about 25 min from the visitor center.  We got to the VC and picked up our JR Books.  BCNP is VERY proud of their JR program.  By that, I mean the requirements far exceeded most of the other parks we've done the program.  The kids had to see several specific things across the park, answer some more complex questions, and pick up 10 pieces of trash.  The book even came with a glove stuffed in it to pick up the trash.  It seemed a little daunting up front, but like most things with my kids, I was wrong.  They ate it up.  They enjoyed picking up the trash and still pick up trash everywhere we go based on that lesson (I guess mom and dad telling them to pick up their own trash isn't a good enough lesson...now they pick up anyone's trash because a cartoon prairie dog told them to...I'll take it though).  

 

One of the amphitheaters at Bryce.  Just one or two hoodoos out there.

 

 

FIRED UP to pick up litter!

 

We grabbed a picnic lunch in the park, per usual, and finished up the JR activities just after lunch.  Evidently all the parks in this area host Space Fests around this time of year.  We caught an interesting program at the hotel that we sat in a blow up planetarium (reminded me of playing with a parachute in gym class) and learned some interesting things about the night sky.  We went back to the VC to get our badges. Then we set out to hike one more trail before we went back to the camper.  I believe the name is Mossy Cave Trail, but it was by far our favorite part of Bryce.  The trail is south of the VC and off of the main highway, not the park road.  It follows a stream and goes back to the cave on one fork of the trail, then backtrack to the fork and then to a waterfall.  The kids were memorized by the water and the smoke from the wildfire mentioned above made the lighting in the narrows quite interesting.  That day there was even ash falling everywhere while we walked.  Quite eerie at times.

Our lunch spot, just down the hill from the lodge.  I wish there was more done with that gas station in the background.  It was starting to fall apart.  Would be a great exhibit to the days of the automobile making NPS properties popular or a gift shop.  

 

All the rangers treated the kids with respect and a large number, usually the rangers that looked like they still didn't live in their mom's basement, gave the kids a lot of attention for being interested in the JR program and curious about the parks.  However, this young man really did a great job.  The line stacked up about 15 deep behind us and he didn't bat an eye to talk to them about what they'd learned and encourage them to keep getting out into nature.  Bravo Zulu young fella.  Keep up the work.

Smoke from the wildfire playing with the light on the hoodoos.

That's the sun.  The landscape looked like Mars.  Really eerie, but strangely beautiful.

The Mossy Cave

The waterfall...on Mars

Once we finished up our hike, we made our way back to the CG.  We enjoyed the CG for it's location more than anything.  It was fairly full while we were there.  There is space between spots, but it's taken up by huge scrubby grass, so despite having about 10' between you and neighbors, it still feels crowded because the grass encroaches into the site and the CG specifically forbids trimming or stomping the grass. The entire CG is on a hill so the gravel sites are somewhat unlevel.  The shower house was OK, but the line to get in was nuts every night and no A/C, so it was also a sauna.  I'd stay there again, but I'd be better prepared for the unlevel sites and skip the shower house.  

 

We slept well and prepared for our next leg of the journey to a CG near Capitol Reef NP.

On 7/30/2018 at 6:58 AM, twiceblessed....nacole said:

Wonderful pictures!  Sounds like an amazing adventure 😊  

We did the SW this year and absolutely LOVED it.  Can't wait to go back!

Thanks for taking the time, to write a TR.  Excited to follow along!

Thanks.  I read your TR and saw you did White Sands.  I remember you asking me about it when I posted a TR for it.  It's a wild place.

Nice pics.  It's on the list of things to do before the kids leave the house.

Alright, breakfast thrown at the kids.  The saga continues...

