So this was a bad start to an otherwise lovely morning…. about 9am a Forest Service fire truck drove through and told us they were going to fire danger Stage-3 and were going to close the entire Kaibab National Forest!
WHAT?!?!?!?
Yup, you can read about it here: https://www.fs.usda.gov/alerts/kaibab/alerts-notices/?aid=66669
But the bottom line is everyone had to leave the forest because of extreme fire danger. Tira and I gave it a talk for the next hour while we cruised the web to confirm the closure and had some breakfast. By 10am we both agreed it was time to go and to go east.
By noon we had packed up, hooked up, and filled up with gas at Jacob Lake and were on the road. We didn’t plan to go far, just outside the forest limits where we could spend a couple of days deciding where to go, but as we wound our way down out of the forest, the temperature rose. By the time we got to the edge of the forest closure, it was 103° and honestly we just didn’t feel like looking for a place to stop.
Tira was sick and it was hot-hot-hot. So we drove on. We left the Jacob Lake area on 89a and joined 89 where we went south towards Tuba City and an RV park. We got on 160 (also called Navajo Trail) but the RV park was full. 🙁 So we drove on.
There was camping near the Navajo National Monument, but because of Covid the area was closed, so we drove on.
We finally stopped about 5pm and parked in the back of a truck stop. Of course that meant cars and trucks coming through all night long, but we had little choice. It worked out fine in the end, and I got all the 4 or 5 hours of sleep that I needed.