Northern Arizona: Camping on Memorial Day Weekend, 2020 (Part 1)

For this week’s post I’ve decided to jump forward almost three years. The events of this past weekend warranted an adventure story breakdown, and I did not want to wait until after all the New Zealand posts to share it with you. Below you’ll read about our misadventure in finding a campsite during one of the busy weekends of the year…that I kind of forgot about until we started driving there.

This misadventure includes: silly fighting between Jay and I about which campsite to choose, a mysterious sign that read “Warning, Danger, Authorized Personnel Only” sign, a damaged sleeping pad, chilly sleeping quarters, a past injury flare up, and an interesting turn in events. As I’m writing this post it occurs to me that this story reminds me of many of the posts I’ve read on one of my favorite blogs called Never Ending Footsteps. Lauren, the writer, has traveled to so many places around the world and a lot of her adventures have mishaps and misadventures. What I find admirable is that she still learns valuable lessons, enjoys herself, and most importantly keeps at it! Check out her blog, it’s worth it.

We’ll start off with where this all occurs, and know that this is not necessarily an in totality review of this camping location, it is simply a forewarning not to go there during Memorial Day Weekend unless you want to camp RIGHT next to others. Before I tell you the location I’ll give you a little context. I currently live in Flagstaff, AZ with Jay and we go camping occasionally and have only frequented one location. We just love this location (Marshall Lake, AZ) because the sites are nicely spaced with others not clearly visible and, because it’s not actually a lake but more of a marsh, not many other people frequent it. We decided this weekend to try a new place and because Jay was still working from home during this Covid-19 time, he gave me the task of deciding where to camp. As mentioned before I wasn’t really paying any attention to the fact that it was Memorial day weekend or even that it was also now a weekend after the shelter-in-place had been lifted. We wanted somewhere not too hot during the day, not too cold at night, close to hiking trails, and with some sort of highlighted characteristic. I chose Blue Ridge Reservoir an hour southeast of Flagstaff AZ.

Now to add on to the fact that I didn’t pay attention to how busy it might be, neither of us had ever been to this area. We spent Saturday packing up everything we use for car camping: our box of pantry foods, cooking utensils, and griddle cast iron, our Kelty Low Loveseat (So comfy!), our awesome Yeti Soft Cooler (Great for a few nights of camping!), our efficient Camp Chef Two Burner Stove (Adjusts heat easily and well built!), our basic 2’x4′ table, miscellaneous clothing, and of course my ukulele. Things that tend to live in the car are: the cleaning supplies, our plywood bed frame, 2” foam pad (Buy this and other sizes in store at Peace Surplus if you’re in the Flagstaff area!) and 2” memory foam pad, our bedding, Jay’s relaxing ENO DoubleNest Hammock (Pretty comfy for two people!), my old basic hammock, my Big Agnes mtnGLO Tent & Camp Lights (Such a score!), and our basic water container. Additional items included Jay’s tent and sleeping pad because he was “sick of sleeping in a coffin” and wanted room to sit and breath. After everything was packed we headed on our way.

On the way there, and constantly anytime we were driving, we saw areas filled with RV’s and assorted campers, and all sorts of UTV’s driving around. I’m telling you, this was every few miles. Once we got to the dispersed camping area, Shin Bone Trail, we drove around and couldn’t find a single spot that was more than 50 feet from another group. After fighting over checking out three other areas nearby and how un-perfect the areas were for setting up Jay’s tent, we settled on one in the back of the woods down a dirt road- just past a beautiful meadow area that was full- where no one was.

The site sat right next to a fence with a sign reading “Warning, Danger, Authorized Personnel Only” and had quite a few Charmin Flowers (used toilet paper). Side note. Please bring trash bags to put your toilet paper in when you’re camping, leaving it on the ground at campsite is distasteful and unnecessary, and it’s bad for the wildlife! So please pick it up. Thats all. Back to the story. Obviously Jay’s first thought of the sign was that it was a chemical testing site and that if one stepped foot past the fence government trucks would surround and if any more steps were taken you’d die several years later from radiation of something else. I usually am not risky or drawn into dangerous situations….but I was just so curious! And if there was any sense of reason left in my brain, it couldn’t be that bad….right?

Next week I’ll continue the story and you’ll find out what the scary mysterious site ACTUALLY was, our unfortunate sleeping conundrum, what my mystery injury is, and what turn in events ended up happening to complete this misadventure. See you all next week!

Question for all you reading, what is the most unfortunate camping site you’ve ever stayed in? There has to be someone with something worse than this! And if you care to share, what ended up happening, did you stay, leave, or something else? Comment below, I’m curious!

Mahalo and Kia Ora!