Date: Sun, 29 Sep 2024 16:31:53 +0000
Reply-To: Richard Koerner <rjkinpb@SBCGLOBAL.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Richard Koerner <rjkinpb@SBCGLOBAL.NET>
Subject: Re: camping trip, long and mundane
In-Reply-To: <CACvdLxMFCp=LXFOJhBjk+CP1R5TrCrB=Z=K+Arz5S5GcWOxX0A@mail.gmail.com>
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Excellent trip report, Dave. Man....just makes me want to plan a similar trip. Amazed by your knowledge of all the little things too, like flora and fauna. Right....crawling in and out of bed gets more difficult as the years go by. But hang in there!
On Sunday, September 29, 2024 at 08:57:44 AM PDT, David McNeely <davmcneely40@gmail.com> wrote:
Just got back from the first camping trip in a while. These are getting
less often as Bonnie and I age (I'll be 80 in February). We went to Sheep
Creek, a Washington Department of Natural Resources campground about 5
miles from British Columbia north of Colville, WA. The van did extremely
well, no problems whatsoever with anything on this some 300 mile round
trip. The camping was more difficult than I anticipated for reasons of our
age related infirmities. Just all the lifting and moving things about.
And sleeping. Like most our age, we have to get up in the night. The bed
just requires more effort to do that than home beds, with the AC console
above and the need to crawl in and out.
I intended to fish, as Sheep Creek is a great trout stream. But, it is
high gradient, and I found that the rubble and boulders made wading
difficult, even dangerous for me now. But the stream was beautiful, and we
saw seven American dippers, birds that frequent rocky and fast flowing
streams. They walk about in the water, diving under and walking on the
bottom, where they forage for invertebrates like caddisfly and other insect
larvae and snails. A pair of them were feeding fledgelings in a nest under
the campground bridge, a very late nest.
The first couple of nights there were no other campers, but two other
groups showed up on Friday night. Kudos to Washington Department of
Natural Resources for the excellent campground conditions, including a
sparkling clean vault toilet, a well with a hand pump for potable water.
The campground was full of large but second growth mixed conifers,
including Ponderosa and lodgepole pine, western larch, Douglas fir, grande
fir, and western yellow cedar, as well as both paper and western river
birch. A few of the Ponderosas and cedars were nearly 3 ft diameter,
nothing giant, but healthy appearing trees. The understory included
huckleberry, though of course no berries this late in the year. Rocky
Mountain maple was also abundant as understory. We saw old but still
fairly clear mountain lion tracks along the trail on the opposite side of
the creek from where we camped. Signs stated that lions and bears were
active in the area, and to remain vigilant. We also saw where something
(bear?) had torn into a ground yellow jacket nest.
Well, we probably will need to switch to a camper that is easier to use
than the Vanagon. After all these decades, there are things that just make
us old folks have a hard time, especially the bed. We definitely won't go
back to tenting, and no motor home or trailer for us, but we may get a
better fitted out van, but one that can still negotiate back country roads
like that into Sheep Creek or typical FS roads.
David McNeely
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