The Hunt for a Campsite

My husband and I pride ourselves on our ability to find the best off-road campsites.  Our camping road trips, which in fact are always off-road trips, are our best vacations.  They start precisely where the pavement ends.  One of my most favorite-favorite points of that precision is somewhere in the vicinity of Hurricane, Utah, where there is no sign to indicate that you should turn here if you are looking for an off-road adventure of the several-day kind.  It’s one of those turn-offs that you just have to know.

It was from that very point that we started the first hunt on our last off-road trip of the several-day kind.  Our routine is such that we normally, or at least try to normally, start the hunt around five o’clock, so that we have time to set up camp, cook and eat dinner, and enjoy a fireside cocktail before the sun sets. 

When the hunt begins, there’s a certain energy that permeates the Jeep, our rugged, loyal, and capable chariot of fun.  This energy is very palpable.  We are one.  We scan the geography, using caveperson instincts to determine the general area where our site is most likely tucked.  Along that line of trees, next to the river, across the plain, at the base of the rock wall. 

Utah

What’s magical about the hunt is that my husband and I agree always on the hunt.  We just know, without saying, where to go.  No discussion.  It’s just obvious.

Our eyes peel the roadside, looking for signs of the site.  Just after that tree, just around the next bend in the road, over the next rise, near those rocks, and so on it goes until we arrive, as if we were home.

The best campsites are not just anywhere.  And here’s the trick:  they have to be invisible from and accessible from the road at the same time.  Which is of course why they are so hard to find.  They have to stand alone; they are one-off camp spots, not in any way associated with a campground.  There are no reservations.  Or permits.

Utah

The last one of these campsites was a real beauty.  Creamy, soft sand earth, sagebrush, and juniper, it was perched at the top of a low bluff, with long views all around.  No sign of man, save for the satellites orbiting the earth, the occasional airliner, seven miles high, and a few scattered stones around blackened wood.  We built a fire in a roughly hewn ring made of these stones.  And that’s it.  We felt cowboy.