We spent a week in Sedona over Thanksgiving and during that time we hiked or mountain biked every day, often exploring well off the beaten path to access Sinagua ruins, a number of caves and an arch with a particularly spectacular view. There was much bushwhacking, more than a few cactus pricks/rock bruises/tree scratches and one awesome experience observing several javelina feeding in a wash. All together, we notched over 40 miles and nearly 9,000' of elevation gain. The caves and ruins do not come without significant effort. Usually, this involved hiking, then scrambling, and in one case, a sketchy class III climb up, and then back down, a nearly vertical 20' wall. Lots of ledge walking with significant exposure, too. We only had one failed mission and that was only because we reached a spot that required a scramble/climb in a very remote canyon that we would have to also descend on the way out, and as bad as we wanted to continue we recognized that it was just outside of our abilities. My legs and back were sore for a solid three days after arriving home. Guess that means I need to spend more time putting miles on them, right?
We had a fantastic campsite for the duration of our visit, surrounded by golden grasses that, apparently, we were all allergic to. But, it was quiet, mostly flat, not too far from town and tough enough to access that it would keep most of the riff raff out...except a wedding party. On our second or third night we arrived back at camp right at sunset after a big day on the trail to find a small wedding taking place at our campsite. Now, we knew that we'd need to make it obvious that someone was camping there so we put a homemade sign at the start of the rocky road into the site advising that it was occupied, erected a tent at the site and left behind a table and three camp chairs. The wedding party removed the sign (never to be recovered), piled our table and chairs on the tent and erected a gazebo cobbled together with juniper wood and screws. I was...not happy. I mustered as much empathy and calmness as I could before approaching them. An old hippy dude with long gray hair ran toward me and explained that his daughter "selected" the site for her wedding. I explained that we'd "selected" it as our campsite. He promised they would be done in 20 minutes and I didn't want to ruin their special day, so we backed the truck up so as not to interfere with the ceremony and waited for them to finish. I noticed that they didn't have a professional photographer and offered to take a few photos for the bride and groom but they declined. On our last night a Yavapai County deputy visited us as he'd seen the rig from a distance and mistaken it for an ambulance. Super nice guy and we had a good chat. I appreciated him checking on us.
We're headed to Phoenix and Tucson for a couple of weeks over the holidays. Most of the time we'll be at our favorite campground in the McDowell Mountains, where nearly every night we fall asleep to coyotes yipping in the desert and every day we're able to ride for miles and miles directly from our campsite. We are hoping to notch a couple nights remote camping, though. Building an itinerary involving lots of hikes and rides, plus some museum visits. Should be a good time and a great way to bring in 2022.
). I'm curious on the routing of the inlet and exhaust. And did it mount in the factory furnace location?