So,
what is your definition of “camping”? Does it involve making
s’mores, cooking hot dogs on a stick, and gathering around the
campfire to sing Kumbaya?
Perhaps it even includes sleeping in a tent. Right on the ground!
Now, doesn’t that
sound like fun?
Actually,
for some people it is. But you’re probably not some people. At your
age (not that you are old, exactly) your joints insist on a higher
level of comfort. When you plan a vacation, your first step is to
heed the advice of William Shatner and log on to Priceline.com.
Even
so, maybe a spouse coerced you into trying a rental RV just this once
to see if you might like that form of camping. You can have all the
comforts of home in a rig that is only a smidge bigger than the QEII.
Because how can you possibly live for two whole weeks without a
marble-tiled shower, whirlpool tub, king-size bed, carved walnut
armoire, dishwasher, complete laundry, a dining room that seats 14,
an 85-inch TV inside and a small 60-inch TV for outside?
When
you run out of eggs, even with the 27 cubic-foot fridge, you have to
decide if it is worth searching for a store with a parking lot big
enough to accommodate your rig. So, you just do the smart thing and
tow your Lincoln Navigator along for those short errands. Now all you
have to do is learn to recognize gas stations you can get into. And,
more importantly, get out of. Making a right turn requires the length
of an airport runway. Still, you get a lot of practice making gas
stops with a rig that averages 3 mpg.
Now,
where do you want to go? A surprising number of people drop a quarter
mil on a Class A rig and drive it to a lake within an hour of home.
They could have bought a nice house at the lake for about the same
price but that would not provide all the adventure of “camping.”
Besides, the cottage would probably be smaller.
Perhaps,
inspired by Clark Griswold, you think a cross-country trip with the
family would be fun. And it would be educational for the kids to see
Mt. Rushmore, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon and Death Valley on your way
to Wally World.
Where
should you stay along the way? Popular choices include RV parks and
RV “resorts.” The absolute minimum you should expect in an RV
park is full hookups; i.e., water, electricity, and sewer. You should
also expect to park within 18 inches of your neighbor so when you ask
your spouse to pass the salt, your neighbor says, “I’ll be there
in a second.”
An
RV resort
does not stop at the minimum. No, not by a long, long shot. We met a
fellow in Tucson who was touting the advantages of spending the
winter in his resort. He apparently thought I was the kind of guy who
would be impressed by a woodworking shop equipped with more power
tools than Norm Abrams'. Plus an Olympic swimming pool, 16 tennis
courts, five acres of shuffleboard courts, eight bocce ball courts,
and a couple dozen horseshoe pits. And a community center with
separate rooms for lessons in various arts and crafts, zumba, yoga
and Tai Chi as well as a space the size of the Palace of Auburn Hills
for pot luck dinners with 8,753 of your fellow “campers.”
If
you detect a slightly disparaging tone to this narrative, you’re
right. Just as there are people who have no interest in “sleeping
right on the ground,” there are also people who have no interest in
spending even one night in an RV resort. Shirley and I are among
these.
We
gave up that sleeping on the ground business years ago to get
out of the weather and bump up the overall level of comfort. When we
were tenters back in The Olden Days, setting up camp usually included
stretching a tarp between trees in order to have shelter for cooking
on the Coleman stove. But tarps don’t provide much shelter from
wind-driven rain. Folding a tent and tarp after a rain, or during a
rain, is also a major source of revenue for marriage counselors.
Instead
of tenting we now put about 20,000
miles a year on our Roadtrek motor home. Ok, so “motor home” may
be too grandiose a term for a vehicle that is basically a Chevy
Express 3500 van. But it is a Chevy van with a refrigerator, propane
stove and furnace, microwave, queen-size bed, toilet, and shower. Oh, and a small
flat-screen TV. I tend to forget about the TV not because we are
particularly virtuous but because we are rarely in places with TV
signals. So
I removed it.
Where
are these Third World, uncivilized places without TV coverage? You
may have heard of some of them: Yellowstone, the Tetons, Zion, Bryce
Canyon, Grand Canyon, Denali, Rocky Mountain National Parks…. The
list goes on considerably. Plus hundreds of other places you have
never heard of. Of course, if you absolutely insist on TV, a
satellite dish can get it anywhere those pesky trees don’t get in
the way.
With
rare exceptions, national park campgrounds do not offer hookups for
RVs. Even so, some RVers have found that, if they screw their courage
to the sticking place, they can survive, short term at least, without
all of the amenities. These few, these happy few, this band of
brothers might be tempted to venture even further out of their
comfort zone, so to speak, and try going where no man has gone
before--boondocking. Even if it is just over the long St. Crispin’s
Day weekend.
Boondocking
is also called dry camping or dispersed camping. It means camping
without a campground. National forests and BLM properties allow
camping almost anywhere. So does the entire state of Alaska. There
are a few minimalist rules, such as don’t set the world on fire,
but official restrictions are mostly unnecessary because of the
restrictions imposed by nature.
The first rule is, you can only go
where you can go. That’s why you typically won’t see the really
big rigs deep in the woods. Steep, gravel mountain roads with sharp turns
and low-hanging branches tend to discourage those concerned about
their paintwork and turning radius. So, if you see anybody at all way
back in there, they are probably in something more compact and
maneuverable. Forest roads start out narrow and become still narrower
and more deeply rutted the farther in you go.
