April 15 - July 27, 2023: Dispersed Camping in Pitkin county of the White River National Forest

After leaving Santee State Park we headed to the Richmond VA area for about a week, then to Deerfield, NH for about two months and then to the Nashville, TN area for about a month. We visited family and stayed on their property in those cases. I'll start with our VA visit and I'll describe activities during our family visits but if you want to just hear about our White River Forest camping you can move down towards the bottom of this blog post.

We left Santee State Park in SC on April 15 and drove to my sister's in Beaverdam, VA. She moved there recently from southern NJ, but still had a few things we helped with to get her set up in her new home. Mostly it was organizing related. I did some bike riding in the area. It wasn't the most bike friendly so I used my mountain hike so I could ride on the grassy shoulder if I felt it was necessary. On one of my rides the through axle for the rear wheel came loose. I wasn't sure how that happened so I tightened up things as best as I could and nursed the bike back to my sister's for the last couple of miles. By the time I reached my sister's road the rear derailleur got caught in the rear cassette and made a bit of a mess so I ended up walking at that point. After I reached my sister's I diagnosed the issue. A retaining bolt was missing. We were able to get a replacement at a nearby feeds and needs store so I was able to keep biking. The rear derailleur cable adjusting nut got bent when the derailleur got caught in the cassette but I could still shift using most of the gears, 

On Friday April 21 we headed over to our daughter's place in nearby Glen Allen, VA. On Saturday April 22 we all went to the Jurassic Quest, America’s biggest and most popular dinosaur event, at the Richmond Convention Center. Our grandson Zay had a good time even though he was a little timid around the animatronics. Zay's brother Benji was still too young to enjoy the event so he mostly just hung out with one of the adults. We just hung out at our daughter's on Sunday before leaving on Monday to travel north to NH.

On Monday we made it to the Vermont Welcome center on Vermont 9. The facilities close at 7 PM and open at 7 AM. Since we got to the center right around 7 PM, we didn't get to use the facilities until the next morning. In the morning while I was waiting for the doors to open I noticed a nice view of the Bennington monument so I took a photo.

We made it the rest of the way to my son's in Deerfield, NH on Tuesday April 25. We would be staying there for a while to work around his Christmas Tree Farm and do some camper projects while visiting family. We also planned on doctor/dentist visits and getting the truck inspected. We weren't able to get yearly physicals scheduled because our physician's assistant was out on maternity leave and she wasn't the only one. I set up an eye appointment for Thursday April 27 so I could get new contacts prescribed and ordered after losing one while we were in FL. We borrowed our Rochester son's car for the appointment which ended up being a mistake because it really wasn't drivable and the battery failed to start the car once we made it to the eye doctor. Luckily our Deerfield son was coming off his night shift around the time of my appointment and works close by so he provided a jump start. One surprise I had was finding the missing contact while in FL in the bathroom of my son's house a couple of weeks into our stay (strange!). So now I have a complete set for spare.

The first farm project we tackled was calibrating the fertilizer spreader. We wanted to achieve 3 ounces per tree. We determined the tractor speed. We also ran the spreader a certain amount of time with the fertilizer and collected the amount that was output so it could be weighed. Fertilizing the 11 acre portion of the farm and the couple acres of trees around the house took the whole day on Saturday. My son had ordered 55 bags and we used 50 of them (I think they were 40 lbs each).

On Sunday, we drove up to northern NH to pick up 1000 Korean Balsam crosses to transplant back at the farm. Transplanting the seedlings was the main reason for the timing of our visit. The seedlings had to be planted as soon as possible and we didn't know how long it would take. I had my brother from NJ come up to help out.  We ended up planting 500 on Monday and 300 on Tuesday. It was raining every day and with the soil so wet it was decided to plant the last 200 on Saturday. The holes for planting were filling up with water.

My son had done some research and learned that putting mulch around the transplants was beneficial. So our next project after transplanting the seedlings was mulching them. We mulched around a few of the established trees after finishing the transplants as an experiment. The mulching took a week or two since it was my wife and I doing the mulching a good bit of the time. I would include bike rides on many of the days. I ordered a new cable nut for my mountain bike so one day I changed the nut out along with the rear shift cable.

After the mulching was completed, we chain sawed the stumps well above ground from last season's sale more flush to the ground. Jane cut any of the double or triple leaders she found so there is just one ( the leader is the main stalk at the top of the tree). The only other notable farm projects I did were mowing.

