Southwest Adventures – Journey Reeb

Hi Everyone! Do you believe summer is officially over, now that Labor Day has past??? How did that happen so quick? But fall is a great time of year just about anywhere, I think. We’ve been having fun on our tour of the Southwest. I have so much to share with you. Grab a cup of tea and settle in!

I mentioned in my last post how much we were loving our Southwest Colorado location in the mountains. We loved it so much we booked the exact same campground site for the month of September 2019. Not sure where all we’re going to go next year, but we know we’ll be at that spot for September.

We ended up cancelling some of our Utah plans for the first couple weeks of August, and stayed in Southwest Colorado longer than originally planned. A great benefit of traveling this way, we can change our plans and our location when we want to. We moved around to a couple of campgrounds in the same general area, staying in the San Juan mountains, north of Durango. We met a very nice couple at one campground that we hiked with for a few days, which was fun, and they were full of good information about places we were headed. And, on another hike, we ran into a friend of a friend. It was so weird – we hiked up a mountain, in a light rain, to the top where there was a nice little lake. There was only one person at the lake, with 2 dogs. Of course Gerry had to go say hi, and we started talking. The usual, where are you from, where are you staying, where are you going type of talk. Turns out, he was from Delaware, Ohio, their kids went to the same school as ours (different ages, though), and we have met he and his wife a few times at graduation party and wedding of a mutual friend. And he was staying at a campground just up the road from us. So he kindly invited us over one evening for a nice visit, he played guitar and sang while we enjoyed each others company. Small world!

We visited Durango a few times, a nice western town with a lot of services and shopping, and some good grocery stores. We now rate towns based on the availability of good grocery stores. We have changed how we eat fairly considerably in the last year and look for grocery stores with good selection of organic produce and also seek out farmers markets everywhere we go. I have been surprised how many towns and areas do not have access to good, fresh, organic produce. Food deserts do exist, we have found some of them!

Anyhow, we traded a couple of weeks of hot, sandstone bluffs and canyons in Utah for mountains, trees and cooler temperatures in Colorado. So glad we did. When we moved out of the mountains we stopped for a few days in Cortez, Colorado, which is right in the southwest corner of the state. We went to Mesa Verde National Park, where we took a tour into the Pueblo Cliff Dwellings. Very cool, you have to climb up big ladders to get to the cliff dwellings. Amazing how people built these and lived there around 1100 AD.

Then we moved on to Lake Powell in Page, Arizona. Lake Powell straddles the Arizona/Utah state line. Lake Powell was formed in the 1960s, when they built a dam in the Colorado river. Glen Canyon was then flooded and Lake Powell was born. It is the second largest dam, after Hoover Dam. They are in year 8 of a drought, and 52% of the lake is gone – 92 feet down. We walked along the lake every day, our campground was right on the lake. A state park campground, Wahweep, which was very nice. We walked to the shore for sunrise a couple of mornings which was beautiful. But, since the lake is so much smaller now, you have to walk down quite a ways on what used to be underwater.

We did a raft tour on the Colorado river, through Glen Canyon which was very nice and a good way to see the area from a different perspective. We went through the famous “Horseshoe Bend” on the raft, then later went on top of the canyon to take a picture of the Horseshoe Bend. You’ll see it in the pictures.

We also went to Antelope Canyon while in the area. Antelope Canyon is a “slot” canyon (I had to look it up, didn’t know what that meant). It’s a very narrow canyon, more like a “slot” in the ground, that has been formed by water and wind. The result is amazing sandstone formations that swirl all around you with light coming in from the slot over your head. Lots of pictures for you from there!

