DAY 4: GRAND CANYON NP TO ZION NP (Thursday, August 6)

(FINALLY have Wifi again!  Woohoo!)

SB was up at literally the crack of dawn.  I think the sun rose a bit before 5:30, and we had already been up and to the bathroom and back to the van by 5:35.  

While getting out the setup to make pancakes, we realized we didn’t bring a whisk or any butter.  Whisk problem easily solved with a plastic fork; butter problem ignored “because the griddle is non-stick.”  

“I don’t remember greasing it last time,” I insisted.  “We just have to make sure it’s hot enough.”

The first four pancakes cemented themselves to the pan, requiring several minutes of scraping and picking and a trip to the dish washing station at the camp site.  

For round two we greased the pan with olive oil and it went better, but it didn’t stop me from throwing the remaining pancake mix into the trash can (I’m not THAT wasteful — there wasn’t a ton left, and I was over it.)

Packing everything back up takes about an hour, so we got ourselves all put back together and left for our next stop, the Zion River Resort (RV Park and Campground) in Virgin, UT.  

The drive around the Grand Canyon is long.  There is obviously nothing that goes directly across so you have to drive almost to the eastern edge and then curve back around.  You end up almost directly across from where you started, three hours later.  The drive was pretty but very isolated.  There is so much empty, expansive land in northwestern Arizona (mostly owned by the government?).  

As we got closer to Utah, the rocks and mountains got more and more beautiful.  Everything out here has these beautiful layers, and it’s amazing to think about how long they’ve all been here, and what it took to form them.  The layers are often diagonal — the force that pushed them upward is unfathomable.  

Utah!

From the Utah border it wasn’t too much farther until we got to our campsite, but first we had to stop in St. George to wash Ralph.  We found a coin-op car wash/dog wash combo.  It was insanely expensive, but totally worth it because he was disgusting.  

During.

After.

The Zion River Resort was pretty much as advertised, and I was happy to be there for $75 for two nights.  It had all the hookups, washer/dryer facilities, showers, a pool (that we never used) and lots of your typical obnoxious RV owners.  

Unless you’re in the market to purchase one and have been hanging out at a lot of RV dealerships, you really have no idea how unbelievable MASSIVE some RVs are.  They’re like rolling McMansions.  There was one especially massive one with a covered car parked in front of it, although he made sure to leave the back end of the car uncovered so you knew it was a Corvette.  

We saw one other VW there, and it was the full camper version of ours.  Otherwise we were the dwarf among giants.  

We started unpacking, and had planned on a relaxing afternoon just hanging out at the camp site and in the van, playing games and drinking a beer or four.  I have really enjoyed the van so far, except for how long it takes and the level of effort involved in unpacking and repacking it.  When you fold down the backseat to make the lower bed, it basically takes up the entire interior of the car, which means everything that was previously stored inside needs to find a new home.  It’s a lot of puzzle work back and forth.  I wish there was somehow extra storage space so we didn’t have to completely repack everything every morning and night.  I think shorter weekend trips would be a lot easier (“Maybe that’s why they call it the ‘weekender’” - Matt), and it’s just harder on this enormous trip because we have so many extra things with us (saxophones, all of Matt’s uniforms, a file box full of important documents, etc).  

There was a forecast for rain, so we stopped at Home Depot on our way in and bought a tarp.  The plan was to put the rear boxes under the picnic table and then use our car top bag (purchased back when we originally drove out to CA from MN) , which was water proof, for all of the duffel bags of clothing on top of the picnic table, then wrap with the tarp.  At our last stop we put the duffel bags in the pop-top with her while she slept, but if it rained, the top would need to come down and having them elsewhere already was going to be much easier.

Before she transformed into a turd.

She was being a gigantic turd so we had to abort our plans to join the free campfire and s’mores up by the main building that evening.  We put her to bed and eyed the radar.  We were really hoping that it wouldn’t rain.  Then all of a sudden the wind picked up in a really, really startling way and we thought it was go time.  When I say picked up, it went from gentle rustling to 20-30 mile gusts.  I thought for sure a storm was hot on its heels so we woke her up and pulled her down from the top (to clarify, the reason we can’t have the top open is that the sides are canvas, and not exactly water-proof.  If we got them wet, they’d have to dry out completely before we could close it and drive to prevent any mold issues).  Then for the next three hours we all lay more or less awake together on the bed on the bottom, sweating.  It was still pretty warm, and while the wind continued, we couldn’t have the windows open too far with all of the rain.  It turns out Ralph gets really nervous in storms (there weren’t ever any in San Diego, so we had no idea) so he had to lay with us, too.  And while it did rain, there was never the big storm that that wind had led us to believe it would be.  

Despite being in a deep sleep right before we woke her, SB never really went back to sleep the entire night.  Between her, the heat, and the incessant panting from the nervous dog, it wasn’t our best night.  I was jealous again of all the fat cats in their big RVs who didn’t need to have a rain plan.  But at least we bought the tarp.