Canyons

I began my week in Navajo Mountain National Monument. It was relatively warm, but often in the afternoon, the wind picked up and sitting outside wasn’t an enjoyable option. So Cosmo and I spent some time in the van reading (me) and looking out the window hoping to spot another dog (Cosmo) and taking naps (both of us.) We met a very nice neighbor named Donna who also lives in a Roadtrek 190 Versatile (same as mine only a year older). We had the usual nomad stories to swap but in addition, could also get some pointers from each other about living in an old Roadtrek. We sat in the sun at a picnic table one afternoon and chatted for hours.  On a windier day, she came over and we sat in the back of my van at my “dining room table” and visited.  It was delightful getting to know her.

 The night before I was to leave and head south to visit the Grand Canyon, it got very windy. I woke up a couple times (or maybe Cosmo woke me up) because the wind was rocking the van and there was a sound like we were being pelted by tiny pebbles.  I pulled myself far enough out of my deep sleep to realize it was raining. The sound soothed me right back to sleep.  At the first light of dawn, I woke up and heard the same sound and realized it wasn’t rain, but sleet. My heat was on and I got up and opened the cupboard doors under my sink and the bathroom door. It was definitely freezing out and I have such a fear that if it ever gets too cold my pipes could burst. I’ve been advised that it would have to be below freezing for hours or that it would have to be way below freezing for a shorter time to do damage.  I was not ready to test that theory so I opened up the spaces where there were interior pipes so the heat could get in. I turned on my hot water heater and after a few minutes turned on the hot and cold faucets on my sink to let some water flow through. I don’t know how much any of this helps, but I felt I needed to be proactive in some way, and believed that if I let hot water move into the pipes, it would take longer to freeze. 

As I sat in bed having coffee and scanning news headlines, the sleet sounds subsided.  I looked out and it was snowing. Snowing HARD.  I immediately thought “Be careful what you wish for!” having just recently sung the praises of having a “snow day”, I realized that I was thinking of another time and place. A snow day here was not going to be a sit-back-and-take-it-easy kind of day. My plan was to head south toward the Grand Canyon. I’ve never driven the van in snow, nor do I intend to. But which would be more dangerous, to drive in the snow or stay camped up on an mountain risking bursting pipes from the freezing temperatures and wind chills? I didn’t have to decide as the snow stopped after about a half hour. It was still freezing and my planned destination for that day was going to have a low of 32 degrees overnight.  I soon got packed up and hit the road.

My first quest was for propane. My gage showed I had a third of a tank.  I’m not sure if it is totally accurate. If my heater was going to be running most of the night, I wanted a better margin of error, so I found a place through Google, about half an hour out of my way that had propane.  On the way, I found another gas station that also sold propane. I went in and asked if someone could pump it for me (You have to be certified in most states to pump propane into an RV).  There was a man and a woman standing behind the counter. They looked at me like I was from another planet and said “We’re not pumping propane today.”  I said “Today?  Do you HAVE propane?”  The woman said “Yeah, but we’re not pumping it today. You know…the weather.”  My first thought was that everyone else coming and going were Navajo, and they just weren’t going to be bothered with an old white man.  My second thought was “They are just too lazy to be bothered putting a coat on and going outside to do their job.”  I thanked them and headed down the road 20 miles to my original destination. When I got there, a sign said something very official sounding like “Entering Navajo Department of the Interior Land.”  I sighed and kept my fingers crossed. I drove a mile into the Navajo Reservation. I found the Spirit Gas Station and Market. I got out, the only white man in the lot. I went inside and asked the cashier about propane. She was not only Navajo, but she had Downs Syndrome. She couldn’t have been nicer.  It took two tries to find someone who could pump propane into my tank, but within 15 minutes I had a full tank and some groceries to boot. Everyone was very polite.  I headed south to a town called Tuba City, AZ (I swear I’m not making that up). I checked into an RV park for $29. They had hot showers, full hook-ups (meaning I could top off my fresh water tank) and laundry facilities. That sounded like a bargain to me. I parked, plugged in to give my solar charger a rest for the night, did a load of laundry and took a L-O-N-G HOT Shower. It was heaven. The shower and adjoining dressing room was big enough that I could have parked my van in it.  I cranked the water up to just a half notch below scalding and washed my hair, put conditioner on it, did the same for my beard, and let the steamy water wash over me.  I hadn’t realized how cold I had been until I felt the hot water on my dry skin.

