#400 Kaibab Paiute RV Park & Campground

We were looking for a two-hour stop up the road going towards the north rim area. I saw an RV park operated by the folks at the reservation. About a month before we ever got there I sent an email to them using, contact us, that I have skills as a handyman, electrician, and such and while I'm there if they were interested I would volunteer some kind of work for the reservation. I never heard back from them so I guess they didn't feel the need to take me up on that.

I didn't know what to expect but it was on the way so we pulled in and I went by the office. Some of the sites were fairly spaced out area along one area but there were another fairly crowded bunch of folks all crammed in together. They put me up there in the middle of all that and a little later I asked would it be okay if I was alone on the dirt line, I used to say the wood line but there are no woods and they said yeah. They mentioned some of these spaces were camp hosts. I saw one totally empty and set and leveled up. A lady mentioned you probably need to move because that's a host site It didn't look like it was but she said they were a car camper so they didn't have a lot of stuff. I happily moved we settled in and later on we went into town and had a nice bite as we usually do. There was a pretty cool hike that we went on but it had no destination. We just went in a mile and back out. I saw a pretty interesting sweat lodge and I realized that there were things that went on here that I would not be allowed to take part in in a hurry but if you really got to know folks for a while they would have probably let you go to the sweat.

The next day we went to the national monument that was just across the street from the RV park. It was run by the national park service. It was a spring that has some pretty controversial history to it and it was a repeating story of how settlers didn't always treat the natives well.

I found myself on the side of BLM and rights for indigenous people and whenever you hear some people talk and they make it seem like that's all you people talk about is how white people are mean and have been so awful. But every time I turn on there's another story that reinforces that so these are the facts whether you like how they feel or not.

We began to learn the history of how for thousands of years probably the native people enjoyed the use of the spring. Water just poured out of the ground and you could trap it in a pond but it was very abundant and a wonderful place to live. You could have raised crops or livestock because water in the desert means life. The Mormons came along and began to build outposts and missions here and there. They decided the spring belonged to them to build a building on top of it and take control of it and none of the native people could use the water because the Mormons owned it now. The native people couldn’t get the concept of owning the water. Next, the settlers built a fort around it all so they could defend their property by force. This made it just about impossible for the native people to have water now because they were forbidding them to have it and is that a nice thing to do no it was awful.

I will insert a wiki here about what went on here and it's sad it's awful as usual.

https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2019/05/pipe-spring-national-monument-paiutes-mormons-and-stephen-mather

https://www.nps.gov/pisp/planyourvisit/8c-outside-contacts.htm

Pipe Spring National Monument

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Location Mohave County, Arizona, USA

Nearest city Fredonia, AZ

Coordinates 36°51′43″N 112°44′14″WCoordinates: 36°51′43″N 112°44′14″W

Area 40 acres (16 ha)[1]

Created May 31, 1923

Winsor Castle

First telegraph office in Arizona, Pipe Spring NM

Pipe Spring National Monument is a United States National Monument located in the U.S. state of Arizona, rich with American Indian, early explorer, and Mormon pioneer history. Administered by the National Park Service, Pipe Spring was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 15, 1966, and the boundaries of the Pipe Spring National Monument Historic District (a portion of the monument) were expanded in October 2000.[3]

History

The water of Pipe Spring has made it possible for plants, animals, and people to live in this dry desert region. Ancestral Puebloans and Kaibab Paiute Indians gathered grass seeds, hunted animals, and raised crops near the springs for at least 1,000 years.

Antonio Armijo discovered the springs when he passed through the area in 1829, when he established by the Armijo Route of the Old Spanish Trail.

Pipe Spring was named by the 1858 Latter-day Saint missionary expedition to the Hopi mesas led by Jacob Hamblin. In the 1860s Mormon pioneers from St. George, Utah, led by James M. Whitmore brought cattle to the area, and a large cattle ranching operation was established. In 1866 the Apache, Navajo and Paiute tribes of the region joined the Utes for the Black Hawk War, and, after they raided Pipe Spring, a protective fort was constructed by 1872 over the main spring. The following year the fort and ranch was purchased by Brigham Young for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). The LDS Bishop of nearby Grafton, Utah, Anson Perry Winsor, was hired to operate the ranch and maintain the fort, soon called Winsor Castle. This isolated outpost served as a way station for people traveling across the Arizona Strip, that part of Arizona separated from the rest of the state by the Grand Canyon. It also served as a refuge for polygamist wives during the 1880s and 1890s. The LDS Church lost ownership of the property through penalties involved in the federal Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887.

