Moving from Grand Canyon to Dolores, CO

After spending a week in Williams, AZ at the Grand Canyon Hotel and RV park (and kennel) we had heard enough trains in the middle of the night.  Great park, but too many trains.  This hotel/RV park also own the Grand Canyon Railroad and are on contract to the National Park to run the train into the park everyday.  They seemed to keep the RV park and hotel full most nights.  We had a lot of fun in Williams at all the Route 66 restaurants, bars, shops, and art galleries.

So we left Williams on Monday morning and drove up the edge of the Painted Desert and through Monument Valley.

One of the oddities of this trip was, we became the tourist attraction during a lunch stop at Burger King.  We stopped at the BK in Kayenta, AZ and it was a large one.  They had several buses and RVs parked in the back in a big gravel lot.  The buses were filled with vacationers from Switzerland and they had never seen a fifth wheel 40' long being pulled by a heavy duty pickup.  So several of the tourist came up and took pictures of us and the trailer and had tons of questions.

We overnighted in Mexican Hat so we could have a steak at the Swingin Steak Restaurant.  We got there early enough to get some photos of some of the rock formations on the edge of a thunderstorm. Made for some interesting pictures.  I have those on Flickr.

On Tuesday we drove on to Dolores, CO and picked Priest Gulch RV campground on the Dolores river in the San Juan National Forest.  We heard about the campground from new friends we made in Williams, AZ.  Charlie and Jennie are also Montana RV owners.  They also told us about a road trip to do up in southern Colorado; the San Juan Skyway.  We will be doing that this week.  More on that later.

The Grand Canyon

We had a perfect day to visit the Grand Canyon.  The weather was cool, sunny, and clear. That made for better pictures and easier walking.  We drove up instead of riding the train, which would have been fun, but it's would have limited our time in the park.  We got there before the train arrived, but had to wait 20 minutes to get past the gate.  We had the Senior Lifetime pass which was only $10 when we got it, but it saved us $30 at the Grand Canyon National Park.  They had 4 lanes and all were 20 cars deep.  I'm glad we were here now and not in the summer.

After finding a parking place we jump on the Blue shuttle bus to go to the visit center/bus depot. They have 3 bus loops, the Blue Shuttle loops around the middle of the park and connects to the Red and Orange loops.  The Red loop takes you to the Hermits Rest out west and the Orange Loop takes you east to Yaki Point.  The Visitor center is walking distance to most of the rest of the park.  But that's a matter of point of view.  We road the bus to the visitor center with 4 girls with backpacks who had just finished 150 miles hike to the bottom and back up, and around the Colorado river basin.

There were tons of foreign visitors and too many of them climbed out past the safety barriers to take selfies.  I ask a Ranger if they had many fall and he said they had more than you'd guess, but only the fatalities make the national news.

The trip out to Hermits Rest is only accessible in the busy season by the Red shuttle bus and was a part of the park we've never seen.  It is where you have the best view of the Colorado River from 5000' above.

On the way out of the park we took the east exit past a number of view points that were also new to me.  At the end we went to the Desert View Watchtower. The east exit took us past much better views than the route we took into the park from Williams.  We exited through Cameron and then south to Flagstaff.  We stopped in Flagstaff at Cracker Barrel, which was our first stop at a national chain restaurant this trip, but we needed the taste of home cooking and there isn't any out west except at Cracker Barrel.

All in all a great day.  While I'm not a fan of crowds, the Park service handles them well, at least in the spring.  I have photos uploaded to Flickr, here.

Williams and Sedona

We had a long drive from Benzon, AZ up to Williams, AZ on Monday and picked the Grand Canyon Railroad and Hotel RV park. We got a good rate for 7 days so we are using it as a base camp. I'm surprised how busy they are.  Can't imagine what the summer looks like.

Since we bypassed Sedona on the way up, we decided to go back down there in just the truck on Tuesday to see what all the fuss was about.  We'd heard it was a must see.  Well, not so much in my mind.  Our first mistake was to take the scenic route 89A down from Flagstaff, thinking it was, well scenic. 

