Michael Janke

After spending a few days in a BLM campground in the Lake Mead recreation area, we looked into heading north to the part of the Great Basin that’s in central Nevada. Unfortunately it looked like the weather would be below freezing at night at the places we wanted to visit. So instead we’re heading a bit South into Arizona to see if we can find moderate weather.

We knew that altitude affected the weather, but as we’re from Minnesota, where the difference between high altitude and low altitude is about 600 feet, we probably didn’t appreciate how much of an effect altitude has on weather. So now we’re trying to figure out the altitude of the places that we’d like to stay so we have an idea how cool it’ll be during the day and how cold at night. This is information that is not obvious from the various apps that we’re using to find campgrounds.

After spending some time in a supermarket parking lot trying to figure out which national forest and BLM campgrounds were open which were closed what their altitude might be, we finally gave up on public campgrounds and picked a private RV park (Point of Rocks RV Campground).

It has turned out to be a nice park with nice sites and facilities at a fair price. Wifi is good enough to get caught up on the 35 updates that my Android devices are crying about. And it happens to be right next to a very nice city park (Watson Lake Park) with really cool rock formations, a nice lake, lots of hiking, and a plethora of birds.

Hiking and chilling beats driving, at least for a few days.