Although their way of life was greatly impacted by Mormon settlement, the Paiute Indians continued to live in the area and by 1907 the Kaibab Paiute Indian Reservation was established, surrounding the privately owned Pipe Spring ranch. In 1923, the Pipe Spring ranch was purchased and set aside as a national monument to be a memorial to western pioneer life.

The site today

Today the Pipe Spring National Monument, Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians Visitor Center, and Museum explain the human history of the area over time. Daily tours of Winsor Castle, summer "living history" demonstrations, an orchard and garden, and a half-mile trail offer a glimpse of American Indian and pioneer life in the Old West. The Paiute tribe runs a small adjoining campground.

In popular culture

In 1969, the actress Lane Bradbury played a young Eliza Stewart Udall at Pipe Spring in the syndicated television series, Death Valley Days, hosted by Robert Taylor not long before Taylor's own death. In the episode "A Key for the Fort", Miss Stewart, an ancestor of the Udall family, sends the first telegraph message from Arizona Territory and works with her Aunt Cora (Ivalou Redd) to nurse an ill Ute chief, Black Wing (George Keymas), back to health. The episode also stars Gregg Palmer as Jacob. It was filmed at Pipe Spring.[4]

Well now a hundred and fifty to two hundred years later the national park service is, in essence, saying we're sorry about that and now we're protecting it and now although we do control it everybody can visit it but no one uses it. I think the native people have some say-so about how things are done and they make a little money here because they have the RV park here so that's good.

It was nice that there was some history to learn here even if it was unpleasant and it was also I thought it nice to allow the native people to make a little bit of money instead of giving it to just any old RV place. While we were in the area we went to something called the BLM visitor center as we had wanted to see the Wave wiki. I was looking on all trails and it showed something a little unusual they suggested a scenic drive. I say unusual because all trails are always hikes so I don't think I've ever seen a scenic drive on the app before. We thought we'd take him up on it. We left Freedonia we went towards the visitor center like it suggested they gave us some tips on how to see the wave the back way by car. They gave us a map and showed us how to get there from the back way and we certainly intended to. It was well-intended but still kind of hard to get there from here. The only other way is the walk-in and that's not easy either because you have to win a lottery to be allowed to hike there. It's a five-mile hike in the desert and that’s a little more than we usually do. The scenic drive takes you to Paige which is really close to Antelope Canyon and Glen Canyon Dam. After that, you take the only other road back towards Freedonia and pass by Jacobs lake. This area is the left turn that goes down to the North Rim. That left turn would be the following week.

As a family, we had been at Paige at lake Powell about 10 years ago and really liked it as it was beautiful. We had a big family vacation meaning India and I and our two kids. We landed in Las Vegas rented a car and drove to the Hoover dam, South Rim for 3 days, 6 nights at Lake Powell where we also saw Antelope Canyon, Bryce for 3 nights then to Zion for a day or so back to Las Vegas and home.

It was nice to be back in all these places and now we can stay a day or a month because we are playing retired and have no agenda. As we got closer to Paige we began to sense that we were seeing the backwaters of Lake Powell however there were no backwaters it was more like a dry ditch.

I'm sure all of this used to be very blue as we were only 10 miles from Glen Canyon. There would normally have been a little creek or something but there has been such a drought it's all gone. From the highway a few miles down eventually I saw a little trickle of blue and wanted to get closer. I saw a truck stop exit and it allowed us to go down towards the bank of the lake at its extreme western edge.