The road was very curvy with very few pull off for taking pictures.  If you found a wide spot in the road it was already taken.  Keep in mind this is Tuesday in early May, not July 4th weekend.  We found a few pull-offs, that charged to park and take pictures and they were full.

So I was not in a great frame of mind when we came into the "city".  Finally found a public parking lot, but not designed for trucks, so we sort of cheated and used Martha's still valid handicap parking sticker since there were lots of those in the lot.

Next we hiked to the main drag for some lunch and found a nice place.  Our goal was a place with a view.  Found one, took some photos while we enjoyed the most expensive hamburger and grilled cheese & mushroom sandwich I've every seen. 

After lunch we looked into taking a jeep tour off road in hopes to get a better view of the red mountains.  $90 per person!!  You can get a special deal on Southwest Airlines cheaper than that.  So we passed on that.  Maybe I can find a video of the trip on Youtube.

So we headed back up to Williams and stopped to take some pictures and got a good one of the high peak you see out of Flagstaff.  It was still snow covered. (Link to Flickr photos)

After a stop for groceries, we went bar hopping.  The first one was clearly a tourist place.  $7 for a craft beer that made me miss the pubs back home with their $4 beers that are clearly better.

On to a local bar next.  It's famous we are told, mainly because it's the oldest bar in Williams, first to reopen after Prohibition, and has a theater as part of the bar that was the first one in Arizona.  It's 110 years old, if I remember right.  It's called Sultana.  Met a retired local couple who moved here 5 years ago after retiring and RVing around the USA for 6 years.  Picked Williams because it was a small interesting town.  They still ride their Harley's up to Sturgis, SD when the need arises. 

So the day ended on a positive note aided by mass quantities of alcohol.

People you meet

This won't be new information to my RVing friends as they already know all this stuff. We've stopped at all kinds of RV campground on this trip and met a lot of folks.  All have been friendly and outgoing.  Much more outgoing than in any regular neighborhood. It's so typical of RVer's in my opinion.  It's probably due to the fact that you aren't in any place too long and if you want any human interaction you have to be willing to just walk up and start talking to folks.

The parks we've been at the most have been SKP co-op parks.  SKP is synonym for Escapees which is the real name of the RV club. As co-op parks, all the lots are leased by the owners and visitors like us can rent the sites when the owners are out traveling.  In the southwest most of these parks are full in the winter when it's cold back home and almost empty in the summer when it's hot here.

These co-op parks are interesting.  The lease holder can add little building on the lot for all kinds of purposes besides storage.  They can be living rooms, laundry rooms, porches, etc. Whatever they need space for when they are here for the six months they are here in the winter.

These parks have tons of activities in the winter to keep folks busy.  In addition to that some of the people find jobs or volunteer work to fill their time.  I met a retired attorney yesterday who filled his time in winter with being an arbitrator for civil cases under $10k for the county court system.

It's also interesting what people do in the summers.  Some just go visiting and touring around the country, somewhere it's cooler than the southwest.  Others have jobs lined up.  Working for a state or national park.  This usually means they get all their campground fees paid, and sometimes a small salary.  But most important to some is the access they get in the parks.  They are cleared to go where park visitors can't go and see some things that aren't viewed by normal visitors.  They are also there for all the great events, like animal migrations or births of young, and don't have to get lucky to catch something interesting the way normal visitors have to.  Some people have co-op sites up north and here in the southwest and just move as the weather changes.

Obviously the folks that do this are full timers, meaning they sold their house and everything they owned that wouldn't fit in the RV.  As one fellow I talked to yesterday said, he traded possessions for experiences.  A large percentage of these folks are experts at living inexpensively.  Most have solar so they can live for a week or so without any hookups for as little as $5 a day. They also know all the great food places where locals eat and avoid the high priced tourist chain restaurants.

A trend I found interesting at SKP Saguaro Co-op in Benson, AZ is having 2 campers.  A number of these folks have setup their original RV like a 5th wheel trailer on the site and have never moved it.  So they buy RV's like Class Bs, or truck campers so they can go boon-docking as a group for short trips while they are in residence at the Co-op.  They have a big storage area near the campground to park their second RV or boats, etc.