 

Day 4 - Williams, AZ to Sunset Crater Volcano NP to (unplanned) Wupatki NM to Cedar Breaks NM to CANNONVILLE / BRYCE VALLEY KOA in Cannonville, UT

 

First off, WHAT A DRIVE!  Such a beautiful part of the country.  Lots of elevation changes and some tight quarters on this day.  The route I took isn't for the unprepared or faint of heart behind the wheel.  At one point, I had the trailer almost jacknifed on an overlook in Sunset Crater (DW was not as impressed with my driving as I was with my abilities to deal with my curiosity or stupidity as she called it that day).  

We set out from Williams nice and early.  Check out at the CG was nice and easy.  We arrived at Sunset Crater Volcano NP early in the morning.  We really loved this place.  We hiked two trails and got the JR Badges for the kids.  We stayed about 3 or 4 hours.  We probably could've hiked another trail, but that's about all you need here despite it being strikingly beautiful and interesting.

Kids in front of the Visitor Center.  The NM received a bunch of money for deferred maintenance last year.  The facilities were all recently redone and they were working on repaving the park road.  Really great.

My attempt at artsy photography.  Wildflowers foreground and the volcano in the background

Lava field from the most recent eruption, which is one of the most recent in the area.  It happened 1000s of years ago, but recent in Earth time.  Note that only a few types of plants have figured out how to grow through the ash and rock.  The ridge line with the evergreens in the right background had only trees on it.  It is a good geek out place coupled with beauty.

This is the mouth of the "Ice Cave".  It's actually a lava tube that goes so deep there is always ice formed in the bottom of it.  The air coming out of the cave was around 40 degrees.  It was nuts.  The tube partially collapsed some time ago, so visitors aren't allowed inside anymore, hence the grate on it. 

While we were at the SCVNM Visitor Center, the Rangers mentioned that there was another NM, Wupatki NM, just north of SCVNM.  In fact, there is a NPS maintained road that runs between the two.  The road was in great shape, but some fairly significant elevation changes that would challenge some folks.  Also, don't drive up the overlook that says no RVs over X feet even if you are only 2 feet longer than the warning.  Unless, like me (mentioned above), you want an opportunity to test your driving skills and try out the boundaries of your relationship with your SO. 

The drive to WNM is about 40 mins.  WNM and SCVNM tell an interesting tale.  Several tribes lived near the volcano (also the tribes that lived in and around the Grand Canyon) before the eruption.  In the days leading to the eruption, something tipped them off that the eruption was imminent (leading theory of NPS was animals acting strangely).  Whatever the reason they decided to leave, they all moved to the area where the NM is and set out on a new life 20-30 miles north.  It was an interesting relationship between the two NMs.  SCVNM told the geologic story and WNM told the cultural story.  

Because WNM was added to the schedule on the fly and Cedar Breaks NM was THE park I was most interested to see throughout the whole trip, we didn't get much out of WNM other than a quick lunch in the trailer at the Visitor Center parking lot and a quick drive through the park.  No badges for the kids...something I wished we would've done.  However, it's motivation to come back again and see all the things we missed.

We struck out from WNM.  The route was quite pretty.  Not too many stops or gas stations.  You have to plan your mileage so you don't run out before you get out in the boonies.  We arrived to Cedar Breaks NM mid afternoon.  The road up to CBNM is narrow, windy, and steep (a bit of a theme here, eh?).  The NM is at 10350'.  There was still snow on the ground here and there in mid-JUN.  It didn't impede our travel at all, but a consideration when you want to arrive.  Because of the elevation, the weather was absolutely amazing.  The kids wanted their jackets eventually, but I wanted to soak it in after living in the desert summer for so long.  CBNM is at least a day/overnight spot.  I wanted to hike the few trails and spend a night or two in the onsite CG once I got there.  It is most definitely on our list to return to one day.  Also unbeknownst to me in my research, CBNM is known for a huge wildflower bloom in late JUN.  We missed the bloom by several days.  Their website/facebook communicates the bloom fairly well.  Better make CG ressies early if you want to camp during the bloom (even though you have to make a guess on the bloom days, months in advance.  Be more to the minute Mother Nature!).  They're as hard or harder to get than FW ressies during Christmas.

