Back in Colorado

We got back home on Wednesday, May 15 after 8 hours on the road.  No issues during the drive, just boring and tiring.  I like keeping the mileage covered in one day to 300, but alas, we were close and both of us had gethomeitis....so, 478 miles it was.

Colorado welcomed us with the aftermath of a hail storm while we were transiting through Colorado Spring.  

Of course, it was bright and sunny just a few minutes later once we'd cleared the city limits on our way north to the overcrowded cesspool that is the Metro Denver area.

A few days to unload, clean and prep the VRRV for storage and then the tackling of home chores for a bit.  Martha tells me I've been camping 69% of the year so far.

Boondocking East of Albuquerque and a Visit to Madrid

Monday, May 13

We left the Petrified Forest National Park early yesterday morning, around 7AM, ready to move further east along the I-40 Super Slab.

By 1PM we'd arrived in the vicinity of the Cedro Peak Loop Road.  We encountered way too rough of terrain conditions trying to get on the loop in a clock-wise direction to explore for campsites.

We disconnected the CR-V and gingerly made our way back onto Juan Tomas Road and found the right access forest road 522.  Just past the group campground, we found a spot along the access trail.  

Had we gone just a few more feet up this road away from the tower hill, we would have found a campground!  The sites were pretty small, as USFS sites tend to be, but there were a couple I could have squeezed Uma into with some effort.

As it was, we set up at the right spot in the end.  We rested the rest of the afternoon away, and got over the panic we'd experienced at the beginning of the loop road!  Don't take the FR542, use FR252 which takes you to the Sabino Canyon Trailhead and the Group Campground.

Of course, with the cell tower located in the hill nearby, there was plenty of cellular internet signal to be used.  It figures, I get the Starlink system and then the next few sites I don't need it.  The time will come though.

Tuesday, May 14

Since it was close by, we drove the Honda CR-V to the town of Madrid, NM.  This town was featured in the movie "Wild Hogs", which I liked a lot.  Madrid is a small "artist-oriented" town.  

A nice gate I saw...

Here's the boarding house (in reality a Mercantile Store) used in the Wild Hogs movie.

The main Wild Hogs location, built by the movie and left to the town.  The town brought it up to code and turned it into a Wild Hogs souvenir store.

I found this site with a great recap of film locations used in Wild Hogs:  LINK

It's got some more Madrid-specific info.

Another Madrid location used in film, this one in the Netflix series "Longmire", another favorite of ours.  The interior of the bar is used as the "Red Pony" Saloon in the series.  We didn't go in, it wasn't going to be open till 11AM and we were "done touring" before then:

Interesting car, sadly non-functional

Quite the decor at the restaurant near the Mine Shaft Tavern

There was, of course, a Cannabis dispensary

Madrid was preparing for their Crawdaddy Blues Festival scheduled for the coming weekend while we were there; so I imagine the crowds will be much larger than the few people we saw wandering about.

We left Madrid and got back to camp in time for lunch.  The rest of the afternoon was spent hanging at the campsite, enjoying the warm weather under the shade of Juniper trees.

I did go riding on Yagi, my TW200 to fully explore the FR542 porting of the Cedro Peak Loop.  It would have been a deadly mistake to continue up it with the VRRV!  Lots of rock ledges, big boulders, deep ruts and ironically, another campground area.

We plan on being home, back in Colorado, by tomorrow evening.

A Short Visit to the Petrified Forest National Park

We left the Sedona area this morning and less than three hours later were pulling into the RV parking lot near the south entrance to the Petrified Forest National Park.

After setting up the VRRV for an overnight stay, we unhooked the Honda CR-V and left to go into the park so Martha could take a look around.

I've been to this park before: LINK and shot more pics then than I did today.

After a visit to the visitor center so Martha could get her Parks Passport stamped, we were approached in the parking lot by a couple of motorcycle riders.

Turns out they're tourists from Slovenia, Milan and Sabina, and touring Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles in four weeks.  They were running low on gas for their Harley and asked if we could spare them some.  You see, we still had the cargo carrier attached to the rear of the CR-V and one of the containers was a red gas can.

Milan cut a plastic drink bottle into a funnel and carefully poured gas into the Harley's gas tank while I held onto the funnel.

Milan turns on the Harley's dashboard to see

how many miles the added gas now provides.

Success!

Milan and Sabina

We said our goodbyes after exchanging contact info in terms of email addresses.

Martha and I then drove to the other end of the park and stopped here and there for views and sometimes pictures.  The light was quite flat and when the scenery was below clouds, it was quite dark also.

As I mentioned before, there's more pics available from the previous visit to this park.

One of the stops we made, which I hadn't done before, was to the Painted Desert Inn.  Here's some of the things that caught my eye inside.

Then and Now

Cool petroglyph: Hopi Mountain Lion

From back in the park's heyday I think...

In the Inn's dining room, there were a couple of large Hopi murals.  In the one below, my eye was drawn to the fierce animals the two Hopi boys had to deal with during their journey.

What animal is this?

Bear?

By this point in our camping trip, both Martha and I were "rocked out" so we didn't really spend much more time in the park.  We rested the rest of the afternoon away and will most likely displace tomorrow towards Albuquerque.

T-Dub'ing the Broken Arrow OHV Trail near Sedona, AZ

I spent the morning riding my TW200, Yagi, through the Broken Arrow Trail that is located within the city limits of Sedona.

At the trailhead off of Morgan Road, you can park and hike on the trail or there is an OHV version of the trail as well.  It proved slightly technical in spots, lots of slick rock, ruts and rocks.  A nice ride overall, with great rock formations.

Cattle Jeeps

Note the cattle jeeps used to ferry loads

of tourists.

