thank goodness for birds

stinkbutt or no stinkbutt we still had to set up camp and make ourselves at home for the next two days. the tent was set up and mr. a-go-go went to crop circling a trench around the tent to keep it from getting flooded if the rain continued because of course we would have rain after already experiencing freezing temps and torrid winds. so mr. a-go-go got out his handy dandy folding shovel while i pulled out the camera to document it all.

aside from setting up the tent and making the bed, we need to plan for meals and make sure we have something to do after all the set up is done. reading, sewing and sudoku are done by the light of our headlamps. if it is too cold or windy we hide out in Rodney until it’s late enough to declare a justifiable bed time. mostly we just noodle along and explore the landscape that surrounds us. at camp stinkbutt though, there wasn’t much to explore save for a dash past the stink to the reserved campsites that were creekside. the water was pretty and gurgling away or maybe it was babbling, i’m not sure. there were all sorts of birds just like mr. a-go-go said. so we sat and watched and enjoyed the view.

as crowded and stinky and cold as the campsite was it wasn’t all that bad. the saving grace of the whole place was the birds. all kinds of birds! from the get go there were the birds. robins scurried about the campsite in search of critters and crumbs. woodpeckers, peck, peck, pecked away at the lanky ponderosas that surrounded us and unidentifiable birds in grey and brown peeped peeped under foot, car and camp bench. the niftiest of nifty however were the hummingbirds. camp stinkbutt was void of anything flowering but still i heard the cartoonish motor motor of hummingbirds whizzing by. i couldn’t figure out where they were coming from or why as not a speck of color was in sight save for the eye popping yellow of our tent and the happy pink & orange picnic throw i had tossed over my faded camp chair. all night the first night i would hear what sounded like hummingbirds hum around us, it wasn’t until morning when one wee fellow flew fast and furious into the yellow cereal bag we had floating about our camp deftly jabbing at it hoping for something sweet to snack on. ah-ha! i knew there were hummingbirds.

the mystery of the hummingbirds was solved when i wandered away to find a less stinkified bathroom to take care of business in. i thought for certain that the pit toilets near the camp host would be clean and so i headed that way. as i walked i began to hear more motor motor motor and the closer i got to the camp host, the louder the humming buzz biz got. there before me, outside the RV of the host was a small thatch of birdie paradise. feeder after hummingbird feeder peppered the area and boy howdy were there birds! some of the feeders had five or more wee nectar lovers perched upon them and they didn't fly away when i appeared. i didn't have my camera with me and it wouldn't have mattered if i did, i don't think i could have adequately captured this lovey yet surreal moment. so yeah, it may have been a stinky two days but the birds provided a lovely soundtrack.

a long walk on the rim and, “what’s that stink?”

5/12 Williams, The Grand Canyon, and stink butt camp




The morning was indeed frigid and the warm bed kept us from the road north to the Grand Canyon until 7 am. We didn’t see the sunrise over the big river in it’s deep red cradle but we were early enough to have the Rim trail mostly to ourselves for the morning. What can I say about the big great cleft that would be new? This was mrs. a-go-go’s first visit so I’ll let her photos make their excited disbelieving overwhelming describing.






Later we took the park shuttle to the end of the line at Hermit’s Rest and walked more of the Rim Trail back toward the main park village. By this time, after lunch, the crowds were upon us. Nothing like the summer rush I’m sure, but still a bit trying. People get pushy, and impatient. It’s a really special place so I understand so many coming to see it but it makes me worry about how many of us hairless house apes there are. On the plus side, we listened to German, Korean, Portuguese, Hindi, Italian, French, Japanese, and a mess of languages and accents we could never recognize. Jeepers, the world comes here…and almost gets along without arguments and tension.

By 1pm we were walked out. Back to our hot car on an hour-long shuttle ride, and we were on our way to Flagstaff and Oak Creek Canyon north of Sedona, AZ. The weather south of the canyon was a little daunting with short flurries of big raindrops and sheets of distant rain hanging from big white anvils. Flagstaff briefly confused our directions and we had a quick glimpse of the old town where we’ll have to visit on another trip. I had hoped to score a campsite at a tent-only campground north of Sedona. Rodney did his best to grip the road on the twisting Oak Creek Canyon Road as we scanned the brown signs for Manzanita Campground. Full!? Really!? On a Wednesday afternoon? Well, the camp-out season starts early in the red rocks of Sedona. So we backtracked to another campground that is heavily used (and I mean USED) and frequented by lots of RVs. I won’t mention the camp’s real name, but we call it stink butt. We took a site for two nights in spite of the stinky pit toilets that waft the valley with a grey brown smell and the badly abused surroundings. We needed a place to stay so we could do some hiking in the area and stink butt would have to do. The local inns were way out of our budget so we sucked it up and decided to accept what was available. Chiggers can’t be boozers, and our day peering into and across the Grand Canyon left us needing dinner and a dry tent. Yes, a few more spatterings of rain fell, but we were dry for the night; dry but with wrinkled stink-noses and the headlights and “mon-back” calls of the late arriving RVs until midnight stilled everything but the hum of the pit toilets’ stink-vent fans.