Category: Uncategorized

These are my go-to places when I begin to plan my next blissful adventure.

ForestCamping.com

Since I live in Colorado, I rely on my Colorado Atlas & Gazetteer map book a lot. But, I realized a few years back that I tended to go to the same familiar places especially when my kids were young. In exploring some new areas in my region I came across Fred and Suzi Dow and their website which includes a listing of the 157 national forests and grasslands they have personally visited and researched since 1994.  They also have resources for people interested in being a campground host. Suzi also has a blog corner with really interesting and entertaining stories.

You can learn more about this couple here:  http://www.forestcamping.com

CampgroundRecon.com

 I discovered this gem just recently as a YouTube channel. These folks have recorded virtual tours of over 245 campgrounds in Colorado and a few in eastern Utah. They release a new video every Thursday. They also have a website with an interactive map. What’s awesome is you can really see which campsite would be a good fit for your rig and setup needs.

You can learn more about this person here https://campgroundrecon.com

The 52 Hike Challenge is a great way to find places to hike. In addition, the organization supports the physical and mental well-being associated with exploring new places and hiking an average of once per week. They offer rewards and swag. I often locate trails through my state’s chapter Facebook page and the use my Colorado Atlas to see what campsites are close. People share their hikes and pictures. So far this year, I’m averaging two hikes a week and there is a 100-Hikes Challenge too.

Camping for Women

There are times when I want to camp and hike and my husband’s schedule doesn’t work out or I just want to have sometime one-on-one time with my daughter or female friend. I found this website through a social media site I follow that is composed only of females who venture into the woods on their own. This website covers travel experiences of women around the world. Their mission is similar to mine and provides a forum for contributors in the blog section as well as a resource section. It is a one-stop shop for the inquisitive woman.

You can learn more about this person here http://campingforwomen.com

The Bearfoot Theory

I came across this website when I was deciding whether I wanted a camper van or a popup truck camper. This site has information about van life and although I did not choose a van (topic for another post), I did find many of the blog posts interesting and helpful. The pictures are amazing and I especially enjoy the winter hiking and gear reviews.

You can learn more about this at http://bearfoottheory.com

Conclusion

There are a plethora of helpful websites and people who are writing about and providing resources about a shared passion: being active in the outdoors. I will, from time to time, share more helpful resources and links to information I think will be helpful for you to build your skills in living an outdoor-centered life.

If you are interested, please subscribe to my newsletter.

From Green River, Utah we headed to stay at a commercial RV Park in Moab.  The drive was easy but, for us, this place was crazy and super busy.  We were “camped” about two feet from the people to our back and about four feet from the people to our front.  There was no grass in between and the picnic tables were awkwardly placed atop concrete pads.  Our neighbors’ table was directly next to ours.  In the park’s favor, there were nice trees and a nice swimming pool.  We had full hook-ups so we could leave the dogs in the trailer with air-conditioning on the days we went to the national parks.  The dog area was just a dirt patch and more people should clean up after their pets because it was covered with poop and made a terrible place to exercise our border collies.  We did find a nice dog park in the town adjacent to a trail along a creek.  

Things I’ve Learned

1. Commercial sites are going to be an exception in our traveling life.
2. Delaying our visits to the National Parks until the evenings because we were working during the day had its advantages.  First, a lot a people left the trailer park during the day and it was fairly quiet.  We had the swimming pool to ourselves and was a nice midday break.  In the evening when people are returning to the trailer park it is noisy and smelly as many folks are driving RZRs.  We leave the trailer park for the national parks which are cooler and less crowded in the evening. 
3. The RV Park may actually refund your money if you decide to leave early, which we did.  We headed out of the desert and headed for the Manti-La Sal mountains

Places to Visit 

Arches National Park

Canyonlands National Park

Dead Horse Point State Park

At first, setting out doesn’t seem different from any other trip you take.  But it isn’t long before the learning curve begins.  Our trip to High Line Lake State Park from Franktown, CO took a lot longer than anticipated.  We had to stop several times and there was a delay in Glenwood Canyon for construction.  In some ways, it doesn’t really matter but mentally it is helpful to have a realistic estimate of your arrival.   In the future, I will always add another 50% for the trip duration, therefore, a two-hour trip will take three.

