Getting ready for pandemic camping

It's been nearly four years since my last post, something that's hard to comprehend! But in the interim, I've gone through cancer and recovered, we've moved twice, we've upgraded our trailer since we needed to live in it for a bit, and we've retired. So too much has happened that kept us from actually camping. Now that 2020 and the pandemic are here, we are planning a trip to see hubby's mom (who will be celebrating her 97th birthday) while we still have the chance. So we're back in business as campers!

As we look forward to our long trip, we have taken a shakedown cruise for a couple of nights at Lake Pleasant's Desert Tortoise Campground near Phoenix, AZ. This is a georgeous regional park, with a huge lake for boating (hubby loves both sailing and paddle boarding), biking, and hiking. We had scoped it out a bit ahead of time to get a sense of which site we'd like best, so we ended up with a great site overlooking the lake. Only reserved campsites are open at present. Camping is available on the shoreline, but not now during sheltering-at-home. First come, first served. We continue to be most comfortable with reserved spots so there is no anxiety about whether we'll get one.

We had spent quite a bit of time at home getting the trailer ready. We now have a 34' toy hauler, and we wanted to bring our e-bikes with us. Hubby figured out a way to use the retractable bed in the main room to secure the bikes as we travel, and then the dogs totally love the bed as a "dog bed" during the day especially with the view. There's plenty of room for us in the trailer, even with the bed down we have a couch and two recliners.

As we were leaving for these couple of days, I found myself more excited than I had thought possible. I have loved camping with my family (human and canine), and it was an amazing outcome after cancer to be able to do so once again. Hubby was too concerned about the noise the stabilizing bars made to really be able to enjoy the moment of departure. Fortunately, in this case, we had only about 20 minutes to go before we were pulling into the campsite.

While the campsite was clean and well appointed, with amazing views,

there were some issues with layout. This was site #151. If we had parked in the logical place, the door would  have opened into the bushes while the water and electric would be on the correct side. If we had had a class C or A RV, we could have pulled in and the door would open toward the picnic and fire area, but the gas and electric would have been on the wrong side. As it turned out, we decided to park perpendicular to the parking spot (since this was possible in this pull through).

We needed an extension to the power cord, which had to run from the back side of the trailer and to the water tube for the same reason. But with some electrical work by hubby, we had it all set. In the end, everything worked except for the microwave. We'll have to figure that out...it may actually be the microwave itself. TV worked fine with streaming from the computer and a Verizon hotspot, though we'll need to have a strong cell signal to make this work as we travel.

All in all, we feel pretty ready for this summer's trips, as long as Covid-19 doesn't force us to stay home...and we had a really lovely couple of days at Lake Pleasant.

From Campsite to Conference

This trip to Cheyenne Mountain State Park in Colorado Springs marked a few firsts for us. I was attending a conference of independent school heads at Cheyenne Mountain Resort and decided to bring the family and camper along. We stayed at the state park campground, a mere 15 minutes door to door to the conference, and we had more of an adventure than we would have if we'd stayed at the resort.

When we arrived, we discovered that nearly all sites at the campground except ours (#27) had expansive views over the city of Colorado Springs.

Ours had only a peak-a-boo view, but we had trees surrounding us and privacy, which none of the other sites had. It was a tradeoff, but one we happily accepted. The campground looks out over the city and also over Fort Carson, an army base. Reveille at 6:30 every morning was a bit annoying, but taps at 10:00 p.m. was sort of hauntingly beautiful. The sounds of the city rose up to the campground from time to time (sirens, etc.), which was definitely a first for us at a state park campground! We had also never stayed at a campground with full hookups before, and having the sewer hookup was a real plus since I could take regular showers as I got ready for the conference each day. No sub showers during this trip!

The campground had a variety of great facilities, including hiking trails (no dogs allowed, sadly) and an archery range. The husband brought his bow along, and he enjoyed the 3D part of the range the best. Since he wasn't attending the conference, he had more time to explore than I. He also did some mountain biking on the trails, which he said were very well maintained.

On our first day there, we managed to sneak in a little geocaching, but the weather was explosive! Off an on, all day and night, there were huge black clouds that rolled in over Cheyenne Mountain and blasted the campground. Torrential downpours, hail, and blasting winds were accompanied by dangerous weather sirens from Fort Carson, making us very happy to have a trailer to retreat to and very sorry for the campers in tents in the walk-in area.