But
these issues are on
the
forest road.
If
you expect to set up camp, you have to get off the road. If you think the road is tough going, try
going where there is no road. Some of the most attractive places to
boondock are down steep, boulder-strewn embankments to clearings next
to tumbling mountain streams. Well, they are attractive if you can get there
without breaking any vital body parts. The rig’s or yours.
The
faint of heart sometimes find that getting there really is not half
the fun. Getting there is terrifying. You may have seen that TV show
about people who are challenged to survive when they are dropped off
naked in the jungles of Borneo. Hah! Usually they walk out in a
couple weeks bragging that they have lost 37 pounds without even
paying for Marie’s Mail Order Meals. For a real
challenge, leave those people with an RV and have them try to get that out of
the jungle.
Any
place in the deep woods, it doesn’t have to be Borneo,
can be stressful because some people get nervous when they are more
than 100 feet from civilization. However they define that. The
sound of things moving around out there, especially at night, can be
scary. Really, really scary. People ask if we see bears. Well, yes we
do. Packs of coyotes and rabid wolves? Yep, them too. Even an
occasional Sasquatch, though they are usually too shy to come closer
than 50 feet so all our photos are blurry. What Jaws
did
for the confidence of swimmers, Deliverance
did
for potential campers. (Cue up the dueling banjoes.)
From
the boondocker’s perspective, this is all good. Mostly because it
deters the kind of mass invasion experienced at the national parks. Getting far from the madding crowd is one
of our chief motivations. There is also the fact that it is free. But
money is not the determining factor because national parks
campgrounds are an unbelievable bargain in the first place,
especially after you reach 62 and qualify for a geezer pass. On the occasions when we do pay for
campsites, the fees are typically less than $20. Most often half of that.
A
totally contrary reason for boondocking is the desire to actually get
a site in one of those overcrowded national parks. We learned this
trick at Zion when
the
park campgrounds were full even though it was after Labor Day. The
ranger suggested that, if we did not mind camping for free, we could
go back up the road a few miles and park right on the banks of the
Virgin River. Magnificent! Early the next morning, we returned to the
park and secured a site from departing campers.
If we know we are likely to arrive too late in the day to
secure a national park campsite, we stay someplace on the edge of the
park. In the Routt National Forest outside of Rocky Mountains NP. In
the BLM just outside Canyonlands NP. On the Yellowstone River just
north of the park or at Warren Bridge BLM just outside Jackson. In Kaibab National Forest on the North Rim pf Grand Canyon. At Padre Island on the Gulf coast of Texas, you
can drive right onto the beach and save the whole $4 geezers with passes pay at
Malaquite Campground.
On Padre Island, we parked right on the hard-packed sand beach.
In addition to the soothing sound of the surf, there were sea birds,
a caracara...
several great blue herons...
and various crabs and crustations.
Twice when we were on Padre, rangers and
volunteers were releasing rescued sea turtles.
Most
of the year, those mountain men were solitary hunters and trappers.
Boondockers as it were. The point is, boondocking can include both
solitude and an occasional lapse into highly ritualized debauchery.
Or, what we call civilization. No matter which form of boondocking you
ultimately choose, you may actually find that it’s just a walk in
the park.
An advantage of boondocking, depending on how you look at it,
is the possibility for closer contact with wildlife.
National Forests often permit "dispersed camping" just about anywhere
you can get safely off the road.
Ethical campers choose places that have already been used so no new
fire ring needs to be constructed.
Because National Forests are multiple use facilities, there are often cattle
as well as wildlife.
It is not an actual campground--but it doesn't have neighbors whose
musical preferences vary widely from ours.
The river is just to the left.
We watched a dipper feeding on aquatic insects.
Near the resort community of Sun Valley, Idaho are secluded
National Forest boondocking opportunities.
In Alaska, you can pull over for the night at virtually any wide spot
in the road. This is near Exit Glacier.
Awoke the next morning to find that we had been joined by 13
more rigs. So much for seclusion.
At Matanuska Glacier, we had the place all to ourselves.
Likewise, we were the only overnighters at the base of
Horsetail Falls.
An ancient live oak sheltered our rig at Las Cienegas Wildlife Area
southeast of Tucson.
More often, though, we choose a place out in the sun. Either way, our
neighbors are several hundred feet away. Or non-existent.
Our only visitors were steers that came to ask if that was really the smell
of black angus steak in the cast iron skillet.
There is no campground at Whitewater Draw Wildlife Refuge but
you can park for a couple of nights to admire 20 or 30,000 sandhill cranes.
This great horned owl was nesting in an old barn there.
And there were waterfowl in addition to the cranes.
One of the advantages of camping right next to a mountain stream is
the wine cooler that comes with it.
A curious mule deer came to inspect our camp in Montana.
Walmart Supercenters are convenient places to spend the night for
free when traveling but they are not destinations for actual camping.
At the Buenos Aires Wildlife Area southwest of Tucson a dust devil came
to visit.
And we had to tolerate the proximity of neighbors just up the road.
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