After an interesting morning departure from the Sedona area, we made our way up to Lake Powell, just outside of Page, Arizona. Lake Powell is ginormous. Little known fact: Lake Powell’s total shoreline can measure from nearly 2,000 miles, using fairly standard measuring techniques, to infinity using an infinitely small unit of measure. We spent 4 nights here, and 1 full day on a boat in the water. After Lake Powell, we stayed a few nights in Kanab, Utah.

The first step in leaving the Sedona area if you are heading north is to crawl your way out of the Oak Creek Canyon. It’s not crazy steep in most places, but it is long. While Vicaribus does love climbing hills for long periods of time, sometimes he tries too hard and clogs his fuel filter with rust from the diesel tank in the process. We then have to pull over and feed him a new fuel filter to coax him to continue. Thankfully this time we made just to the top of the canyon before having to go through this ritual. It is a ritual that I thought we had down to a 5 minute ordeal, but this time it didn’t go so well and we got too much air in the diesel line, which meant an hour or so of priming and general fiddling to get it running again.  But, this actually this ended up being fortuitous. To quote Tombstone (a top 5 Nick movie), “That means lucky.”

We happened to pull over in a large scenic view parking lot at the top of the canyon, where a lovely representative of Sunflair Solar Ovens walked over to see if she could get some shots with an oven and the bus. Of course we said yes, and then after a bit of chatting and explanation of our predicament, we now have (had, but will have again (keep reading)) one, as she donated one of the ovens to our cause! I had actually looked into these, but never pulled the trigger. They are really cool (or hot i guess), and fold up nice and small.

The rest of the ride to Lake Powell was pretty uneventful. You can see it here in one of our latest Quick Run videos.

The last (and pretty much only) town you go through heading to Lake Powell from Flagstaff is Page. Right after Page, you pass over the 710 foot tall Glen Canyon Dam and then you arrive to the Wahweap area of Lake Powell on it’s southwestern most coast. We spent our 4 nights there in the Wahweap RV Park and Campground. This was another excellent spot with nice facilities and epic views.

I don’t recall what we did the first night, except eat some popsicles from the camp store. It was damn hot.

On the first full day there we explored the area some and then went into town for some groceries, laundry (too many people at the camp laundry), stamps, wifi, diesel, fuel filters, etc. While we were parked at Safeway, a fellow by the name of Eric spotted our bus in the parking lot and tagged us in his Instagram story. Long story short, he and Heather chatted a bit, and then hey came over to the campground that night to hang out and do some filming of the bus and us for his YouTube vlog. We eventually ended up on the roof watching some serious shooting stars and chatting the night away.

The next day we went down to the beach and did some chilling out. We then cleaned the crap out of the bus and found a good spot to finally film and take photos for the upcoming full bus tour blogs and videos. That night Eric came back over to do some more filming with better light and then we fed him tacos for not murdering us.

Here is Eric’s awesome interview vlog episode feature Vicaribus and the Passengers!

At this point, it was becoming apparent that Lake Powell is a boating destination, and to fully experience it, a boat is required. So, for our last day there we decided to get a boat.

At full pool, Lake Powell is almost 180 miles long and mostly surrounded by crazy cool cliffs (CCCs in the biz). Between the northern end and southern end (where we were), there is an expansive area with nothing in the way of civilization. The only way to see that part of the lake is to spend multiple days on a boat. We obviously didn’t do that, but house-boating out here is HUGE! It is not uncommon for people to spend weeks out there. As a side note, the best resource I found for info about boating on the lake was at http://fredsliquorstore.com/

We ended up getting a boat from Skylite Boat Rentals up in Big Water, Utah, since it was way cheaper than the Wahweap Marina. Their location is about 10 miles from the campground and boat slip, giving us a chance to finally try out our hitch on the back.

When we first hit the water, we quickly checked out the dam from the water side and then headed as far as we could go into Antelope Canyon. When we moved to Denver 3 years ago, we actually did an Antelope Canyon tour on the dry side up above the lake.

