Roughing it - Yuppie style

This is my first article every written on location, directly to my computer. I often blog in the wild, but that effort includes pen and paper. This one goes straight to my laptop.

That's the first indication that there is nothing remoted related to 'roughing it' involved in this camping trip.

I got out of Vegas on the night that would be Halloween. All the parties and celebrating took place on a Saturday, since Halloween fell during the week, and the best way to make the best profit was to move the day to one that fell on a weekend.

I took Mark's advice, and went to a place called Lovell Canyon. Mark recommended it based on my own needs. I wanted a place where I could camp and not be molested. Plenty of raw desert around Vegas that's open land, however, I do not have Mark's truck. And a sporty little BMW was not designed to tackle rocky trails. So, I needed someplace close to Vegas, but isolated from humanity, but with a well paved road so I could get there. I needed someplace where I could park a few feet off the road, pitch my tent and enjoy the great outdoors, without having to be out of smiling range of my beloved automobile.

Without any hesitation, Mark knew the spot.

Lovell Canyon road was once the only road to one of the many middle-of-nowhere towns in Nevada. The closest city to Vegas. Pahrump. This was the old highway, and being so, was a well graded, paved road. But now there's a bigger and better highway, so Lovell Canyon road has been forgotten by travellers. A well paved highway that runs through the middle of nowhere.

Mark said it was so far out of the way that nobody ever went there. I checked out a website online that concurred. The site stated that if you really wanted to rough it, Lovell Canyon was the place.

Perfect.

I was just not ready for the biting cold of the desert. I'm totally out of practice. So, instead of being dropped off in the middle of the desert, and hiking miles to make camp, far out of reach of all communication and life-lines,..

I slept in my BMW.

I brought gear. I just wasn't ready. And it was really late at night when I got here. I could hardly see, even with the hi-beams on, driving to where I'd make camp, in a place I'd never set eyes on before. And when I got to where I would sleep that night, it was bitter cold, and the thought of fighting up my tent, in the moonless dark of night, in the cold, totally exhausted was too much. So, the car became my tent. I rolled out my sleeping back, and curled up in the back seat and crashed. It took a bit to finally get to sleep, because there were more signs of gun nuts. Shells from pistols, rifles and shotguns scattered around where I had parked, and footprints in very very loose soft dirt that couldn't have been more than a day or two old were indicators that this was not quite as remote and untravelled as Mark and the website had indicated.

But once I did fall asleep, it was the best. The silence except for the crackling of the random sounds of the nocturnal wildlife moving about. The stars. Wow, the stars! Out of the city lights, and on a moonless night! I've never seen the stars so clearly before. And so many of them. The few constellations that I recognize now are littered with new dots to connect that I'd never seen. I really needed a Starmap for this trip. It's a shame I'm without one. This would have been a great place to learn.

It's a great experience waking up in the wilds. Even if you have to step out of your car to enjoy the morning air. 360 degrees of mountains, mesquite and Joshua trees. You almost don't see the paved path back to civilization. My only regret is not having a nice camp stove to cook up some sausage and eggs, and brew some coffee. If there is ever going to be a repeat trip, this is going to be a must-have.