We had an afternoon off together, and chose to spend that taking a long looping drive and geocaching along the way. We first headed down to Canon City, where the very scary highlight of the trip was a drive on Skyline Drive.

This reminded me of a time when we were driving through Escalante National Monument, on a similar very high bluff that dropped away on both sides of a one-car-wide road. Have I ever mentioned that I'm intensely afraid of heights? As we were slowly creeping along the road, with me gripping the sides of my seat as hard as I could, we kept reflecting on how the road had been built for $1200 by prisoners, and wondering why. It's like one long scenic pull-out -- it doesn't go from anywhere to anywhere, so it was clearly designed just to provide the views (and thrills).

From there, we headed to the Royal Gorge, which is a Canon City park. Along the way the husband found a geocache,

near a picnic area with a beautiful view of snow-covered Pikes Peak far off in the distance.

We were disappointed upon arrival at Royal Gorge to find that it was almost entirely a money-making operation. Although there was a viewing deck, it was impossible to get a view of the gorge from there without also getting a view of the visitors' building, walking bridge across the gorge, tram cars and zip-liners traversing it, and even some folks flying out over the gorge on a huge swing. Back up the road a ways, though, there is a picnic area and we were able to get an unobstructed view there.

We made a big loop on the way back, heading up route 9 and across 24 back to Colorado Springs. The remote towns connected by these highways were rustic and cute at the same time. Antelopes were everywhere, and there was even a herd of buffalo. It's obvious that some folks were living very much off the grid. We drove past a small town near the area the husband had fly-fished the day before, Lake George, and stopped to find a geocache at a historic cabin.

It was a long afternoon and evening of driving, but the scenery was glorious and it felt shorter because of the frequent geocaching stops. This sort of experience is why we love this kind of travel. Being able to get out of town and see the beauty in the more remote landscape charges our batteries.

So, back to the things that were new to us on this trip:  a campsite with a sewer hookup, a campsite overlooking a city, attending a conference from the trailer, being awakened by reveille and, of course, all of the new places we explored.

State Forest State Park, Colorado

Just headed a couple of hours away from home this weekend, but to a part of Colorado where we haven't spent much time. State Forest State Park is HUGE:  71,000 acres! It has several campgrounds, and we stayed at the Ranger Lakes Campground. Here's our campsite (#113). Can you see what's wrong?

Yup, you're right. The electric box and the picnic table/fire pit are on the wrong sides! There's no reason for this that we could see other than a wonky design. Throughout the campground, there are sites that are correctly laid out and some that aren't. There are also some that, if you are going the right way on the one way loop, would be exceedingly difficult to back into given what would be an acute angle. Fortunately, we did not have that problem. The campground is small, and it has clearly been affected by the pine beetle problem. Stumps are everywhere. At one time this was probably a nicely wooded campground. Now it is open with small trees planted and just starting to grow.

We did some geocaching in the area and visited the Moose Visitor Center. The rangers were super helpful, even giving us a list of geocaches. My signal booster on my cell phone provided us with a lot more using the geocaching app, though. Supposedly, this is the moose sighting capital of Colorado, but we didn't see any moose while we were there. There is plenty of hiking in the area, although at this time of year there is still snow on many of the trails. There's a trail right next to the campground that goes around the lakes and shows how stunningly beautiful the area is!

One of the other campgrounds in the area, Michigan Lake, is also very beautiful, although again the deforestation was so sad. The lake is very low right now, perhaps because there is a big dam project going on in the area. But if you can look past the negatives, there are some amazing views of the huge snowcapped mountains peeking up from behind the lower level (still over 9000 feet in altitude) areas you are standing upon.

 

At night, we had a great meal with herb marinated beef kabobs and a pearl couscous salad (bonus: steak and eggs for breakfast in the morning); played LED bocce, a game that we saw being played at night by others last weekend and had to buy!; had a fire and popped jiffy pop, even though it says not to do it over an open flame; and, of course, read. We realize we are a bit self-congratulatory about it, but we don't have a TV in the camper and don't intend to get one. These quiet nights are the reason why!

 

All in all, it was a lovely relaxing weekend. 

Vega State Park, Collbran, CO

This was a long Memorial Day weekend, and we got something of a late start after finally getting the boat on top of the trailer.

