Finding the Right Campground

After spending 5 days with Abuelo (Leo’s dad) in New Mexico and El Paso, Texas, we loaded back up in the Jucy van for our last week of camping/road tripping.   The final destination was San Diego, where we would land at Gabe, Monique, Sylas and Alana’s house (Leo’s brother and family).  Before leaving El Paso there was much discussion and exploration of our route home, camping spots, weather forecasts (more cold), and “should we just skip the Grand Canyon.”  We decided to keep with our plan of going to the Grand Canyon, but this did commit us to more hours in the car and some chilly nights once again on the Colorado plateau.  This final segment of the road trip was like a final review of our experiences in the past month.

 

We left El Paso and head west.  Looking for the right camping spot has become a bit of a learned art; not too far off our route, not too urban, open still, and not deserted.   Earlier in the trip we learned that the family did better camping at a campground with other humans around.  It is funny but the wilderness doesn’t scare the family, it is the isolation and worry that someone will show up and cause us harm that freaks some of us out.   I think hearing the news about gun violence in the USA made the kids feel nervous about the risk of violence.  It is hard to know how to talk to them about it and put it in context, because it is a real thing, but camping in an isolated campground in Colorado is likely less risky than going to see tourist attractions or a shopping mall.  (But I wasn’t about to add that worry to their minds...)  Adding to the general worry was the experience of seeing all the road signs with bullet holes in the remote areas of Colorado and New Mexico.  So with their worries simmering we learned that finding a campground with some infrastructure was reassuring.  When I say infrastructure, I mean a campground in a national forest or state park with a fire pit, a self-pay station and if we are lucky another camper or two.  It is off-season for camping, so we mostly had the campgrounds to ourselves, which is desirable for most campers, but not our brood…  

In an effort to find the right fit for a stop I scoped out a campground called “Cochise Stronghold Campground” on national forest land in Arizona.  It was at the entrance to an amazing canyon of tumbled rocks that was where Cochise, the leader of the Chokonen band of the Chiricahua Apache lived for many years.  He held off the U.S. government during the “Apache Wars” starting in 1861 until a peace treaty in 1872 (which was quickly broken by the U.S. Government, no surprise). The campground had a guided walk with informative plaques that told the story of Cochise, his people and ultimately the mistreatment at the hands of the American government.  Seeing the beauty of the land and imagining an entire community of people living there and then being forcibly moved onto a reservation and then displaced again across the country to Florida and then Oklahoma made me sad.   

I tried to get the kids to engage with the story of Cochise given that we were there, and it was literally history right in front of them.  It had everything you are supposed to have for learning – context, different learning styles (tactile, visual, auditory etc), small chunks of information, interesting content,  but do you think I could get the kids to engage?  Not at all.  They were at the campground making things out of yucca fibers, finding rocks, making rope, having a GREAT time.  So, the lesson of the day for me was:  what we each get out of a stop is different for all of us.  Leo and I really enjoyed reading the plaques and learning the history, the kids not so much.  Learning happens in different ways, at different times and for different reasons.  The next day flipped it all around again when we went to the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum and spent 6 hours wandering and soaking up the experience.  Trying to find the balance of letting go of certain expectations while still holding on to others...Now that is a trip!