After spending all afternoon driving from Pagosa Springs, Colorado to the Moab, Utah area and looking around for a place to camp, I was happy to have found a nice spot to pitch my tent for the night in time to get all setup before sunset. Back at what has to be one of the best campsites in the area, about 20 miles south of Moab, with amazing views, really cool terrain and good cell service.
Most of the campsites I drove past were pretty full with multiple camping parties with large campers, and the place I was hoping to camp if it was empty right next to a creek in the foothills of the La Sal mountains wasn’t looking too good. Multiple campers with generators and worst of all the creek was completely dry! There was one open spot I could have had my privacy but I figured it would be noisy with generators running and plus the site had lost its appeal to me without any running water.
So I headed back up to the place I camped for a couple weeks last fall, hoping it wouldn’t be full too, as I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity stay at what has so far been my favorite campsite near Moab of all the campsites I’ve stayed at and seen. There was one small group of people already up here, but they didn’t mind me staying the night, and there is plenty of area so I was able to set up my tent totally out of their way.
I got the tent set up just in time for a sunset walk with Dakota, who was more excited than I was to finally be getting some exercise after being cooped up in the car for nearly six hours.
I have never seen the desert so green before, probably because I’ve always been in the desert in winter time. The La Sal mountains were looking as gorgeous as ever, maybe more so with their snow-capped peaked.
The views seemed even prettier than I had remembered, probably because of all the additional green that wasn’t here before.
The nicest part of all might just be the ability to make a campfire legally, here in Utah, as the last two states I was in, New Mexico and Colorado both had covid19 campfire bans. The weather is also quite warm up here, so it is turning out to be a really mild night.
I may end up staying up here a second night, or just continue on towards my next destination - the mountains of central Utah - in the morning; time will tell. That’s the fun of this camping lifestyle, you never know exactly where you’ll end up next or how long you’ll be there, even if you think you have a pretty good idea :) This is now the third campsite in a row that either hasn’t been where I ‘planned’ it would be, or the stay was cut shorter than intended (and in this case, probably both). Sometimes that’s nice though, because then you just discover more areas, and also why I’ve learned it’s always a good idea to have picked out two or three potential spots in an area beforehand if possible, as you never know when the place you wanted to stay at is completely full or the road is unexpectedly blocked off or something. So far I have always found a free place to spend the night, usually with pretty nice views, and tonight was no exception.