Which one do you prefer, the above shot

or a closer version on Yagi?

Yagi and I were never alone, tourists may have

been edited out of this shot.

Only had one slightly close call in terms of cager traffic both on the way to the trail and returning to camp.  Both incidents had me giving the clueless cager the ADV salute.

Made it back to the camp area with no further issues.  Did some exploring of neighboring public lands and found some more campsite candidates if ever back in this area.

The afternoon was spent hanging around the VRRV and relaxing. We displace further eastward tomorrow.

Hiking Around Bell Rock

 A hiking day today for us.  

After breakfast, we headed towards Sedona and parked at the Bell Rock Trail parking lot.  Note to self: if you wait till after 9AM, the lot is full and its warm by then!  Fortunately, we got there by 8AM I believe.

It would end up being almost three miles of hiking over uneven terrain with lots of small rocks, ledges and steps to keep things interesting.

At the start of the hike, looking at 

south face of Bell Rock

Neighboring rock formations

I missed it but Martha spotted this snake dragging its prey lizard away from the trail:

North side of Bell Rock

We then wandered over to the Big Park Loop which eventually took us along the north side of Bell Rock and then we turned south on Rector Trail:

West side of Bell Rock, within the Munds Wilderness Area

We'd spotted people climbing on Bell Rock, and eventually found the trail that leads to the climbing path:

We didn't go climbing....

We then took a drive towards Flagstaff using Hwy 89A, which was reported to be a scenic byway.  Well, it was also heavily forested so it was but brief glimpses of rock formations for us today.  It's a very twisty road too so the driver has to pay close attention.  I think it would be fun on a motorcycle but traffic was pretty heavy so not sure.

The afternoon was spent relaxing at the campsite after a nice lunch.  Towards evening, I walked up another small hill overlooking the campsite for this shot:

Nice weather today, sunny but cool breezes in the shade.  Highs in the mid-70s at most.  The haze brought on by a prescribed burn which had made the valley looked fogged in, had disappeared as you can see above.

I'm happy to report the two solar panels are providing more than enough power to not only power the Starlink system but also charge the house battery on the VRRV.  I turned Starlink on when we returned for lunch, left it on all day, and the house battery was 100% charged.

Exploring the Tuzigoot National Monument and Jerome, AZ

 Thursday, May 9th 

After breakfast, we drove to the town of Cottonwood, where they had a Harbor Freight and I bought a second 100 watt solar panel. (more on this later in this post).

Afterwards, we drove over to the Tuzigoot National Monument to check things out:

View from lowest point of the path

Martha near the tower

Views from atop the tower:

A poster in the visitor center

View as we departed the monument

 More info about Tuzigoot on Wikipedia

Since we were close by, we also went over to the nearby town of Jerome, AZ to check things out as well. It had been over 10 years since we have been there. 

A town full of artists, Jerome is a tourist town known for its art scene and tours of Ghost/Haunted locations.

Many of the original buildings have burned down in fires since the late 1800s, they've either been rebuilt close to what they looked like or their facades used as fronts for newer stuff:

Front for Glass Blowing business

Many, if not all, of the buildings along main street have plaques describing the historical role/use of said building.

The stores, are full of knick-knacks, but I found they seem to prefer or specialize in metal origin art...sometimes of disparate mechanical bits from other things:

The above items were from a store called Nellie Bly, whose story I read and found interesting:

The town has no relation to Nellie Bly, I think the owner just liked the woman and story.

Some other things seen underneath what used to be a car dealership where restrooms for tourists are located:

Today's moto content

Another facade used now to display artwork:

Art?

The town was getting crowded by noon, and that's from Martha's perspective, so we escaped to the nearby town of Clarkdale.

We had a picnic lunch at the town park and then we drove home. Clarkdale was very quiet and very few people seen, I liked it!  The town was a mining/company town from when nearby mines produced large amounts of copper back in the day.

Once we got back to the campsite, I would spend several hours creating wiring connections for the new solar panel. 

That's when the trouble began, once I hooked everything up I was not seeing the results that I was expecting; in terms of amperage delivered by the solar panels. 

Cue frustration period:  I had to once again resort to my guru: RichardM.

He walked me through the troubleshooting process and it confirmed I had at least wired things up correctly.

In the process I discovered that my skill at using Anderson connectors was lacking.  Some of the problems encountered involved connectors not assembled correctly apparently.

To simplify things for now, I eliminated the new Anderson connectors and just used wire nuts to hook the two panels together to the extension wire that goes to the solar charge controller.

Since cell signal is sketchy here, I had been having difficulty maintaining a good telephone call with RichardM; so I turned on the Starlink for a better connection. 

Once the Starlink system was up, I noticed that the amp meter was registering the desired number of amps going into the system! What the hell! 

A phone call with RichardM cleared things up and demonstrated once again how little I understand concepts involved with electricity.  

Since the battery was almost fully charged when I first started doing the wiring for the new solar panel; the system was only drawing two amps or less as designed. 

I had been expecting to see 6+ amps being drawn from the two solar panels!  I had failed to realize, that since the battery at that time needed no more than two amps to complete its charging it was not going to draw more than two amps!

I monitored the amp draw using an amp meter and also the shunt meter in the RV and I could see that when Starlink was on, the system drew more amps from the solar panels and kept the house battery charging simultaneously.

Before, with just one solar panel, we were limiting the usage of Starlink to a max of 5 hours a day spread out through the day.  Such a usage would result in about the battery being at 85 to 90% by nightfall so enough to get through the night and more. 

Now, so as long as there's good sunlight hitting the solar panels, we can keep Starlink running with its 5 to 6 amp draw (50-75 watts) and still charge the house battery.  We'll see how it goes.