Author: Mike Pekrul

We got up crazy early this morning to go watch the sunrise. Rode the bikes in the dark over to the rim, picked a vantage point and settled in. Glorious! After sunrise, we headed off to hike down the Bright Angel Trail into the canyon. And then BAM! I took a turn and the bike…

SO FREAKIN’ COOL!! I took my first ever helicopter ride this morning and it was awesome! If I had a job, I’d quit right now and start training for a new career as a helicopter pilot. Might even have to rethink the Moose Ranch. I took flight with Maverick Helicopter Tours in a Eurocopter EC…

So in the continuing drama that is our dead e-bikes, we ran into a wall of rules. We rode the first bus home last night. Transferred to another bus which brought us to the campground. Charged the batteries overnight then set out to retrieve our bikes this morning. Hopped on a bus, and after a…

We started out this afternoon to simply walk the rim trail to the west. We rode our bikes out to the first overlook and looked over the canyon. We did that a couple more times till we finally reached the place on the rim trail that we stopped this morning. As we started walking, it…

Ok, so it’s a BIG gully. Today we arrived at Grand Canyon National Park. We hadn’t even finished setting up the camper and already spotted some wildlife. Several elk were just walking around the campground. After finishing the setup and some lunch, we rode our bikes over to the rim, and got our first look…

Today we visited the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff. Founded in 1894 by Percival Lowell, there have been a number of major discoveries coming from there. Percy Lowell himself “discovered” the canal systems stretching across the surface of Mars, and speculated about entire civilizations on Mars, leading to the entire genre of Martian storytelling. Even though…

Was an exciting day yesterday, as I walked through the snowy woods, hearing Susy’s fearful scream. 😳 Before the excitement, we had a great walk through the ponderosa pine forest, snow everywhere and more coming down, drifting through the trees, crunching as we walked. Silent and beautiful. After we walked for a while, Susy headed…

Yesterday we took a ride WAY out in the beyond, past where the road ends and civilization stops. So far that we were surrounded by scrub and hills and sky, and humans didn’t exist. Susy wanted to do some more rockhounding, so we went “out there”. Stopped the truck on the side of the wagon…

We visited Montezuma Castle National Monument today, and then went on to Montezuma Well, a secondary location together with the monument. Montezuma Castle is the name of a cliff dwelling in the Verde River valley, along Wet Beaver Creek. And no, I did not make that creek name up. It’s a well preserved site up…

Went into Sedona again and walked (not hiked) the Boynton Canyon trail and up to the Boynton Vista and our first vortex. It was kinda funny, when we started out from the trailhead, I looked up at two spires WAY WAY up from where we were, and made a joke to Susanne that we were…