Category: Campsite

Elk Flats Campground at Cave Lake State Park, NV – Tuesday June 16, 2015

Got here at 1:00 and we are in site 14.
Did not do anything this afternoon, well not really I did work on the jigsaw puzzle Brian and Christine gave me for Christmas.  Most days when I am driving I’d think about getting started on this puzzle and then after we were stopped I’d forget about it. It is a Shutterfly puzzle Brian had made of a picture I posted on the blog last summer.  I got the outside border done before I had to quit for dinner.
Yesterday while at Cathedral Gorge we had a challenge with the refrigerator.  It seems when the temperature gets over 100 it gets unhappy.  With the sun on the outside of the motor home it had to be between 180 to 200 degrees on the outside of the frig.  This morning while filling up with water I took some temp readings.  At 9:00 a.m.after 20 minutes the shaded side of motor home was 78 degrees, sunny side the fiberglass 110, metal doors 140, steps 124.  The weather channel said it was 96 where we were yesterday. Anyway the temp in the refrig started rising. At 58 degrees it was time to do something. This happened last fall one day at Lees Ferry when the temp got over 100 degrees.  In the fall I worked on it for several hours and made plans to go to Flagstaff to get it worked on. I finally used the electrical disconnect to turn all the power in the coach. This reset the refrig and it worked fine until yesterday.  This worked again, by bed time it was down to 45, at 4 a.m it was 37 and at 7:00 a.m. It was 35, happy refrig, has worked fine all day today.

Jacob Lake, AZ – Sunday June 14, 2015

Left Lees Ferry early so we could get a site at Jacob Lake Forest Service Campground at the north road to Grand Canyon north side. The canyon is still 50 miles south of here.  There were a bunch of open sites and we took site 5 which is where we stayed last Fall.
Really nice day in mid 70’s, Lees Ferry is to be 95 and Hurricane 104.  We will head to Cathedral Gorge, Nv tomorrow where it should be 90. 

Lees Ferry Natl Park – Thursday June 11, 2015

Today we drove 300 miles to Lees Ferry National Park just below Glen Canyon Dam and the place where people start their trip floating the Grand Canyon.  The drive out from Navajo Lake added a little interest to the trip.  At 5:00 a.m. this morning a THUNDER storm came through the area so there were several places where there was mud across the road.  The highway folks had already been out and bladed the road however in a couple of spot the mud was still at least a 1/2 in thick.  To say the car got dirty would be an understatement.  We stopped at Kayenta to get gas and I could at least get some of the dirt off the windshield so I’d be able to drive the car after we got to the campground.

When we got to Lees Ferry campground both of the river view spots were taken.  We first moved into site 44 and then moved to 46 which is right next to 44.  We moved because site 46 actually angles into site 44 this way hoping no one would camp to close to us.
A little after 5:00 the people who were camped in one of the view sites showed up and left.  They had left there trailer in the site all day and then left at 5:00 p.m.  Rude on their part good for us, we moved into one of the front view sites, number 47.
This is site 47.
View form site 44, the first site we were in.
This is the view from our picnic table with the large metal cover to keep the sun off ME.

View to the right from the picnic table.

It is going to be warm here 85 to 95 during our stay.  Plan is to leave Sunday for Jacob’s Lake, Az or Sand Hollow State Park by Hurricane, Utah.

 

Navajo Lake State Park, Tuesday June 9, 2015

We were on the road early today for a 300 mile drive to Navajo Lake State Park in northwest New Mexico.   The drive turned out to be an extra 50 miles.  I took a wrong turn just 8 miles before we would have gotten to the Pine Area campground.  I saw a Navajo Lake Campground sign and I turned left.   Had to drive all the way to Aztec, NM (14 miles) before I could find a place to turn around.  There are two challenges in pulling a car: 1) you CAN NOT back up, not even a foot, 2) getting gas, finding a station I can get into and out of without backing up, and I have to decide as we drive by, it can be a REAL pain.

We are in site 58, our third site of the afternoon.  The sites are all laid out backwards.  Power and water should be on one side with the door and table on the other, most sites have the power, water and table on the same side, or the power/water are on the side where motorhomes and trailer have there door.   The first site I could not get level without our slide being within 10 inches of the next sites BBQ (really 10 inches).  The second site was a pull through marked a reserve site on the exit side of the pull through and an open non-reserved site on the entry.  When I pulled into the site and started setting up the RV the camp host (really nice guy) came by and asked me why I was setting up in a reserved site.  I said because the post over here says the site is open.  Dan (the host) said it’s a reserved site and he had actually never seen the non-reserved site post I saw.  He went a got a garbage bag and put it over my post really fast.  He than took me around the park in his John Deere tractor and helped us find a site.
Here is the drive for today.
Here is a close up of the area we are in:

Notice the dam at the lower part of the lake.  Can you see where the blue line goes across the face of the dam.  Yes, the road starts at the bottom of the dam face and we drove up across the face of the dam to get to the top of the dam.

