Wednesday, July 10, 2019

Last Day of Boondocking at Penrose Commons BLM

Not as hot a day as yesterday thankfully.

Still, clear skies and blazing hot sun.  Martha came out to join me after lunch and there was a nice breeze coming into the RV that didn't cause the awning to vibrate too badly.

I woke to see a SUV camper at the site near the road junction.  Didn't think much of it at the time though it was in bad shape and stuff seemingly strewn around to make sleeping room available.  Later that afternoon, after Martha had joined me, the "Dad" sent his 11-12 year old son to ask if we had spare water and perhaps tools to help fix their generator.

Martha and I went over, and began to get bad vibes about the "dad" and what he was actually seeking to do.  Wanted to borrow my tools to "fix" a generator that he told me he'd accidentally let run dry of oil.  He wasn't exactly presenting a great first impression, shall I say, a bit sketchy.

We'd brought a five gallon jug of water over with us, and at least the kid seemed appreciative.  We'd already given him two small bottles of water from the fridge beforehand.

Told the guy that I was willing to lend him my tools but I needed to stay with them....at this point he said he was very tired and might do it tomorrow.  Hmmm.

So we spent perhaps three hours in the RV, relaxing, I go back and tell him why not work on the generator now as I was leaving in the morning.  The guy said, through his son, that he was too tired and perhaps we could just "lend" them $10-$20 to buy some tools tomorrow.

I went back to the RV to discuss things with Martha....not too much later, the kid is sent over asking if we'd made a decision re the money; and did we have any extra food.

The kid didn't looked starved, but apparently the food choices available to him weren't "varied".  So we gave him some foodstuff and told him we'd give them some money on the way out.

We packed up, just getting too many weird vibes about them, and in under an hour everything was ready to go.  Martha gave the kid some money as we went by their campsite and she could smell pot coming out of the SUV....the "dad" didn't even bother coming out.  He apparently was too busy toking up in the SUV, a very sad situation.

So, the whole trip ended in kind of a negative experience.  Feel sorry for the kid, who's apparently the mature one in that relationship.  I hope things turn out well for the kid anyways, we just couldn't see spending the night there.

So, we saw the dark side of boondocking perhaps, perhaps I'm just too paranoid and there wasn't any bad intentions on their part, but I didn't want to take the chance.

Missed an awesome sunset as I drove the RV up the I-25 corridor back to the Denver Metro area and home.  Martha and I got home safely and with no issues.

Update:

Forgot to mention, moving the spare tire closer to the rail resulted in better ratchet strap angles.  No more broken straps and Yagi was held steady all the way home.

4 comments:

RichardM said...

Sounds pretty sketchy to me. I don't think that I would have hung around as long as you did...

Diamond Dave said...

Lock and load!

redlegsrides said...

Next time, it won't take me so long to displace. Definitely not going to setup camp near any spot where there's already sketchiness going on of course.

redlegsrides said...

Diamond Dave....yeah who to shoot? The poor kid who's covering for his deadbeat dad or the stoner dad that was so stoned that he was harmless, not to mention, physically a wreck?