I have loved
camping since I was little and can remember camping trips from the time I was three or
four years old. I can tell lots of great stories about these adventures. Camping (for me) has nothing to do whatsoever with trailers or
"campers." I am a tenter -- or I sleep totally exposed
under the broad, clear western skies. There is nothing in my mind that is
dangerous about this -- but I am not defenseless either.
One of my very first camping memories was a trip to Flagstaff back in the 50s for the All-Indian Pow-Wow. The interstate highway did not exist then and the road to Flagstaff (partially) was the present day route of 89A from Cottonwood through Sedona. The campground where we stayed was along that stretch of 89A that runs straight to Flagstaff from the top of the Oak Creek Canyon switchbacks through those tall old growth Ponderosa pines; it was on the east side of that highway. I can sometimes still pick out the spot where that camp was today, given the opportunity to watch the scenery. What was memorable about that night was I saw a porcupine! I think I have only ever seen two of them in my entire life – on that camping trip and then one in Juneau, Alaska in summer 2009 at the top of the aerial tramway. Porcupines must be fairly reclusive (that, or there just aren’t that many around here).
In the 60s, as Tina and I got older, Mom would take us on camping trips around Arizona. One summer, we went over to Mt. Graham and camped up on the mountain. We had bears in camp and heard mountain lions screaming in the night. We cowered in our borrowed tent until morning and then fled north to Luna Lake where there wasn’t so much excitement. Of course mountain lions are still scary critters, but I have become woods-wise enough to know that a black bear really isn’t much of a threat – no more so really than a coon and for the same reason – they’re usually just foraging and if you don’t provide them a source of food, they avoid you. I’m more likely to sit up and watch a black bear, than I am to run, as we shall later discuss. I like bears. ‘Course, there ain’t no Grizzlies ‘round here… anymore.
Motorcycle camping… when I was about 16 or 17, David Beaver and I undertook a back country camping trip on our motorcycles. David had a Kawasaki 175 and I had a little Honda twin (125cc). We rode up north past Cave Creek and slept on the picnic tables at the Seven Springs campground. I had bought a little “pocket warmer” at the Yellow Front store – it was like an over-sized cigarette lighter (Zippo variety) and it had some kind of long burning wick inside. Once lit, you kept it in your pocket in a little flannel sack to warm your hands, etc. As I slept on the picnic bench, every so often the danged thing would get uncomfortable in whichever pocket I had placed it – so I would move it to a different pocket, a different part of my body. In the morning, nearly frozen despite all the effort, I discovered I had little “pocket warmer” shaped burns all over – wherever there was a pocket the thing had resided in.
Later that day, covered with uncomfortable little pocket warmer burns and riding west through the rugged wilderness toward I-17 on Table Mesa Road, the nut fell off my rear axle on the side of a steep mountain – on a 4WD road and 20 miles from West Bumfuzzle. We sat there trying to figure out what to do next. David is one of those people who has an ability to think things through and come up with practical solutions – and as we waited there on the mountainside, we saw far below us on the road a Toyota Land-cruiser that was working its way up the hill. When it got to us, we could see the lone occupant trying to figure out how to get around us without stopping. Oh, he tried... but there was no possible way. David checked with him to see if he had anything we could use to get my motorcycle rolling again. He had a wire clothes hanger. David took the front axle nut off my bike, reassembled the rear axle with it, and then wired the front axle in with that clothes hanger. His impromptu repair lasted long enough to get me home and I’ve always considered him somewhat of a genius.
When Jannie and I got married in 1972, we couldn’t afford a real honeymoon. So we went camping. We drove up toward Flagstaff and pitched a little rented tent under some trees off the road – next morning we discovered we had camped in a neighborhood, with houses all around. We hadn’t seen them in the dark the night before – and we were practically on someone’s doorstep! Three years later, in May 1975, we took a two-week trip up through the national park country, then over to the Pacific coast and south to San Diego, one end of the country to the other. The first night out, at Zion National Park, the wind came up and blew our tent down around us. Who needs tent stakes anyway, right? The next night at Bear Lake, Utah, we almost froze to death – I think it may even have snowed. I know there was still existing snow on the ground. The campground where we stayed wasn’t even open, but we pitched the tent anyway. This time WITH the tent stakes.
