Commencing Countdown, Engines On!

Its that time of year again, where we load up four adults, three dogs, two rides, and two trailers and head to the mountains.  "The mountains are calling and I must go", has never been more appropriate.  I've been looking forward to escaping southern Arizona for a long time.

We made it through Phoenix by 9AM and slabbed it all the way to Flagstaff.  After gassing up, we stopped off pavement for a quick lunch.  And then it poured.  Monsoon season has hit Arizona a little early (which we have been welcomed with open arms).  Undeterred, we crossed I-17 and started down a portion of the AZ Backcountry Discovery Route.

(You know you're from southern Arizona when, you take pictures and video of rain).

It was boring.  Of all the beautiful places to ride in AZ, the BDR crew chose a crazy boring route.  Scrub brush...and more scrub brush. Hey guys, AZ does have trees.  I didn't take a lot of pictures here.  Blah.  But we did see a huge herd of elk: at least 25 head.  And I didn't get any pictures of them.  They ran across the road before I could get my Nikon to cooperate.

We made it back to pavement and slabbed our way to Tusayan.  We found a back door into the Grand Canyon National Park and took it.  It rained off and on.  We pushed west until we were out of the rain clouds and camped off of NF-302.

It was early and Mike got out the slack line so we could thoroughly embarrass ourselves.  

The dogs wanted to join in.  The girls tried limbo.

The storm clouds moved on, a decent sunset happened behind the pines.  We had dinner, played dominoes and made our way to bed. It was a pretty good start to our trip.