The mountains are calling, and I must go. – John Muir
I’m heading out on a week-long fly-fishing trip in the mountains of Colorado in this fine camper. It was originally a utility trailer we borrowed, then flipped and, as my dad always taught me, “You break it; you buy it.” So, we bought a wrecked trailer. One of at least two million reasons I almost NEVER borrow things.
The trailer sat in our lot for some time looking like a bloodied MMA prizefighter than had been beaten within an inch of its life. Then, my son, Caleb, decided he wanted to make a camper out of it. Hallelujah!
I dragged it out to him in Castle Rock and he began the painstaking work of stripping the old shell off, then designing this camper from scratch. I’ve always told my children that if they look at something long enough, they can figure it out. He did and the finished product is wonderful!
He used it a few times elk hunting, then he and his family bought a different home, and he didn’t have room to store it.
“Pap,” he called one day. “You want that camper? I don’t have room to store it at our new place.”
While I didn’t exactly jump in the car the next minute like I wanted to, it wasn’t long before I made my way there, then hauled it back to Kansas.
It has room for a queen size bed, is solar powered and the back raises so I can store kitchen gear in totes as well as cook underneath. While my wife, Christine and I intend to use it, her work prohibits her from making this fly-fishing trip with me, so I’ll do the maiden voyage solo.
Christine and I love camping. On our honeymoon twenty years ago, left our home in Kansas where it was twelve thousand degrees in summer and drove to Granby Lake, Colorado. We then strapped on backpacks at the Arapaho Bay campground and hiked 9 miles up to Crater Lake, elevation just shy of 10,000 feet. The thermometer inside the tent the first morning read 23 degrees. Brrr.
I was a younger man then.
Since then, we’ve spent a lot of time by ourselves as a couple as well as taking our family on tent-camping trips, usually to Colorado because I love camping where it’s cool. I loathe laying on top of a sleeping bag on a hot summer night in Kansas serving as a buffet line for every mosquito in Butler County. We do camp in Kansas, but its almost always in a camper at which the younger me would have derisively scoffed at the older me. However, the older me doesn’t give a flip about what the younger me thinks.
But I digress.
Camping outdoors in a tent or, in this case a small camper which will only serve as a bed at night and kitchen during the day, is good for my soul. The early morning sounds of songbirds chirping, bacon sizzling in the cast iron frying pan, the smell of ponderosa pine logs burning in the campfire and the fresh mountain air is like letting nature do a deep tissue massage on all that ails me.
Phil Taunton, a legendary outdoorsman in Kansas, often says we need to go outside for a better inside.
I intend to spend a week outside in nature, only crawling in this cute camper at the end of day to lay my head on the pillow and dream of the river I’ll fish the next day.
As John Muir said, “In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks. Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.”
Part of the fun of planning a camping trip is deciding where to go. This time, I’ve chosen to use dispersed camping, which means that I can camp on a piece of land controlled by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) which allows people to camp for free. There are no amenities like running water, electricity, shower houses, bathrooms, or a Quik Trip. Also known as boondocking, I’ll set up my camper and enjoy the great outdoors for a week. I might be a little ripe when I’m done, but the fish don’t care. Mostly, I’ll smell like campfire smoke.
I was delighted today to finally find a place known as Badger Flats which is just a short drive from some of the best fly-fishing waters in the world of The Dream Stream, Eleven-Mile Canyon, and the South Platte River.
We have driven by the area before so know generally where it is, so when I found it today, I got excited and said to the neighborhood cat who decided my barn was his barn, “Badger Flats or Bust!”
The cat was not impressed and looked at me with the type of indifference and uncaring that only a cat can muster.
I quickly looked up the phrase about “were going to X or bust,” and discovered it became popular in the 1849 Gold Rush to Pike’s Peak, a mountain I’ll be relatively close to when I stay at Badger Flats.
“Badger Flats or bust!”
If you are not already subscribed to this string of stories, please look for the “Subscribe” widget at the side or bottom of the page. I promise never to sell or give away your information.