While we were there, there was a wildfire nearby.  That's what the smoke is in the pictures (and you'll see some smoke in Bryce Canyon pictures in my next post from the fire too).

The breaks.  Very interesting colors and geology made even prettier with the elevation.  Fire off on the right.

Working on those activities for that JR badge!

Even though we missed the main part of the bloom, there were still a lot of flowers showing up early to be first for the "rope drop"

We moved out from CBNM and drove another beautiful route and arrived to our campground just east of Bryce Canyon NP in Cannonville, UT just as the sun was setting.

 

Up next Day 5 at Bryce Canyon NP.

 

Day 2 and 3 - Grand Canyon NP:

 

We set out in the morning for the big ditch.  GCNP is a common destination, won't make a huge post on these days with bunches of hole pictures.  If you have some specific questions, please ask.

We spent Day 2 at the S Rim Visitor Center and nearby POIs on the S Rim, got our Jr Ranger Badges, and got the chance to attend their star festival.  The star festival was great.  Many amateur astronomers and a smattering of pros with telescopes set up, lectures, and more looking up at the sky.  The only tough part was the kids were pooped.  DW and I could've gone longer, but they were done.  We drove back to the camper and recocked for Day 3.

 

We got a slower start this day, better prepared knowing we wanted to document the sunset.  I watched the kids play around in the campground's playground for a bit while DW went to the store to buy a few essentials that we left on the counter back home.  We got up to GCNP and spent the afternoon near the Desert Tower on the east side of the park.  We worked our way back to the S Rim Visitor Center in the late afternoon, grabbed a quickie dinner from the cooler, and found our perch for the sunset.  With my kids being 5 and 8, we didn't want to be so close to the rim.  So our spot was great, but there was some real estate in front of us that a group of about 30 college kids thought would be a great place to set up and be noisy and stand so my kids couldn't see.  We issues enough passive-aggressive dirty looks until we felt satisfied (I'm sure they were really upset.....) and found another perch just before the light show began.  After the sunset, we boogied back to the camper to get ready for another big day on the road.  

 

A few pics:

Showing little man something of interest through my monocular.  I wished I had it handier and had trained them how to use it before we got to the park.  They enjoyed seeing things way out there.

Jr Ranger badges, baby!

Ah-mazing sunset.  Highly recommend it.  The rim erupted in applause when the sun finally dipped below the horizon.  It was quite a view.

 

It's the Grand Canyon.  Must go.  Each day throughout the whole trip, not just here, I carried a backpack with lickies and chewies for the kids, hats, jackets, and water.  It is standard procedure for us and recommend it.  There is ample opportunity to refill water, so for my family of four, we had about 3 quarts of water capacity and snacks for the day.  I regretted not planning kiddo sleep better for the trip.  If we weren't camping newbs and unfamiliar with the camper, if I had to do it again, I probably would've boondocked in the national forest south of the park.  1) We didn't need the hook ups like I feared the family would require 2) We could've gone back and forth to the camper during the day instead of been an hour away from the home on wheels.  We did like the CG overall.  It's a fancy parking lot, but there is grass between every site, so your neighbor's slide isn't threatening to ram your rig.  The amenities are adequate.  The shower house was a bit of a mess by the time we got to it each night and hot water was for the early birds only.  Williams, AZ itself is a wonderful town.  I would've liked to spend more time there, but as I mentioned in my first post, we slammed every second of NPS into our 9 days.  No time for lounging around!

 

We want to go back someday.  We want to spend more time out of the car and down in the canyon.  Also, we want to see the North Rim as well.

 

Next up:  Day 4, a grueling road day from Williams, through three NPS properties, and to our CG outside of Bryce Canyon.

Morning Fiends,

 

I took a trip last summer with the family and never made time to document it, though I have always wanted to share it with the community and because I like remembering it.  So, here we go!