The next night, we were ready for a break, so we got a room at Jackson Lake at Grand Tetons National Park. The lake was still frozen solidly enough that the locals were driving pick-up trucks on it. Then we went on up through Yellowstone – and had one of the strangest camping experiences of all – there was 5 feet of snow on the ground – but we stayed warm and comfortable camping at Mammoth Hot Springs. The temperatures around the hot springs and geysers were probably 40 degrees warmer than the rest of the park; the difference between that area and the surrounding park, which was still gripped in winter’s cold, was nothing less than amazing. Later on that trip, at Manchester, California on the Pacific Coast highway, we slept outside the tent on the ground in our sleeping bags. I think that was the first time Jannie had ever done that – she was a little scared about the idea at first, but soon was enjoying herself as we lay in our bags staring up at the stars. We were on a bluff high above the Pacific surf and we could hear the waves crashing onto the beach far below.
On one of our first camping trips together, we rented a little tent and of course we weren’t very good at setting it up (even though I’m sure it was pretty simple). We camped at Christopher Creek, and in those days, the camp sites were right on the creek. Unfortunately, it began to rain in the late afternoon as it often does on summer afternoons along the Mogollón Rim. But unlike most days, the rain didn’t stop… it was still raining at 9 o'clock that night. So we burrowed into the tent for the duration, ate our dinner in there and played cards until we figured it was time to sleep. About midnight, we woke up and looked out and the sky was clear – so I decided to raise the tent’s flap outside the entry, so the inside could start to dry out.
Not being familiar with the tent, this took quite a number of minutes. I had a very weak flashlight. After I finished the job, I flashed that very weak light around the campsite, and was greeted by two enormous yellow eyes staring back from about five or ten feet away. I jumped back in the tent and sniveled until I fell asleep... In the morning, we discovered bobcat tracks in the wet dirt outside! He probably stood there the whole time I worked on that flap, trying to decide if I was “worth” killing and eating.
When my kids were small, we often went camping in the summers. Once, all four of us went up to Valentine Ridge – John was only four or five at the time. Sleeping in the tent, I sensed that something was amiss, and I looked around – John was standing over Mandy and… uh… relieving himself “in her direction.” I guess he thought he was outside the tent… but he was only half-awake. I’m not sure that Mandy or Rod slept too much after that; they probably both kept one eye open. John, on the other hand, slept pretty well.
Another time, at Oak Creek Canyon, we were all four sitting around the picnic table and eating our supper – one kid says to another kid – “stop touching me” – so I looked under the table to see if I could apprehend the most-guilty culprit. It wasn’t kid touching kid at all – but skunks touching kids. There was an entire family of skunks under the table hoping for scraps to fall. I very quietly told the children not to look, and not to move. We sat there stock-still until those polecats got tired of waiting and ambled away, leaving us unmolested, “unfragranced” and extremely relieved.
In the late 80s, the whole family took a camping trip to Vallecito Lake, near Durango, Colorado. Most of us anyway. On the trip home, Mom and Dad got a head start on me and the kids by about 20 minutes. We were to meet at a highway junction near Four Corners to regroup. I thought I’d have a good joke on them by taking a short cut (which I saw on my map) and which would cut off about 30 or 40 miles from the distance to the meeting point -- I would still get there before them -- or so I thought. Halfway into that shortcut, I found the road completely blocked off and closed. So I had to go all the way back around and then cover the original miles as well.
Meanwhile, Mom and Dad were waiting at the aforementioned highway junction – and they finally thought maybe they had the wrong one. So they drove south to Shiprock, and then east toward Farmington to another junction they thought might be the one. While they were doing their little eastward leg, I arrived at the original junction, and not finding them there, went on south toward home as I thought they must have done. This is in the days before any of us had cell phones. When they got to the new junction, and of course we weren’t there, they drove back to Shiprock, and then north again to Cortez, Colorado to look for us there.
Meanwhile, 20 miles or so south of Shiprock, I broke down. With three kids in the car, I am stranded 20 miles in the middle of northwest New Mexico. A Navajo fellow on his way home to Dulce stopped and offered us a ride back to town – once in his truck I realized he was fairly well lit by spirituous liquors… but we were already in there and we made it to Shiprock thanks to him. I got a tow truck to take us back out to get the car. The tow and repair took most of the afternoon (just fan belts), and it took almost every penny I had. I was a starving college student at the time and had no credit cards.
