Camping With Suzi » Camping in a national forest or grasslands RULES!

Camping in a national forest or grasslands RULES!

Here are a dozen reasons to camp in a National Forest:

1. Elbow Room – There is no need to worry if your neighbor might hear a late night discussion and critique your dinner menu; the distance between sites is simply too great.
2. Meet the most interesting people – You might have a camp site neighbor from Moscow (Idaho or Russia), or hike with a rock climbing author of murder mysteries from Berlin (Germany or Pennsylvania).
3. A sense of accomplishment – In the wilds of a national forest you set up camp, get a fire started, maybe even catch a trout or a mess of perch for dinner or, at the least, perfectly toast a marshmallow. These tasks can be a challenge but the satisfaction when the sun sets and you got it done is enormous.
4. Fresh air – This is where you don’t see the air but smell it. It might be the butterscotch of Ponderosa pines, the musky scent of decaying earth, or the honey sweet aroma of wildflowers along with evening campfires and morning coffee and bacon.
5. Convenient to a neighborhood near you – With 156 National Forests scattered throughout this country, there must be a national forest within few hours or maybe a day’s drive.
6. “A change of wallpaper” – With our hectic lives, two weeks of vacation can be hard to come by. But a brief change of surroundings works wonders at refreshing the spirit and mind. With a national forest close by, a bunch of weekend vacations are possible.
7. Wildlife – In the early morning or just before sunset, sit quietly for a while at a camp site or in a meadow and discover the wildlife that lives in the national forest. You won’t see it all but there will be enough to make you realize, a robust population of wildlife reflects the forest’s good health.
8. Awesome beauty – Mankind has built some pretty amazing things but none compare to the delicate wonder of a dew covered spider’s web, the view from a wilderness campsite, or feeling of discovering the cascade power of a towering waterfall.
9. A humbling experience – Stand in a grove of young Aspen trees or next to a hundred-year-old pine, watch an osprey fishing, salmon returning to their home water, or climb to the edge of a mountain ridge and look out on the world. So, how important you are in the grand scheme of things?
10. Quiet starry nights – The black velvet night sky in a National Forest has more twinkles than a movie star’s dress on opening night.
11. S’more and scary stories – Perfectly charred marshmallows, squashed between layers of chocolate and crisp graham crackers eaten to tales of Big Foot. Does it get any better?
12. Affordable – If you have the camping equipment (or are “making do” with a bed roll and cooler), a family have a camping vacation in a National Forest for two nights at about the cost of night at the movies with popcorn, candy and soda pop.

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