The camper projects that took the most time was the installation of the heat recovery ventilator. We cut some foam pieces to put in an external cubbyhole door of the camper. We had to cut openings in the foam for the ventilator to stick through. We made a small 6" log duct and cut a hole in the cubbyhole wall into the camper inside. We also installed all the wiring. The ventilator will only be used during the winter so everything was done so components can be stored away and set up easily. I ended up shorting out the camper wiring while doing the installation. This became a bigger issue because I couldn't find the fuse that was blown until searching and pondering for several hours. I finally found a separate set of fuses from the main fuse block. One the lucky side I also found the main 40 amp fuse that had failed when we were in Tennessee last year.

The other camper projects were installing new sensors for the black and fresh water tank levels. I ran into an issue snaking the wires up to the instrument panel area using the existing wire way. After fighting that battle I finally decided to make a new way which would later require some finishing work to hide a new hole in the corner of the kitchen countertop. A new monitor for the sensors was also needed and installed. The grey tank needs a different sensor due to its location and accessibility. We have the sensor but it still needs to be installed and calibrated. We also installed a battery monitor. I also modified our Starlink cable so we could take advantage of the external port on the outside of the camper. One part of the cable was run on the inside of the camper from the added plug to audio/video section of the camper. I used the newly added wire way for this. The other part of the cable would run from the Starlink terminal to the added plug. Unfortunately when I was drilling a hole in the camper exterior I ran into the camper's aluminum framing so I had to stop and drill a different hole. I temporarily plugged the initial hole with butyl tape and plan on a more permanent fix once I get to our daughter's in Grand Junction CO next month.

Lastly we had some repairs. The motor of one of the vent fans failed. Unfortunately I didn't buy/order a direct replacement and didn't realize that until it was too late to return, so replacing the motor became a bit of a project. I had to drill new holes in the metal mounting bracket and make new electrical connections.  The 40 amp fuse I mentioned earlier was replaced and the stove hood LED light that failed was replaced with a brighter one.

I also set aside time to work on my quilting program while at the farm, particularly on rainy days after getting some of the farm projects completed. I'm happy to say I got a lot accomplished. I ended up with two Visual Basic scripts. I found that even while being diligent in trying to create lines, that the script would turn into polygons and thus the mosaic structure, some of my lines didn't intersect nearly perfect enough for the line segmentation algorithm to work reliably. So I created another script that would log at lines that fell short of intersecting perfectly or having short line segments that went slightly past intersections. I could open the log after running the script and fix issues. Not all of them need to be fixed because some lines that come close to intersecting are actually meant to not. After creating the additional script and finishing debugging the script that segmented the line and created the polygons, I was ready to get to work on one of my grandsons quilt.

We left my son's farm on June 18 for my sister-in-law's in the Nashville area. We stopped at the I-81 south West Virginia Welcome Center on Sunday and drove the rest of the way on Monday June 19. For some reason I thought taking two days to drive to my sister-in-laws would be adequate but I felt rushed the whole drive which I've made a mental note of so I can  likely avoid planning something like that in the future. The main motivation for our visit was a get together between my wife and her two sisters for a week of quilting. While they did that I would keep myself busy with my bike rides, grandson's quilt designing and some gardening. I was able to complete the quilt design during our visit which was a real sign of progress for me.

Except for two of my bike rides I took the same route I had mapped out in previous visits. On that route I encountered a couple of small dogs (they were at the same location) that approached me too aggressively for my liking while I was riding by. I didn't feel particularly threatened since the dogs weren't that big but I decided it was a good opportunity to practice using the pepper spray I had added to my bike equipment for unfriendly dog encounters. I got to practice on several rides and I was able to make contact with dogs and the spray. After a while I stopped seeing the dogs when I rode by. Maybe they got the message or their owner did.

On one of the exceptions from taking the regular route, I went on a route that included about 5 miles of the Natchez Trace Parkway. I've been wanting to ride on that parkway since I've read good reviews. The parkway has limited access points and it's over 10 miles away from sister-in-laws so I haven't had the courage to tackle getting to the parkway and riding along it. The total ride was about 30 miles but a couple of those were because I missed turning onto a street that lacked a street name sign. The parkway reminded me of the Blue Ridge Parkway but more drivable and less scenic but still nice. I'm glad I got the first ride under my belt. I did the ride two days before I left but now that I've broken the ice I'm hoping to do another ride in the future that includes a longer stretch on the parkway.

The gardening I did included mowing (they have about 10 acres of mostly fields) but more substantially I cleaned about 75 - 100 yards of fence line by the house. It was a project I identified during earlier visits where I found the growth on the fence line being quite a hazard while mowing. Before I got started, my sister-in-law clearly pointed out various sections with poison ivy. I was slightly deterred by it but the more I cleaned the more brazen I got. I tried to cover up and not have any skin exposed but I ended up with exposure to the plant anyway. It took a little over two partial days to clean the fence line. I didn't shower after the first day and I now think if I did I might have avoided the impact of exposure. Instead of adding all the clippings/sawings to their burn pile, my sister-in-law and her husband decided it was time to purchase an all in one chipper/shredder. The mulch would come in handy for spreading around their blueberry bushes.

