I’m not a huge fan of official campgrounds. I prefer dispersed camping. Then again I’m not picky. Sometimes good enough is just fine.
I often want nothing more than a place to sit for the night and a place to have a little campfire. Here’s some life advice from the Curmudgeon; never let the desire for “awesome” stop you from having a “not so bad” trip.
Sometimes it’s just fine to park my ass at a campsite and forget all about the glorious, multi-week, outback trip that ‘aint in the cards at the moment. So, campsites have a place.
I bitch about the $25 (or whatever) fee but it’s worth it. I can set my tent up in 90 seconds (not exaggerating!) and my cot and mattress are the kind of luxury no backpacker has ever seen. I’ll grumble about a crowded campsite and then half an hour later realize I’m fat and happy sitting a tree somewhere and it’s all good. (With the exception of Yellowstone National Park. The cretins that run YP Campsites are just plain assholes! I dunno why that particular place sucks so bad? I assume they they breed their parkies in a pit of smug. A haughty obnoxious breed; formed from the clay of failed dreams and beaten hourly with a book of regulations regulations, they’re simply detestible in behavior and attitude. Yellowstone unleashes the most sexually repressed, humorless, badge sniffing, power tripping, fucknuts they can find. On who? On poor innocent tenters who just want to look at the pretty scenery. If all the parks in the Nation got together and had a competition over who’s staff had the most humorless pretentious fucksticks… the Yellowstone guys would be out in the parking lot writing up parking tickets.)
Anyway, parks generally don’t like you bringing your own firewood and I get that. It’s one of the few rules I actually accept as not some evil illuminati plan to rule the world. They’re attempting (mostly futilely) to cut back on invasive pests in forestland. No shit, that’s a thing. Historically it’s stuff like Dutch Elm Disease, Chestnut Blight, and White Pine Blister Rust. For those, the horse already left the barn. Right now, at least out East… there’s Emerald Ash Borer. I seem to recall a pine borer in the Black Hills too… though I forget the entomology at play with that one. Anyway, shit happens when you pick up stuff from one place and move it somewhere else. I don’t want to cause it.
I’m old enough to remember parks just having a pile of wood hanging around. Detritus from whatever landscaping and hazard tree removal they’d done. That was nice. “A tree fell across the bike path and we chopped it up. There’s a pile out yonder. Grab what you need.” My youth must have been an innocent time because that’s long gone. Now, parks charge ridiculous fees for a little bit of wood. Seven bucks for an armload? The market rate is $150 a cord! Seven bucks for a handful of sticks when a C-note will buy a chest high wall running 16′ linear feet? The mind boggles. Camping is historically supposed to be a good option when you’re poor; count on bureaucracies to mess that up.
I found a personal solution. I started by rooting through my scrap heap and found kiln dried dimension lumber. Aint’ no bugs in that. I also scrounged some pallets (which are also kiln dried and milled). This is all (as far as I can tell) totally allowed.
Here’s some scrounged raw materials:
I sprung for a clean new trash can (park people are tense about such things so I’ll keep everything real clean).
I’m not sure how to strap the can in my truck without having the lid blow off. I’ll improvise and report back if it worked.
It ought to be enough for several little campfires. I’m feeling pretty clever about it. Now I’m off to kick back and read a book by the fire. Where? Anywhere but Yellowstone, because fuck those guys.