Day 7 - Logandale Trails to Jack and Jay

It sure was nice to wake up to temperatures that were above freezing Friday morning 😄.

The morning started with me heading out on the 13 mile loop trail, Now I was traveling alone, without recovery gear, so I had to keep in mind that every situation I got myself into was the result of the decisions that I had made based on the information that I had managed to gather and evaluate. What could go wrong...

That was a rough trail... But the van handled it super well. I decided to traverse the road in two-wheel drive to see how far I could get before I had to turn around, and I was very pleased with how many obstacles and how much terrain the van could handle. There were a couple of places that were pretty sketchy, one in particular, and I decided to go around. This all went well until I arrived at the exit of the Overton Wash. This was an obstacle that I couldn't figure out how to get around. I searched all of the different lines around there. Looked for a way around the slick rock I had to crawl up, but couldn't find one. So I made a calculated decision to airdown my tires, stick it into four low, and see if I could take the path that, based on the tracks, was the only way up and forward.

Keeping in mind that I needed the van to be in both a non-stuck and non-broken state if my adventures were to continue, I used as much mechanical sympathy as I had and tried to get up the knob. To no avail. I then tried another approach, and it didn't work either. It was time to take heed of my mantra of staying unstuck and unbroken, and turn around and go out the way I came in. Had I been with others, and had recovery gear, I could have gotten the van up that obstacle.

The rest of the day was pretty straightforward, as I drove to my Nephew Jack and Jay's place as quickly as possible, which was a straight 75mph interstate run to Flagstaff. Upon arriving in Flagstaff, I beelined to a car wash and gave the van a thorough wash to get rid of all the dust and grime it had accumulated over the past week.

When I arrived at their house, another Sprinter van was parked there, and it turns out it is Jay's mom's van. It is a nice van! She picked it up in August and has been living and working out of it full-time since then (well, she has been hanging out with Jay and Jack for the last two weeks).

We all went to dinner at Satchmo's, a local BBQ joint, and then went back to their place and played the card game Shithead, which I quite enjoyed, and watched the first three episodes of Pluribus.

Today, plans are to hang out with Jack and Jay for a while, and then head down to Sun City West to hang with Sue and Mom for a couple of days.