So about a week after completing the cleaning to let the clippings dry out, assembling the chipper, we started chipping the clippings/sawings. At the end of the first session, I went over towards a part of the fence line to retrieve my water bottle. I was in my sister-in-law's utility vehicle. After picking up my water bottle and starting to drive away, I heard some cracking behind me and a small tree (about 7" diameter at waist height) fell just where I had been. There had been some windy storms in the past week. It was only breezy the day the tree fell but I assume the stronger winds from previous days had weakened the tree enough that it only took a little breeze to knock it down. I didn't do anything to the tree while I was cleaning the fence line. The tree was about a foot from the fence in the neighbors property. My life wouldn't have been threatened if the tree had fallen earlier since the utility vehicle has a roll bar. The biggest danger would have been an injury from a branch that snuck between the roll bars. Again, the tree wasn't that large and the branches stretched vertically more than horizontally. Regardless, the fallen tree added to the clean up and mulching the fence line cleaning had precipitated.

We left my sister-in-laws on Wednesday July 12 for dispersed camping at White River National Forest in Colorado. I wanted to have plenty of time to arrive by Saturday morning and not feel rushed drivng. We had planned to meet my Colorado daughter and her family on Saturday in the forest while they were there for a weekend camping trip. We made it to a rest area near Wentzville, MO on I-70 West after encountering a fair amount of traffic delays north of Nashville. We stopped in the middle of some thunderstorms which was partly responsible for us deciding to call it quits for the day. When I was brushing my teeth before calling it a night, there were a couple of thunder strikes nearby that really got your blood flowing.

On Thursday we drove to the Kansas I-70 West 46 mile marker rest area. The Kansas rest areas are very inviting with several of them having dump stations. We hadn't dumped our holding tanks since we left NH so we planned on using the rest area dump station for that purpose. We also hoped to fill the fresh water tank from one of the rest area water faucets. I filled our 40 gallon bladder at my sister-in-laws before leaving there. With dispersed camping, at least for White River, which is usually the case, there aren't any services or facilities. So after doing my Saturday morning exercise routine on Friday morning we showered in the camper before dumping and filling so we and the camper were in the best state possible for a couple of weeks of dry camping/boondocking. We ran into a fair amount of traffic in the Denver area so we ended up staying at an I-70 rest area near Glenwood Springs, CO that we had stopped at last spring.

I remembered the rest area accessed a pedestrian/bike path along I-70 that followed the canyon. We were going to be higher than 9000 feet above sea level when we camped so I was concerned with overdoing it exercise wise when we reached White River. The last time I was that high above sea level I ended up with high altitude sickness. So I did my Sunday morning jog on Saturday morning before we headed up to the camp site my daughter had given us coordinates for. The canyon in glenwood Springs is a beautiful area whether you drive it or jog it so to back that statement up here is a photo I took quickly while on my jog.

We didn't have many miles to travel but several would be on an unpaved road so we got going after completing my jog. We found my daughter's camp site without issue so we made it there in plenty of time before lunch.

During our visit on Saturday, we hung around the camp site and took it easy because of the elevation change. Although, I did partake in a round of miniature disc golf with my son-in-law and two grandsons, which I deemed to be low enough in physical intensity that I was safe. Sunday was breakfast and packing up for my daughter's family. The heater in my daughter's camper cut out in the middle of the night. The heater fuse holder was melted (this was identified in a previous camping trip with them last year and partially fixed) so I provided a replacement fuse holder and fuse that I had in my spares. That changeover was done while others packed up.

I also got out my recycled water hand washing station on Sunday morning for its inaugural deployment. When I went to try it out, not unexpectedly, I found the pressure cut off setting needed adjustment. So after the heater fuse repair, my son-in-law and I unscrewed the pump so we could adjust the cut off pressure to a lower setting. At a couple of the hose connections, I needed to tighten the clamps to eliminate leaks. After eliminating the hose connection leaks, I noticed a pressure loss was still occurring in the system. Eventually I found the pump itself had a small leak in the housing. This is the first time I used the pump for the hand washing station but I had used the pump before to pump potable water into the camper's fresh water tank. I didn't notice the leak then but that application didn't involve a pressurized system. Alternatively, there might have been enough water left inside the pump that it froze while sitting in the back of our truck during our stay in colder areas like last fall in NH. So I don't know if the pump was faulty originally or if frozen water compromised the seal.

