Wild Camping

[John Layton]

Jeeesh...sounds like a Longmire script!

[Greg Y]

Jeeesh...sounds like a Longmire script!

That or "Yellowstone"

[Leszek Vogt]

I guess my experience was mild by some accounts. Lost a reclining chair recently while camping on Olympic Peninsula, even tho it was tie down to the table by a wire. I'm pretty sure I saw the one who was scoping the scene.....had a bike and a dog....saw him several times yet the sites were hardly filled, in other words he had no site. I guess it wouldn't be difficult to slip into a certain area and then pick the item/s by car.

There was another time (also camping) at Pismo Beach, CA. Local kids ripped off my cooler for the beer. Well, there were couple of exposed rolls of film and several new rolls....that I'll never see again....and I think there was only one bottle of brewski (which I didn't care much about). I was peeved about losing the film.

Les

[Tin Can]

Glad I'm camping at home, especially after reading this

https://time.com/5869788/national-parks-covid-19/

[Vaughn]

Lots of people vacationing in 'safe' places.

[wyofilm]

I live about 25 mi from Pinedale, WY, which is south of Jackson, WY on hwy 191. During the summer we get visitors and many passing through. This year it is crazy busy with trailer campers. A good number of those campers have temporary plates. Many folks looked at wide open spaces and low covid numbers and found us.

[Drew Wiley]

I stopped in Pinedale briefly last year on my way to a two-week loop hike in the northern Winds with my 4x5, in the headwaters of the Green River. More moose than people, and more ornery horseflies than I care to remember. But on TV I heard the local doctor pleading with tourists not come this year due to the risk of transmitting the virus, and lack of local facilities. And per recent reports, it is indeed spreading in a scary way into rural Idaho and Montana. So I'm sticking closer to home and will backpack in the high Sierra instead this year. I always try to keep a few out of state options due to the unpredictability of our forest fires, which can get massive, and send a lot of smoke well beyond just uphill; I've encountered smoke from the western slope of the Sierra as far away as Utah.

[wyofilm]

We get California's (and Utah's and Oregon's) smoke most summers. Sometimes we make some of our own. Really, I don't mind the out of towners vis a vis covid. But, they can leave their distracted and reckless driving at home. We are a sparsely populated county with no covid deaths thus far, but several deaths from car accidents just in the last couple of weeks. These are accidents on clear days and dry roads. Such accidents are inexcusable for at least one driver. We have our own bad drivers, we don't need to import any more!

[John Layton]

Our nearby favorite Franconia Notch has gotten completely overrun with folks coming up I-93...mostly from Mass, but also CT. and RI., to the point where there are few to no NH or VT plates in the overfilled lots. Our typical strategy had been to start out super early to get a parking space, but these days even that provides no guarantee of finding one. Gotta hand it to those Mass. folks...they must get up and out really early! Some of my very favorite locations to photograph...like around The Basin and up the Basin Cascades trail - places that in days past I could enjoy pretty much to myself...now feel almost impossible to work now due to the throngs of people. About the only time I can really work in these locations now is in really dismal weather - which, ironically, often provides me with great light for making photos.

[Drew Wiley]

Things are a bit up in the air here. I just got back from my dayhike in a forest along the coast, with near total solitude, a parking spot all to myself, replete with overloaded wild plum trees all around for a refreshing snack. Had some nice huckleberries too. But they closed off a major beach road again, probably using covid as an excuse to do major road resurfacing efficiently without traffic issues, but they haven't posted exactly why yet. But trail horse rentals are now open for business, and even a private horse camp. It's not for the RV crowd, but for horse trailers, horses, and camping along a trail intersection where every evening brings the aroma of BBQ steak mixed with strong horse manure smell. Maybe they save some money not needing charcoal briquettes! Things are spaced apart much better than in RV camps because there obviously has to be room for the horses.