Yeah It's Smoky... But This Time It Ain't The Truck!

We hauled out of Longview yesterday morning rolling a short ways up I-5 to make our turn east at Hwy 12. Bound for Idaho, Lolo Pass and Montana!

Uh huh. Why don't I never learn? Don't say so loud in public, where I'm headin'?! It just makes Murphy's job that much easier for him... 'course, I suppose a fella could have looked at news and such a little better... to see what lay ahead. ;)

At first I just thought it was just cloudy and foggy, but after a bit it started to sink in, these clouds aren't grey... these suckers are blue... and then, the occasional faint scent of burnt pine trees. Yeah... forest fires.

Got a text from some friends down near Cottage Grove in Oregon.  We apparently went through southern Oregon just before a surge of fires erupted all through there.

Up where we're running now, it turns out there's a good sized blaze north west of Yakima and another south west. Maybe it's just me, but when there's enough smoke to have my delicate ol' eyes burning, it takes the shine off a mountain trip.

No problem right? Just keep her pointed east and drive away from 'em! Not so easy. There's six fires straddling the country we were heading for... and four more down below those! I pulled it up on the smartphone... and there's Icons for fires all the way to Yellowstone.

A lot of the same country that was on fire when I rode through in September last year. I guess I/we should get used to it. There's many millions of more acres that have to burn to erase the mess built at the Sierra Clubs et al. behest... The woods themselves are beyond saving. Gonna take a few years to burn all that up so we can start over with a clean forest. Our only hope can be that few more men sacrifice their lives fighting the inevitable blazes.

You either CHOOSE to do proper logging operations to do the work that natural fire does or you CHOOSE to let natural fire burn... or you are CHOOSING to have the forest grow to a thick, sickly, badly overgrown mess that burns with catastrophic rage.

I admire the WISH to nurture a "Natural" forest. It's a pretty fantasy. There's only one problem with it. There are few, if any, natural, un-impacted by man, forests remaining on this continent. 370,000,000 people have a way of spreading their "Impact" around a bit. That means, we have a responsibility to "Manage" the land we live on properly. To make it as abundant and healthy as is possible.

That doesn't mean leaving it to the "whatever happens happens" mindless Disney World fantasy of Fire Fighting Grizzly Bears playing with Rabbits in a sunny meadow. It means realizing that using the products of a forest for the betterment of mankind is NOT an evil, and doesn't require the destruction of the forest either.

The curious thing here is, the devastation of these fires; largely the consequence of litigious intervention by the previously mentioned et al's ... is far deeper and longer lasting than that which even improper logging ever did...  kind of like plugging in a non-native, invasive, species of wolf...

Ahhhhh... In the mean time... in an effort to climb out of the smoke we're taking advantage of that bit of hardware we've got on this rig, a steering wheel. So, when we hit the boundaries of Yakima sometime early today I'm gonna cut it hard to port? I think that's sailor talk for left? and roll up the eastern face of the Cascades a ways. Likely cut back east again along Highway 2.

I've heard that the air is clear along through there. Rather than dropping into the Valley between Lolo Pass and Lost Trail pass, around Hamilton... it looks like we'll go through Lake Pend Orielle in Idaho and maybe the Kalispell country of Montana...

It's a rough life when your back-up travel option is Glacier!

Just Rolling Along
Brian

Working Up an Internet Sweat and... What's the Wrong With This Picture?

Whew! What a day! Spent 6 or 8 hours doing a major... and delicate... reshuffle/reorganization of a large chunk of the Goin' RV Boondocking website that I've been putting off for a long time...

... 'cause if I screwed it up... a couple years of work could go POOF!

Well, late in the afternoon I got 'er done and with no POOF! either. So, if I'm right, the navigation to a bunch of pages should be quite a bit cleaner and make more sense... hopefully translating into my wages recovering a lil' bit! ;)

So... late in the day I needed to try to get my crossed eyes straightened out so we thought we'd take a short drive up a road we'd not wandered up yet.

Just south of us is a spot on the map called Tom's Place. A couple houses and a lil' Pub/cafe/general store...

From that spot there's a road that leads back into the Sierras to a place called Rock Creek Lake.

*Rock Creek Lake*

We'll be bumping north in a day or two I think... and we'd almost not gone up this way before we left... Sure glad something possessed us to turn up there. Running up Rock Creek road from Tom's Place takes you up as pretty a mountain valley as there is.

I'm no tree expert, but that sure looks like a Sequoia don't it? Anybody know for sure? It's what I'm thinking they are... only smaller on this drier, colder side of the mountains... Still a lil' bit more firewood than I could get hauled in one load though! :)

It was still just a sliver under 70 down near camp... as the altitude climbed it dropped off enough I cranked up the furnace in the truck so I could leave the windows open and smell the high country.