 

 

Bandelier National Monument – Thursday June 4, 2015

We were up early today and on the road by 7:00 a.m.. I wanted to get to Bandelier early because of the limited choice of campsites.  This campground is an older national park like campground which means there will only be a few sites we’ll be able to fit into.  We got here at noon and got the only pull through site in the park ( lucky Harry  and Jean ) site 55.

Paying for the site was an interesting endeavor.  Most things here are pay by credit card machine this includes entry into the park and camping.
Here are the registration instructions on the campground map.
TO REGISTER:  Choose a vacant site (DO NOT put anything on the site until the site is paid for) and return to self-registration area at campground entrance.  Follow directions posted by the fee machine.  Place
receipt from machine on dashboard.  Note: Machine give $1 coins for change.
If you wish to extend your stay you must do so after 12:00 Noon.
Camping fee is separate from the ENTRANCE FEE.
Campers must stop at the entrance station to show valid entrance pass upon every re-entry into park.

Two paragraphs below this on the registration instruction sheet the instructions say; “Campsites must be vacated by 11:30a.m. unless payment has been made for the following night.”

My first question is how can I extend my stay if I must make the “extend your stay you must do so after 12:00 noon” but I must be, ”vacated the site by 11:30 a.m. unless payment has been made.”?
Second question, “DO NOT put anything on the site until the site is paid for,”  When I find the site I want how do I know that someone else has not selected this site and is at the pay station paying for the site.  If I get to the self-service credit card pay station and someone else has already paid for the site I have to find another, this could be an interesting challenge when 10 people are driving around the 3 campground loops looking for a site.

Another great opportunity is at the automated pay station.  On the payment machine it says you can use a credit card $1.00’s, $5.00’s, $10.00’s and $20.00’s.  On the sign about three feet to the right of this payment machine, in the middle of the instruction for registration it says, “ DO NOT USE $20.00’s”  You’ve got to love the great ability of our government.
Oh  yea, on the receipt which is printed from the automated payment machine it says we have to be out of our site by 11:00 a.m.,  Thanks that is really useful information.

 

Bluewater Lake State Park, NM – Wednesday June 3, 2015

View from camp.

We are here for another day and will move on to Bandelier National Monument early Thursday morning.  The plan is to stay there through the weekend before moving on.

Camping in New Mexico is really great.  The state parks and nice and have both reservation sites and none reservation sites for drop in’s.

Here is the pricing structure:

$10.00 for basic site
$14.00 for site with electricity and sometimes water

$180.00 for an Annual Camping Pass (good for 13 months) all basic sites are free, electricity and water site is $4.00
$100.00 for an Annual Camping Pass at age 62
$225.00 for an Annual Camping Pass if you are from out of state.

We purchased an Annual Camping Pass when we here in October and it has more than paid for itself.

High today should be 85 with low of 52.

Bluewater Lake State Park, NM – Monday June 1, 2015

Monday morning we were up early.  After two weeks on road it was time to visit a laundromat.  We went to “Handee’s Laundromat and Car Wash” it was actually  very clean and we were out in about and hour and a half.
We are still moving east and are now at Bluewater Lake State Park just off of I-40 west of Albuquerque, NM.
In site 41, New Mexico has sites that are reservable  and also always have sites that are available for drop ins.  This is really nice since  we don’t always know where we are going until we get there.

Homoliva State Park – Winslow, AZ – Friday May 29, 2015

We are in site 32.

There are 53 sites in this campground and only 12 sites are being used. Of that 12, 5 are for one boys youth group.  We stayed here on September 14, 2011 and at that time there was only a couple of people here.  It is really a nice campground with 40 to 50 feet between sites which are level and paved with electricity and water.

Today’s drive was 429 miles.  We were on the road by 6:30 a.m.  and got to Homoliva at 4:00 p.m.
I had planned a stop in Flagstaff to do our grocery shopping at a SuperWalmart however that did not work out so well.  I have read a lot of blogs about how unfriendly Flagstaff is to RV’ers and they again proved it to be true on all accounts.   It was difficult to find the store because of no signage.  We saw a large brown building with a large parking lot and figured it to be the Walmart.  When got right to the turn lane we could see the four foot high Walmart sign at the parking lot entrance.  However, I could not see a good path into and out of the parking lot.  One of the challenges of pulling a car is you can not back up.  If I get myself into a place where I can not make a turn I’d have to stop unhook the car and then backup.  I actually have had to do this once.  We were on Hwy 50 (out in the middle of nowhere) half way across Nevada when we stopped for lunch at a pony express historical site.  The parking lot was empty and I thought I could make a large circle and make it out the only entrance point.  I was wrong, unhooked the car, backed up three feet and made the turn J.  Back to Flagstaff Walmart, the parking lot was so broken up the curbs and light posts I was not sure I could get in and out with all the tight turns and other vehicles in the lot.  After driving around the area looking for a place to park we decided to move on down the road.

Here is a Google Earth view I got after we arrived at Homolovi.  It doesn’t look to bad until more cars and a few motorhomes are added.

Flagstaff was also a scheduled  pee stop for Hank so he went 5 (FIVE) hours without a pee (poor traveling Hank) we usually stop every two hours.
Nice day with a temp of 92 here.