Sometimes our camping trips end up more like reconnaissance missions than relaxing time spent outdoors. If the place we thought looked perfect on the map turns out to be very much non-perfect, then we go to Plan B. But Plan B, being less researched and somewhat ad hoc, is only somewhat likely to pan out. Plan C, even less so…and so on until you’ve spent your entire vacation driving around on horrible dirt roads looking for somewhere, anywhere, to camp.
This reminds me of one of my favorite children’s books “The Bear’s Picnic” by Stan and Jan Berenstain (which, I just noticed, was published just a few days before I was born. Ok fine, google it, in case you didn’t already know my age.)
In this amusing book, each picnic spot was either too crowded or too buggy or something, and the daddy bear dragged the family all over the countryside trying to find the perfect picnic spot. When they finally found the perfect spot, they got rained out and ended up back home.
John, does this sound familiar? At all maybe?
We left on Friday morning, our van full of food and three eager dogs, and drove up to Colorado. That’s a red flag for me right to start with. I’m not a fan of southern Colorado. I prefer the mountains of New Mexico (or California, or Oregon, or Washington, or even the deserts of Arizona and Utah). I keep telling myself not to be prejudiced, but have we EVER had a good trip to southern Colorado? I’m not thinking so. I did enjoy a trip up to northern Colorado back when Darren was going to college up there, but that’s quite far from where we live.
A complicating factor is we’re still getting used to van camping. We used to be backpackers. Finding a good backpacking route is definitely an art. But it turns out finding a good van camping spot is not any easier.
The first place we aimed for, nearish to Durango, looked promising. I’m actually the one who picked it out, after having vetoed John’s first choice due to excessive lengths of difficult roads. The spot I picked offered a variety of forest service roads and small creeks in the region, suggesting available at-large camping. There was also a designated campground in case we got desperate.
It was beautiful out there!
The first forest service road turned out to be too tight up against the creek, leaving extremely small spaces for camping. John and I wouldn’t have minded ourselves, but we would either have had to keep the dogs tied up or be constantly calling the dogs away from the road. The creek was also high & fast. I imagined my little dogs alternately swept away by the creek or hit on the road, which was chock full of Jeeps and ATV’s.
And the “campground” at the trailhead was just an open, grassy, muddy field (full of trailers and tents and vehicles of all sorts flung about all over like another Burning Man).
The second road we chose was up away from the creek, which we assumed would also mean a lot less people. So we rattled and bounced up yet another dusty, washboard road, to discover that we assumed wrong.
We almost got our van stuck up a road we really shouldn’t have been on with the van. The teenage drivers of the ATV’s waited patiently while we awkwardly got turned around. I don’t think they even bothered to roll their eyes.
But we saw an enormous brown bear! So that was something at least.
Realizing the entire area was overrun by people and vehicles, we retreated down into northern New Mexico and headed into a nearby small section of Carson national forest just east of Navajo Lake, where we’ve never been. The map showed plenty of little dirt roads, so we figured we could just camp at the end of one of them.
Turns out there were tanks at the end of every single road out there. (I assumed they had something to do with the oil and gas industry, which is a huge industry in New Mexico, but who knows what was in all those tanks.) It would have probably been ok if we went ahead and camped out there near one of the tanks at the end of one of those roads. I doubt anyone would have cared, but who wants to camp at a tank?
It was now getting very late in the day and we had a critical decision to make. Do we try yet again? If so, where? Or do we just go home?
We decided to head to the closest national forest possible, which was back into Colorado, just north of Chromo, south of Pagosa Springs. We figured we could make it there by just before dark. We headed up our hastily chosen forest road and took the very first pull-out available just as it was turning dark. Success at last! After 12 hours of driving we had finally found a spot to spend the night.
The next morning I had to get up early to treat the migraine that was brought on by all the rough road driving the day before. I took meds at 5:30 and again at 6:30, and managed to fall back to sleep, which was very lucky and greatly increased my chances of getting ahead of the migraine. The meds don’t cure the migraine, but if taken early enough, they allow me to continue with my day.