 

A lil' side note: The word is that Tioga pass should be open by the middle of the month. I'm hoping to be able to ride up over the top into Yosemite... that'd be my first time up that road, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

The only downer part of yesterday's drive was seeing how many USFS campgrounds there are up there that have the poorer end of the country pretty much priced out of using Our Own Campgrounds.

It's one of my what, Two Dozen Hot Buttons? :) I'll give you fair warning... leave now if you don't want to read about U.S. Forest Service Mis-management...

For those of you who stayed... Here goes... ;)

You know, the Dept. of Agriculture has at least two agencies under it; The U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management.

The BLM, in our experience generally has equal or better built campgrounds which the BLM operates directly, and generally charges $5.

The U.S. Forest Service at this point has given about 60% of the Campgrounds which WE OWN and are its Chartered Management RESPONSIBILITY to Private corporations for management.

Here on the Inyo National Forest, all the Corporate managed USFS Campgrounds are $20+-!

We stayed in Tuttle Creek BLM for $5($2.50 golden age/access)... there was a USFS concession managed camp a mile or so up the road, $20.

Here at Crowley Lake BLM... $5 bucks($2.50 golden age/access)... just down the road in Rock Creek the USFS camps are ALL $20.

Same camp hosts...Same outhouses. Same Tables. Same dumpsters. Same water access. Same Same Same...

Except... one is managed by those responsible for it while the others are pawned off to a corporation that makes no investment. (read the concession prospectus. Much of the work they do for repairs/improvements comes off their permit fees!)

Now... here's the real rub. The closest I can find (they keep the numbers well obfuscated) the permit fee for the Campground concessionaires generally comes to somewhere about 6% or so of the "Take"... (I wish our storefront rent back in Colorado was only 6%!!!)

So... The BLM charges $5... and the BLM gets $5 (and maintains it's campgrounds far better on the whole in our experience) .... The Concessionaire charges $20... and the USFS gets around...$1.20

What is wrong with this picture? Do you see a problem there?

If the BLM can do its job, and do it WELL, on that five dollars, why can't the USFS? They are part of the same Dept of Agriculture. What is the issue here if it is not some sort of corruption? Since the USFS has so many more campgrounds, I would think the economy of scale of their larger operation would make the USFS's job easier.

Oh wait... The Tonto National Forest in Arizona does just that! They manage their campgrounds Themselves... for $6! When we were at Cholla camp on Lake Roosevelt last year they'd just completed solar heated shower buildings and new dump stations! ... so why can't the REST of the National Forests learn to do their jobs?

Remember a couple of years ago when the USFS tried to eliminate the Golden age/Access cards for the benefit of the concessionaires? It raised such a stink they backed away from that foolishness quick time. Well, old timers... it's time to think of somebody else, not just us who have the benefit of the discount those cards afford us.

Think of a young, hard working, blue collar couple with a couple kids, rent, and doctors bills, and all, contending best they can with $3.75 gas, food inflation etc... they get ten days vacation and want to take the kids camping...

Ten days = $200 to stay in one of OUR campgrounds! or, if they can find a BLM... $50 bucks... A whole lot of people are simply priced out of the camps... all for corporate profits and bureaucratic laziness. It's just wrong Dad!

And yes, I said Lazy. What is it that the USFS is doing that they don't have the time to manage what They Were Hired to Manage? Why don't they have time for it... while the BLM does? ... at 75% less cost to the public?

I mean, the U.S.F.S is busy pushing ranchers off their grazing permits.(resulting in damage to the land from the LACK of grazing. They sure aren't busy putting out logging contracts... they've eliminated the greatest majority of logging in the country (made obvious by the rapidly worsening health of badly overgrown forests).

... and now I see that I'm not alone in my criticism...

private-operators-forest-service-recreation-sites-spurs-lawsuit

forest-service-sued-over-concessionaire-recreation-fees

citizens sue us forest-service

Maybe a few million letters to the right congressmen might make a few changes happen?

If the BLM, as well as the Corps of Engineers can get the work done as they are chartered to do, at a public cost that is affordable for the working man, Why can't the U.S. Forest Service?

Don't you think it's time for a change? Maybe we should just cut our costs... Eliminate the U.S. Forest Service, and transfer responsibility for those lands to the Bureau of Land Management? They sure seem to be able to do the job a lot better... Just sayin'

Until there is a change;  If the fees charged are more in line with those properly collected by the BLM I'll use a camp... otherwise, I'll be using concession managed campgrounds as a last resort and then only for an overnight. I'd urge others to do the same.

There... all vented :)
Brian