Friday morning we are off to the Uncompahgre Plateau for a Labor Day campout. There is a single small campground on the south end of the Plateau, with only 8 sites, and we hope to be able to snag one of those. Otherwise it’s dispersed camping for us, and for the Hurley family who will be joining us on Saturday.
We have prepared for dispersed camping with the following necessary items in addition to what we normally carry with us on such forays:
1. lots of water, since there is none available where we will be
2. a portable toilet which is very stylish, compact, and discreet
3. a small privacy tent within which to use the stylish, compact, and discreet toilet
4. the usual prayers to the weather gods that we not freeze our tuchuses off
(We decided that pooping in the woods using a small trowel and a tree for privacy was okay when we were daypacking and nature caught us out, but on a three-day outing like this … something else was required. Ergo the portable commode. We’re getting soft.)
For the Hurleys there will be many opportunities for mountain biking, something that 3/4 of their family enjoys. For the Floms, there are endless places to hike, sit, or recline. Robin and I gave up on mountain biking after we discovered how unyielding the ground was this Spring when we each took a fall from our cycles. And that was in the heart of civilization! The idea of careening down a root- and rock-infested trail, wrenching our bikes into one turn after another in locations far from orthopedic care has less appeal than it once did.
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We are back, early, from our latest camping outing. Friday and Saturday were beautiful days. We found a roomy campsite in Iron Springs Campground, our friends Amy, Neil, Aiden, and Claire had joined us, and everything was going swimmingly. Until the sun went down on Saturday night.
Hours after we had retired, we were brought to unwanted consciousness by the roar of engines, banshee laughter, and shots being fired. All this coming from a group that had chosen a dispersed spot across the road from our campground for their party. Judging by their behavior, chemicals had been applied liberally to their central nervous systems during the preceding hours. The manic engines we heard were those of dirt bikes, ATVs’, and pickup trucks with cut-out mufflers.
In short, a large group of yahoos from Montrose County were having their fun, they had picked our part of the world to do it in, and one of the things they seemed to enjoy was driving around the loop of our campground in order to wake up and sow confusion among the ordinary citizens resting there.
Now we were 26 miles from civilization, and out of telephone contact with the rest of the world, including that of law enforcement. We therefore puzzled briefly over what to do? Robin was understandably not going to get back to sleep in this environment, and I was at the point where I was hoping that the shots we heard were at the very least reducing their number slightly. What we did do was withdraw from the situation. We got in our car and drove home in our pajamas, leaving our camper and gear behind. Later this morning we will return to the scene of the crime and recover our stuff. Hopefully it will be undisturbed. But that’s out of our hands. We are all safe.
Perhaps they would have continued with their stupid, drunken, and aggressive behavior for a short while and then left us all alone. Or perhaps they would have invented new things to do with us to brighten their early morning revels. We will never know. But it will be a long time before we spend another Saturday night out on the Uncompahgre Plateau, of that I am fairly certain.
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We do have a few photos, taken from happier moments on Friday and Saturday in what is a beautiful semi-wilderness area, that we will share with you.
Campsite 
Campsite 
Looking out of the camper 
Nighttime on the table 
Hurley’s site 
East Bull Creek Trail 
East Bull Creek Trail 
East Bull Creek Trail
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Little Home In The Valley 