Camping Away From Everything Else

I’m 100% on board with this. Car camping in a busy campground is hardly a get away to me. Nothing is more annoying than waking up to the jackass with a Harley rolling out of camp at 6am for a sunrise cruise.

My favorite spot is at a secret watering hole and I often can camp a weekend in the off season without seeing anyone at all.

Highly trafficked trails are a little better, but still feel like a city without buildings. Even moderately trafficked trails trails have a different feel than low traffic.

By far, I prefer trails where I can count the number of hikers passed on one hand, maybe 2.  I’m lucky to live close to the Los Padres forest which is pretty easy to find low-traffic trails and camp spots, although the well known watering holes are crowded in the summer.

Some delusional people call going out with a 40 foot RV “Camping”.  Backpacking Camping is a whole other beast.

A news show once said “walking has been engineered out of American society”—which means if you can walk and carry all your gear and find some rugged backcountry you probably won’t see anyone as 99% of Americans are indoors and/or rolling—and there’s nothing much worse than a Rolling American.

I love meeting folks in the deep. Awesome people. Fun to visit with. 8 hrs alone on a trail is enough time to make kind company seem special.

Yup!

Oh boy – this rings true for me.

And all it takes is a little imagination.

I live in the English Lake District – a legendary hill area that’s a magnet for the harassed residents of the many nearby cities. Lancaster is 20 minutes away – it’s hardly remote.

But campers tend to cluster around the honeypot locations like Angle Tarn – attractive and relatively accessible. On a typical sunny evening in summer evening it will be crowded.

But just think a bit differently and you can find dozens of deserted spots away from the crowds. Or go out in wild weather. Or go out in winter.

If you can find solitude in the Lake District, you can find it pretty much anywhere.