Recovering in Coconino National Forest

We were back home before 2:00, and switched into recovery mode after our hike down and back up out of the Grand Canyon.  We have enjoyed our seven night stay at the Grand Canyon Railroad RV park, and we decided it was time to try out all their amenities.  We thought a swim in the indoor pool and some soaking in the hot tub might be just what we needed.  For some reason, Mark's legs weren't sore at all, but his shoulders were tired from the extra weight of the backpack.  Denisa's calf muscles were sore, and she found that the steps in and out of the motorhome were very painful.  I guess it was her legs' way of reminding her that they weren't interested in walking uphill for ten miles again.

Since Mark got almost no sleep the night before, he went to bed very early.  But we both woke up the next morning feeling pretty good.  We still wanted to have some recovery time, and we thought some time in the forest might just fit the bill.

We have spent some of our time in the Williams area exploring the Coconino National Forest.  For all the traveling we have done in our lives, we didn't understand that the national forest dirt roads can be quite good.  We also didn't understand that we could camp for free along those forest roads any where there was already a fire ring and camping spot.  We had mapped out a spot off hiway 64 just a couple miles north of Williams on Forest Road 71.

Most diesel motorhomes come equipped with a generator that runs off the diesel in the fuel tank.  The generator can power all the electrical appliances, and works in tandem with the house batteries between times that the generator is run.  We prefer camping spots that provide electricity, but we can live without it.  Since that diesel generator needs to be exercised once a month, living in the forest without hookups seemed the perfect opportunity to do that and save a couple nights on camping fees.  We can also report that the lawn chairs have now came out of the storage spot in the basement.  Trying to save electricity, we spent most of our time outside.

We moved into our spot in the forest the next morning after our hike.  This is only our second try at boondocking, so we're not sure about how often we have to run the generator to recharge our batteries.  But we started documenting our voltage usage and unplugged everything possible.  We didn't have great cell phone coverage in our spot, so we found that we had to climb on top of the motorhome to be sure our phone calls weren't dropped.

We enjoyed exploring our little piece of the forest.  The forest roads were great bicycle trails, and we took several rides during the two days we stayed here.
 

We found that riding a bicycle takes different muscles than hiking, so even if we were a little sore we could still bike.  One day we biked a wonderful 7 mile loop that took us up and down the mountains closest to us.  The trees are beautiful, and some of them had interesting shapes.




Another day we rode a loop trail that just ended in the middle of the forest.  Too stubborn to just back track and ride the same route home, we opted for riding off-trail.  Denisa found this is not an easy thing to do.  She might be smiling in the picture, but the only positive she could find at that moment was that this was a great cardio workout.

We wish we could capture that wonderful pine smell that we loved in our forest time.  It was such a good place to recover!  We found that we could run the generator twice each day to keep the batteries up at half charge or better.  We love our residential refrigerator, but it was our main electricity user.  If we had a traditional RV refrigerator that can run on propane or electricity, I think we could go with very little generator time.  But we are still learning how everything works and really loved our time off the grid.


One of our favorite parts of our camping in the forest was our camp fire cooking.  Mark built an awesome fire, and we had a gourmet hotdog dinner complete with chili heated up in a can in the fire ring.

 

But the very best part of the meal was the smores for dessert.  Denisa's main complaint with eating smores is that there is always too much graham cracker and chocolate for the amount of marshmallows you can squeeze between them.  

So we kept eating the marshmallows around the edges, then reloading our smores with new fire-toasted marshmallows.  We ended up having 8 large marshmallows with our graham cracker and chocolate squares, and it was just the right combination of gooey-ness.  No pictures are available of the smores because our fingers were way too sticky to hold a camera.

We loved our time in the forest, and will be seeking out more national forest sites in the future.  It's another one of His wonders that we love wandering around!