I kept driving downhill and you find yourself in a neighborhood and I kept on just going further and further in finally I got to about as far as you can get where a house and a dead end. This was a water view area and this property was about as close as you can get to the lake even the lake wasn't there but just a trickle. As I got to the end of the dead in the road there was a transformer pad there used for underground power and laying on top of it was a hangman's noose. I thought is this guy just saying I don't like strangers, do not park here do not, gawk at the lake from my house. If you do or if you choose to mess with my property I will kill you. That's what the hangman's noose means so I sort of decided maybe we'll just move on.

We never saw much of the lake because we had seen it ten years ago. We saw some Colorado going across the big bridge at Glen Canyon Dam and started back on our two-hour trek past vermillion cliffs in hopes of finding the Wave

The scenic drive was a four-hour overview of the area. Getting to Paige took about two hours and we meandered all through the world of the desert and the cliffs. I'm going to put a little screenshot here of what our day was like because it was a lot of driving. Vermilion Cliffs refers to an area of 10 or 20 miles all along the highway with some really nice rock formations.

Pic

I got some pictures of that and it is quite pretty and then we took a right that was suggested by the BLM visitor center people. The GPS said our spot was 10 or 12 miles but what a bumpy road it was. It was all dirt and I guess when people pull trailers behind them and they're empty they sort of bounce so it creates this rhythmic ruts every two feet or so. This made it a miserable road to drive on so being hard-headed we did it anyway. I tried to go slowly because we thought that would make it less painful we drove and drove and drove. Sometimes it would get smooth and you could go 30 or 40 mph. Most of the time all you could bear was 5mph. At about 5 miles we pulled over at a Condor nest viewing area. We didn’t see any birds but saw a big white blob of poop on the cliffs which means they are here just not today. The GPS said to take a right turn and now it's a one-lane road that looks like a cat path. We went on for a mile or so then finally a sign said road closed to normal vehicles.

The picture below is The Wave

It's not locked so you can just push the gate open but we looked at the situation and it was still several miles more to where you could see the Wave and now it's not even a road. It looked like you were crossing cow pasture and we just decided that although we tried we had to let this go. The GPS still showed six more miles and it would be like going through a farmer's field with big rocks and 3 foot deep ruts of soft sand. We had a four-wheel-drive but it started feeling like a low bridge ahead moment and I didn’t want to put India through any more preventable disasters. You’re in the desert with little water no food and no cell service. Oh well, let's turn back and India quietly says to herself said thank you for letting it go.

On the way back I did something I'm going to call Taraplaning. Hydroplaning is when you're floating across a highway on a glaze of water. Taraplaning is when you glide on dirt. Instead of going slow down the bumpy road I actually kind of picked it up quite a bit going about 25 or 30 miles an hour and instead of experiencing every single rut I seemed to glide across the top so it wasn't bumpy at all which I found very odd. Going slow you felt every single bump but at 30 miles an hour you seem to just fly across the top of the ridges and that's what I call Taraplaning. We got back down to the main road and got some really pretty views of the cliffs.

As we got close to Freedonia we came up upon an area called Jacob's Lake which did not have a lake. Maybe there used to be a lake but dried up. It was a bit of a civilized area at the right turn that goes to the entrance to the north rim road which is still 30 miles away. There was a restaurant, gas, campgrounds, and such. We looked at what was available and it seemed better suited for smaller rigs. They had one available spot but we would have been parallel to the road and awkward so it didn't seem worth it to me. You're kind of paying 25 bucks for a boondock anyway no water or electricity. A little further down the road, you can boondock for free. It was nice to kind of scope it all out and get a feel for it now we know a little more about what we were going to be in for in the next day or two. We got back down to Kanab which is again the other small built-up little area with restaurants and an AutoZone all the basics. I knew I was going more into a dead signal area and I thought well at least if I had a radio I can listen to NPR or something and they didn't even have an antenna at the AutoZone or Napa. The RV came with a radio but I’ve never been able to pick up anything. One day I removed and looked around behind it and they didn’t provide an antenna, wow guys. I would just have to do without and we got lots of downloads stored up on our phone from when we could find internet while in Kanab. After that, we found a nice little place called Fusion Asian had a nice meal. It had been a fairly long day and we were ready to just get back to the RV.

406 N Pipe Spring Rd.Fredonia, AZ 86022928-643-6601Official Website

GPS: 36.8671, -112.7359