That area has some famous hiking, most notably “The Wave”, in the Vermillion Cliffs. We were very close to that area and wanted to do some hikes. The Wave is so popular they do a lottery system and only 10 people a day are chosen. So we didn’t even try that. But, we learned of another hike, Wire Pass to Buckskin Gulch that started right next to the trail to the Wave, and was promised to be “one of the best hikes in the US”. According to a book I have that I have found to be pretty reliable. So off we go, leaving Gerry behind in the RV in the air conditioning because he really can’t handle the heat. We were loaded with water, healthy snacks, proper clothing, etc, etc, etc. The trailhead is at the end of an 8 mile, very rough, dirt, US Forest Service road. We couldn’t go more than 7 or 8 mph. But we knew that and had planned for it. WELL. At mile 6 we see a tow truck coming the other direction, with a Jeep Cherokee behind it. Not a good sign. The Jeep waves us down and tells us the road is flooded up ahead, they got completely stuck and had to be towed out. We had read about how that was possible, and if a tow was needed, expect to pay $1,000 (yes, $1,000) for it. Seriously, it was 90 and sunny with no shade at 10:00 am. Dry as you can imagine. How is this possible??? But, we received flash flood warnings on our phones every day, they say there are severe downpours, very isolated, and they turn these dirt roads, with nothing to stop the water flow into dangerous situations. SO, we turned around, and did not get to hike One of The Best Hikes In the US. Bummer.

After Lake Powell we went straight north to the Hatch, Utah area. Right between Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park (about 1 hour either direction to each park). A very remote campground, called Wilderness Ranch and probably the strangest campground we’ve stayed at yet. The people owned 500 acres, and the RV sites were at the back of the property, down some long dirt/gravel roads. No bathrooms, no showers, no laundry facility. But, huge RV sites with full hookups in the middle of nowhere with beautiful views. And, there were only a couple of other RVs there so we had the place to ourselves. There was also a golf course on the property. Weird, I know. It needed some work and the owner had plans to improve it and try to make it an area attraction. Anyhow, we enjoyed several days of wondering the property with Gerry, listening to the coyotes at night and oh my goodness, the stars!! We saw the Milky Way several nights, I have never seen so many stars. We also went to Bryce Canyon National Park (lots of pictures). Beautiful there, and we did a great 6 mile hike. Of course we had to leave Gerry behind, doggies are not welcome at national parks. 🙁 We did not make it to Zion National Park (I hear your gasps and shock!) But, we just didn’t want to do another day without Gerry and we loved the property we were on and didn’t muster the energy to go there. We’ll keep it on the list for another time.

Speaking of Gerry. A little update is needed: he developed these warts (2 big ones) on his nose/lip area. We found out it is from a contagious virus. How did we find out you ask?? Well, we were signing him in at a doggy day care in Durango when the owner saw them and said “oh no! He can’t come in here! Those are contagious!!” A phone call to our vet back home, some pictures sent, and they agreed. So we went to a vet in Durango who suggested we get his immune system to kick in to fight it by crushing the warts. They assured us it wouldn’t hurt him. So they did. And we gave it 2 weeks and it didn’t work. All the while we couldn’t take Gerry to any doggy day care, which made it hard for us to go to national parks because we don’t like to leave him alone in the RV for more than a few hours.

So, while we were at Wilderness Ranch, we drove to Cedar City, Utah, about an hour and 15 minutes each way, to see a vet who surgically removed them. Gerry had to have anesthesia, but he did well and we took him home the same day. Happy to report he is healing well and hoping he will be fit for doggy day care again soon.

We moved from Wilderness Ranch south to Fredonia, Arizona, which is right outside Kanab, Utah. This was our home base to go to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Terrible RV park, and we ended up cutting our time there short by a few days. But, we had a great visit to the North Rim, and did a great hike there too. Hard, as we went about 1.5 miles down into the canyon, then back up and it was very steep. We had planned to go about 3 miles down, then up, but, we ran into a Ranger on the way down, who was telling everyone to turn around and go back up, a storm was coming. Evidently, the day before, on the same trail, people were stranded for a few hours during a storm, water floods the trail since it is between high canyon walls and is very dangerous. So, we took his advise and turned around. The weather cleared up somewhat while we walked around the rim, although you’ll see in the pictures there was a storm over the canyon, a few miles out. Beautiful. Lots of pictures for you. We haven’t been to the South Rim yet, that will be in the next couple of weeks. But we loved the North Rim.

