I wasn’t sure if we were going to make it out of the furnace they call Phoenix. Unfortunately, there was a heat advisory the weekend we planned on leaving. The temps went up to 114 degrees. This made it very difficult to go back and forth to pack the van especially since the van had to be parked far away from where our apartment actually was. Going across the parking lot with boxes in that heat is draining. But I have to say my husband did the bulk of that work, with intermittent breaks in the AC. There was just so much stuff and it had to go into one of three places, the van, the Goodwill or the dumpster, the decision making was exhausting! We got up at 5AM and left town around 11:00 AM and then drove about 300 miles.
But it’s a brand new day and we are now in the ponderosa pine forest of northern Arizona where it is cooler but not as cool as we would like. It is still in the 90s during the day but 50s at night. We are staying at Jacob Lake Campground in the Kaibab National Forest which is 44 miles north of the North Rim of Grand Canyon. We have driven through here many times but never stayed overnight. The campground only has vault toilets and water spigots for drinking water and it was a bit pricey at $18/night plus a $9 reservation fee, so $45 for two nights. It is most likely because of the proximity to the Grand Canyon. We have trees on our site, bathrooms are clean and neighbors are quiet. We had Verizon LTE service the first day which was downgraded to 3G the second day. Went for a short walk from the campground on the KAI-VAV-WI trail. Mostly we are resting and recovering from the last couple weeks of getting everything ready to go.
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