I was a little disappointed that there was someone already occupying the campsite I wanted when I arrived at the Colorado River on Monday. Although the area was big enough for at least six campers, I didn’t like the look of the man, his female companion, or their junky pull trailer and truck. They looked like the typical loud, generator-dependent low-lives that are relatively common anywhere there’s free camping. One way to tell? They’d parked their trailer and set up chairs facing the open gravel camping area instead of the bucolic waterway only 30 feet in the opposite direction. Seriously?

After disconnecting my boat and leaving it parked there with the trailer locked — after all, that’s where the boat ramp was — I pulled into another spot I’d stayed in the past which was about a mile back up the road on the same backwater channel. It was a much smaller spot and a bit close to the road, but had better access to the water and better fishing.

The next day, after off-loading T2 (short for Turtleback 2, my second truck camper), and helping my friend Janet settle in with Short-Short (her very small pull trailer), we went back to launch my boat. Janet drove the truck back while I motored the boat to our site and parked it along the sandy bank. We then finished setting up our joint camp.

Here’s a drone photo of our camp shot this morning. The waterway on the left is the backwater channel; about a mile straight ahead is a narrow inlet that connects it to the Colorado River, which you can see on the right.

It’s crazy quiet here, day and night, with the occasional disturbance of a vehicle driving by during the day. A good place to camp out and get some writing done.