I went back to the van and retrieved my travel partner. We walked just a few feet to a very nice dog park. It was not only fully fenced in and large enough for Cosmo to run, but it had agility items inside the fence: A tunnel to run through, A piece of vertical plywood with two cut out circles for Cosmo to jump through (and he did) and also a teeter totter which, when I tried to get him to walk across it, I swear I heard him say (under his breath) “You MUST be out of your mind.”  We both had fun. Then we went back to the van and I spent a couple hours sorting out my possibilities for visiting the Grand Canyon the next day.  With my recent miscalculation about the weather on Navajo Mountain, I was checking and re-checking the weather on several online sources. Not only did the overnight low temperature change from source to source, but the temperature varied dramatically from point to point within the park itself. I’m guessing that elevation is the key factor. One place said the low for the night would be 34; another said 28.  But if I drove 20 minutes farther south of the park that changes to 28 and 14. I don’t like 34, but I can be certain it won’t damage my water tanks and pipes.  14 degrees is out of the question. I also noted that the park is huge and some of it remains closed for the winter. They do have campsites that are first come/first served. They cannot be reserved. You just need to show up and see if any are left. The campground is at the west side of the park and I planned to enter from the east side. From what I read, it was a short distance, but quite a long drive (time-wise) from east to west.  I decided to go into the park (not too deeply) on the first day, then drive back out. There is some great BLM land just 2 miles to the east of the east entrance. Assuming it wasn’t totally full, I planned to stay there the first night. (It’s an hour and a half drive from where I was at the RV park to the east entrance. It looked to be about another hour to the campground. So, if I drove from the RV park to the campground, it would’ve been about a 2-and-a-half-hour drive.  But if I stayed on BLM land the first night, I could get up early and drive an hour to the west side campground and hope for a chance to get a spot.  If I didn’t get one, I had the rest of the day to drive back to the east entrance, stop and see the canyon along the way and still get back to BLM land before dark to get settled in again.

The night before I left for Grand Canyon National Park, the weather took a drastic turn for the worse.  I chose this particular RV park because it was in a town that weather.com told me was supposed to have a low temperature of 32 that night and it was about an hour and a half away from GCNP. Before I went to bed, I checked the weather again and it said it would reach 25. That wasn’t good. I’ve managed to survive temperatures down to 29 degrees before. But 25 degrees? That scared me.  I turned on my hot water heater, and opened my cupboards again to let the heat in.  I packed my outdoor shower faucet with blankets, and I turned my heat up to 60.  It ran most of the night. I got up every couple hours and turned on the faucets inside to let water flow through. It always did, so perhaps those measures worked for preventing anything from freezing or bursting.

Sadly, Grand Canyon Day was pretty much a bust. When I got up that morning after very little sleep, I checked the weather at GC.  It said the low that night would be 41.  I found a lot of different BLM land outside the park—just 2 miles away in Kaibab National Forest.  I tried to get the weather forecast for that, but it is a HUGE forest so I wasn’t very confident that the forecast would be accurate.  In a city to the east of the forest, it said it would get down to 31; in Tusayan, AZ to the south, it was going to be 17.  I drove to the BLM land and got there effortlessly except for a very strong headwind most of the way.  I stopped at the BLM land, and it was an easy set-up.  I checked Weather.com again which wasn’t easy because I had only one bar of Verizon cell service. I could barely get weather.com to work, but after a few tries, it said it would be down to 20 where I was for most of the night.  I couldn’t do that.  I finally got enough of a signal to get on my laptop, and it said it would get down to 14. I knew I couldn’t stay as much as that spot was perfect for my plans. I was about to turn around and go back to the RV park I stayed at the night before, but I knew if I did, I would not drive all the way back (an hour and a half) to Grand Canyon anytime soon. So I went into the park. There was a line at least half a mile long. There were gates; one was closed. It took about half an hour for me to get in, and I went to the first viewing site. I guess it was pretty spectacular, but it looked so much better in most of the photos I’ve seen taken at sunrise or sunset. There was a haze and the canyon looked like a backdrop for a movie. There were so many people there, in spite of the weather, it was difficult to get a picture without people in it.

I went to the gift shop and bought a “Night Sky” t-shirt. That was, I guess, my consolation prize for driving all the way there and getting ready to turn around and drive back to where I’d come from. They had a snack bar/Native Crafts building.  It advertised “Coffee Drinks and Ice Cream.”  I decided to treat myself to a cappuccino for the long ride back to the RV park. I went in and they had an extensive menu of coffee drinks. The cappuccino sounded perfect. Then I looked to the counter and I saw a handwritten sign that said “Today’s hot drinks: fresh brewed coffee and hot chocolate ONLY.”  I left disappointed.  I’ve often though on the road that this country is falling apart at the seems. When I waited in line to get into the park, I calculated that they were charging $32 a car to enter. There were at least 30 cars ahead of me, probably more. That’s roughly $2,000 an hour they are taking in.  Could they not afford to hire another attendant at the entrance? There were two other entrances collecting admission fees as well. They probably made enough in 3 minutes to hire an extra attendant at each gate. There were throngs of people in the snack bar/gift shop. Why did they advertise such an extensive coffee menu and not have most of the items available? I wouldn’t have been disappointed had their menu outside advertised coffee and hot chocolate.