While in the Kanab, Utah area, we also visited Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. Thank you, Janet, for telling us about this great place! Best Friends is a 3,700 acre, no kill sanctuary for all types of companion animals: dogs, cats, horses, pigs, goats, bunnies, exotic birds. They have about 1,600 animals on site at any given time. They have a very active national outreach program that works with shelters in cities all over the country to reduce the kill rates at shelters. They have neuter/spay locations all over the country and run many other programs with the goal of reducing the number of animals killed in shelters every day. We did a tour of the property, met some doggies and kitties and had lunch in their cafeteria overlooking a beautiful canyon. Check them out, animal lovers, they do great work! Somehow we left there without another doggie in tow, but it was hard!

RV Update: I told you before about some of the wood trim coming off. Well guess what? On one moving day two or three weeks ago, I opened the door to start my set up process (put slides out, etc) and found our 50″ Samsung smart TV lying on the floor. Yup, the wall bracket had come out of the wall, above the fireplace, and it lay shattered on the floor. The road had been bumpy that day. And perhaps there is a cumulative effect from all the bumpy roads. Who knows? We have never used the TV much, mostly for DVD movies. I’ve mentioned before we never set up the DirectTV, we have never used the cable option that some campgrounds have at the hookups, we do sometimes get “air” channels if we are near a city and will watch a little TV then. But most of the time, we don’t use it for anything but watching DVD movies. We have built an impressive DVD collection, I must say. So, we have no TV now in the living area. We have been using the bedroom TV to watch DVDs. We had never turned that TV on before this happened, but it was easy to figure out how to use it. And, if things get really rough, we still have the outside TV we have never turned on. It is under the awning on the outside, I think people use it for things like football parties, etc. Again, we have never turned it on, I would have to figure out how to use it if we wanted to. One of the best things, I think, about how we live in the RV is that we don’t watch TV. I know some of you may think we are crazy (for so many reasons!) but it is amazing how different life is when time is spent on other things (talking to each other for example 🙂 ) rather than watching TV.

We are also having somewhat of an issue with our water intake valve. When we hook up to the water spigot at the campgrounds, which feeds directly into our water pipes, some water is seeping into the fresh water tank (which you would fill if you were not going to have access to a fresh water hook up). This happens sometimes, not always. My best un-mechanical minded guess is that a valve or flap of some sort separates the fresh water tank from the water hookup and the valve does not hold sometimes. Anyhow, we are keeping an eye on the monitor for the fresh water tank and when it fills up we empty it. The danger is that if we forget to check it, it could overflow and flood the RV somehow. Oh well, all in all, we are very happy with our RV and how it works.

So that brings us up to the present moment. We are currently at the Grand Canyon Railway RV park, in Williams, Arizona. This will be home base for 10 days. Bill is coming to visit, and, I am going to St. Paul to help Guy finish up some things at the new Sober House for a few days. Residents are beginning to move in (sooner than planned) and we need to finish up a few improvements and furnishings. It will be great to spend a few days with Guy and see Aspire Sober Living receive it’s first resident. Life is good.

Before I go, I have a confession to make. I have not even opened up the box for the external hard drive we bought to make room on the computer for Steve’s pictures. Just have not had the motivation to tackle that project, it is not my cup of tea, so to speak!! So, in the meantime, phone pictures will have to do. I think you will notice how much better our new phone cameras are (remember the 5 hour Verizon ordeal in my last post?!) Anyhow, I hope you enjoy the pictures!

Sorry for the long post, but I had a lot of catching up to do! Thank you everyone for the comments and well wishes, we love hearing from you.