So Sharon got a two night reservation at Rim Campground; unfortunately it was at a National Forest 5 hours away from the Grand Canyon. But after a morning bike ride and hike, short of a hike down into the canyon, we were done with South Rim. So we drove to Tusayan to watch an IMAX that I'm pretty sure I have at home, eat mediocre Mexican for an early lunch, and then drive to our day old reservations.
It turns out there is a lot of impressive wilderness in Arizona. We breezed through the outskirts of Flagstaff, and a stint on I-40, but the rest was back country two lane asphalt, my favorite roads. We were listening to Book 5 of a silly series where the female protagonist is the Grim Reaper, with a day job as a private investigator. It's a romantic comedy suspense. We listened to Book 4 after American Gods, and we've already listened to maybe 6 or 8 others in the series. (We got hooked last year.) Darynda Jones is the author, and all the books have the same reader; the most current/ last book has an interview between the author and reader that is quite good after you've listened to a few.
We arrived at Rim Campground, and Sharon made short work of the host, and we spent the evening on our pre-paid site. Such a
deal. They ask we park on the pavement beside the site, don't actually use the site, with no electricity or water. No problem!
Our solar panel is awesome, generating more power than we can store. (With a pair of golf cart batteries tied in tandem with what we have, we might be entirely self-sufficient except for A/C and ceramic heater, both of which we're learning to live without.) Sharon has determined that she can run her NutriBullet off the inverter in the morning to make her smoothie. We still need to determine whether we can run the Instapot safely. Life in Ernie is a set of trade-offs, and we're happy with the choices we've made so far. Though we already see improvements to be made (wall cabinet doors opening up and staying shut more securely, a quieter and sleeker a/c, more battery to run off grid longer). The only down side is that the Bluetooth module isn't reporting anymore. The app connects to it, but no data. It's disappointing, I enjoyed monitoring how much power it was generating.
Our dinner consisted of Sharon's leftovers from our Mexican lunch, albeit with our habanero sauce. The heat of the sauce and a quick refry, and life is good. Looking forward to restocking the larder at Jon and Dori's.
We rode out to the signature reason for this area, the rim view. In this park it's of trees. Much of the drive out here was through National Forest, with an impressive number of trees, at least along the road. I'm pretty sure that CGI wasn't involved in any of the Arizona scenery we experienced along the way. While the campground isn't much, it's impressive how popular it is. It is in the woods, albeit very arid woods. With no water. Or electricity. But lots of sunlight during the day.
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