 

It was our first time taking the sailboat along, and also the bikes. Trailer behind, sailboat on top, and bikes in the bed. We felt set for anything fun! We had viewed the campsite on Google Earth when we booked it, and though we thought we knew what it would be like, we were wrong as usual. In this case it far exceeded our expectations. We didn't arrive at Vega until after 10 p.m., so it was pitch dark. This being a mostly no services loop (Aspen Grove), there were no lights on in the trailers around us and we had a little difficulty backing into our site (205). We're thinking walkie talkies might be a good investment. Most everyone had pull throughs, but we had wanted the location of this site. It was definitely worth it! Here's what we woke to in the morning!

 

The lake is astoundingly beautiful over in the area of this campground. The other campgrounds in the park are closer to the dam and on a much more open part of the lake, making them less private and more tightly packed. First thing, the husband wanted to get the boat in the water. I wasn't really interested in boating this weekend, since it was pretty cold (well, 60s, but I guess I'm a wimp). Anyway, we checked out the inspection and launching rules and discovered that we didn't need an inspection and could launch anywhere as long as the boat wasn't trailered. So in he went!





He went boating every morning, while I stayed at the campsite, slept in a bit, and got some reading and knitting done! Did I already say that our campsite, 205, was the best in the park? We can say that definitively, since we geocached throughout the park and checked out all of the campgrounds.

It was relatively private, and the location at the end of a point meant that all of the sound of the generators was behind us, blocked by the trailer. This is a downside to camping without services that we hadn't run into before -- noisy generators. Since pretty much no one had electricity, a lot of folks ran their generators during the day. What it means for us is that when possible, we will look for campgrounds with at least electric hookups. Of course, in Colorado, most state parks don't have any hookups, so we will just work on setting ourselves up so the trailer blocks the sound. As you can see, we had a clear view of the lake and didn't see our neighbors. Other sites in the loop do have more access to the other sites -- good if you want the community, bad if you want the solitude. Another fine aspect of our site was that a path led directly from it to the end of the point about 200 feet away.

We had this whole beautiful area to ourselves in the mornings and evenings, but during the day there was almost invariably a fisherman and sometimes a whole fisher family at the end of the point. It was far enough not to intrude, though, and once we got over thinking we should own the whole area, it didn't bother us at all.

Other things we did while at Vega: biked the roads, though they were pretty dusty when a car went by, geocached all around the lake, had a great bonfire, enjoyed some good grilled food including an herb marinated halibut, and took a drive on back roads with beautiful vistas looking out over Grand Mesa National Forest.

Unusual for the drive down from Steamboat through Rifle, everything was amazingly green. I've never seen it like this, and may never again. It had begun to change and become more brown as we headed back, so we know that as summer wears on the green will be gone. But it was beautiful to see while we were able. All in all, it was a lovely weekend...one that was hard to return from!

Kicking off the 2016 camping year

For the first trip of the year, we decided to stay close to home in case anything went wrong. We headed 12 miles up the road to Steamboat Lake State Park, where they had just opened the first campsites. We stayed in site 134, which is along the outside of the loop on the ridge overlooking the lake.

We had only a few neighbors, and the pick of some primo sites! Here's the view from the back of our site - we had to walk a few feet to see this view, but didn't have to do any serious bushwacking.

 

 

It was quite windy and a little overcast, but warm enough to be out with a light fleece. During the night, we could hear the wind talking to us, rattling the various flaps on the outside of the trailer and even seeming to try to enter the trailer through the kitchen fan exhaust. The trailer felt like a haven from the elements, cozy and warm.

 

During the day, we took the dogs for a couple of walks/hikes, pushing Bailey beyond her normal limit of a mile. She slept very, very well at night. We found a new trail along the water and below the bluff that the Dutch Hill Campground sits on. It was quite muddy, and the husband slid down a hill. Other than some extra dirty laundry to do when we got home, there was no harm done. Since this was a test run, we used the outside shower to rinse off the mud, and we discovered a leak. That was the only problem we encountered, though we did come home with a long list of things not to forget the next time out!

 

We cooked the main course on the grill with the rest cooked inside, as we usually have. Saturday's dinner was sticky lamb kabobs, broccoli, and noodles. Yum! There just seems to be something better about dinner cooked outside while camping. After dinner, the wind died down for a hour or two, so we had a fire, something we don't usually do. Our closest neighbor on one side was playing his guitar, and the closest family on the other side was playing some sort of LED bocce in the dark, and it just all felt so peaceful.

