#dry-camping

From the Parker area we headed straight to some boondocking BLM in the middle of Kofa NWR and stayed a week in this relaxing area, right in front of some beautiful mountains, on King Rd near the entrance. In fact the sign for the entrance was right across the road.

We took off on a drive one day to the interior of the area, what beautiful mountain ranges and wide open spaces, jaw dropping. We drove for probably at least 10 miles to explore.

During the trip we came across what looked to be a feature like you'd see in Yellowstone, like some sulfur deposits or such from an ancient bubbling forth from the earth right out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by desert. Very interesting find.

Another day we took off on a hike into the desert off trail just to explore the beauty of the desert and all the species of plants and cactus, basically our front yard for the week.

So the second day of our tour of Joshua Tree NP took us to places that we hadn't been the first day:

Behold Keys View, and fantastic overlook. It was cold, wind blowing about 20mph, crisp, but very worth the trip:

A shot of some rock formations:

We stopped by a place called "split rock", for obvious reasons. I am mesmerized by what massive geological event must have deposited these large boulders how they are.

There's Kathy down there if you can spot her, it was a nice trail through the boulders and scenic landscape that I'll remember for the rest of my life.

Kathy next to another smaller Joshua Tree:

A scenic shot:

Another shot of Keys View:

Airshow of the Cascades, Madras Oregon

We bought our tickets for this show before traveling east to Wyoming, and were very excited. I’ve always loved air shows and can’t get enough of them, so when I happened across an ad for this yearly event earlier in the year, and the fact that there is camping for the event, we were sold. https://www.cascadeairshow.com/ Arrival We made our way over from Joseph and pulled in to the big field reserved for campers. The field was huge. The man guiding us in spread us out nicely to give ample room.

We immediately noticed there was an Arctic Fox of exactly the same model as ours, and we struck up a conversation with these folks and had a nice visit with them. It turns out they are actually going to have a restored model-T in the show, which is very cool.

The Car Show

We didn't know there was a bonus car show to the deal until we arrived. We were actually able to arrive a day early on Thursday, which was nice to give us a chance to settle in. We went to first look at the cars, wow. You can really see the love and passion these people put into restoring them

The airshow portions had classic B-17s, stunt planes, a jet which the name escapes me now (that one was the highlight IMO), parachute teams etc etc. The show itself was 2 days long, events scattered throughout. It was extremely entertaining and I would recommend this yearly event.

Here’s some drone footage I forgot I had when I made my original Grand Teton Boondocking post, I edited and cobbled together some footage with some of my original music from long ago. Posting these drone footages has inspired me to write more music related to scenery and landscapes to attach to the future drone footages. Stay tuned.

Big Sandy Recreation Area, Wyoming

We would have headed west out of the Tetons had it not been for the fact that Kathy had some minor skin surgery done in Rock Springs during our stay at the Escapees Escapade, and rather than pay extra for the stitches to be removed somewhere else at the 2 week window, we decided to head back south towards Rock Springs to be semi-near, so that she could head out for her stitch removal appointment. Besides she really liked this dermatologist as well so that is worth something. It turned out that this was a really great decision as we lucked out on the boondocking again.

A Beautiful View

The Campendium app has been gold for us in finding dry camping locations and this was no exception. We got a choice spot right in front of the reservoir, a view of the mountains in the distance (although a bit hazy from smoke), and lots of walking and exploring of the surrounding desert to be done. Mocha loves these kind of places because there is nobody for many hundreds of feet all around, so she’s pretty much leash free the entire time. She loves to explore just as much as we do.

The Perseids Meteor Shower

By pure luck we happened to pull in 1 day before the 2 night peak of the annual Perseids meteor shower, and the forecast was for clear skies! We were nowhere near any light pollution whatsoever, so this was a first in our lives for us. We had never witnessed a meteor shower so remote before, and able to watch for hours into the morning if we so chose. The sky was clear from horizon to horizon. Kathy lasted about 20 minutes, and we saw quite a few. I stayed out for about another hour, as well as the next night. I did see quite a few of varying sizes, some very faint. There were a few doozies. But mostly I watched in awe of space and really soaking in the beauty of the universe. I’ll never forget that experience and this place the rest of my days.

Some Desert Exploring

We set out one day on a walk that ended up being a bit longer than we planned, due to seeing some interesting features in the desert landscape that drew us in to investigate. The features looked more man made, kind of a un-natural disturbing of the landscape although not completely obvious.

Upon investigating these anomalies we did find a lot of evidence of past human occupation, with some interesting debris.

One clear area looked like it may have been the remnant of a homestead, as it also had faint signs of parallel auto tracks that ended there. There was no structure left, but the terrain sure did look like there was habitation at some time in the distant past. Our curiosity was piqued and we began wandering off the trail into the surrounding desert on kind of an archeology expedition, searching for un-natural features in the landscape. It was a fun couple of hours imagining who it could be and what they could have been doing out there so remote.

There were a couple of beautiful sunsets, and some great scenery, and it was very peaceful and quiet. We stayed for about a week, with plans to stop in Rock Springs on our way out to empty our tanks, fill the fresh tank, stop at the UPS store for my delivery from Instyconnect, and head on to our harvest host on our way back west. Some parting photos:

We’re staying a couple days at elevation on our journey over to Wyoming, to try and escape the heat for a bit. Searching on our campedium app yielded this place in the Umatilla National Forest just outside of LaGrande. It is nice and quiet, and we actually debated staying and skipping the event in Wyoming. But we decided it looked like too much fun and so we’re headed out tomorrow. Maybe we’ll be back here some day.