I was in reasonably high spirits. The night had been quiet, the morning was warm and sunny, I had slept in and I had the migraine under control. I was looking forward to later in the day, when we planned to drive 4 miles up the road to a trailhead we had seen marked on a sign at the entrance of the forest road. Meanwhile, since I was still treating the migraine, we figured we’d start by just taking a short morning walk around.
I thought it was beautiful, but John was out of sorts. Maybe it was because in our exhaustion the night before, he had backed the van into a tree limb while getting us parked, creating a dent at the top of the van. We have a back-up camera, but those don’t work 9 feet off the ground. It was my fault – I was supposed to be spotting for him. But, like the back-up camera, I failed to look up that high.
For whatever reason, he wasn’t enjoying our morning walk. He said he didn’t like the area. The final straw for him was when we got back to our campsite intent on breakfast and discovered that some people decided to use our camping spot as parking for their ATV trailers!
So off we went, in search of another camping spot.
Once again, we headed back down into New Mexico. We debated and debated, with the van pulled over on the side of the road. We peered at paper maps we had brought and tried hard to get our phones to load google maps with scant cell tower. Should we head toward a wilderness area where the ATV’s can’t go? Except there’d also be no place for us to camp with the van other than in the trailhead parking lot. Or should we try some other national forest land (again) and hope for fewer ATV’s this time?
We decided to try in the vicinity of a campground by a small lake (uh yeah, no, lakes = bad idea on the July 4 weekend, I know). Predictably, the area was completely overrun by jeeps and ATV’s. Also biting flies. I cannot stand biting flies. I’m generally tolerant of mosquitos and other outdoor insects. But biting flies are very rare back home in the Sierra Nevada – Cascade ranges and I never developed a tolerant attitude about them. I associate black flies with the Rockies and east of the Rockies, and I also associate them with overcrowded areas with lots of people and livestock.
Anyway, although it was beautiful, but we couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
By this point we had given up and decided to head home. Rather than retrace our steps, we decided to continue east on 64 to Tres Peidres and then south on 285 to 25 and home. We hadn’t been driving very long when suddenly John slowed and peered at one of those all-important, dark brown forest service road signs.
“What?” I asked.
“I was just wondering what was up there, but I couldn’t really see the sign.”
“Well, we can go back and read the sign.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“You were trying to read the sign, you might as well go back and read it.”
“You want me to turn the van around?”
“You don’t have to; but you were trying to read the sign. Either we’re reading signs or we’re not reading signs, there’s no point in sort-of reading signs.”
Which is how we ended up finding that perfect picnic spot.
It seemed like a quiet little road, so we thought we’d stop and walk around a little bit.
On our walk we noticed an old track off the forest road, which looked drivable as long as it didn’t rain. John ran back down the road to collect the van and bring it up while the dogs and I waited in the shade.
It was perfect! Lovely! No one out there but us!
But by this time it was hot and my migraine had started to come back. So we got settled in, took a short walk, and determined to do a big hike the next morning. (No matter how bad a trip gets, I always have the goal of getting in at least one good long hike.)
But the next morning was cloudy. John and I looked at each other in disbelief. It’s never cloudy in the morning in the desert. We’ll get afternoon thundershowers, but not morning drizzle. Also John had checked the weather before we left, and we were expecting dry weather until Sunday afternoon. John confidently announced the clouds would quickly burn off, and we left for our long hike.
About 20 minutes into our “big hike”, we adjusted our course to essentially circle the van rather than get too far from it. After another 20 minutes, as we circled back even closer toward the van, John casually suggested we “pick up the pace a little bit.” Two minutes after that, we were sprinting the final few yards to the van as the rain came down.
We were parked out on an undesignated track and our main concern was not getting the van stuck in the rapidly-forming mud. We stashed our stuff, closed the roof vent, and headed out, this time no discussion required. We had barely gotten onto the paved highway when it started pouring. Five minutes later, the road was covered in an inch of water. Five more minutes and it was hailing. We were on the road again.
We will go back there. One thing we noticed on our short, rained-out hike was a large area perfect for tent camping, only about half hour walk from the road. So if any of my siblings with little kids would like to do an easy backpacking trip with us, this would make a good one.
When it’s not raining.
If I haven’t just inadvertently convinced you to never go camping. Ever.