 



The Mysterious South

Today we drove through the low mountains and mists of West Virginia, with tendrils of fog rising out of the hollers to join with the clouds even through the rain. The scenery was eerily beautiful, and even more evocative as we listened to Ishiguro's The Buried Giant on Audible. In Ishiguro's new novel, the mist carries forgetfulness, and it did seem as though time had stopped still in the landscape surrounding us. However, if anything, the scenery brought back memories rather than obscuring them. Maybe 15 or 20 years ago I spent time in remote West Virginia at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory during two summers, and that quiet and dark (literally) time came back full force. It's so beautiful here, but there's still that mysterious sense that the social landscape of Deliverance is hiding out there in the physical landscape that is so reminiscent. Because of the rain, I didn't get any photos of the drive or of the campsite at Fort Boonesboro State Park in Kentucky, but maybe this one of the camper in the dark is a good representation of my mindset, if nothing else.

 

Because we got here in the midst of a rainstorm, we decided to go out to dinner rather than try to cook out or do a reprise of each course needing to be cooked separately. We took a chance on Hall's Restaurant, which is right on the river. The food was OK, but the setting was very special and the service was outstanding.

I don't really understand how the photo makes it seem sunny, given that it was pouring rain just on the other side of the railing. But they are clearly set up for rain and we were able to eat outside in spite of the weather. Here, the husband is sitting about 25 feet above the water level, and the restaurant has photos inside of 2003 when the water was flooding the restaurant above this level. YIKES! We thought we had it bad in Eldred. There are marks on the wall inside the restaurant showing the height of all the various floods, and the highest (in the 70s) is just a couple of feet below the ceiling! However, since the restaurant was originally opened in 1783 as Holder's Tavern, there is history to uphold and the restaurant has been rebuilt again and again.

In spite of driving through nasty weather for the entire day today, we managed to have an interesting and enjoyable day. Traveling is always a surprise!

Rocky Gap State Park

Wow, this park rivals Maumee Bay State Park in Ohio for fanciest, although the sites here are a bit more rustic -- no paved pads and more woods. When we drove in, it was hard to imagine it was a campground! There is a golf course right at the entrance, and even a casino! We found an aviary inside the campground with rescue birds and several rangers. The bald eagles were beautiful, as were all the different owls. These are birds who were hit by cars and can no longer fly, all except for the horned owl which someone had shot. The birds were getting a health check while we were there, and the ranger talked about how they keep them eating a healthy amount and how having another of their kind to share their enclosure makes them healthier. This was all completely unexpected in a state park campground! There are biking and hiking trails, a swimming beach, kayaks and canoes. This is definitely somewhere to stay for more than a day. There are multiples campsite loops, and not all have electric. But our spot tonight does, and we are very comfortable.

The drive down to Maryland from New Jersey was one of the easiest we've had, although there was a strange spot where everyone just stopped for no apparent reason. There was no road construction and no accident...maybe an animal crossed the road too far ahead for us to see. The views were beautiful as we drove the last 50 miles or so along the top of Maryland.

Poor Chester got his claw caught in a tread on the steps to the trailer and cried out in pain. We will definitely be covering the treads with a towel on this trip and then finding a more permanent solution when we get home. Fortunately, there was no lasting damage. The campground puts all the dog sites in a couple of loops, so we have many, many dogs around us. That makes our crazy cockers even crazier, so they are mostly resting inside where they won't be bothered by outside sounds. Not all of the sites are occupied tonight, but we're pretty sure the place fills up completely on a summer weekend.

Oh, and a follow-up to the trailer tire issue. We were able to get the tire replaced and the new tire mounted at Jefferson Tire in Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey. They were extremely helpful, and we'd recommend them to anyone staying at Mahlon Dickerson. The husband also enjoyed revisiting his memories at Home Depot, since we don't have any in Steamboat. He got himself a flat jack, and will now be able to change a tire in nothing flat (no pun intended). When we went to our friends' house fro dinner, the husband and our friend welded some plugs onto the hitch that made it fit better in the receptor, so it was a good day for the trailer. The only bad thing is that the dinette seat back is pretty much broken. It's a very shoddy piece of work and will need to be completely rebuilt when we return home.

We discovered that Mahlon Dickerson was the Secretary of the Navy in the 1830s when we took a walk on the trails on our full day in NJ. There's a great nature trail at the park (although we didn't have the guide so didn't know what the numbers referred to) that hooks up to miles of hiking and biking trails there. Our friends met us there for a campground brunch and then a walk, and Chester made friends with Vincent.

All in all, our NJ stay was terrific and our trip to Maryland smooth. We're off to Kentucky tomorrow morning!