Maintenance & Restoration

Adrian W · 07-03-2010, 06:02 PM

Got home just a little after 12 pm today, 3 July. Had a safe trip, had a great time, enjoyed ourselves greatly. Our daughter, son-in-law and grandson seemed to have had a great time as well. We were very happy they asked us along on their adventure.

Three days to get up to Tetons from Tucson, camped near Sunset Crater National Mon't just north of Flagstaff the first day, camped just south and east of Provo, UT second night both forest service campgrounds. 3rd day we camped at Colter Bay campground in Grand Teton Nat'l Park; stayed two nights and explored the place via their Santa Fe.

Stayed 5 days at Grant Village Campground in Yellowstone and drove all over the place, many hundreds of miles via the Santa Fe. Cool days and kind of cold nights with only a day or two with a little rain in morning or evening.

Saw about 5 Bears, many Bison and Elk, but no Moose and lots of forest and geysers as well as some neat birds: White Pelicans, Ravens, Grey Jays, Luis Nutcrackers and Ospreys to name a few.

Their rented Aliner hardsided pop up trailer worked very well for them. The heater in it work well, if the battery was charge well. They figured out how to just hook it up to the Santa Fe and used it's battery when the other was not charged enough.

We returned a different route, Yellowstone to the Flaming Gorge area in Utah just south of Rock Spring, WY was a long trip. Forest Service Campground. Second leg was to Colorado Nat'l Mon't above Fruita, Colorado near Grand Junction. Third leg was to Mesa Verde Nat'l Mon't via Silverton and Durango, which was a mistake the cost was too high for a quick stop and the road was being worked on and was a mess. Fourth leg was to Show Low and Pinetop-Lakeside area in the White Mountains of Arizona, another long day on the road. We did get some good Bar-B-Que there at Grumpy Jake's. We stayed at a Forest Service campgound at Lakeside.

We parted from them after spending the night there. They went back to Tucson in a pretty quick hop. We headed east to New Mexico. While in the Apache-Sitgraves Nat'l Forest we saw more elk than any other place, at least 50 or so in one big group. We stopped at City of Rocks State Park between Silver City and Deming, NM for one more night before drive home this morning.

Wow! Sooooo much in such a short time. What a Great Time!

Oh, Yes. 2503.9 miles according to the trip odometer and seems the Ford F-150 averaged about 17 MPG. We did very little driving without the trailer. Mainly to get water in for the trailer via 26 gal. reserve tank in the pickup. The shower came in handy, our little grandson had his nightly bath (shower) in the Scamp. Often with no showers in the campgrounds, all four grownups used the shower in the mornings. For our son-in-law, it was a tight fit in our shower (6'3" makes it a little hard to fit in these little guys). But he enjoyed the showers. The Coleman Back Cat heater worked well on the cold mornings and at times before getting ready for bed when we could not use the electric cube heater (not be able to use the generator).

Our Trip in Pictures: http://s286.photobucket.com/home/DesertHaw...?view=slideshow

Michele B · 07-03-2010, 07:02 PM

Sounds like a fantastic trip! By the way, I really enjoyed your photo link.

The southwest is one of my favorite places to travel. Did you see a lot of smoke north of Flagstaff?

Adrian W · 07-03-2010, 07:24 PM

No, we did not see the smoke north of Flag, but we saw a lot of smoke as we got to Flag. We had to do a small detour to get to the Hwy to go north. The fire must have only been a few hours old when we got there. A helicopter was working it and police were evacuating homes in the way of the fire. Lot of smoke on sections of the I-40.