The state park itself is enjoyable.  There is a path all the way around which the dogs really enjoyed, especially the swimming in the lake part and later that evening my husband and I took our mountain bikes back to an area with a really fun place to ride.

We stayed here only two nights before heading into Utah.

Things I’ve Learned

1. In order to work, we need electricity.  The solar panel from the old trailer (with the adapter) doesn’t charge the phones or iPad successfully.  We will probably pick up a generator in Moab which is in a few days.
2. Start the mail forwarding process sooner than later.  My husband was traveling out of the country right before the trip so we were having forms notarized the day we left.  The scan didn’t come out well enough for the company to read and also my name was to be notarized too.  These things are more easily handled at home but I guess that’s part of this; how to handle these things when you’re not in your normal environment.

 

ONWARD

The drive to Green River State Park was very windy, a headwind to be exact.  This dropped the fuel efficiency on the truck way down and there were no gas stations for about 60 miles.  The first stop we came to had relatively expensive fuel so we only filled up enough to get us to Green River.  The state park here is quite nice and some areas are better shaded than others.  We stayed here three nights.  We were able to ride our bikes and walk the dogs into town but we had to drive quite a way to find good hiking.  The river wasn’t viewable directly from the campground.  It does have a golf course and ultimate frisbee course directly adjacent to the campground.  It was too windy to spend much time outside or attempt ultimate frisbee.

 

Things I’ve Learned

1.  Pull-through sites sometimes really mean pull-aside sites.  Our trailer ended up in a bit of an awkward spot because we had to pull in enough for the slide on our trailer to not stick out into the road.  I will definitely look at facility maps a little closer when making a reservation ahead of time.
2.   Bring dog toys and dog grooming equipment.  We probably won’t always be in a place where our dogs can get a two- or three-mile hike each day so the ball thrower we got at the local hardware store has already been used.  Also, dogs will roll in as much grass and leaves as possible so a brush would be helpful too.

Places to Visit Nearby

The John Wesley Powell Museum in Green River, Utah

Goblin Valley State Park about 50 miles southwest of Green River, Utah

 

A recent trip to my husband’s birth country (South Africa) this February made us feel as though we wanted to travel and take advantage of better weather, old friends, and new scenery and places to explore. With my husband running his own business and my recent retirement from the classroom and working for myself comes the possibility of working remotely.  We’d like to spend more time on our sailboat when not in charter and travel around our beautiful state and country for extended periods of time.  Given this is a big change, we decided to do this in phases.  Phase 1 involved getting the right recreational vehicle for us and taking off for a month to test things out.  Details of how we decided upon this combination and then, how we personalized our trailer to suit the needs of running a business are in other journal entries.

The road to getting on the road was a long one for me.  In the midst of preparing to be gone for a month, we made a significant change to our diet and my husband was traveling for business for the last several weeks before our departure.  He got home from Dubai and we left the next day.  In addition, I’ve been de-cluttering and cleaning stuff out on the off-chance that we’ll put our house on the market soon. 

The idea is to try a month of living and working on the road.  My husband owns an engineering consulting company and I’m creating products for Teachers Pay Teachers.  We currently live in a 3,000 square foot home on five and a half acres forty miles southeast of Denver.  Our whole family is the area.  My parents, two kids and their SO’s plus my husband’s two kids their SO’s and three grandsons.  Plus we have his sister, three of her four kids and their kids in the metro area.

I wasn’t fully aware of how much it would take to reorganize our lives so that we might live remotely.

1. Disconnected satellite tv.  I didn’t really need to do this but why pay so much money for something you won’t be using and there are so many online options.
2. Enrolled in a mail forwarding service. 
3. Moving toward getting rid of the business server, including quick books and my husband needing a computer with a terabyte of memory.

This trip has a variety of experiences for us so we’ll be able to figure out what we like and don’t like. 

