Hope Over Land and Sea: 8000 miles, 9 weeks, NC to Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Badlands and more in 2023.

[Pacific Northwest yetti]

I worked a FEMA contract in Flagstaff a few years ago. I enjoyed the area, and also found Sedona and Prescott a fascinating and beautiful place of contradictions.

 

[HopeOverLandandSea]

Grand Canyon - Part 1​

Ok this is the BIG ONE! I have to tell you, if you are planning a road trip of “canyons” once you have been here it is hard to impress a teenager afterwards, no matter how deep Gunnison is or varied the colors of the Badlands.

I mentioned the road trip when I was 15 with my parents and in talking about it with my Mom it turns out I might have been a typical dismissive teen with comments about the Grand Canyon being “just a big hole in the ground.” However, despite the fact that 15 year old me was not expressing my awe out loud, I was truly impressed and have talked about my FIRST experience there for the last 40ish years now.

As we all parked and then approached the rim for the first time I held back a little bit because I wanted Tanner and his parents to experience it together for the first time.

I remember my first pictures of the canyon from 1986, they were taken with a Kodak 110 which was about all of the camera I was trusted with at this point. Dad saw my interest in photography, sparked by his own work as part of his Master’s degree in Communication and in a few years for my high school graduation he gave me his Pentax K1000.

“You cannot take a bad picture of the Grand Canyon” has been my story these last 40 years, but the other side of that is you simply cannot capture the majesty of what you are seeing. This is truly something that has to be experienced and I cannot recommend it highly enough for anyone traveling the southwest.

Our camping reservation was at Mather Campground, Site 77 on Fir Loop. This is a nice pull through spot. I selected it using Google Maps with satellite imagery because I wanted something with good views of the sky for my Starlink connection. Make sure to note that generators are not allowed on Pine Loop and there are no electric, water or sewer connections at any of the campsites. The bathrooms are very nice with hot water showers and flushing toilets.

The neighbors dropped by only a few minutes after setting up camp and you are SO EXCITED the first time you see them wandering through. I think I have a few dozen pictures and videos from this alone. Within a few days of staying at the park and driving around you will quickly get used to the fact they are EVERYWHERE!

Being a couple time zones away from home I found that I was able to wake up “early” and get in a few hours of work before exploring for the rest of the day. Something I eventually settled into was keeping breakfast in the Jeep fridge so I was making less trips in/out of the camper.

I have the Jackery 500 as my base power unit in the Jeep, wired to the 12 volt connection in the back of the Wrangler and the fuse under the hood switched over to provide electricity even when the Jeep was not running. This ultimately caused a problem with my battery on the Wrangler as it drew that down several times to where the rig would not start!

Something to mention is the Jackery 500 is not quite big enough to handle making coffee, that requires 700 watts or more and the power unit would “reset” and I would have to start the coffee over again about 6-8 times. I will be replacing this with a 700 watt inverter for Summer 2024 and will report back.

It kept the fridge running all summer AND when I powered up the Starlink, mounted to the hood of the Jeep, everything worked great. I personally would recommend the 1000 or 1500 for anyone considering similar usage but the 500 was just fine for this trip.

We went back out to the Canyon that evening to watch the sunset, simply incredible and also hard to capture in a photograph. I remember my second trip to the Grand Canyon in 1991, I was with a group of college buddies and hiked down a short ways into the canyon before sunrise and sang Hymns as it rose over the edge of the rim. Simply glorious experience I will treasure the rest of my life.

The Grand Canyon is a designated Night Skies / Dark Skies area and they will set up telescopes at the Mather Campground parking lot and do a wonderful presentation about the things you can see.

My nephew is really interested in photography and we decided to go back to the rim after 10 pm to capture images of the stars. This is one of my favorite photographs of the entire trip, you can see a pine tree in the lower right corner. This was taken with our Nikon D3500. I don’t remember the exact settings but it took about a minute or so for the exposure and then some editing to bring it back to the black and white image you are seeing below.

On our final day at the canyon with Tanner’s parents we decided to hike down into the canyon to Ooh Aah Point for pictures. This is a 1.8 mile hike out and back but was actually about 3 miles all told from where we had to park.

Going down is so easy, and the final views are worth the price you will soon be paying on your way back UP the canyon!.

Coming back up the trail to the rim you need to plan on 2-3x the time as it takes you going down. We did the hike in the morning so we had as much shade as possible.

We all did make it although there was LOTS of grumbling, huffing and puffing from the teenager. He agrees afterwards that it was worth it but not eager to repeat that experience any time soon.

After arriving back up top we headed to Desert View which is on the far east end of the southern rim. This tower has amazing views, SURPRISE, and lots of interesting history about the structure itself and the surrounding areas.

Time to relax and think about Part 2 of the Grand Canyon experience.

 

[HopeOverLandandSea]

Grand Canyon Part II​

Once Tanner’s parents headed off towards home, we spent the next day or two relaxing and then no story of ours would be complete without some mention of trains right?

https://www.thetrain.com/

I think it is pretty significant that their website domain is THE train, as if there are not any others out there right? They have been providing tourists a unique way to visit the Grand Canyon since 1901 so, I guess that is pretty historical and worthy of that name. We did not actually get to ride this train but instead set up video cameras and recorded its arrival.

They have a daily trip from Williams Arizona to the park and back and you can book complete packages including hotel rooms etc. This makes for a nice alternative if you want something a bit more luxurious than sleeping in your roof top tent or camper.

Hermit Road, formally known as West Rim Drive, is only accessible by shuttle / bus from March through November each year. The shuttles have 9 stopping points along the rim and you can choose to hike from one point to another if desired and then hop back onto the shuttle again as desired.

