We found a lovely spot in the recently abandoned free campground on the pass, lit a fire, opened the wine, and relaxed. It was a great evening.
We had a busy Memorial Day weekend working at the Coney Island Hot Dog in Bailey. The weekend warriors were in full march, and we were slinging hot dogs as fast as we could through Monday. Highway 285 was a constant stream of cars, trucks, campers, rvs, and boats. Angelica and I were ready to go camping as soon as we got off work. We headed up the recently opened Guanella Pass around 5 pm. All the traffic was headed in the opposite direction, back to Denver.
We found a lovely spot in the recently abandoned free campground on the pass, lit a fire, opened the wine, and relaxed. It was a great evening.
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Kenny and I spent the first three weeks of 2017 traveling down the Natchez Trace Parkway from Nashville to Natchez. If you missed week 1 and 2, you can catch up here and here. We left off last week a little off the Trace at Goshen Springs Campground where we had to get our van fixed. Now, we're at the final campground on the Trace: Rocky Springs. Week 3: Camping at Rocky SpringsJanuary 17, 2017 Kenny and I spent the first three weeks of 2017 traveling down the Natchez Trace Parkway from Nashville to Natchez. If you missed week 1, you can catch up here. We left off last week in Tupelo, Mississippi during a winter storm, and now we're settled at the next free campsite on the Trace, Jeff Busby Campground. Week 2: Camping at Jeff Busby + Goshen SpringsJanuary 11, 2017 The next day there were high wind advisories so we moved to a site behind the bathroom building to block the southwesterly winds (Obviously Kenny’s idea). And then there wasn’t any wind. Now we’re the only RV in the joint and feel kinda odd being behind the bathroom, but decided that we don’t want to move again. On December 31, 2016, we started down the Natchez Trace Parkway from Nashville, Tennessee. It took us a slow and meandering twenty-one days to drive the 444-mile parkway to Natchez, Mississippi - speed obviously not being the goal. It's now the beginning of May 2017, and I considered skipping over this part of our journey, since it's anything but timely. However, this is my blog, dammit (!), and the history of the Natchez Trace spans back tens of thousands of years, so I'll consider these past four months between us and the Trace but a blink of an eye in the grand scheme. I'm going to share some excerpts from my journal and pictures from this quiet, isolated, and damp piece of America, but, first, a little context. Big Red Gets StolenOur winter plan went something like this: 1) Work the sugar beet harvest in October, 2) work at the Amazon Fulfillment Center November through the end of December, 3) buy a generator with our savings, and 4) take the next three months off boondocking in the southwest until our summer job in Colorado. But, on the way from the sugar beet harvest in Drayton, North Dakota to our next job at an Amazon Fulfillment Center in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, we stopped for an afternoon in downtown St. Louis... where our van was stolen. Miraculously, it was found a week later, and even more miraculously, still in running order. We had a GoFundMe campaign that helped lighten the blow, but because of van repairs, car rentals, and buying a new tow vehicle to get us to our next job in Tennessee, our nest egg was broken. After we were done working at Amazon we had a couple options: 1) go crying to Mom or 2) forget about buying a generator, camp cheap and live off of beans and rice until our next job. And beans and rice won out! So, we took a look at the map and looked for a new route to get south, then west. And there it was, a long vein that avoided highways and interstates, a place we had never heard of. Forty miles from where we sat, stretching through part of Alabama, and deep into Mississippi: The Natchez Trace Parkway. History of the Natchez Trace ParkwayThe Natchez Trace Parkway is a paved road that follows much of the "Old Trace" - a natural trail originally trampled down by bison and other large game. Overtime, it became a footpath for travelers. Native Americans were the first to use the path as a sort of highway. Boatmen, called "Kaintucks", would float supplies down the Mississippi or Ohio river to sell at busy hubs, like Natchez and New Orleans. They would also sell the planks of wood that made their flatboats, and then hike back home, 400 + miles north toward Nashville on the Natchez Trace. Explorers, soldiers, and slave traders are also part of the ancient path's more modern history. With the introduction of the steamboat, traders could more efficiently bring goods down the river and complete their return trip upriver by boat, making the Trace obsolete. In the early 1900s, a group of women known as the Mississippi Daughters of the American Revolution made it their duty to preserve the forgotten and historic Trace. Due to their efforts, the Natchez Trace Parkway was designated a national park in 1938. The parkway is a leisurely drive with a maximum speed of 50 mph. Also a designated bike path, motorists share the road with many cyclists in the summer months. The three campgrounds along the Trace have no hookups, but they are free and anything but primitive otherwise, with paved sites and heated bathrooms. Week 1: Camping at Meriwether Lewis + Tombigbee State ParkWe spent last summer working at Hart Ranch RV Resort in Rapid City, South Dakota. We had every Tuesday-Wednesday off. On Monday, we'd get off work around 2:00 pm, load up the van, ditch the trailer, and go camping! We were so obsessed with exploring the Black Hills, both after work and on the weekends, that we seriously neglected documenting our adventures on our blog. So here you go. Nearly a year later, and just in time for you to plan a summer trip, here's our love letter to the Black Hills. I hope you get inspired to go explore South Dakota and fall in love with the Black Hills! The StratobowlThe Stratobowl was only a few miles from where we were living, but about 12 miles from Rapid City proper. If you're traveling south on Highway 16 from Rapid City, start looking for a small parking lot after Bear Country and directly after you pass the gas station. On the first try, you'll probably see it as you cruise by, but you can get off at Rockerville to turn around and turn in to the parking lot from northbound Highway 16. The Stratobowl was put on the map in 1934 when it was home to a stratospheric balloon launch site sponsored by the National Geographic Society and the US Army Air Corps. In the 1950s, it was also used by the US Navy Project Strato-Lab. The trail is only about 1/2 mile uphill to the overlook, but if you're looking for a longer hike, continue past the overlook until you come to a fork. If you go straight, you'll end up on private property in another 1/2 mile. If you take a left, you'll get another view of the canyon. If you go right, the trail continues on a dirt road that we never found the end of. In the late summer, you can also see hot air balloons take off during the Stratobowl Historic Hot Air Balloon Event. This hike is dog friendly and great for trail running. The Flume Trail Just a short drive from Rapid City, the Flume Trail runs 11 miles one way, with an optional 3-mile loop in the middle section. This moderate and quiet trail follows the path of the historic Rockerville Flume that used to carry water 20 miles from Spring Creek, South Dakota to Rockerville, South Dakota until 1885.