 

I've always wanted to get a RV.  I've rented them a few times for NASCAR races and stayed with friends.  DW wasn't so sure.  I managed to convince that we could rent one an take a roadtrip for vacation to see if this is what we wanted to do.  We rented a RV travel trailer from RVshare.  I found the right owner.  He didn't think I needed to pay off his whole note in two nights of rental and he was easy to work with.  I recommend the technique and the website, but you need to find the right owner to make your experience as pleasurable as ours.  The TT is unremarkable.  It got the job done, so not going to cover much on it.

 

We mapped out a 9 day trip through AZ, UT, and CO centered on NPS properties.  The kids are in love with the Junior Ranger program and I didn't want to hold back their badge collecting!  

 

Day 1 - El Paso to Petrified Forest NP to Williams, AZ:

We're road warriors, so 508 miles didn't make us blink (would much rather take our time to smell the roses, but I don't get to take big chunks of vacation all the time, so we squeezed a lot in on this trip).  The drive from ELP to Silver City, NM is really boring.  Mostly flat, not much scenery, and not much on the side of the road for a potty break, gas, or snacks.  North of Silver City, we got into the Gila and Apache National Forests.  The scenery improved greatly:

Roadside park in the Apache National Forest.  What a view.

DS and DD in their sweet Jr Ranger vests ready to collect their loot and enjoying a leg stretch and a run to the back of the trailer to empty the tanks...with a view.

We arrived to Petrified Forest NP late morning.  PFNP is separated by the highway (connected by bridge) and you can enter from the North or South.  I did some research and the consensus of my research said to enter from the southern end of the park and exit to the north IF you are doing the park in a day or less.  First reason, the southern part of the part is the actual petrified forest where you'll want to spend a lot of time and if you run out in the south, you don't miss the most interesting part of the park.  Second reason, the access to get back on the highway from the northern gate is much easier.  I recommend this technique if you are approaching from the South or the West.  It'd be too many extra miles coming from North/East.

We stopped at the southern Visitor Center and grabbed our Jr Ranger books and a quick lunch before setting out into the park:

One of the 100s of spots to view petrified wood.  IT'S EVERYWHERE!!!!

 

The southern end of the park is reminiscent of the Badlands with a TON of wood scattered all over the ground.

We continued our way north through the park.  We stopped to hike 2 or 3 short trails.  Crystal Forest was one of them.  The others escape my memory a year later.  It was worth to stop for one, but there is so much wood, the unbelievable work of nature got a little repetitive despite the impressive sight of it all.  Near the bridge over the highway there is a old roadbed for Rte 66 with a pull off with some markers about the history of the park and how Rte 66 and the automobile made it grow.  Worth a stop for Mother Road junkies.

The northern part of the park is called the Painted Desert.  It's very picturesque.  Not much to do from the car than a pull off or two.  If you want to get into the heart of it, you have to go on some significant hikes.  Due to time and kids nearing fun expiration dates for the day, we snapped some pictures and moved along.

Sweeping view of the "Painted Desert" with the park road winding along the rim of the valley

We stopped in the northern Visitor Center for some Jr Ranger iron and emptied the bladders for the run to Williams.

The moment DS was begging for all day...gimme that badge!

 

The drive on 40 to Williams, AZ is nice. We didn't take anymore pictures for the day, but I remember being impressed with the mountains and forests.  We arrived to Grand Canyon Railway Hotel and RV Park around dinner time.  We set up camp, ate some grub (spaghetti according to my trip planner.  We didn't follow all the details to the letter...particularly when we ate what meal and what trails we hiked...but this is where I collected all my research and planning for the trip.  And yes, I'm a bit of a planning nerd.  It's basically my job, but we don't fight the plan.  If a trail I researched wasn't recommended by the rangers or the kids revolted on another lunch of cold cuts, we don't always stick to the plan).  We grabbed some showers and some sack time to get ready for 2 days in the Grand Canyon.