From Cortez, Mom and Dad had the forest rangers and the county sheriff looking for us. I figured out by this time they were probably wondering where we were, so I called Ruth at home to see if they had called there. They hadn’t yet, but they eventually did, and the kids and I headed for home with about $5 left in my pocket for supper (McDonalds) and just enough gasoline. We beat Mom and Dad home by several hours. Dad was disgruntled, Mom was still laughing.
Then there was the time... Some friends and I went up to the White Mountains, and we camped near Big Lake. John and I were hanging out in the morning, after a good rain, and we were making breakfast for us and for Ms. Minette, who was camping with us. We had everything set up for cooking underneath a vinyl-plastic canopy -- and with the rain that canopy trapped water and filled up just like a lake. It was four poles, topped by a big flexible lake of icy cold water. As the rain continued lightly, the pool of water trapped on the top got larger and larger and eventually tripped (or more correctly, tipped) past the point where the canopy shuddered and shifted so that the 35 degree water could drain off right down the back of my neck as I prepared the breakfast bacon.
On one of my last camping trips, a few years back, Mandy and I went to one of my favorite places. She and I both know where it was, but I won’t mention it here as it is our family’s secret place. Keeping it to ourselves ensures we will never find a crowd there. We were sleeping in the tent and I woke up about 5:30 AM – it was starting to get light, but still very dim outside. I heard something. What I heard was the biggest black bear… brown actually…. that I have ever seen in Arizona. Bears hereabouts are usually the size of large raccoons, but this boy was huge. He was trying to see if anything was in the back of my truck that he might want to eat – and when I sat up on my cot, he backed down, turned around and started ambling away, looking at me out of the corner of his eye as if to say, “hey, I ain’t doing nothing, I’m just passing through…” He was just a big doofus brown black bear. Well, I wanted Mandy to see him – so I touched her arm and whispered her name. When I did, the bear bolted off up the hillside. I think all Mandy got to see of him was his big brown butt scrambling up the hill.
Despite all of this mayhem, I still enjoy camping. I don’t know why. But there are no bad memories in camping, not for me. Except maybe that one time I fried up a fresh trout inside the tent because it was raining outside up at Hawley Lake… took ten years or so to air that tent out. But I’d go again tomorrow if the weather was warmer, smelly fish, cold rain and all.
One of my very first camping memories was a trip to Flagstaff back in the 50s for the All-Indian Pow-Wow. The interstate highway did not exist then and the road to Flagstaff (partially) was the present day route of 89A from Cottonwood through Sedona. The campground where we stayed was along that stretch of 89A that runs straight to Flagstaff from the top of the Oak Creek Canyon switchbacks through those tall old growth Ponderosa pines; it was on the east side of that highway. I can sometimes still pick out the spot where that camp was today, given the opportunity to watch the scenery. What was memorable about that night was I saw a porcupine! I think I have only ever seen two of them in my entire life – on that camping trip and then one in Juneau, Alaska in summer 2009 at the top of the aerial tramway. Porcupines must be fairly reclusive (that, or there just aren’t that many around here).
In the 60s, as Tina and I got older, Mom would take us on camping trips around Arizona. One summer, we went over to Mt. Graham and camped up on the mountain. We had bears in camp and heard mountain lions screaming in the night. We cowered in our borrowed tent until morning and then fled north to Luna Lake where there wasn’t so much excitement. Of course mountain lions are still scary critters, but I have become woods-wise enough to know that a black bear really isn’t much of a threat – no more so really than a coon and for the same reason – they’re usually just foraging and if you don’t provide them a source of food, they avoid you. I’m more likely to sit up and watch a black bear, than I am to run, as we shall later discuss. I like bears. ‘Course, there ain’t no Grizzlies ‘round here… anymore.
Motorcycle camping… when I was about 16 or 17, David Beaver and I undertook a back country camping trip on our motorcycles. David had a Kawasaki 175 and I had a little Honda twin (125cc). We rode up north past Cave Creek and slept on the picnic tables at the Seven Springs campground. I had bought a little “pocket warmer” at the Yellow Front store – it was like an over-sized cigarette lighter (Zippo variety) and it had some kind of long burning wick inside. Once lit, you kept it in your pocket in a little flannel sack to warm your hands, etc. As I slept on the picnic bench, every so often the danged thing would get uncomfortable in whichever pocket I had placed it – so I would move it to a different pocket, a different part of my body. In the morning, nearly frozen despite all the effort, I discovered I had little “pocket warmer” shaped burns all over – wherever there was a pocket the thing had resided in.
