I’ve been camping repeatedly at generic park. This is lame and costs money. No regrets though. It worked to get the ball rolling. Reservations were convenient and the location was a known thing. I got me back into the groove of more camping. That’s good. Had the groove become a rut? I decided it’s time to return to my roots of “free” camping.
I had a place in mind. It has nothing but a few fire rings, a hand pump well, and an outhouse. No services. No reservations. No cost. No bullshit.
The problem was I’d only been there on Honey Badger. I’d “discovered” the place by gradually extending my explorations. To get there I’d zipped across hell itself without really noticing. Honey Badger can lead you astray. It goes wherever it fuckin’ wants. If you don’t think about it you might follow the same path with a normal car. The bike’s nimble feet will easily swish past stuff that will eat a brake line.
Judging from the map, road access should be fine. It’s just that I had not personally verified this. To lumber my Dodge (with Honey Badger on the trailer!) to the target location I entered a forest/wilderness-ish area from a different direction. This kept me on pavement a little longer but also had me traversing roads I’d never personally seen. (There was a third option on “Mystery Road” but I’ll mention that later.)
Everything worked out fine. The Dodge is not a pavement queen. I did need 4×4 but that’s why I have 4×4. I covered about 40 miles on road that was just the right level of “interesting”. I officially declared it “fine for this equipment (the Dodge), but very close to being not-fine”. Later on, from the camp itself, I figured out a different egress route. Instead of narrow twisty dirt I left via a big fat dirt road that’s probably maintained for heavy log trucks. Never stop scouting your terrain!
I pulled into camp a few hours before sunset. There was one camper there; a hard sided pop-up. (Filthie, is that you?) I felt bad ruining the guy’s solo location. Then again it wasn’t like I crowded him. It was just the two of us spread over a dozen or so acres.
It took me a bit to snake the truck into a likely spot. Informal camping is… ready for this… informal. I didn’t so much have a road to follow as there was grass and more or less cleared space between tree stumps and scattered tall pines (Looks like they had a blowdown several years ago.) So I drove off road until I saw a spot that was the best combination of flat enough to erect a tent and mostly shaded. I’d brought a folding workbench but there was a decrepit picnic table nearby. Nice!
I set to work popping up my tent but my “neighbor” showed up. The first rule of civilization is to always offer a cold beer if you’ve got one. He accepted and we sat around bullshitting for a while. I liked his hard sided pop up. His wife was there too he said. I never saw her leave the camper.
The bugs kinda sucked and soon my neighbor split. I planned on starting a fire with my flint and steel but while filling my campstove I spilled some white gas. Nobody sucks so bad they can’t start a fire under those conditions so I didn’t learn much.
I deployed two Thermacells and wore bug treated clothes… which helped a little. Dinner was a jalapeno cheese bratwurst cut up and cooked in an iron frying pan with a small can of beans. (I now have 3 other cans in my “bug out” box.)
Dinner was delicious but I didn’t get to relax as long as I’d like. Two more beers and a thousand mosquito bites later I retreated for my tent.
It was hot so I’d left the tent’s rain tarp off. It slowly cooled and I drifted off while watching the night sky.
(To be continued.)