July-August, 2024.
Ah me, my last afternoon here. Tomorrow morning I’ll be hitching up and heading home.
It’s been such a great camping trip!
In the photo above, you can see some of the sprinklers that were set out on Monday and Tuesday this week … sprinklers that I moved to help the fellow that had to move sprinklers around the entire state park every day. (He thanked me profusely for helping.)
I had a perfect campsite. And I had the whole place to myself when I arrived on Sunday. Had it all to myself on Monday too. On Tuesday evening one other camper arrived, and one set of folks arrived and took a cabin. The place got busier later in the week. But still, everyone was quiet in the evening and morning, everyone was courteous. But boy was I spoiled by how empty this small campground area was for more than two days!
And yet … and yet … the table in my trailer, my seating area, my living area, is at the very back of my trailer. So, while I was here, my view was of a garbage bin (dark brown box in the photo above), and of the wildfire damage behind my trailer. I loved it here, I really did. But I wondered if there might be a way to have a different view from the back of my trailer.
On Thursday this week, some other folks arrived with their pickup truck and trailer and parked their trailer in the opposite direction! I hadn’t thought of that, but that would have solved my “view” problem perfectly.
Here below are two Google Earth images. The first one is what I did. The brown line is the drive into the campground. Then the BLUE rectangle is my trailer, and the small BROWN rectangle is my truck. The RED line at the back of the trailer is where I sit, where the table is, where the large windows are and where my view is. In the image below, and while I was camped here, the back of my trailer looked out at the trees and the garbage bin and the wildfire damage, NOT at the lake/reservoir. Notice that everyone else in the image below is parked the same way I was.
BUT, what the folks did who parked differently is in the image below. They pulled in, then pulled AROUND the end of the campground, then pulled the “wrong” way into a campsite, such that the back RED end of their trailer was facing the lake (wow, how cool!), and the truck was facing the woods and the garbage container. What a great idea!
This alternate method of parking a rig was ok with the state park officials. It would require a long power cord to reach the electrical outlet, but I have that. Ok, next time I go camping here, I’ll wait for a time when I can get that end spot, and then I’ll park with my trailer’s view window looking out over the lake. 🙂
Don’t get me wrong, though. I wasn’t suffering too badly here. 🙂 It was gorgeous! The photos below were taken earlier in the week before anyone else arrived. I tend not to take photos of other people, or at least I don’t post those photos online very often. By Wednesday evening this week, these campsites and the cabins were pretty much all taken. Still, it was quiet.
In the photo above, you can see a large green area with lawn and trees past the cabins. I walked out there, to the edge of the trees and turned around to face the cabins and took the photo below. Yes, that’s the big white truck and Towhee the Trailer right in the middle.
Then (below) looking a bit to the left towards the edge where the land meets that reservoir/lake …
I walked away further from my campsite, further into the trees, then looked back towards my small campground. In among those trees was a nice play area for kids. But you can see it’s a long way from the small camping area where I was in the distance. I was ok with that. 🙂 Yes, that white dot in the distance is Towhee the Trailer. The large, main campground in Conconully State Park is now right behind where I’m standing when I took the photo below.
And then I turned around, turned my back to the playground, and saw this (below) … the larger and CROWDED campground. Oh boy, I’m glad I was camped in that smaller campground.
Here below is a Google Earth image of the entire Conconully State Park. The larger, crowded campground is on the right, then the playground (circled in RED), then the small, quiet campground (where I was) is on the left. Vehicle access to each camping area is shown by the two yellow arrows … so there were separate roadways to each camping area.
I walked through that larger camping area a little bit, but it wasn’t my cup of tea so I didn’t stay long. I did come across this log cabin replica below. It was inside the state park.
And then there was this large, original, old bell (below).
But my favorite sight was this fellow below. There were several more deer, but all the others got out of sight around behind the building before I could get a photo of all of them.
And then I walked back to the small, quiet side of the campground, back to my truck and trailer. It was getting late in the afternoon so it was time to start tidying up inside the trailer, moving some things into the back seat of the truck, getting ready to head out tomorrow morning for the long drive home. The drive to get here last Sunday from the trailer’s storage unit took me 5-1/2 hours. Heading home tomorrow, Friday, I might run into heavier traffic, so I wanted an early start.
Except for that little hair-pin cliff experience (yikes!), this was a wonderful week. And even that experience had some joy to it and taught me some things.
This has been such a nice campground! I’ve had great adventures. I wish I could stay, but I can come back. When I do, I’ll get that end spot and I’ll park the other way around! 🙂