El Paso looks like a cool city. It has an international flavor, sitting just across a fence/checkpoint from Juarez. The tourist pamphlets and magazines are filled with pictures of colorful exotic foods and breathtaking art. We drove right through. It does look like an amazing city, but we didn't have a plan on where to go or where to park—serious considerations when towing your house around America. It was interesting to see the actual border on I-10 north, a curving ribbon of fence that hugged the interstate, the shanty town dotted hills of Juarez just beyond. And you say to yourself, “That’s a different country over there.” Instead, we headed to Las Cruces, New Mexico. We had been hoping for a campsite with electricity because our battery was running low in the trailer. We stopped at Leasburg Dam State Park, about fifteen miles north of Las Cruces, and talked to the guy in the office. He was sad to report that all the electric sites were already accounted for, but we were welcome to set up shop in one of the available dry camping sites. Then he regaled us with the history of the area, showing us around the little museum at the park, offered us books in the over-stuffed exchange library, and encouraged us to continue our travels.
Since we had to dry camp anyway, we decided to go to the Aguirre campground in the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument west of town. The campground is on the east side of San Augustin Pass on highway 70, right at the base of spectacular peaks in the Organ Mountain range. Aguirre has no hookups, but the view and surroundings more than made up for it. We took pictures, made dinner, and enjoyed an evening fire with wood that smelled like the finest incense. While traveling, we try to eat as the locals eat. Visits to the grocery store are always interesting in a new region. Pickled pigs feet in Tennessee, boudin sausages in Louisiana, jars of cactus in Texas, smoked meat sticks in North Dakota, and meat cases in any new town are always an alien menagerie. Our budget for eating out is small, so when we aren’t eating at an authentic food stop, we compensate by trying to new regional dishes with our own kitchen tools and ingredients from a local grocery store.
In Las Cruces, New Mexico, I picked up a free magazine on what to do in the area. It featured an article about Elote En Vaca, or corn in a cup. A staple of Southwestern cuisine, this simple dish is basically corn cooked in butter with peppers and onions, and sometimes topped with cheese or sour cream and hot sauce. I knew we had some corn in the freezer, so we gave it a try! In Part 1, we began meandering through West Texas and left off in Davis Mountains State Park. On our last night at the park, we took an evening trip to the McDonald Observatory. McDonald ObservatoryUp the winding road of Mount Locke, at 6700 feet, the McDonald Observatory sits at one of the darkest places in the continental US and welcomes tens of thousands of visitors each year.
Every Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday, the McDonald Observatory, part of the University of Texas at Austin, holds a Star Party. On this Tuesday night in January, more than a hundred of us sat bundled in coats and blankets on the cold amphitheater benches and looked up. Our Star Host was both enthusiastic and dry, both excited about sharing his knowledge and concerned about the future of science. We were only introduced to him in the dark. I could see the silhouette of his hair and his tall build, and Kenny and I both wondered if our Star Host wasn’t P. Allen Smith. He cast his green laser pointer skyward and taught us how to view the night sky. We found the North Star, a satellite, Gemini, the major and minor dippers, new stars, and old stars. On many nights thereafter, Kenny and I have continued to stand under the dark skies of New Mexico and Arizona and point out all the new clues and constellations: the square of stars leads to Polaris, Orion’s Belt to the nebula, the large drawn out “V” to the Andromeda Galaxy. We didn’t mean to spend a week traveling the long lonely highways of West Texas. The tentative plan to get through all of Texas went something like this: take four days, go to Rice where the Casita manufacturer is located, maybe go to San Antonio, then to El Paso, then into Arizona. On our trip to Rice, we were supposed to get a new door installed (because we destroyed ours, which is a different story for different time), but things didn’t turn out that way. We did end up leaving Casita with a new door, the only catch being that it wasn’t installed. On the atlas we searched for a nearby state park where we could plug into electricity and install the new door ourselves. Oh, life on the open road can be cruel. That’s how we found Lake Whitney State Park. Lake Whitney is a 23,000-surface-acre reservoir in Texas Lakes and Prairies Country. When we got there, there were a number of campsites to choose from. The woman at the main office suggested a spot, “the BEST spot”, right on the water. When we turned into our loop, not another RV was in sight. We set up camp, Kenny jumped in the water, Annie chased skipping stones, and that night we fell asleep to the sound of lake water lapping at the shore. So we stayed another night. A different woman checked us in the following morning and commented, “Oh, that’s a good site.” That day, we installed the new door and read the state parks brochure, where we saw the picture of a pool filled with crystalline blue water surrounded by desert mountain peaks. So on the third day, we cashed in for a Texas State Park Pass and headed west to Balmorhea State Park where one of the world’s largest spring-fed pools was waiting.
We spent the afternoon plotting a tentative route in a general direction that we'll probably take once we get off the Trace. It felt more productive than it sounds!
Kenny and I aren't detailed planners when it comes to traveling. We don't make camping reservations (unless it's at a national park during the busy season) because it's more fun to enjoy the trip as it comes than stick to an itinerary. |
The Campers
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