Home Posts tagged "adventures in camping"

Tag: adventures in camping

Even Happier Camper

Did I think June’s camping trip was amazing? Well, yes, I did, and yes, it was. July, though? July blew it right out of the water. Okay, it’s not really a competition. And also, I should go back a bit. February, 2021. I’d meant to go see what camping around Mount Graham was like for a while, but never got it done. Then I found the cabins at Roper Lake, and spent a weekend looking at the beauty of Mount Graham, learning my way (a little) around the area. One day heading back from maybe breakfast to the lake, we took a detour and drove up Mount Graham a bit. It’s a steep narrow mountain road with lots of switchbacks, though, and I was driving a 14-year-old Toyota Corolla and couldn’t remember if my tires had been inspected recently. And there was ice. I decided I would absolutely like to camp up there, but for that day I turned around before we reached any campgrounds. I had Plans. I was going to camp So Much. But Life Finds a Way–to smack the carp out of all one’s plans. I didn’t make it happen. This year, though, I’ve been camping on Mount Lemmon, and it’s becoming more familiar. Load the car, buy the food, buy the ice, go. It’s not so hard. We went in May. We went in June, and I wanted to go in July. June on my beloved Mount Lemmon, though, had been right on the edge of…

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Happy Camper

So I probably shouldn’t even say this, but camping without my bio-kid is a lot quieter than camping with them. Shh. Don’t tell. Last weekend was spent in a lovely campsite, overlooking a canyon and shaded by evergreens. No one in my campsite was complaining, for most of the weekend. It was the most relaxing, peaceful, joy-bringing experience I think I’ve had in a very long time. Except that I did miss bio-kid. Negative or not (they are) I do love that kid. In their place, though, there was a chipmunk. We watched him explore the campsite with a great deal of cheek–until he hopped up into the bear box to investigate the fudge I bought at the general store, and I had to leap to its defense. I meant to take a lot of pictures. I meant to walk down to the possible-creek. (Water flowed in it last month. Does it still? I meant to find out.) Here is one picture. I meant to do a lot of things. Instead I mostly just sat vegetating in the beauty, and/or reading Howl’s Moving Castle. That is such a freaking good book. So wonderfully written. Did you know Dianna Wynne Jones was a student of J.R.R. Tolkien? Neil Gaiman wrote a lovely blog post about her, after she passed. Anyway. One of the many things I meant to do while camping was write my own blog post. As you may tell by this weak and also late effort, that didn’t happen…

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Birthday Adventures

February is my birthday month. As a child I loved my birthday, but as I got older, it came to mean less. Lately, though, I’ve come back around. Who cares if anyone else is celebrating? My birthday is for me. My birthday, however, falls in the week Tucson celebrates the yearly Fiesta de los Vaqueros–aka Rodeo Break. Schools are closed Thursday and Friday. So instead of taking my birthday off, I’ve been taking the Friday of Rodeo Break, and going camping. Last year was the second time we went to Roper Lake during Rodeo, and friends, it was blinking cold. This year, I decided, we would go somewhere else. A little south of here! A new park, a new adventure, not so cold! I reserved a cabin at Kartchner Caverns State Park, back in August (you have to reserve way ahead.) Then my work adopted a new policy as of January 1st–everyone gets their birthday as a paid holiday, but you have to take it that day. Use it or lose it. You are darn tootin’ I am not going to lose out on getting paid to celebrate my birthday. I went to the desert museum for the Avian Adventure, and met this charming fellow. It was a great time! I will be showing off that picture for a while, let me tell you. Then Friday, I went camping. Poor me, already paid for it, can’t get out of it, sorry to take two days off in a week but…

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The Other Cabin Fever

No, not that one. Well, originally that one. A few months ago I did something extremely out of character—I jumped on making reservations for a cabin I’d never seen, in a park I’d never visited, because there were nights available. Mount Lemmon had been closed because of the pandemic, then caught fire, and I didn’t know when we’d be able to go there again and I couldn’t imagine staying home any longer, and so I started looking elsewhere, and then I jumped on the first thing I found. Camping, you see, is about as safe as you can get right now, especially the way we camp—as far as we can get from everyone, avoiding people like they might carry plague long before the pandemic. Anyway. This past weekend was, at last, our weekend. Behold our weekend home, as the sun set. Ahead of the cabin, the lake. Behind the cabin, the mountain. I took this picture farther around the lake, so our cabin is in it. Meet some of our neighbors. Several of these guys dropped by Friday night to see if we’d left anything out for them. Sadly I did not take a picture. I did take a picture of the one I ran into raiding the snackbox (read: trash can) outside the restroom at four in the morning, but all you can see are its eyes glowing red, so we’ll skip that one. These birds would come in the evenings and chatter and flit about these reeds sticking…

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Nasty, Disturbing, Uncomfortable Things

Friends, this is the middle of nowhere. Note the vultures, if you can spot them. I only caught two in this shot, but there were eight of them. They circled for two hours, while friend and I sat with my car, hoping someone would come along with a lugwrench that would work on a damaged lugnut my tire iron couldn’t handle. Why, yes, it was great fun! Why do you ask? Hanging by my bedroom door where I see it every morning, is a sign that says “Every day is a new adventure.” I try to live by it. Sometimes it’s easy. Sometimes I end up sitting by the side of the road. A couple weeks ago, we went to Sedona. That was awesome. Here is a picture from NOT in the middle of nowhere (because we were enjoying a great meal at a great restaurant–on the open-air balcony, of course–when I took it.) In fact, here’s another gorgeous pic, possibly from the same balcony, because we ate there the whole weekend, it was that good. That adventure went well. We enjoyed pretty much every moment of it. But that’s the nature of adventure—you don’t know what you’re gonna find until you find it. Sort of like a box of chocolates, yeah? Though I do love adventure, I’m currently somewhat unwillingly trying to expand my horizons. I’m very busy right now, and I don’t have a lot of time for it. I’d like to stay closer to home! I love…

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Adventures in Camping

It’s been awhile since I talked about camping. Hubby and I bought a pop-up camper about four years ago as an anniversary gift to ourselves. We’d gotten tired of tenting it, and after a grueling nearly 100-degree week up north, we decided that things needed to change. We’ve camped every year since, and it’s been amazing. We usually go at least once a month through summer and we usually go for one big one-week trip at some point. We got back from one such trip yesterday. It was a new campground to me, Sleeper State Park in Caseville, Michigan, about 2-3 hours away from where we live. Hubby had been there previously. It’s a beautiful place. One funny thing is that there was the Cheeseburger Festival going on that weekend, and guess what? The entire campground had filled up fast. Everyone had flamingos on their sites, and pictures of cheeseburgers and drinks. I guess this was a thing. So we ended up snagging the very last open site, which was very far from the bathroom. Regretfully. I know this sounds utterly ridiculous, but I have issues. So sometimes I need to get to the bathroom quickly. So hubby always tries to get us close. Doesn’t need to be steps away…but it’s helpful if it’s not a hike and a half. Last year, we had the same situation. The map on the website made it look like our site was next to the bathroom, but lo and behold, when we got…

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