11 hours ago, LONE-STAR said:

Congrats I like the colors

Thanks.

 

Oh yeah, saw in my first post I said I'd be moving to DC.  Well the military is dynamic.  About 5 weeks before departing TX, I got notified I'd be going to KS instead.  HR just making things spicy.

---UPDATE---

 

Heck yeah.  We've moved to KS and found a rig.  We met the seller today.  We just have to square away the loan with our bank and his and this little dude is ours.  Over the moon happy.  We hope to have it in our hands by the weekend.  Looking to take a little trip soon to break it in.

The thing out of all this that's surprising to me is that there is a consistent problem of bike theft at the Fort.  It can't be the same two twenty somethings that @ftwildernessguy that are the root of all the thefts, right?  Is the theft arising from other Fortgoers or people coming onto the property to try to score some bikes?  If it were the latter, I feel that the Mouse could piece that together eventually.  If it was consistently random guests having a few too $9 brews from the trading post that could get a bit more difficult to solve.

 

 

Even the most magical campground on Earth still has some %$#@)_#! running around to bring us to back to reality.

Nice trip.  We took a route pretty close to this last year.  Great area and great memories.  

 

I wouldn't be so quick to give up on TX though.  I've only been here for 2 years and I'm moving again, but we've fallen in love with it.  Such a diverse state.

 

Thanks for taking us on the ride.

late to the party, but in.

I like your US Map table.  Is that a big sticker or what?  My kids love understanding where we are on the map.

12 hours ago, Beckers said:

Happy birthday and go buy it before she changes her mind 😂

Have to wait until we're settled this summer, but she's looked for used campers 3 or 4 times since we've talked and told me right before going to bed that she can't wait.  I don't think the mind will to change at this point, but I know what you mean.

38 minutes ago, h2odivers...Ray said:

Happy birthday!!!

Congrats!!!

Btw, can you have your wife call mine?  Lol

She's endured a lot of crazy ideas already.  I don't know if you've laid enough foundation of crazy or she'd be calibrated appropriately to convince.  

My wife and I have talked about buying a trailer and see the country once I get out of the Army.  It's taken some convincing and selling, but renting a trailer last year she started to get the bug.  We've flirted with the idea to buy a trailer when we move this summer.  Not the "dream trailer" we want when we're old farts, but one that's inexpensive, we could kick around in, and sell if necessary (being inexpensive we won't lose our shirts).  

Today as we were driving to lunch for my birthday, out of the blue she asked me if I still want to buy a trailer and she is really excited about the thought.  I can't wait to move now.  We're moving to the DC area which isn't too far for a FW trip.  Happy birthday to me!

Huey Lewis is a bucketlist concert.  Don't think 3MAR is in the cards though.

What a year.  Thanks for documenting and taking us along.  

Man, this is quite a year.  I'm soiling my fruit of the looms if I can get one big trip in per year.

Good to hear you're on the mend a bit.  

late, but in

On 1/12/2018 at 7:16 PM, mouseketab.....Carol said:

very cool!!! Out west I will go someday

It's a totally different world out here.  I never would've thought I'd love it as much as I would when Uncle Sam sent me out here.  Totally worth weeks and months long vacations out here.

On 1/12/2018 at 7:48 PM, DaveInTN said:

Yoda?

Do or do not, there is no someday.

In

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It's from the top secret notebook that the CM's at the Reception Outpost use as a reference. 
TCD

Sooooooo sounds like it's not for sharsesies. When is the declassification date? I'll FOIA WDW for it then

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TCD, where is that drawing from?  I like it.

I'm a newbie and dream of Fort living, but hope the site doesn't die. I've done an immeasurable amount of research.

Love it and it can't go

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I think you need to drop the "rookie" part. That is a great TR. Thanks 

Thanks. It was the first one... everyone was a newbie once. I'll upgrade to "novice" or "apprentice" TR next go

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