Fourth of July Panic

Taos/Red River, NM: Yesterday I was struggling with the annual RVer problem of where to camp on the Fourth of July. No solution came to mind, so I tried to solve the problem the way a full time RVer should: I tried to drive away from the problem.

I made it all of twenty miles north of Taos when I started lusting for land that was pinched between the Sangre de Cristo mountains and the Rio Grande gorge. Unaccustomed as I am to dropping into coffee shops, I did so in Questa because it advertised wireless internet. The bucolic barista said that she was shutting down, and recommended Red River, the little ski town/tourist trap of the Enchanted Circle drive. I don't spend much time in tourist traps, but Red River is the highest town in New Mexico. With a heat wave coming, that sounded pretty good.

What fun it is to improvise at the dashboard--to head off with no hard and fast goal in mind, and work things out as you go. But was I really foolish enough to go to a tourist trap on the Fourth of July?

Red River, NM, is quite the tourist trap, which would have bothered me, years ago. Today I just smiled indulgently and felt grateful for a grocery store and Verizon wireless internet coverage. There was a well-maintained gravel road leading into the national forest. Where was all the traffic, the holiday campers, the ten-year-old boys on ATV's? This was a nice surprise, but what if it was a trap!

After five miles I came to the top of this road, where a side road led to marvelous campsites, seldom used. I had to floor it in low gear to get my ultra-light trailer up the last hill, where I camped all alone in an open meadow at 10,400 feet. What a view there was to the west and the Rio Grande Gorge!

The aspen brighten up the gloom of a spruce forest. Why no crowd? Perhaps it was too difficult for heavy toy haulers. This wouldn't be the first time I benefited from being able to pull a lighter trailer to a difficult place.