We had another late start to a beautiful morning in the forest. No hangovers to use as an excuse this time, but that didn’t matter to us! We played cards in bed (I won) before making breakfast. We were especially excited to cook up a storm this morning because we had a bit of mince left over from our burgers yesterday and were keen for the breakfast version of our fantastic lunch yesterday. I sat in Dan’s backwards passenger chair, comfortably blogging as he sizzled everything up. It was strange, we’d almost gotten into a habit without realising it. Dan cooks in the morning and I blog.
The brekkie burgers were brilliant with beef, cheese, bacon and egg. Ohhh yeah. We faffed around at camp a while longer, not in a rush to get anywhere. We hung out in the van and outside of it just enjoying the fact that we were both back where we belong again. We played cards again, sitting on the bed with all the doors open out to the forest. I won the first round and Dan won the second by default when the forest service drove along the road again. This time they stopped. We figured we should stop and pack it up since they seemed likely to do something about our illegal camping this time. We sat quietly, waiting and watching to see if we would be getting in trouble. After a good five minutes and no movement from within the Forest Service car, he moved on. Ha ha, dirtbags win again.
We used that as our signal to make a move. We packed our shit up and moved on out. It was early afternoon at this stage and we had a couple of errands to run in town before checking out Flagstaff’s Independence Day celebration festivals. Town was abuzz with people walking the streets in holiday mode. Our first stop was a smoke shop. Dan was looking for a replacement glass piece for his vape pen which he’d dropped on the ground yesterday, breaking it. We didn’t find what we needed but while I was in the post office, he Googled around looking for another shop that might have the part he needed. I was in the post office for a good half hour sending Jon’s trad rack back to Australia since he decided he needed it more than me after leaving it with me to look after. It wasn’t hard, just time consuming like every American government process.
By the time I came out, Dan had found a spot that had what he needed so we drove further through town to another smoke shop. They produced the small glass piece for $5 and he was set. Next, we needed a few groceries so we crossed the road and went into Safeway. More burger essentials and a bottle of white wine. Errands done, we drove back through town to the art walk that was on in the park. The park had beautiful green grass and sat under the shade of huge trees with a bunch of market stalls lined up. Just the ticket for a lazy afternoon. We drove a few blocks away to park and Jon called just as we found ourselves a couple of spaces in the suburbs of Flag.
I sat on the kerb and chatted with Jon as Dan made us a belated lunch. The kerb watching was pretty good with locals going here and there on bikes, skateboards and cars. Jon was doing good, it was nice to catch up with him. About an hour after parking, we were finally ready to hit the art walk. I stood outside the vans with Cleo on the leash while Dan had a nervous pee inside and I was approached by a group of local homeless guys and they seemed surprised that I was a white girl with a pit bull. “Are you a white woman?” they asked me. “Yes?!” I answered, repeatedly when they asked again, not really sure what they meant. When Dan emerged from the van, they seemed to understand better. Apparently white girls don’t own pitbulls. They chatted easily with Dan and I was quickly forgotten, them giving each other handshakes all round before they left us. Dan explained the dynamics of dog ownership to me as we walked the streets towards the park.
Once there, we discovered we’d pretty much missed it, all of the market stalls were packing up for the day. We still wandered around and looked at the art and useless shit no one needs before finding ourselves a good people watching spot on the soft grass at the edge of the park. We tried to figure out the dynamic of a pair of tall skinny guys (one had shaved legs) playing with a tiny soccer ball in the middle of the park, there were also a bunch of homeless people (including our friends from earlier) getting into heated conversations and last of all, two lesbians chilling in the park that became interested when one of them decided she’d climb the big tree in the middle of the grass.
We chilled here for a good hour just watching until we thought we’d go and check out “Lights on the Lawn”, an Independence Day celebration on the other side of town that I’d sussed out online. It had free admission and fireworks so we figured it would be worth a look. We walked back to the cars and I navigated us over to the festival. We stopped in at a Maccas on the way to use their bathroom and got ourselves a dipped cone just as a matter of course. As we sat outside eating it, we were approached by a homeless guy (I don’t know why we attract these types) and he sat himself down at our table and started by telling us how much he respected us. “You are nice people,” he slurred and waffled on and on. He eventually got to the point and I gave him all the coins I had bu it still wasn’t enough, he then broke into song, some Native American chant and he wouldn’t let up. He was drooling all over himself the whole time, clearly pissed as a fart. It kind of ruined the whole ice cream thing, we downed it as fast as we could so we could get out of there.
When we got to the festival, I think me and Dan cringed simultaneously when we saw the people heading into the festival and completely turned our noses up at the $10 parking price. I knew there had to be a catch. We pulled over by the festival to consider our options. Our separation was looming since I was pretty much ready to leave Flagstaff and Dan was planning to stay there until his commitment back in Phoenix on 19th July. When he said he’d be keen to drive up to Colorado, exactly where I was going, instead of staying in Flag, we made a plan to get out of Flagstaff and head north east. We were both pretty happy at how quickly our plans could change and that we were both alright with it. A quick consult of freecampsites.net and we left the fat families behind to get back on the road.
We didn’t drive more than half an hour north of Flag until we were in the Coconino National Forest off the highway. I drove us in to the forest network, then Dan took over since he had more cell service than me. He took us on a beautiful drive up into the mountains where flowers blossomed in fields of yellow grass which lit up in the setting sun. Unfortunately it didn’t lead to a campsite so we turned our beasts around and carried on deeper into forest. Dan ended up coming up trumps with a great site looking out into a valley with mountains on one side and the highway winding its way out of sight in the distance. Happy campers we were.
Since I’d put in the firewood collecting effort yesterday, Dan took point while I put my van back together. I still wasn’t fully confident in the fuel pump fix but because my stuff which is normally stashed neatly away behind the passenger seat was on top of the bed, it all fell over on the dirt roads and I’d had it. I put the engine tunnel back together and repacked, not at all confident that it would be the last time. By the time I was done, Dan had a considerable pile of firewood for us to burn. Thanks to our late lunch, we didn’t need dinner so we got into the wine and beer and enjoyed the view of the sun setting over the valley as we got the fire started.
It was another beautiful night to spend in front of a fire. It had been windy when we first got to camp but as soon as we’d set up, it died down to be just cold enough to warrant the warmth of a fire. We chatted the night away listening to music like normal until retiring to the van where Cleo had been hiding ever since we got the fire going. Before bed, we played Black Jack for something different for a game so simple, it had Dan in fits of laughter towards the end because of the way I was playing.
