Remembering The Cinders

On September 14, 2018, Chris picked me up from work. He had the doggies and the pop-up and we headed for Flagstaff.

We drove to NAU and picked up Veronica, and then headed off to O'Leary Group Campsite.

We joined Off-road Passport for their last annual Cinders trip. They had gone every year to Cinder Hill in Coconino County to drive into the volcano.

We got to the site pretty late. We set up quickly, and ate dinner. By the time we got to the fire pit to socialize, everyone was heading off to bet. We hung out for little while anyway. A family with a ton of small children showed up to the firepit to make smores. They were quite entertaining! The littlest one kept catching their marshmallows on fire, and basically panicking. They were still delighted to eat their charred to a crisp smores though.

The next morning, we got up and got ready to hit the trail.

We were a little worried about views being obstructed, because there were two nearby wildfires- the Rhino Fire and Platypus Fire. You could see the smoke for miles and miles. When we got to Cinder Hills, the views were still amazing though!

We had 26 vehicles in our group, but when we stopped to take a group picture, there were 27 vehicles. I guess another Jeep saw us, and decided to join in. There were only 5 Toyotas out of the whole group- 3 4Runners, a Tacoma, and an FJ Cruiser. At one point we tried to all band together and stay together in line to unite against all the Jeeps. Haha!

We got to drive in this super fun figure 8. It was so cool! Then one by one, we all climbed a super steep hill. 

Chris was one of the first to go, so that he could take pictures from the top of all the other trucks.

The figure 8 and the hill were cool, but driving down into the bowl of the volcano was just the best! It was SO steep! I tried to take pictures, but none of them do justice to the crazy grade dropping into the bowl. 

We parked and had eat our picnic lunches with the gang. 

Back at camp, they had a raffle and a salsa competition. The salsa was so yummy! Me and Chris both won prizes in the raffle. I won a frisbee and a toolbox, and Chris won a $50 vehicle service and a t-shirt. 

Chris made carne asada tacos for dinner, and then he and Veronica went over to a ice cream social with the group. I stayed behind to write, but sure enjoyed listening to the bustle outside. There was a group of 9 boys staying at the next campsite over. I was listening to them play a game in which one boy constantly yells instructions for the game, and the other boys start to play, and in response, the bossy boy decides to change the whole game and shout new instructions. It was pretty funny. 

At the fire a very intense game of Jenga was going on. I kept hearing loud "OoooOOOOOOOoooh!"s and tons of laughter. 

The next morning, most of the campers got up extremely early to leave- but not US! The camp host came by in a golf cart and talked Chris's ear off. I could hear them talking about restaurants and he recommended a few places for us to try when we come to Flagstaff. We're supposed to try Fat Olives and The Place. He had a beautiful Collie names Bella. Chris was pretty excited that he got to pet her.

We headed into town and decided on NiMarco's for lunch, but we had to kill some time, so we went to Sportsman's and spent about an hour there. There was a mannequin wearing a camo top, camo hat, camo leggings and camo boots. Veronica said that if she ever started hunting, that that's the outfit she'd wear- so we picked out a little kid's cap gun for her to take hunting- haha! I let her know we'd be sure to get her her hunting outfit for Christmas. 

We had such a fun time camping and hanging out with Veronica!