The water side was way more fun, and was the subject of our 5th Quick Run video.

After a successful 13-point turn at the end of the canyon, and while we were slowly working our way back out, we made use of our new solar oven for the first time, cooking up some delicious tamales. I’m fairly certain it was the first time an oven has ever been used in Antelope Canyon.

Upon exiting the canyon we headed back out and briefly scoped out Navajo Canyon before finding a nice wide spot to lay out in the floats for a while. This spot also happened to be the location for our first attempt at our own vlog.

IF we can find the time to keep these coming we will, but no promises.

All-in-all, we did an excellent job of pulling the boat to the lake, putting the boat in the lake, boating in the boat on the lake, and pulling the boat out of the lake without damaging us, the bus, or the boat. However, upon leaving the parking lot at the marina I failed to close the back door of the bus. Fortunately Heather noticed this about a mile up the road, and upon inspection the only thing that appeared to be missing was the new solar oven. Doh! We backtracked our way back to the marina, but somebody was clearly quicker than us, because we never found it. (Happy side note – Heather ended up talking to Sunflair, and they are sending us a new one!) (Unhappy side note, it did not occur to us that Miles had no where to pee all day on the boat, so while we were looking for the oven, he peed on the couch.) For a photo recap of our time at and on Lake Powell, look here.

We slept good that night and then hit the road for Kanab in the morning after tracking down a missing package that Heather had delivered to the resort. On the way we stopped briefly at the dam visitor center and then the Grand Stairway – Escalante Vistor Center in Big Water, Utah. It was at the visitor center that we learned that just up the road, a regular Joe had found, and then subsequently had named after him, a nearly complete dinosaur fossil while he was just hiking around. So naturally, I had to go try for my self. I’m pretty sure I did not find any fossils, but you can see the dino hunt and the rest of the drive to Kanab in the slightly out of order 4th Quick Run video. All of the pictures from the crazy landscape wherein I hunted dinosaurs remains can be found here.

Kanab, Utah

Kanab is a quaint, yet well appointed, little town, sort of in between several of the really cool spots in southern Utah. The food is good and the WiFi at the RV park we stayed at was to die for. Kanab RV Corral is run by gentleman who spent 35 years at Intel as a Software Engineer. That plus the fact that the town was smart enough to get its own fiber data connections equals the fastest internet speeds I have ever seen, ever. Naturally we spent the majority of our 3 nights and days there thrashing the intertubes.

One of the closer amazing spots is a hike called the Wave. It’s so special that you have to get a permit to hike it. They only allow 20 people a day to go. 10 of the permits can be reserved online ahead of time, and disappear immediately. The other 10 are given out via a lottery each morning for the following day. We attempted this twice, but were not lucky enough to win either day. The odds were against us with about 150 showing up each morning.

On our third day there, we did pull ourselves off the keyboards and did a very cool hike on Buckskin Gulch Trail about an hour away. It was hella-scenic and I would like to say (with no basis for comparison) that it was better than the Wave.

If I find the time, our Buckskin hike will likely be the subject of our second vlog. All of the pictures for Buckskin Gulch are here.

As of now, we have left Kanab for the wonderland that is Zion National Park. It will likely get it’s own Vicaribupdate in the coming days.

Website Updates

There are a few website updates to bring to your attention. Now that we have gotten into a groove with the photos and blogs, as you probably noticed form this update, we decided to also tax our free time with videos! There is a new page that showcases all the videos we have made and will make. Click here to see it, or its under the Visuals top menu item if you want to find it yourself.

We also now have some actual real live data showing up on the Live Data page. You can see our seven day historical temperature, humidity, speed and much more. One of these days I will do a post on all of the technology in Vicaribus, including the magical self-made sensor box.

Latest Stats

Shew! That was a big one, if you’re still reading congrats and thanks! And here now are the latest stats as of the writing of this post:

CURRENT INTERESTING STATS

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