Southwest roadtrip report

On 5/13/16 my wife, her sister and I left North Ga headed for the Grand Canyon, Zion, and Bryce Canyon NP's with stops at other sights along the way. We didn't get away until 4PM after my SIL got off from work. We stopped in Ft. Smith on the Saturday to visit my wife's Aunt for a while then into New Mexico for Saturday night. We stayed in cheap hotels checking in near midnight and gone by 6AM.

Sunday started on an ominous note. I felt a vibration as soon as I hit the road. I hoped it was just rough pavement, but that was just wishful hoping. We made a brief stop at the Petrified Forest NP ( which I don't recommend), before heading on to the Grand Canyon. We set up camp just in time to see part of the South Rim at sunset.



By the time we got to GCNP the vibration was bad enough to confirm my suspicions, a bad U-Joint. I left my wife and SIL at the park and drove 80 miles back to Flagstaff early the next morning. After most of the day and $278 Findlay Toyota had me fixed up.

On Tuesday afternoon we headed toward Zion, stopped at Horseshoe Bend for a 1.5 mile hike and some photos.



Then on to Zion. We took lots of photos there, but none really do it justice. I really liked it much better than GCNP. We hiked most of Angels landing trail, but wimped out of the last part. Go to you tube or google and do a search for impressive photos and video. If you're not familiar the last section of the trail has several knife edge ridges you must cross only a few feet wide with 1500' drops on both sides.

On Friday it was on to Bryce Canyon. It was OK, but after the others it wasn't as impressive. We did some research and headed for Kodachrome Basin nearby. No crowds, we had the place almost to ourselves.



Some State park rangers gave us directions to some cool hiking trails about 20 miles out in the desert on BLM land. On the way back we came across some cowboys with an F-250 and horse trailer stranded on a steep hill. For some reason it wouldn't engage in 4X4, they started spinning in 4X2, got the truck a bit sideways and couldn't go up or down. We helped them unload the animals, and my wife got to ride a mule to the top of the hill.



I used a tow strap and was able to get enough traction for both of us to get the trailer up the hill. I told the guy driving the truck that if his friends ever found a Tacoma had to pull his 3/4 ton and trailer up a hill he'd live hard.




We left Utah early this past Saturday and came back the northern route through Colorado where we saw lots of snow up high. It took 2 days of hard driving. I was in the truck 19 hours Sunday arriving home at 2AM this morning.

My 9 year old truck did great covering 4619 miles in 10 days. She has just over 171,000 miles on her now. I got 19.5-20 mpg on most of the interstates running 70-75 mph. I did hit strong headwinds in Eastern Colorado and all of Kansas dropping mileage to about 16.5 mpg in those states. In the mountains where speeds rarely got over 65mph and with lots of downhills I got 21.5-22.5 mpg.

 

Nice! When I lived in snow country, I tugged a few suvs out of snowy ditches with my Subaru wagon. The joys of using good tires appropriate for the conditions.