•      A state campground with no hook-ups,
•      A state campground in another state with electric,
•      A commercial campground in Moab with possible doggie day-care for dogs,
•      No reservation with attempt at finding free BLM sites,
•      A state campground with full hook-ups, and
•      Our land in the mountains on 35 acres. 

Each of these taught us something about work, play, or rest.  Please look for other posts related to these experiences.

 

Before:  1998 Chevy 3/4 ton with 24 foot Puma

After: 2016 Chevy 1/2 ton with 27 foot Lance

It’s been a year now since I retired and my husband and I have been thinking about living a bit differently.  We have a travel trailer, a sailboat in the Pacific Northwest, some land in Colorado in addition to our home south of Denver and we stayed in South Africa for several weeks this past February.  We’ve enjoyed splitting our time and really started thinking we could do this on a more consistent basis.  Perhaps, we could even give up on house but it was clear we couldn’t live and work for extended amounts of time in our current trailer.

The “before” trailer was 24-foot with no slide and a small, awkward to get into double bed.  Add two border collies to the mix and it was obvious we needed a change.  There are a lot of questions to answer when looking around for a recreational vehicle.

Trailer or Motorcoach?  We like the trailer because we can park the trailer and use the truck for outings.  Given the right circumstances, our dogs can stay in the trailer while we are gone.

Fifth Wheel or Pull-Behind Trailer?  We opted for the pull-behind so we can use the truck bed for bikes and other items.

Length of Trailer? We clearly wanted a great bed space with room on either side to get out and around.  For us, the smallest one possible.  The smaller the trailer, the more options we have for parking and maneuvering.

Slide Outs? We decided one slide out was enough.  The main living area expanded which meant dogs wouldn’t be constantly underfoot but we would minimize the moving parts and hopefully, reduce any technical issues.

Construction type and age? We wanted a four-season trailer so taking trips in the spring and fall would be less risky with dropping temperatures and potentially freezing water.

Truck bed open or enclosed?  Our truck has a Softopper on it.  If you haven’t seen these, check them out.

Budget?  We were fortunate to have a trade and enough cash to not need any financing. But we did have a number in mind and were determined not to go into debt.

Tow vehicle?   We had fairly new cars and this old truck. Our 1998 Chevy 3/4 ton was showing her age.  She had no electronics and every year we’d put another $500 into replacing something and that was okay traveling here and there but not for extended periods and especially with our aging dogs.  We decided to get rid of an extra vehicle and have just a truck and a car.

We traded in our old pickup truck (1998) and my husband’s 2017 Hyundai Elantra for a 2016 Chevy Silverado with an extended cab that has doors so picking up our one dog and getting her settled.  It also has a six-foot bed instead of the eight-foot bed which makes our overall length a bit shorter.

Next:  Read about our lessons learned and how we “remodeled’ our trailer once we got back from our month-long test run.

As I visited the trip catalog on the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center (CCAC) site, I saw the trip I’d been wanting to take for a long time.  As the daughter of  Colorado parents who’d traveled and camped in the west extensively, I heard their amazing accounts of Chaco Canyon and put it on my list.  However, this did not seem to motivate anyone around me to go and I because I wasn’t sure I wanted to venture on my own, I took a chance on this trip.

Having a great experience with (CCAC) through the NEH and having a strong desire to visit Chaco Canyon, I decided to splurge as a gift to myself for retirement.  The one distinct advantage that CCAC is their partnering with scholars and the Native American community.  While an NEH scholar, I had the honor to tour Mesa Verde with two well-known members of the Santa Clara Pueblo and listening and feeling their stories is something that still brings tears to my eyes.  This trip to Chaco was no exception.  They had planned an archaeologist with extensive knowledge of this culture and a Hopi tribal member and his wife.  These three people accompanied us on our trip and this is what made it so extraordinary.

Our group was small: just eight participants, our drivers Dave and Winona (from CCAC), Erin Baxter our archaeologist and Phillip & Judy Tuwalestiwa.  One of the major things I learned on this trip is that magic is hard to describe and is better felt.  Not only was this an amazingly well-prepared trip but the combination of our group was unique and entertaining.

Crow Canyon Trips