Later that day, covered with uncomfortable little pocket warmer burns and riding west through the rugged wilderness toward I-17 on Table Mesa Road, the nut fell off my rear axle on the side of a steep mountain – on a 4WD road and 20 miles from West Bumfuzzle. We sat there trying to figure out what to do next. David is one of those people who has an ability to think things through and come up with practical solutions – and as we waited there on the mountainside, we saw far below us on the road a Toyota Land-cruiser that was working its way up the hill. When it got to us, we could see the lone occupant trying to figure out how to get around us without stopping. Oh, he tried... but there was no possible way. David checked with him to see if he had anything we could use to get my motorcycle rolling again. He had a wire clothes hanger. David took the front axle nut off my bike, reassembled the rear axle with it, and then wired the front axle in with that clothes hanger. His impromptu repair lasted long enough to get me home and I’ve always considered him somewhat of a genius.
When Jannie and I got married in 1972, we couldn’t afford a real honeymoon. So we went camping. We drove up toward Flagstaff and pitched a little rented tent under some trees off the road – next morning we discovered we had camped in a neighborhood, with houses all around. We hadn’t seen them in the dark the night before – and we were practically on someone’s doorstep! Three years later, in May 1975, we took a two-week trip up through the national park country, then over to the Pacific coast and south to San Diego, one end of the country to the other. The first night out, at Zion National Park, the wind came up and blew our tent down around us. Who needs tent stakes anyway, right? The next night at Bear Lake, Utah, we almost froze to death – I think it may even have snowed. I know there was still existing snow on the ground. The campground where we stayed wasn’t even open, but we pitched the tent anyway. This time WITH the tent stakes.
The next night, we were ready for a break, so we got a room at Jackson Lake at Grand Tetons National Park. The lake was still frozen solidly enough that the locals were driving pick-up trucks on it. Then we went on up through Yellowstone – and had one of the strangest camping experiences of all – there was 5 feet of snow on the ground – but we stayed warm and comfortable camping at Mammoth Hot Springs. The temperatures around the hot springs and geysers were probably 40 degrees warmer than the rest of the park; the difference between that area and the surrounding park, which was still gripped in winter’s cold, was nothing less than amazing. Later on that trip, at Manchester, California on the Pacific Coast highway, we slept outside the tent on the ground in our sleeping bags. I think that was the first time Jannie had ever done that – she was a little scared about the idea at first, but soon was enjoying herself as we lay in our bags staring up at the stars. We were on a bluff high above the Pacific surf and we could hear the waves crashing onto the beach far below.
On one of our first camping trips together, we rented a little tent and of course we weren’t very good at setting it up (even though I’m sure it was pretty simple). We camped at Christopher Creek, and in those days, the camp sites were right on the creek. Unfortunately, it began to rain in the late afternoon as it often does on summer afternoons along the Mogollón Rim. But unlike most days, the rain didn’t stop… it was still raining at 9 o'clock that night. So we burrowed into the tent for the duration, ate our dinner in there and played cards until we figured it was time to sleep. About midnight, we woke up and looked out and the sky was clear – so I decided to raise the tent’s flap outside the entry, so the inside could start to dry out.
Not being familiar with the tent, this took quite a number of minutes. I had a very weak flashlight. After I finished the job, I flashed that very weak light around the campsite, and was greeted by two enormous yellow eyes staring back from about five or ten feet away. I jumped back in the tent and sniveled until I fell asleep... In the morning, we discovered bobcat tracks in the wet dirt outside! He probably stood there the whole time I worked on that flap, trying to decide if I was “worth” killing and eating.
When my kids were small, we often went camping in the summers. Once, all four of us went up to Valentine Ridge – John was only four or five at the time. Sleeping in the tent, I sensed that something was amiss, and I looked around – John was standing over Mandy and… uh… relieving himself “in her direction.” I guess he thought he was outside the tent… but he was only half-awake. I’m not sure that Mandy or Rod slept too much after that; they probably both kept one eye open. John, on the other hand, slept pretty well.
