Our brushy, no-visibility camp in Black Canyon started getting to us more quickly than we thought it would. But we didn’t know it until we explored down the road and saw some other camps in the area. When we found camps that were open and appealing, we decided to boogie out of Black Canyon and go elsewhere. We’d pretty much done the whole road tour by then, and we sure weren’t up for the arduous trek down the face of one of those vertical slopes.

Our first choice was a double-edged sword: great lake view of the Blue Mesa Reservoir, but camp sites were sardine-like, with 20-foot spacing and only a white line between occupants. Fortunately, it was mostly empty, so we grabbed a spot.

Then we started exploring again. Egads, more camps. This place is littered with opportunities, and extremely varied ones at that. Our parking-lot camp, Lake Fork, had 88 spaces side-by-side. Further east, in no particular order:

• Red Creek – ONE site by the side of a running stream. Wow.
• Dry Gulch – a dozen cottonwood-ed stream-side sites at the edge of the wilderness area; adjacent horse corral
• East Elk Creek – ONE 50-site group camp (reservation only)
• Elk Creek – 100+ sites widely scattered near the end of Blue Mesa Reservoir

The camp site was a little sloped, but isn’t that what leveling jacks are for?

Turns out, the NPS doesn’t care where we spend our camp dollars; even though we’d signed up at Lake Fork, they let us use the same tag to camp at Elk Creek. And this place, in addition to also being nearly empty, has a visitor center and (dare I say it) a restaurant. We celebrated our day’s ramblings with a couple of decent hamburgers and margaritas next to the marina, watching people drag their boats in and out of the lake (always high entertainment).

We took an evening walk down to the lake, about 200 yards from our camp site.

Lots of room, nobody around – we have almost an entire 50-site loop all to ourselves.

Karin loves to take pictures of me when I look funny.

Tomorrow, we’ll check on the dam water-release, do some hiking, and just generally enjoy ourselves.