Saturday, March 25 – time to leave for Sedona. The “mountains” to the west on I-40 were not as bad as we had feared and the winds were quite tolerable. We stopped in a little town of Holbrook, AZ and ate lunch at a “hole in the wall” family run Mexican restaurant, Sombrerito’s. It was very good. We parked nearby next to an abandoned apartment complex. As we are traveling out west, it seems every little town has quite a number of abandoned buildings. Very old and not so old victims of economic changes. I think these left-behinds survive longer in the dry sun than they do back home or maybe there is just so much land here, there is no need to tear them down to put up something else.
Most of the way on the road we were searching for campground reservations in Sedona. We weren’t finding anything. But that didn’t stop us from charging ahead toward the Grand Canyon. We looked around Williams for a short while, then headed north on 64 to the canyon. Much of that road doesn’t have AT&T cellular so that didn’t help. It was also intermittently raining. When we got to the canyon – it almost felt like snow, was misting as we bundled up the kids and headed for the vistor center. The center of course was closed so we headed for the overlook and were greeted by a magnificently lit canyon. There were broken storm clouds and the sun was sneaking in under the cover to hit the far canyon walls. See the gallery below.
We took lots of pictures. JC shot a pano with my camera. We loaded up and tried a campground near-by – but there was not only no wifi, but no cellular. So, we headed south, still trying to find a campground. We finally gave up and headed for a Cracker Barrel in Flagstaff. Fortunately, they let us boondock. We had supper and breakfast there. The night in between was something else. We had not been able to find any place to go in Sedona and we didn’t want to head that way and take a chance on where to stay after dark.
Up till now, we hadn’t had to boondock in cold weather – as in, below freezing. It meant, we’d have to run the furnaces all night. I was concerned about battery life. We had a pair of deep cycle 12V batteries in parallel on both trailers. While that seems a lot, some equipment on the trailer is voltage sensitive. We’ve learned that at 11.6 volts the CO detector on my daughter’s trailer starts to complain – as in go into alarm mode. We also couldn’t run the tank heaters as they’d drain the batteries even faster. Se we tucked in to sleep.
Most Cracker Barrels are near interstate and railroad tracks it seems. This one was a bit farther away. There was a main street right next to the parking lot, but it wasn’t too bad. Early in the morning, I heard their van start up. Apparently, they hit 11.6 volts and the CO monitor started whining about low voltage, so Phil started the van as I suggested the night before. There is a power connection between the tow vehicle and trailer with our rigs to keep the batteries charged for the brake break-away switch. It supplies just enough power to keep the batteries topped off. Nothing actually froze on the trailers, this time…. Breakfast at CB was good as usual. Yes we broke our chain rule, but anyone that lets us stay the night is allright with me.
Continued next post.