In the morning, we drove to Jacob's Lake, then south to DeMotte campground, about 16 miles north of the north rim of the Grand Canyon. It's one of my favorite spots. A small forest service campground with about 22 spaces. Near it are several forest roads leading to some great spots if you know about them. We were now at about 8,000 feet in elevation and almost cold. Those of you that are pilots know that air cools at an adiabatic rate, if no other factors enter in the equation. That rate is about 5 ½ degrees per 1,000 feet in rise of elevation and we had come up from 1,200 feet in two days. A little over 35 degrees cooler up there. It was great. We picked a site from an almost empty campground and set up. We walked around a bit to explore the immediate area then settled in for the evening. I even turned the furnace on to keep us warm. It would have been even nicer if the motor home had a fireplace but we had each other to keep us warm. It was nice to sit on the couch, listening to some music from the 60s and just cuddling while reminiscing about the music. Young people might have made a mad night of it, but that night we went to bed and fell asleep right away, a combination of the cool and the altitude causing that.
Coffee outside, in the morning watching deer in the campground while they browsed. It doesn't get any better than that. We stood there for about a half hour with an arm around each other, sipping our coffee and watching the deer. Kay hadn't been on any of the back forest roads before, so we drove on some of them, going quite a ways back into the forest. I hadn't been there in 7 or 8 years myself. I had taken a granddaughter with me to see the north rim. We had come up in the fall, just before the north rim closed for the winter and had encountered 4 inches of snow at the 8,000 feet level. This time the weather was perfect.
The next day, after breakfast, we drove down to the rim itself. We both liked to tourist watch. After buying the obligatory postcards to send to the kids, we addressed them and dropped them in the mailbox. At noon, we went into the dining room and had lunch. All the National Parks have great food with excellent service equal to that of many major resorts. The secret to eating at any big resort or National Park is to eat lunch. Dinners are priced sky high, but lunches are moderate with the same quality of food and service. I always take the opportunity to eat out whenever I'm in the vicinity of any nice place like that. Besides, they do the dishes.
How wonderful and romantic to dine next to a window overlooking the Grand Canyon. I see so many stories where the couple orders some kind of wine to go with their meal. I've never been that sophisticated to know what I should order and besides I don't like many wines anyway. Not sweet enough. The kids say that I'm such a sour old man that I need all the help I can get, so I should always order a sweet wine. For once, they have something right. I'm driving, anyway.
By the middle of the afternoon, most of the tourist busses have left and we head back to the campground for supper. For the rest of the week we did pretty much the same thing, exploring the forest and sometimes going to the rim for lunch. There's an old saying about a couple being as comfortable as a pair of old shoes. We're starting to get there by the time we were ready to leave. Speaking of time, it was time to move on in our travels.
We decided to go west, stopping for a visit at Pipe Spring National Monument, a relative unknown place that is a jewel. We toured there and then stayed the night in their campground. It was great getting to talk with the rangers as they not only worked there, they lived there in the summer also. We stayed up late talking and got some fantastic insights to the area as well as the monument itself as it was a way station in that area for many, many years. It was the only water for miles and a must stop for early travelers. The next morning we drove to Cedar Breaks, Utah, another small less frequented gem.
