A malevolent force?
So, the prices of camping and boondocking are going up. It is no surprise that everything always does, but this time it feels different. Remember I'm 78 years old and I've been camping in various ways all of my life, from backpacking to fifth wheels so I've seen camping rules, regulations, and prices change, but never as drastically as I'm seeing now.
I've seen prices of camping go up enough to irritate me, but this is the first time I can remember that in the past couple of years, I've actually written off places to camp because they're too expensive or the prices they're asking are way out of line with the services they offer. A good example of this is when boondocking.
Not all boondocking is free but in the past, I've always felt that the amount charged was appropriate for what you were getting, and the Pima County Fairgrounds was one of the places where I felt the $12 a night to sleep in a dirt parking lot with no hookups was worth it because of all the free entertainment available at the Fairgrounds within walking distance of where I'm boondocked. But last year, they raised the price of that dirt parking lot to $30 a night, which I felt was completely uncalled for and a backhanded way of getting rid of boondockers and making them move over to the $ 45-a-night full hook-up campsites.
So far, when faced with this problem, I pack up and leave for greener pastures in other locations. There's no sense fighting this trend since boondockers looking for inexpensive places to stay aren't considered one of their favorite campground and State Park customers anyway, so I scratch them off my list of places to go and move on.
Looking back on it all, I can't shake the feeling that some malevolent force is behind most of these price increases, and I can't stop feeling that Reserve America, the reservation service, and other businesses of their ilk have something to do with it. After All, Reserve America has much more to do with increasing the price of America's campgrounds than just about anybody else outside the normal tax-and-spend government agencies.
Theboondork
Sunset at Antero Reservoir.
Sunset on a cold Fall Evening.
cloudy afternoon at Antero Reservoir