Sick Kid, Water in the Camper, Tree Damaged Roof and a few AWESOME Parks!!

Holy moly it was an eventful few days after leaving the Grand Canyon!

As we headed down the road through Arizona towards Gallup, NM our son was in the back seat making awful moaning noises. Now this kid does not complain about much, which usually is great, but we sure wished he would speak up when he is not feeling good.

So the moaning turned to “can we pull over, I need to go to the bathroom” and the window rolling up and down. Finally we find a place to stop, which luckily was a National Monument (translate – Passport Stamp).

This stop was a blessing in disguise because not only was it a cool location, we were able to identify a big issue with the camper. Apparently the water pump was left on when we departed, and the kitchen faucet overflowed the grey tank and some of the water got onto the floor from the faucet swinging around with the road motion.

So while I was dealing with that, the poor kid was throwing up outside the camper. Finally he was good enough to get into the bathroom, but the poor bystanders in the parking lot got more than they bargained for.

So after him spending some time in the bathroom, and me getting as much dried off as possible with the slides in, we got to check out Walnut Canyon National Monument.

What a cool little unexpected stop! An old cliff dwelling in a beautiful little canyon.

There is a great hike at this spot that I would love to come back for at some point. But considering our situation (sick kid and we did not come prepared for a hike) we decided to move on.

With everything going on we decided it best to reroute and stopped just 26 minutes up the road. We found this super nice campground at Meteor Park for the night which was perfect because the 95 degree temps surely helped dry everything out.

Of course, it didn’t end there! The next morning as we were pulling out, I managed to take a turn too tight (after realizing the exit gate I was going to use was chained closed) and rubbed the top of the camper on a low tree. It wasn’t until we got to Durango (two days later) that we realized that low tree ripped the roof edge and took out our TV antennae.

Considering most of our issues have not been operator error and we have gone over 10,000 miles in less than three months, I think we are doing pretty good.

So after using almost a whole 50′ roll of Eternabond tape we are patched up and a new antennae is on order.

Back tracking, our trip from Meteor to Gallup included a drive through the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Parks. Cool to get three stops in one, as Historic Route 66 was also in the Parks! (Three stamps for the kids passport books).

The petroglyphs at Newspaper Rock were awesome. Most likely because they don’t allow people to go right up to them and ruin them (sad but true).

And the petrified trees at Rainbow Bridge and Crystal Forest were amazing! I had no idea that trees could turn to stone.

And seeing Historic Route 66, made us think of the movie Cars and how it relates so much to what we are trying to do with this trip – slow down and see the country before it’s gone (like many parts of the Route).

This stop was worth the extra hour on the road for sure!

The road from the Park to Gallup was awfully bumpy and our closet solution for Addy fell apart. Guess canvas closets are not meant for mobile living (or the 50 pounds of clothes she tried to shove in there) Oh well…

Luckily our visit to Gallup was uneventful, just a dinner in town and an overnight at the local state park.

Of course this means we also got to mark another state off the map!

After we left there we traveled back into Colorado to Durango where we will be hanging out (in and around) for a little bit hoping for a little better luck before pushing east!