Reasons Why I Can’t Ever Leave the Campsite on Time

9/3:


Here is a list of some reasons why I can’t ever leave the campsite at a reasonable time:
1) There is a family of German tourists jumping around my car and the dad, clad in black leather short shorts, will not stop taking pictures of Jane until he has photographed every conceivable angle
2) There is a gigantic bull elk in my campsite and he won’t stop standing next to my stuff

Yep, both of those happened this morning.

I was making hashbrowns and bacon for breakfast when my new friend Ronnie came back over to talk hot rods some more. So of course I forgot about breakfast and instead talked cars. At some point in time near the end of our conversation, a big RV pulls up and stops. We assume that they think they can’t get past Ronnie’s truck, but no, it’s a family of Germans and they really love Jane. The whole family was jumping around trying to take as many pictures as possible of her, presumably under the assumption that there was a time limit on photo-taking after which point I would force them back into their RV. Well, I didn’t, and they had a grand time taking pictures of her and posing with her. I don’t doubt that there are now an additional hundred pictures of her somewhere out there on the internet.

Anyways, eventually they said their goodbyes and Ronnie said his goodbyes and I resumed packing up camp. About the time that I had gotten my tent down and was packing up the grill, I looked up at a sound and there was a giant bull elk standing there 5 feet away, munching leaves and eyeing me placidly. I quickly put the picnic table between he and I, not because I was concerned about him attacking me but because I was concerned about getting a ticket from a ranger for being too close to wildlife (like it was my fault that he came up to me). This dude was HUGE – a 14-pointer taller than me. He was using his antlers to hook trees and pull them down so he could eat them. So I watched him do this for a while, and then I went and did dishes because I couldn’t get to the rest of my stuff.

Before this picture he was standing right next to my tent (orange bag on the ground)

Yep, that's a solid 14 points

When I came back there were several other campers standing on the fringes of my site taking pictures of Mr. Bull Elk. I continued packing up the table until he got a hair too close to Jane… and then I started thinking about those huge antlers and their proximity to my car’s paint. So I did what any reasonably insane person would do: I shouted at him to scare him off. I’d like to think that my shouts of, “Git! Giiiiittttt!! Git away from my car you big cow! GIIIIYITTTTT!!!” impressed the other people standing around my site, as they really didn’t impress Mr. Bull Elk too much. But eventually I shouted at him enough that he snorted at me and wandered away to claim some saplings that were not in close proximity to a vintage car and its concerned owner. And that was the end of that.

Wish I had gotten a picture of him right next to Jane but I was too busy yelling at him

Finally I hit the road. I stopped for a few quick photo ops along the Desert View drive before heading on to Page, my destination of the day. 

Jane graciously provides photo ops of her own

I call this "the walkaround" - when someone orbits around the car a few times before wandering off

And this is "power stance" - legs wide apart, camera at optimum angle for awesome pictures

Fortunately Page isn’t too far from the Grand Canyon, as I didn’t leave until sometime early afternoon. I spent quite a bit of time at the watchtower at the end of Desert View. Made to look like a natural part of the landscape, it features some pretty cool “native”-looking art on the inside and some great views of the canyon.

??????? What is this???

Not far outside of the park the road turns back into wide open spaces – which was totally fine with me. I had a nice scenic drive into town. My campsite for the night was at Page Campground, which turned out to be a really nice place! The sites were all totally level and sandbox-like, so it was easy to pitch the tent and then kick back with some chocolate milk and a book (yeah, I live a pretty wild life…). I did put my tent down in the path of an ant trail apparently, as I had a few hundred ants on my tent about 30 minutes after I put it up. My campsite neighbor sprinkled some foot powder that he had on them, which knocked them off of the tent and probably temporarily confused them. They then got back on the tent, ate all of the pine tree sap off of the rain fly, and then got off the tent again, so that turned out pretty well for me.

Tomorrow I have plans to take a tour of Antelope Canyon and to visit Horseshoe Bend, both of which should be stunning! More later… Kelly signing out.