October 28, 2004—The End of the Odyssey
We reached Yuma on October 25th, our destination for the winter and the end of our travels for awhile. More snow was predicted for Bryce so once we received our mail delivery on Saturday in the morning we made preparations to head out. Marc had to run water on the slides to clear the ice that kept them from sliding in and we had a coating of about five inches of snow frozen atop the trailer.
The experience of volunteering for the Park Service at Bryce was a good one. We made new friends, appreciated the sometimes hard job the Rangers have in handling such masses of people, and were told by the head Ranger that he would be happy to make some phone calls for us should we ever want to volunteer again in other parks. Thanks Brent; we’ll probably take you up on that one day!
Highway 89 heading south from Bryce through Orderville and Kanab is a lovely section of red rock, green meadows and pine trees at higher elevations. We bypassed Zion on this trip figuring there just wasn’t enough time to do it justice plus knowing it was soon to storm more anyway. We figured we needed to get south of Flagstaff or be faced with possibly having to drive the rig in the snow and we left our chains in Bend. Besides, everyone knows fulltimers don’t do snow, right?
I’d like to return to this section of southern Utah sometime since it appears like there are some interesting places to investigate, like the Paria Hills, multi-colored moonscape of eroded hills and canyons just aching to be explored. We decided to pull in to Lake Powell at Wahweap, just over the Arizona border for the night and promptly got sticker shock at the nice campground run by Zantera for the Glen Canyon Recreation Area. It was beautiful and nicely laid out, terraced up the hillside with concrete pads and paved streets, overlooking the much reduced mass of draught-stricken Lake Powell. However, at $27/night it was a budget buster for us and as we drove out the next morning and crossed the bridge over Glen Canyon we kicked ourselves when we saw truckers and motorhomes boondocking the eastern side of the bridge for free. Oh well, we’ll know next time!
South from Page, we dropped down the Petal Hills through Antelope Pass, a five mile 6% downgrade, offering vistas towards the beginnings of the mighty Colorado River canyon which later becomes the Grand Canyon. This entire section is on the Navajo Indian Reservation and poverty appears pretty well established. A big push all day, and we arrived in dusty Gila Bend and spent the night at the Elks Lodge where we are due to be inducted as members at the end of January. The next morning we made Yuma.
This is a good place to do a listing of some expenses for those of you wondering what a financial difference it makes to boondock over staying in RV parks every night. We traveled 68 days. We paid $213 for camp fees, which included four nights in Glacier, three nights in Bryce and the rest in commercial RV parks, primarily to visit with friends who do not boondock. We paid $50 for a yearly National Park Pass, which allowed us unlimited entrance into Glacier, Bryce, Arches, and Glen Canyon Recreation Area on this trip. In addition, other tour fees totaled $16. I had to use two Laundromats to wash clothes when I couldn’t use my own set and that ran $12.25.
Fuel was the main expense of our trip. Truck diesel purchased during the trip ran $475 although we left with full tanks from Bend. Gas for the Saturn totaled $125 and motorcycle gas ran $30.24. Propane cost us $43.64 and would have run an additional $26 but the National Park paid us for that refill since we were hosting. I won’t list our grocery bill since it seems to be astronomical compared to most peoples even though we rarely eat out and did so only once on this trip, our anniversary lunch in Helena for $20.
A recap: Camp fees: $213.00 <$3.13/per night>
All fuel: 630.24
Propane: 43.64
Laundry: 12.25
Touring/Pass 66.00
$965.13
So, what’s next? That’s another story, for another day.