Another time, at Oak Creek Canyon, we were all four sitting around the picnic table and eating our supper – one kid says to another kid – “stop touching me” – so I looked under the table to see if I could apprehend the most-guilty culprit. It wasn’t kid touching kid at all – but skunks touching kids. There was an entire family of skunks under the table hoping for scraps to fall. I very quietly told the children not to look, and not to move. We sat there stock-still until those polecats got tired of waiting and ambled away, leaving us unmolested, “unfragranced” and extremely relieved.
In the late 80s, the whole family took a camping trip to Vallecito Lake, near Durango, Colorado. Most of us anyway. On the trip home, Mom and Dad got a head start on me and the kids by about 20 minutes. We were to meet at a highway junction near Four Corners to regroup. I thought I’d have a good joke on them by taking a short cut (which I saw on my map) and which would cut off about 30 or 40 miles from the distance to the meeting point -- I would still get there before them -- or so I thought. Halfway into that shortcut, I found the road completely blocked off and closed. So I had to go all the way back around and then cover the original miles as well.
Meanwhile, Mom and Dad were waiting at the aforementioned highway junction – and they finally thought maybe they had the wrong one. So they drove south to Shiprock, and then east toward Farmington to another junction they thought might be the one. While they were doing their little eastward leg, I arrived at the original junction, and not finding them there, went on south toward home as I thought they must have done. This is in the days before any of us had cell phones. When they got to the new junction, and of course we weren’t there, they drove back to Shiprock, and then north again to Cortez, Colorado to look for us there.
Meanwhile, 20 miles or so south of Shiprock, I broke down. With three kids in the car, I am stranded 20 miles in the middle of northwest New Mexico. A Navajo fellow on his way home to Dulce stopped and offered us a ride back to town – once in his truck I realized he was fairly well lit by spirituous liquors… but we were already in there and we made it to Shiprock thanks to him. I got a tow truck to take us back out to get the car. The tow and repair took most of the afternoon (just fan belts), and it took almost every penny I had. I was a starving college student at the time and had no credit cards.
From Cortez, Mom and Dad had the forest rangers and the county sheriff looking for us. I figured out by this time they were probably wondering where we were, so I called Ruth at home to see if they had called there. They hadn’t yet, but they eventually did, and the kids and I headed for home with about $5 left in my pocket for supper (McDonalds) and just enough gasoline. We beat Mom and Dad home by several hours. Dad was disgruntled, Mom was still laughing.
Then there was the time... Some friends and I went up to the White Mountains, and we camped near Big Lake. John and I were hanging out in the morning, after a good rain, and we were making breakfast for us and for Ms. Minette, who was camping with us. We had everything set up for cooking underneath a vinyl-plastic canopy -- and with the rain that canopy trapped water and filled up just like a lake. It was four poles, topped by a big flexible lake of icy cold water. As the rain continued lightly, the pool of water trapped on the top got larger and larger and eventually tripped (or more correctly, tipped) past the point where the canopy shuddered and shifted so that the 35 degree water could drain off right down the back of my neck as I prepared the breakfast bacon.
On one of my last camping trips, a few years back, Mandy and I went to one of my favorite places. She and I both know where it was, but I won’t mention it here as it is our family’s secret place. Keeping it to ourselves ensures we will never find a crowd there. We were sleeping in the tent and I woke up about 5:30 AM – it was starting to get light, but still very dim outside. I heard something. What I heard was the biggest black bear… brown actually…. that I have ever seen in Arizona. Bears hereabouts are usually the size of large raccoons, but this boy was huge. He was trying to see if anything was in the back of my truck that he might want to eat – and when I sat up on my cot, he backed down, turned around and started ambling away, looking at me out of the corner of his eye as if to say, “hey, I ain’t doing nothing, I’m just passing through…” He was just a big doofus brown black bear. Well, I wanted Mandy to see him – so I touched her arm and whispered her name. When I did, the bear bolted off up the hillside. I think all Mandy got to see of him was his big brown butt scrambling up the hill.
Despite all of this mayhem, I still enjoy camping. I don’t know why. But there are no bad memories in camping, not for me. Except maybe that one time I fried up a fresh trout inside the tent because it was raining outside up at Hawley Lake… took ten years or so to air that tent out. But I’d go again tomorrow if the weather was warmer, smelly fish, cold rain and all.
