Rabbit Valley in the Fall

Seeing as we have all these three day weekends that I described in my last post, we've gotten to enjoy a few really nice escapes. One weekend we decided to spend a few days camping in Rabbit Valley, a place just over an hour from our house that we discovered last spring. After much indecision due to foreboding weather reports for the weekend, we decided to embrace the adventure and go for it, come rain or cold weather. We left on Thursday after school, and by the time we got there it was dark and our familiar campsite was taken. So we drove on to the end of the road where we found an open campsite, pitched our tent in the dark, and went to sleep. In the morning we woke up, peeked out of the tent, and saw this:

 

 

 

Amazing, right? This isn't even a state park, folks. Just BLM land, free, drive up and pitch a tent land. Gorgeous. We spent the morning hiking around and digging and ignoring the drizzle.

 

 

 

Things got a little more exciting as the day progressed. Our friends the Dohertys were coming to meet us that afternoon, and as they drove Lisa took this amazing picture of the storm rolling in.

I mentioned that the campsite we found was at the end of the road. And you'll note in the picture of our tent above that we were driving a minivan. In dry conditions the road is perfectly passable in a minivan, but not so much after a good downpour. It felt pretty epic as we tore down our camp in gusting rain, threw everything in the back of the van, and tried to drive out before things became totally impassable and we were stuck back there for who knew how long. But make it we did! We found a campsite much closer to the main road and met up with our friends who had a camper that we huddled in during the worst of the storm.

Again Lisa captured an amazing moment.

Things cleared up, and we even managed a few spurts of sunshine over the next day, enough for exploring and playing in mud and a bit of rock climbing.

 

 

 

 

It was a gorgeous weekend, if a bit wet. And certainly one of the best reasons to go camping is to experience just the right amount of discomfort. To knock ourselves out of the temperature controlled lifestyle we normally enjoy, to expose ourselves to the wildness of the earth for a time and feel a deeper connection than we normally do. To pay closer attention to the clouds and the wind and the sky and the pitch of the ground, and to feel that there are great and powerful things stirring.