Not Telling...

Last week, my wife and I went camping for our vacation, roughly coinciding with our 5th wedding anniversary. It was the first multiple day vacation I had taken since the Boulder Old Boys tour to Chile, which was over a year ago.

After doing some Internet research, looking through some books, and asking around, we selected a campground. This particular campground is pretty much in the middle of freakin' nowhere, does not take reservations, and only has 11 campsites. Because we were taking the whole week off, we figured our chances were pretty good of being able to find a spot to camp. If they were filled, we had some backup plans in the general area, which would have worked, but not nearly as well as this one. As it turns out, we arrived on Monday, and there was one other family camping. That left the other of the two prime spots in the whole campground available, which worked for us just fine. Funny thing about camping, the less people you see the better you tend to like it.

Anyway, we had 3 days of an epic camping trip. The fishing s*cked, but the biking, hiking, and views were awesome. Oh yeah, I spent 4 consecutive days with out interacting with an electronic device other than a flashlight. The weather even held out. During the final 2 days, with the campground beginning to fill in, the trip downgraded from epic to merely awesome... Everyone understood the unwritten rule, be polite, make small talk about what kind of bait/lures you are using and mind your own business. Who could ask for better neighbors.

As to the title of this post, by time we left, the marginal sites were filled up, and people were showing up to find a full campground. The politeness was slowly overtaken by people getting pushy about when you were planning to leave, and how they could guarantee that they got the spot when you left. Needless to say, this was not popular in Camp Dave. When you go somewhere without a reservation, you are rolling the dice. If the dice don't go your way, it's your responsibility to have a backup plan, not to make your problem better by making it someone else's issue. Hence, the fewer people that know how to get here, the fewer people will likely be there the next time we go back. Kind of like a fishing hole, if you find a killer spot, keep that knowledge close to the vest, otherwise the next time you go back, it will be a parking lot.

In honor of the upcoming Independence Day, the fly of the day is the Spirit, courtesy of the folks at Fly Anglers Online.













Tight Lines,

Dave