Sunday October 15th 2017

My stay at the Grand Canyon ended today. I packed up this morning at moved west one hundred and sixty miles to Kingman Arizona. I went from temperatures in the 60s to temperatures in the low 80s.

First visitor this morning.

As I was packing to leave the wildlife that I’d been told to expect in the campground finally showed up. A couple of Elk came by to say goodbye. They passed down the far side of the main campground road about one hundred feet from my site. My camera is always at the ready in a case on my belt so I pulled it out and started taking pictures. A couple of the pictures are pretty good.

Second visitor this morning.

The Elk were only one of today’s interruptions during packing. I like to stay focused on the preparation tasks so I don’t forget anything or make any silly mistakes. Today, the Elk and two fellow campers interrupted me. One guy wanted to know what someone from Florida was doing at the Grand Canyon in October. He was really confused when I told him I live in the RV full time and didn’t just drive out from Florida to see the Grand Canyon.

The other interrupt may have had a negative impact in my preparation. The guy across the street came over while I was hooking up the car. He wanted to know all about pulling a car behind his motorhome. After answering his questions for ten minutes or more I returned to my task. I re-checked everything before continuing where I left off. Later while traveling over a particularly bumpy section of road my dashboard auxiliary car brake monitor indicated the brake was no longer in the ready state. This happens when the axillary brake system is not wedged between the brake peddle and the drivers set correctly. It probably had nothing to do with the interrupt, but I haven’t had it happen in a long time.

In addition to the brake issue, my travel day annoyances continued. The drivers side power window on my motorhome got stuck half way up. This is similar to a problem I had before and thought I’d had the factory fix. I continued to play with the switch off and on as I drove down the road. After about 40 miles of a refreshing breeze in my face the window went up the rest of the way. One more thing to add to my list of things to fix when I get parked for the winter.

Site 4 at the Blake Ranch RV Park and Horse Motel in the outskirts of Kingman AZ.

Today’s actual travel was easy. After coming south from the Grand Canyon on Arizona 64 to Interstate 40 it was a straight shot west. Neither road is the smoothest I ever been on but certainly not the worst either. Over the course of the 160 miles I came down close to three thousand feet in altitude which improved the temperature greatly. Tomorrow I move on to Lake Havasu.