Been a busy few weeks since our engine mishap. Sorta moved into high touring gear to have a bit of fun. So we made a quick stop at the Hoover Dam and Lake Meade. Did an interesting loop hike to a hot spring and then the next day headed to the Grand Canyon. Some of you may know but hiking down and staying in the canyon is a bit limited. Usually you need bookings well over a year in advance, but we got lucky and got a last minute next day cancellation for a Phantom Ranch cabin. Not cheap or fancy but allowed us to hike to the Colorado, stay the night and then hike back out on a different trail. This was something we have wanted to do (well along with a multi-day backpack in the canyon) since we first visited 25+ years ago. Oh and to add to a great hike when we returned to the truck someone had left us a little surprise, 2 bottles of wine and a bottle of whisky! This was my kind of day
.
Next stop was just outside of Flagstaff, Walnut Canyon, Sunset Crater and Waputaki. Walnut canyon has an interesting cliff side trail that wanders among some American Indian cliff dwellings. Sunset Crater is a geologically recent volcanic cone with some cool lava flows. Pretty nice campsite in the national forest right outside of Sunset Crater.
We then continued to head south and are now just outside of Tuscon is a cool little private campground. We are here visiting sailing friends we have knows and seen in various parts of the world who have also traded their boat in for an RV. They chose a class C so require hookups and better road access. We were turned onto this campground by some new (and so far just by email) overlanding friends. They have a very cool Mercedes bull nose crew cab truck with a composite habitat,
https://www.ewaldontour.net/. We will hopefully link up in Mexico.
Since we plan at being at this campground a few days we are having a bunch of packages delivered and will try and knock off a few of the smaller projects. One bigger project we might try and get done is the roof rack/light bar mount. After a bunch of calling around and trying to visit shops I think we may have found someone that might be able to do it. We are meeting up on Monday to find out. Below is a very nice GXV (wouldn't that been nice, just sign a rather large check and pickup this truck) and has a roof rack that I really like. I am thinking about using 2" thin walled (1/8") aluminum tube. I am planning on a 50" single row front light bar, and a 20" single row bar above each door facing right/left. Might even put some cube style ones in facing 45 degrees on each corner. I also want to add an air horn and am thinking that I can pressurize the drivers side tube to act as an air line. Might make a nice clean installation.
Oh, you might notice a lack of photos, we recently upgraded to Google Fi (they cover 220 countries including phone and data). Well we signed up for the "unlimited" plan, which after 22gb of data usage they throttle you back to 1980's internet. So for now we are in the penalty box for the next week.
