Well, we’re about halfway through our journey to Quartzite Arizona. Currently camping in Louisiana at a National Forest campground called Valentine Lake or maybe Lake Valentine. To my weather app it says we are in Boyce, LA. This is a first come first serve campground with I believe 20 sites. Has no hookups for electricity or water. It does have a very small flush toilet bathroom and it has water hose bibs all around the Campground. The sites are well spaced and this is probably the nicest campground I’ve been in.

We started out at Watsadler campground in Georgia, right on the South Carolina border at Hartwell Lake. Then we went to Turkey Fort Recreation Area in Mississippi. And while that’s a really nice campground with electricity and water, it was a little crowded and the campsites are pretty close together. Not so much as side to side but across the roads. You’re generally camped across the street from somebody who’s pretty close because the sites aren’t deep. After that we went to the other side of Mississippi to Clear Springs National Forest campground. And that was a very tight campground that you were pretty close to everybody else in the campground. Though actually there were only there of us in the entire campground. They have a nice shower house that was really clean and really nice except of course the shower head was one of those fire hose nozzles that sprays a dense stream, but it was warm and it was plentiful. And from there we are here at Valentine Lake.

All in all the trip has been pretty uneventful except for at Clear Lake we got four or five tornado warnings booming over our phones. There was another camper there who was somebody I had camped next to in Big Biloxi campground in MS a year ago. He has a rather unique camper called a “SOL”.  It is a super sized teardrop space ship looking thing and must cost around $90,000. But while our campground was spared the tornado, the area around the campground was pretty tore up. Driving out the next morning there were branches and leaves and twigs and all sorts of debris on the roads. A few trees had come down. They were old rotten dead trees that pretty much disintegrated when they hit the ground.

Up to this point, all our campgrounds have been first come first serve except for the very first one. They have all been pretty nice and pretty much half empty at least. We have had no issues getting a really good site in each place and the prices have been awesome. This one we’re in, Valentine Lake, is only $10 without the discount and with the discount it’s $5. Clear Spring was $13 with the discount and only $20 regular and that had electricity and water and a beautiful bathhouse. Turkey Fort was only $13 a night and that had electricity and water and a fairly acceptable bathhouse. One of the other campers here at Valentine Lake told me that around the corner is the Kincaid Recreation Area which was a similar campground to this one but it got destroyed in Hurricane Ike in early 2024. Currently they are rebuilding it and it is pristine. We drove over and looked at it and walked around and it’s all brand new electric and water concrete sites, new picnic tables and lamp posts and bath houses. It’s going to be a wonderful campground when they’re done. The website says they’re going to be $25 a site. But I will bet it is more than that once they get it all done and the powers that be decide to raise camping prices like they do.

All of these campgrounds are on lakes. I guess the Forest Service figures lakes are the recreation spot for water recreation and for hot summer recreation season, lakes are essential. Personally since I prefer to camp in the fall winter and spring, lakes provide cold chilly breezes and bugs. So I’m trying to find better forest campgrounds but not having much luck. The new campground around the corner, Kincaid recreation area is quite a ways from a lake. You have to drive quite a ways to the boat launch and beach area. But the campground is associated with a large lake.

But we are having a great time. The time change between Eastern Standard Time and central standard time has us living in a “daylight savings time” time warp situation. So we’re going to bed at 6:30pm eastern standard time and getting up around 4:00am eastern standard time. It’s not that that’s bad cause I can get in the shower house and not be bothered by anybody, but it means around two o’clock I’m pretty wiped and need a nap. Akela on the other hand seems to take 10 minute naps every time I sit down for a minute. He has unlimited energy for chasing the ball or carrying around sticks and chewing them up. We did go over a long hike that was around four miles and he did seem to kind of drag along at the end. Instead of running ahead he was staying at my side for about the last half mile. So I knew he was tired. When we got back to the car and he got his ball he was suddenly re-energized. I wish I had that type of a system.

So the rest of the trip is state parks and reservation required parks with full hookups and full amenities so just before we go for two full weeks of Boondocking with nothing in the desert we will have pampered ourselves to death. It’ll be a shock to my system I’m sure. It’s pretty interesting living in a house and taking a morning routine that includes showers and shampoo and brushing teeth and shaving and pampering and powdering and all that stuff, then go in camping for a couple weeks with absolutely nothing kind of resets your idea of what you can really live with and what you can really live without. I’m looking forward to this two week reset and Quartzite.

So we’ll make this short and end it here. We’ll pick it up on day two of the Quartzite adventure and let you know what I have as a first impression of Quartzite camping and facilities. Later in the week we’ll give a full review of the whole Boondocking site experience. And then of course after Quartzsite we travel up through Cally-forn-ya and over to Zion and some of the neat western attractions before making a beeline for home so I can take care of my grass. Except for camping I think I have a pretty boring life. Worrying about grass.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see on the road, or at least in the videos.
Rick and Akela
GoingNoWhereFast