I did notice a few UTVs parked along the road, and some trails that appear to lead in from the wilderness area. I am not sure of the legality of those trails, if they are on park land or entering from another adjacent property. That is something I hope to explore in the future, I know there are trails outside of the park that lead all the way down into the canyon to the river.

https://hualapai-nsn.gov/
https://hualapai-nsn.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/DIAMOND-CREEK-BROCHURE.pdf

Once you reach Hermits Rest, there is a nice facility with restrooms and overlooks and information about how this area was created. I thought this was some of the prettiest views in the park and well worth the 80 minutes round trip on the shuttle.

We did find a charging station for the Jeep in the parking area near the train and shuttles to Hermits Rest and came back to find the Jeep fully charged and ready to go!

We got several more visits from our friendly neighbors and had to take even more pictures of them because they are SO CUTE!

Time to head on to our next destination, Mesa Verde Colorado! So we drove out of the east gate towards FOUR CORNERS for the obligatory pictures of us straddling the state lines!

 

[Pacific Northwest yetti]

Have you been pretty happy with the 4XE thus far?

 

[HopeOverLandandSea]

Have you been pretty happy with the 4XE thus far?

I was pretty happy with it, I originally purchased it for use around town, 99% of my wife's driving was under 20 miles so with the Level 2 charger, we had some "tanks" of gas where we got 50+ mpg because most of her driving was electric only.

Once I started driving it on a regular basis, the efficiency was really not there for me, on this 8000 mile road trip, I only got to fully charge it once or twice. Most of my sites were "boondocking" no electrical hookups. If I had the 2024 4XE then I would have used that new power outlet so I had power in the OTHER direction, for usage around the campsite!
I think 4xe / PHEV is fantastic choice if you drive 20-25 miles per day on a regular basis, the more you go over that, the less useful they are.

The POWER is another huge benefit, if you want the ability to accelerate, this is the fastest Jeep hands down. Even with 0% on the battery there is usually enough still on reserve to boost yourself off the line, onto the interstate, etc. You do lose the payload from the battery weight, so for overlanding, that is hard to give up. My payload on the 4xe Rubicon was maybe 1000, possibly under?

If I was ordering brand new, Gladiator 4xe... I would be tempted especially with the $7500 tax credit to offset the actual extra cost. For me, it is probably not worth it currently but again if someone was commuting daily, I think it is a fantastic choice.

 

[Pacific Northwest yetti]

I was pretty happy with it, I originally purchased it for use around town, 99% of my wife's driving was under 20 miles so with the Level 2 charger, we had some "tanks" of gas where we got 50+ mpg because most of her driving was electric only.

Once I started driving it on a regular basis, the efficiency was really not there for me, on this 8000 mile road trip, I only got to fully charge it once or twice. Most of my sites were "boondocking" no electrical hookups. If I had the 2024 4XE then I would have used that new power outlet so I had power in the OTHER direction, for usage around the campsite!
I think 4xe / PHEV is fantastic choice if you drive 20-25 miles per day on a regular basis, the more you go over that, the less useful they are.

The POWER is another huge benefit, if you want the ability to accelerate, this is the fastest Jeep hands down. Even with 0% on the battery there is usually enough still on reserve to boost yourself off the line, onto the interstate, etc. You do lose the payload from the battery weight, so for overlanding, that is hard to give up. My payload on the 4xe Rubicon was maybe 1000, possibly under?

If I was ordering brand new, Gladiator 4xe... I would be tempted especially with the $7500 tax credit to offset the actual extra cost. For me, it is probably not worth it currently but again if someone was commuting daily, I think it is a fantastic choice.

Thank you for the reply and how it changed based on your experience and use case!

I would bet others would find value in your experience with it in this use case. Which many also do.

 

[HopeOverLandandSea]

Mesa Verde​

Mesa Verde National Park is in SW Colorado and for us this was close to all of the attractions we were interested in which mostly was riding on the Durango Silverton Railroad which I will cover more in depth in the next chapter.

If you are not already familiar with Mesa Verde, these are cliff dwellings that you will see with multiple levels of homes tucked back under the edges of the hill. There you will find homes on top of the Mesas and down along the cliffs but you will need to register in advance for the ranger guided tours if you want to walk around the inside the dwellings.

It was an interesting experience for us both and when I go back I will make sure to book the guided tour. We also spent time hiking up to the Fire Lookout Tower, at 8572 feet this was the highest elevation in the park.

I would highly recommend the Morefield campground in Mesa Verde, but you should be aware that the sites are primitive, only 15 of the 267 have electric hookups. The restroom near the campsites had flushing toilets, and the showers located near the registration area were really the reason we loved staying there. They had individual shower rooms which were very clean and the water was hot!

The campground is located in a bowl shaped valley so the cellular connections were non-existent, but Starlink worked fantastic! I was able to keep the batteries topped off with my generator during the daytime hours and even in mid June the temperature was pleasant in the evenings and overnight.

I had subscribed to onXmaps before this trip and we were able to find a short “trail” which was really the old Rio Grande Southern Railroad path. We drove over there in the evening for a short trail ride. We did notice several folks boondocking on the road coming in and exiting this trail system and noted that for a possible stay in our future.

From Mesa Verde campground, it is about 45 minutes over to Durango Colorado. We headed over the next day and booked what was surely the COLDEST rafting trip ever down the Animas River. It turns out 48 degree water is really cold in the morning and despite the river guides urgings to jump in the river voluntarily in exchange for a free t shirt I decided that I was already cold and wet enough.

I am sure all of you RAIL fans know already about the Durango to Silverton railroad and are eagerly awaiting for the next installment! As you can imagine when the trip was first planned, and I inquired about possible locations to visit with my nephew, Durango was number one on his list.