Ridgeline view Cibola National Forest
Now we return to the distant spring, continuing my adventure story. I had left Bedrock, passing the cool general store on the way out. The road here is empty, just the way I like it. I had been travelling south with a destination in mind, which is in Cibola National Forest. I’m going to be camped for a week enjoying the sites, hopefully getting a little hiking, and connecting with old friends and new. But why here? Read on to find out once and for all!
Some of you may know that I have been a Patreon of Carolyn’s RV Life for some years now. I was fortunate enough to have been invited to camp with a group of fellow Patrons for her 5th year Patreon celebration. There was going to be a week camping together, meeting new people and reconnecting with friends who I had met in my previous adventure to the States. Thus, my arrival in Cibola National Forest after a long days drive from Bedrock, Colorado.
Even with the last minute change of location, I was fortunate to have gotten some internet signal the night before, so I didn’t end up two hours away where the previous camp was supposed be! The googles took me to designated spot without issue. I already could see Melissa and David, with Carolyn waving me in from behind them. It was an easy site to find, despite the confusion where some people got instructions with a wrong turn, prompting a warning from Carolyn. I had ignored the googles at first, thinking it was sending me down the wrong road. But this time, the googles was correct – the instructions seemed to have ‘fixed’ themselves by the time myself and the others following me arrived.
We were camped in Ciboa National Forest, near the town of Manzano. I had arrived a couple of days before the official event as a friend of Carolyn’s. It would be nice to spend a bit of time with her, as well as Melissa and David, before the official event with the much larger group started. I had met them during my first RV adventure which I termed ‘The Undiscovered Country‘, if you have not read about my first RV adventure. So now I was reuniting with friends I had met on that journey, and meeting new people for the first time. I’m not much of a people person, so having a mix of familiar and new people was nice to help me feel at ease with the group. But everyone was nice and we had lots in common to talk about, being all interested or living the RV nomad lifestyle.
The countryside around where we were was a high land open forest, but a managed forest. There was brush clearing going on all over the place. With the high fire hazard, getting rid of most of the fuel on the forest floor would make stopping a fire much easier I imagine. There are little roads all over the place that anyone can go down in anything. You just judge if you can make it in your vehicle of choice. They certainly open up the hiking possibilities, even though you can walk through a lot of the open forest if you choose.
Big dogs think they can be lap dogs
I had camped with Carolyn previously, and was excited to meet her new dog Sadie. She is an intelligent young dog full of energy and play. Sadie had a blast, meeting all the new people and the other dogs, of which there were several. They would go tearing around raising dust clouds in the dry air while we sat around in a circle. There were no fires in the rings; the fire hazard is way to high even though it is still spring here.
There was a lot of exploring the roads with David. A group of us did one longer day hike up to the top of the ridge from Red Canyon Campground and returning via Spruce Spring trail. We climbed to just shy of 10,000 feet, a new height record for me. You see, the Rockies west of Calgary look impressive, but they are not really that high. I had climbed Castle Mountain previously as my highest, going just over 9000 feet. I was worried I would be out of altitude shape, having camped at sea level all winter, but found that all the hiking made up for that. I was doing good climbing my way up the canyon to the ridge without getting too out of breath.
I made some new friends while I was there too, spending some time camping with Sarah and Aaron later on in my trip. They are a bit younger, doing the remote working/gig job while living in an RV life. Such a lifestyle has its challenges, for one, you need to have internet most of the time in order to work. Starlink will be quite revolutionary for these two – a lot of boondocking still falls outside of cell area, at least as soon as you get away from nearby towns. On the other hand, with Starlink, you rarely have the excuse of being out of service range to unplug from the world for a while.
No Timmy down this well
The area had been a former camp for the forestry corps of engineers, evidently several thousand people had been headquartered here up until the 1970’s. The area has been cleared of buildings but the foundations and some of the other structural remnants remain to be found on walks through the forest.
CRVL public get together in Oak Flats
About the only downer was the upgrade to the fire hazard to the highest level. This was a serious business because in New Mexico it means everyone gets kicked out of the forest! We had been staying a bit past the official get together as a smaller group, enjoying our time. But now, it was get out in two days. It didn’t work out too bad, Carolyn had her public get together, so instead of returning to camp after that, we split and headed off in different directions according to our plans.
I had a great time with the group – it was too bad everyone was heading out so far and wide as there would be no opportunity to all meet again for a long time. But some of us were headed in similar directions, so some smaller group visits happened after this. I now felt like I was part of the community, heading out on my own to camp again, but with the possibility of meeting some of my new friends along the way. I had to look ahead to getting back to Canada. I was eating into my six month stay for the winter during this trip so I could not take too long heading north. But I would make time to explore a bit of the Colorado Rockies, as I normally would not be there this late in the spring season. If you want to see some more pictures of my Red Rock Canyon hike, head over to this set of pictures on Flickr, it was a scenic hike in the spring with lots of pretty pictures! See you next time as I head north.
