Then things started to get tents...

Pun intended.

Lincoln National Forest

Yesterday Kt and I left Carlsbad around 9:30 hoping to arrive in the Grand Canyon before dark. We got some sparse directions from someone at the KOA who suggested we drive through Cloudcroft instead of Roswell for a prettier route. Her advice did not disappoint as each mile grew more beautiful. It's almost as if God was hearing our exclamations and saying, “Oh yeah? You think that's cool?” and then around the next curve something even more astounding would come over the horizon. While we were silenced into a reverent state by the natural beauty around us, we noticed far less natural things happening with the technology in front of us. We had lost service, lost the power to charge anything through the cigarette lighters, and were quickly losing charge. Directions were not existent, contact was lost and power was gone.

I had picked up a map of New Mexico at the KAO by chance (you taught me well mom) and had also grabbed a KAO guide that included basic maps of each state. Using a combination of the two we somehow managed to find our way. Yep, I am now a professional cartographer. I will not say we did not miss a few road signs or that we smiled beatifically the whole time, BUT we did make it to the GC safely. Albeit 14 hours later. To be fair, we drove blue highways and mountains and weren't afraid to stop for a picture or two. We drove through the smoky mountain-esque Lincoln National Forest, saw White Sands, past the Valley of Fire, the site of the first atomic bomb, the Malais Mountains, the village of Tularosa (twice), stopped at the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert State Park, onto the Coconino State Forest, through a few restricted Native American reservations (oops) and crossed into a new time zone (who knew Az (only parts mind you) didn't do day light savings time?).

We made it to Flagstaff around 9:30 and headed up more mountains and into Kaibab State Forest. Kt saw 4 deer (I only saw 3) one of which was a 6-8 point buck about to cross the road. I don't think we are in West Palm anymore. The higher we climbed, about 8,000 feet, the cooler it got. By the time we reached site 148 we were exhausted and ready for those KOA yellow shirts to greet us. Except we aren't staying in a KOA. As we set up the tent, things got increasingly tense. A word of advice to those who may follow our path: it's not the dark that makes putting the tent up hard, it's 14 hours on the road, dark, cold, and exhaustion that make it difficult. Though we alienated all of our camping neighbors, we did manage to finally set ourselves up and were giggling while we fell asleep. After all, we are in the Grand Canyon.

Today we are taking it slow and getting settled. We will be here four nights and could use a little relaxing. We had our first glimpse of the GC today and....it deserves it's own post.

Pictures are coming, I promise!

***Special thanks and a note: Kt drove the ENTIRE way to the GC. I think she deserves a few woot woots (it's the farthest she's driven in one stretch!). Also, I still don't have service and we are having a hard time charging so the blogs may be few and far between as well as the phone calls.

Desert by night. And by blur