My wife was able to get some sewing done while at her sister-in-laws but more importantly she got past an issue she was having matching up parts of my design pattern. Also, since I was able to finish my grandson's quilt design, we printed out the remaining squares in TN. Therefore, while in White River, she was able to complete a couple of squares and start on a third. There are nine in total. Since we are on the drier/western side of the Rockies the weather is mostly sunny. So without deploying our portable solar, there was plenty of power to run the sewing machine and more significantly her iron. In fact, we used the inverter to run our two way refrigerator on our off grid electric for a portion of some days instead of using the propane full time.

While Jane got some quilting done, I was also able to write one more quilt design script to calculate the areas of polygons with specified colors. A one-quarter seam allowance is included in the polygon area calculation. A polygon color corresponds to one of the fabrics to be used in the quilt. The calculated area  will be useful in the future if things go according to plan where the quilt is designed first and then the appropriate amount of fabric can be subsequently.purchased.

Here is the camper at the White River campsite.

One morning while at White River we woke up EARLY to the sound of cows. One of the cows decided it wanted to use our truck as a scratching post. I decided the noises were one thing but being jostled around while trying to sleep was too much so I yelled out the window, which I was pleased to observe startled the cow and made it move away. I was wide awake now so I decided to power up our Starlink system. I had a little trouble getting the outside Starlink cable connection to the camper to completely seat when I hooked it up on our arrival Saturday so I kept getting a message that Starlink was unplugged (if you read the section above, recall I had cut the Starlink cable in two and added a connector to each cut end and on the camper an outside plug). This was the first time we used Starlink since the cable was modified. I mention all this because I was getting a message on the Starlink application that said something like terminal's motion was blocked and to check if something was locking it up or if it is tipped over. So I decided to go outside and brave the herd of about 20 cows to see what was going on with the terminal. I found the terminal tipped over and moved about 20  feet from where I had placed it. I assume the calves entertained themselves pushing the terminal around. They weren't playing with it when I went outside so I picked the terminal up and placed it in a safer location at the back of the camper on top of the hand washing station. Luckily, everything seems to be fine since we haven't gotten any more unexpected Starlink messages and service has been normal.

The cows did not stay the whole day and decided to meander arflong late morning. I think me going outside to move the terminal and do some other activities made them uncomfortable. However, a smaller batch of them did visit another morning so I took a photo for documentation. This smaller batch wasn't quite as intrusive or noisy.

I started out with small bike rides on Monday after our arrival to allow acclimation to the increased elevation. After a couple of rides I checked out Google maps and noted a reservoir that was 8 miles away. I noticed on the small rides I took up to this point that it was mostly uphill and my average speed was very low (7 MPH) so an 8 mile ride was no small feat. I gradually built up to accomplish this feat and I was happy I did. I was afraid the reservoir would end up being a mud hole by mid-summer as it was depleted for summer irrigation. I reached the reservoir by Tuesday of the second week and I was not disappointed. It was a pretty site. I took some pictures one of which was meant to be panoramic but somehow I didn't push the right buttons and I discovered that after returning to camp. Here are a couple of pictures that did come out OK though.

Along the ride, there was a spot about 3 miles on the trail before the reservoir where I could view the valley. Around this area I also had cell reception so I could text camp and let Jane know I was alive and upright. Here is a photo of the view of the valley.

Getting back to the cows we encountered in the area for a moment, I was routinely passing small groups on my bike rides. On one day's ride, from a distance, I could see a blue object near the front of a campsite. I assumed it was just some inconsiderate campers that had left "trash" behind but on another day's ride I saw three cows licking the blue object so I changed my initial evaluation of it being trash. I then thought it might be some type of mineral sustenance provided to the cows by the cattleman. On another day's ride I was able to verify that view. I came upon a fresh block of the substance, cobalt iodized salt. The next two pictures show the fresh block and the third picture shows the block that I saw the three cows licking.

It is interesting how our national forests are used. I have seen logging done but this is the first use I've seen of grazing. My daughter told me that campers are encouraged to use dead wood in the forest for camp fires to reduce the amount of fuel that would feed potential forest fires. I think it may not just be campers because I also saw some pick up trucks pass by with their beds full of cut, unsplit, logs. 

This was our longest dry camping trip. I decided the 100 gallons of fresh water we brought with us is too constraining. So unfortunately for me, who has tried to escape home improvement projects with this style of living, this gives me some more projects. I plan to add to the recycled water hand washing station so it can be used for showers. Since the hand washing station uses the Guzzle H2O filtering system, I plan to add a pump and hose so that I can use nearby water sources to fill up our fresh water tank.

We will be going to Golden Gate Canyon State Park next for a few days before spending a week with our immediate family at a house rental in Golden CO and then to our daughter's in Grand Junction. So there will be one more blog post about the state park before another dry spell in posting while we hang around civilization again.