Ft. Huachuca

We took a quick trip over to Ft. Huachuca, AZ.  The fort dates back to when the frontier settlers need protection from the Apache and Mexicans.  It became the fort that trained and housed the 10 Cavalry commonly called the Buffalo Soldiers.  Until desegregation come to the Army after WWII, the black cavalry soldiers were all trained and commanded from Ft. Huachuca.

When the army got serious about electronic signal intelligence, they needed a electronically quiet place to do their research.  The valley where Ft Huachuca is located provided that dead zone without much interference.   So beside the frontier history, and the Buffalo Soldier history, there is the SIGINT history and current work for Military Intelligence (MI).

Because it's an active military base, we had to clear security and get badges to enter.  The fort is right under some mountains and has a great view in all directions.  We went up the top and took some photos looking into the valley.



There are really 2 museums.  The legacy museum and the MI museum.  We did both and we enjoyed both.  The legacy museum is located in a part of the fort that is original.  The museum is housed in the old officers club.



The MI museum is in a more modern section of the fort.  It's located in the same building as the MI Library and has a lot of interesting artifacts like a piece of the Berlin Wall, an Enigma machine, etc. I remember when Intel shipped tons of Xenix 8086 computers to Ft. Huachuca for use in MI.  I never knew what they used them for.

I posted some other photos on Flickr

Tombstone revisited

On Monday we went back to Tombstone to finish looking at stuff that was too busy on Saturday. The city was less crowded but they still had a nice crowd. Everything was still open.

We went to the Courthouse museum and looked at a lot of the artifacts.  It's interesting how the names you remember from the Tombstone movies are listed all over town, but when you dig into the facts you find the truth or a better, more believable story.

The courthouse had some of the old rooms still furnished as in the 1880's and the courtroom had been restored back to the 1880 look.


Next we when to Big Nose Kate's for lunch. Nice old western bar. The food was surprising good. Also got to try some Prickly Pear Tequila.


After lunch we went to a unique museum. Its big draw is the oldest rose bush.



The owners of the museum are the original owners of the house and they saved everything, so there some great family photos and artifacts. Like one the original owner and his son sitting with Geronimo at a peace conference. Also one of the family members was a Doolittle raider in WWII.

I have a lot of photos on Flickr

Titan Missile Museum

This was a unique museum. There can't be any other missile museum on a Titan II silo site with a Titan II missile inside because the Salt II treaty that Reagan signed with the USSR required us to blow up all the other silos and dismantling all the missiles. There is a special exception for this silo and missile. It's allowed to exist for educational purposes, but the lid of the silo must be opened so the Russians can use satellites to verify the missile is not active, plus they can come over and spend $8.50 for a ticket and take the tour like we did.

What you see when you get to the museum is the building they built to house the offices, gift shop and briefing room, all of which didn't exist when the site was active.  Everything else is underground with lids a few feet above the ground.  There are also a lot of nice cactus beds that were flowering this time of year.


You go into the silo via a set of 55 steps the way the airmen did when they reported to work. There is also a handicapped elevator that use to be for freight.


Since the silo is hardened against a direct nuclear strike there was a lot of thick walls made of reinforced concrete and steel.  Doors were 4', 6', and 8' feet thick as you got deeper into the silo.


Once we got into the control room where the officers would launch the missiles, the guide, who actually worked there when he was in the Air Force, walked us through the process of how they would get the command to launch a missile if it were every required. There were alarms, flashing light and recorded messages to put a little real life into the tour.

Next we went to the part of the silo where the missile was housed, a few hundred feet away through a tunnel.



From the photos you can see we were about half way up the missile looking up.

Next we went outside to see the missile from above, which you could do because the large concrete lid was slide open.


Inside the museum there were a few interesting displays including the ones related to some movies shot at the museum including one of the Star Trek movies.

I have a number of additional photos on Flickr