Camping at 8500 feet.... This is the life.

One of the things The Queen and I love about Arizona is how diverse the climate and landscape can be.

To help combat some cabin fever (which happens in July here in the Pueblo), we took a weekender trip to escape the heat.  It was also an excuse to take Minnie out for a shakedown trip, since our 30 day warranty will be hard to use up if we didn't actually use everything on the motorhome.

So, after work on Friday, we drove out to the storage yard, threw our couple laundry baskets of clothes into the bedroom, put some food in the fridge, and we were off.

Our destination was still unknown as we rolled onto I-10 west (which is really northwest at this point...).  Vicki originally wanted to go to San Diego and park on the beach.  Despite looking on the web and calling several of the state and county beaches between San Diego and Los Angeles, we couldn't find anywhere that would take a reservation for the same day, so it would have been a gamble to try and find a parking space.  Our backup was the Mongollan Rim, northeast of Phoenix, and centered near Payson.  It wasn't the beach, but camping in the mountains is a pretty good alternative.

By the time we got to Casa Grande (where I-8 heads west to San Diego), we'd opted for mountains, so we kept going north (west) to Phoenix, where we headed northeast on the Red Mountain "Freeway" to Payson, arriving there about 2300.  It was too late to venture out into the wilderness, so we parked in the Walmart lot and got a few hours of sleep.

Waking up Saturday morning, we broke open the Coleman National Forest campground guide, and started looking for a place to set up camp.  Several of the campgrounds that looked appealing turned out to be 10 to 30 miles down forest roads, which are not paved and can be in pretty poor condition after the summer rains arrive.  So, we had to come up with Plan C, which wound up to be Flagstaff...

Since we were already well off the interstate in Payson, we continued up 87 to Lake Mary Road, driving thru Mormon Lake along the way (a couple campgrounds were listed in that area as well).  The first "I don't think we want to stop here" came from The Queen as we passed the local VFW hall, which was having a pancake breakfast.  There must have been about 150 Harley riders in the parking lot.  As we drove further and further into town, it was obvious that there was some sort of rally going on, as the number of bikes had to be in the hundreds if not thousands.  As I found out later, it was the "Too Broke for Sturgis" rally sponsored by a number of bike clubs in Arizona.... Guess that explains why we saw three Coconino County sheriff SUV's in a three mile stretch of road...

While the prospect of spending a weekend watching tattoo and wet t-shirt contests was interesting, we U-turned and continued on with our plan to head to Flagstaff.

Somewhere between Payson and Mormon Lake, the smell from the lav was getting a little out of control, and The Queen decreed that it was intolerable, so it was probably a good thing we didn't go into the wilds or stay in Mormon Lake, because it was obvious we needed some chemical for the holding tanks.  From experience, we knew there was a Walmart in Flagstaff just off Lake Mary Road, so we made our second stop of the day....

With the smell finally obliterated, we continued onward to Sunset Crater National Monument, which we had stopped at the previous October.  Knowing that there was free dispersed camping just across US-89 from there, we turned west onto the forest road in search of a place to camp.  After driving a couple miles down the road, we hadn't found anything we liked, so we crossed US-89 again and headed towards the Bonito campground.  We didn't find anthing appealing there either, so we headed back onto the forest service road heading up to Lockett Meadow. 

This is where things got a bit interesting... The road in/out of Sunset Crater is at approx. 7000 ft.  The distance to Lockett Meadow was about three miles, and the elevation wound up being 8500 ft.  So, the road was uphill all the way, and in fairly good shape for the first mile.  The second mile... switchbacks and blind spots.  Fortunately, we only encountered a few cars along the way and in areas where two vehicles could pass.  The last mile was where things got really interesting.

It had been raining up in this area during the previous week, and the road was a little soft in places, to the point that it had washed out on the edges.  It was also a lot narrower in this last stretch as it wound around Sugarloaf Peak (see picture), and we had about 1' of clearance on either side of the Minnie in more than a couple places.  But, once we made our way around Sugarloaf, the road opened up again and flattened out.

Lockett is a popular place for tenting, and were the only RV up there.  The campground host said that they occasionally saw fifth wheels and smaller (than ours) motorhomes up there.  She also said we were a bit brave for making the trip up the road.  Her husband quickly corrected her, and said the first time we come up, we're uninformed.  The second time, we're brave.  No kidding.  The reality was that once we started up the road, we had no choice but to continue, as there was nowhere to turn around until we got to the top.  Had I known the condition towards the last mile, I probably wouldn't have taken the Minnie up there.

After setting up camp (which consisted of putting down a couple boards to level out the Minnie and then putting it in park), the kids set off to explore the aspen grove in back of us, while The Queen decided to re-arrange all the stuff that had been put into the coach when we transferred everything from Jay.  After that was finished, we all took a walk about a half mile up the Inner Basin trail and then headed back to our site for dinner.

We'd hoped to eat outside and enjoy a campfire, but just as dinner was finished cooking, thunder started getting closer and the clouds wererolling in fast and heavy.. Jesse and I quickly gathered up all the camp chairs and stowed them in the lower bins, and by the time the last door was closed up, the rain started to fall.

It rained on and off the rest of the night, so we were stuck inside, feeling really sorry for all the tenters, but not too sorry to watch a movie (using the inverter, not the generator). 

Even though I fell asleep fairly early, I kept waking up as the rain kepf falling, and was envisioning the road being washed out, and us having no way out until the forest service could get some gravel up there on it to fill in the gaps....  Or worse, us going down the road and getting stuck. 

We had food to last a few days, but our fuel was at 3/8ths of a tank, and the generator fill tube in the gas tank was set so that it wouldn't run past 1/4 of a tank... We were also a little low on water, with 1/3 of a tank (10 gallons) showing up on the meter.  So, getting stuck was a little more serious than not.

When the sun came up, I took the dogs out for separate walks.  As I was walking Taz, a car was coming into the campground, so I stopped them and asked how good the road had held up, and they said it was no problem.  So, with that news, we packed up as planned, and headed back down the road to Sunset Crater.

As I said before, we'd been to Sunset once before, and wanted to come back when we could spend a little more time. 

While it's no longer possible to climb up to the Sunset Crater rim anymore, there is a trail up to the top of Lennox Crater, which is about a mile or so to the west.  The trail was fairly steep in places, but the view at the top was worthwhile.  The actual crater is still somewhat devoid of anything aside from a few pine trees which managed to grow at the bottom, far moreso than what's growing on the sides of Sunset.

We also took a drive to the Waputki National Monument, which is comprised of a series of pueblo ruins about 15 miles to the northeast of Sunset.  They share a loop road off of US-89, so it's worth a trip to both if you're going to see one of them.

One of the cool things we saw at Waputki is a "blow hole" at the main ruin site.  It's essentially a vent to an underground cave; during the winter, cold air gets sucked into the cave, and during the summer, the cold air gets expelled, and the 60 degree air coming out is like natural air conditioning....

By mid-afternoon, the next batch of storm clouds was building up to the south, so after a quick stop in Flagstaff for fuel, we headed home.  By far, the nicest aspect of having the motorhome vs. truck and trailer is the fact that we could use the lav while moving... Typically, we had to stop every 90 to 120 minutes for someone to pee, but this time, we made the entire five hour drive from Flagstaff to Marana without stopping once.