I had trouble trying to navigate back to the RV park because there was no cell signal in GCNP nor on most of the Navajo land surrounding it.  The Navajo land I was on felt very much like a third-world country, especially on the reservation. The roads were in ill-repair and the parking lots were unpaved with such deep ruts and potholes they were dangerous. The (mostly) double wide pre-fab homes were falling apart. The poverty was depressing. I finally got to a small town and pulled into a Gas Station/Native Crafts/Burger King parking lot. I got a cell signal and got my GPS coordinates entered to get back “home.”  I decided since I didn’t get coffee, I’d get myself an Impossible Whopper.  There was no entrance to Burger King. You had to go to the far end of this strip-mall building, through the Chevron Station, then walk through the craft section and then into Burger King. The line was ridiculously long, but I was hungry and didn’t want to set up and cook in the parking lot, so I waited.  When it was finally my turn, I said I wanted an Impossible Whopper (which was prominently advertised on the display above the counter) and the woman behind the counter said “Oh, we don’t have those today.”  Once again, I turned and walked out. That just wasn’t my day. I got back into the van and made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and then headed back to the RV park.  I drove through to check out spots before going inside to pay. I noticed another van at a smaller spot that had no hookups. I didn’t need hookups that night, so when I went inside, I inquired about the smaller sites. The woman behind the counter told me they were tent spaces. I asked if I could park my van in one. She said that would be fine. It was cheaper, and had stockade fencing along two sides, that would really help shield against the wind. There were still a few hours before dark, so Cosmo and I went to the dog park and played until he was tired out.

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The next morning we moved back to Navajo Mountain National Monument. We had stayed there last weekend before it started snowing and we drove to the Grand Canyon. I liked it there and wanted to spend some down time in a quiet spot. If you are laughing because I am retired, wandering aimlessly about the country and still feel a need for “down time” I get it. My life is mostly about down time. But in the last couple of weeks, I had a flat tire, a broken ball joint that almost caused me to lose a front wheel, and a couple of overnight hard freezes that made me stress over damaging my van’s plumbing system. I guess when you get used to a lifestyle of low stress, even minor things can feel taxing. Also, I was supposed to meet up next week with people I’d met in California, and they informed me they’d changed plans and moved everything up a week. I found myself rushing from where I was to where they wanted to be so I could spend a couple of days with them. Again, I’d broken one of only two rules I’d set for myself: Never set deadlines. Every time I’ve broken this rule, I’ve felt unhappy. I’m hoping this was the final straw and that I don’t have to keep re-learning this lesson.

The days spent at Navajo Mountain have been quiet and peaceful. Many people come in one night and leave in the morning. A few stay a couple days. One guy was here when I came last weekend, was still here when I returned after my Grand Canyon adventure, and shows no sign of leaving. I hope to stay for a week or so. It’s giving me an opportunity to play with my camera, and learn new apps like Light Room (Light Room is to digital photography what the darkroom is to film photography), Instagram, and Flickr.  For those of you who’d like to see some of my photography, you can visit flickr.com and look under “people” for Scott Blackson, or you can just click this link:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/195383419@N07/

 Lessons from the Road: There are a number of factors to consider in living a nomadic life. At the top of the list is “where do I want to go next?” I get to choose where I’ll live tomorrow or next week, or during the summer. I’ve always had a vague notion that such thoughts are tentative at best. Last summer when I was new to the road I lived under the fantasy that I could control the temperature by driving to where it would most likely be 70 degrees and sunny. A month into my journey in the middle of the Badlands of South Dakota, we hit a heat wave. It was triple digits, and it was very unpleasant, and, I thought at the time, it could be life-threatening to be trapped in a tiny metal box on wheels, with a dog, in the 105 degree plus temperature range. I pulled out my maps to see where I could drive to that might be more accommodating. There was nowhere within a 5-hour drive that was under 100. The entire northwest was setting records for heat, and it was only predicted to get worse in the coming days. 

I thought that was a fluke. I wouldn’t let that happen again, but then there I was this week, on top of a mountain watching the snow come down. Was I going to get snowed in? Was I going to have my pipes freeze and possibly burst? Was there a place I could drive to that day where the temperatures would not dip below 32? All these thoughts added another layer to nomadic life. Sometimes I can choose where I’d like to head next. Other times the weather (and I suspect other factors that remain as of yet undiscovered by me) force the decisions.

The other lesson this week is to stop/breathe/regroup. Although I promised not to impose deadlines on myself, I have still been doing so. Sometimes hard deadlines like “I have to get to such and such a place in time to…” or soft deadlines like “If I want to make it to Oregon this summer, then by such and such a date, I should be this far along on my itinerary.”  The past few days, camped in a beautiful spot, with a “back yard” that seems to be endless trees, cacti, huge rocks and blue sky, I’ve found a peace I’ve not had in several weeks. It’s because I only have a vague notion of where I’m heading next, and no timeframe to get there. I know I need to do this always, or at least more often.