Getting Nowhere Fast

After church and our habitual Sunday breakfast at the Cozy Corner, I pulled the trailer out, filled the water tanks, and headed for cooler climates.  With an afternoon start, there was a chance that I'd end up with some monsoon rain, but it was a chance worth taking.

There were occasional rain showers off in one direction or another,

but eventually, there was a rain shower right where I was. Most of them were of short duration, but I did go through a pretty good "gully washer" near Woods Canyon Lake.

As I headed out of Payson, it was obvious that I was headed the right direction. Lots of people headed back to the valley from the high country. It wasn't unusual to see lines of 20+ at the traffic lights.

Not everyone was having a good day. This beautiful Mobile Suites 5th wheel was parked on the highway with the tug nowhere in sight. There was a line of traffic cones, and a State Trooper with lights on, tucked in behind. I wonder how long he sat there before they got that rig off the road.

Camp for the night was on one of the numerous Forest Service roads on the rim. Close enough for a bit of road noise, but for an overnight it wasn'to worth searching further from the road. A great spot except for no usable cell coverage.

I would have been much further down the road, but I did some unnecessary backtracking, eating up daylight.

Monday was a big sky day, watching the clouds as they would gather and disepate. I took a different route through New Mexico, using Highway 371 north from Thoreau. Beautiful country, but sections of that road has some pretty major heaves that would be good practice for the Alcan Highway.

Home for the week was one of the many boondock sites at Madden Peak Road. It's a nice private alcove with a gap in the trees to get enough solar to keep me happy. With the windows open, there's just a little background noise from the pump station 1/4 mile away on the other side of FR316.

I'd hoped to snag the lower view site, but it looks like it's reserved for Airstreams. It's actually pretty busy - I counted 8 rigs within 1/2 mile, but none in sight of my camp. 4 bars of Verizon or AT&T.

I pulled these off of Weather Underground. The upper graph is for Mancos, Colorado, just a handful of miles down the hill from my campsite. The lower graph is from a weather reporting station within a block of the house in Mesa. The graphs look similar, but my highs are just about the same as the overnight lows in Mesa. 'Nuf said.