Strolling Amok

Pops goes on tour.

Archive for the tag “trails”

28 Aug 2017
8 Comments

Spearfish Trail Exploration

Overlooking Spearfish, SD from many miles away.

This is mainly a video post, and the video presented is not for entertainment purposes since, if it were, it would be just 5-8 minutes long. Instead, it’s a punishing 42 minutes in length – all of it dashcam – which means that few will watch it all the way through. That’s okay. What this is for is to show anyone who is interested just what I typically do to hunt for undocumented boondocking campsites along relatively easy trails that do not require 4WD. (Token high clearance is needed here.) This particular hunt is unusual because it happens to be quite successful. Two campsites on two trails, and not all that far from each other!

Why bother watching? Well, if you live vicariously through this blog and dream of getting out there to the kinds of places I do, this video may kick an assumption or two out of place. It might make you want to stick to published and popular campsites, or to RV parks. Or it may add to your wanderlust – I don’t know.  I find the ever-changing scenery quite Read more…

Posted in Campsites, Daily Life, The Intrepid and tagged , ,
05 Jun 2015
2 Comments

A Trail in Mormon Lake

An inviting trail, no? A slightly smoother detour is to the left.

An inviting trail, no? A slightly smoother detour is to the left.

While scouting trails to locate a campsite in Mormon Lake, Arizona, I passed one branch off NF-219 that did not look promising as a place to drag the Defiant. Its start was already past an impassable dip in the main trail, so that was that. But its appearance was forested in and seldom used, and I mentally marked it as a place I’d have to wander down later.

When later did arrive, that tour took a little doing on two counts. NF-219 goes up a low mountain, and although this branch was not all that far from camp, it was still a puffer to reach on foot. That made me decide that hiking up 219 a mile or so every other day would be good exercise, and it was. It let me know that riding the e-bike isn’t all I should be doing.

The mental challenge was that, as bonafide city folk, I had little idea what was in these quiet and relatively untouched woods. I’d seen lots and lots of pretty sizable canine tracks in the mud running parallel to Read more…

Posted in Campsites, Daily Life and tagged ,

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