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The Punch Line

What’s worse than wood smoke in a campground? Wood smoke combined with cigarette smoke when people are intermittently starting campfires and then a woman moves into the campsite next to yours and doesn’t think twice about lighting up and exhaling into the breeze blowing right into your campsite while you are outside trying to enjoy yourself or relax or just generally breathe or even when you are inside with the windows open to let in a little fresh air. Ugh. Bad joke. And no joke as this was our experience at Pancho Villa State Park in Columbus, NM. We chose a campsite that kept us away from most of the other campers. The campsites on both sides of us stayed empty up until day five. There had been campfires throughout those five days, but the wood smoke seemed to dissipate faster in the desert air. It wasn’t horrible and mostly good. Then on day five a woman pulled in to one of the campsites next to us. We bemoaned our fate as there were plenty of other open sites. And hop
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Firewood for Sale

We have come to accept our fate with campfires on weekends when campgrounds tend to be the most crowded. We do our best to choose a good site upwind and downhill, close our windows at the first whiff of smoke, and wait it out. We look forward to Sundays. Recently, though, Sundays have not brought the relief we long for, and sometimes things get worse. It happened in Abiquiu, and it happened again at Leasburg Dam State Park in Las Cruces. Through the weekend a fire was started somewhere in the campground each night. For the most part we were upwind and spared most of the smoke. We were in a nonelectric site and had a fair amount of space between us and the next campsite. Luckily, that site stayed empty all weekend. Then late Sunday afternoon, as we looked forward to a smoke-free night, a group drove up and began to set up at that campsite. They had a tent. Pat predicted a campfire was in our future. I stayed optimistic - until the camp host delivered two big bundles of firewoo
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Almost Haven

We were all getting along so well in our unspoken code of no campfires at Elephant Butte State Park. It had been at least three days since one had been started. No one in the campground at the moment seemed interested in starting one. I was beginning to forget about being on alert for the stench of wood smoke. I felt free, our wood smoke trials fading…. And then a firestarter interloper arrived. Pat delivered the news when he returned from an evening walk. I hadn’t smelled the wood smoke - the wind was in our favor for the moment. “Just think of those poor campers near the new arrival who aren’t so lucky,” Pat said. Yes, it does take just one pooper to ruin a party. The next morning yet another fire was started as I was finishing my yoga outside. The smoke invaded my space and lungs. As all too usual, the firestarter walked away after starting his fire and left it to smoke and smolder. The whole campground was inundated. I was doubly annoyed after so many glorious days of
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The Firestarter Triangle

We left Bernalillo NM for the weekend and headed up to Georgia O’Keeffe country near Abiquiu. We had finished all of our housekeeping tasks and were waiting on a few deliveries that would bring us back to Bernalillo the following week. We thought one of those deliveries would be our solar panels. But we got a nice surprise on Friday before we left town - our solar panels had arrived. We had planned to boondock in Abiquiu either way. Our new solar panels would make it much better. We picked them up on the way north. Now we could be truly off grid with the means to sustain ourselves. We chose the Riana Campground at the Abiquiu Reservoir Army Corp of Engineers site. The drive from the Albuquerque area to the campground was breathtaking, especially along highway 96. It truly earns its green scenic route dots in the atlas. I had read that the Puerco camping loop was the quietest. We headed around that one to choose our site. We used our most educated campsite selection criteria t
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Wood Smoke Public Service Announcement

My idea for a public service announcement about the dangers of wood smoke. Scene opens on a family with several small children at a campground. One parent starts a campfire in a fire ring with the children gathered nearby. A voice over talks about the dangers of inhaling wood smoke, specifically noting how it is even more toxic than cigarette smoke. After the fire starts with its all too typical cloud of smoke, the rising smoke forms into a person smoking a cigarette. The smoke person takes a big inhale and then blows the smoke at the children. This continues as the voice over says, “You wouldn’t subject your children to secondhand cigarette smoke. Don’t subject them to toxic wood smoke. Wood smoke - harmful to breathe for everyone.” Then the words “Say no to campfires - for your health” come on the screen. Or something along those lines. I have a feeling that a lot of the parents who sit idly by and let their child inhale wood smoke would be appalled if someone came by and
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Connect the Wood Smoke Dots

We decided to hang out at the Coronado Campground in Bernalillo, New Mexico for a while to do basic housekeeping things, such as laundry. Bernalillo is just outside Albuquerque and would give us access to what we needed. We also ordered our solar panels and had them shipped here. The campsites are closer together than we prefer, but for a campground near a major metropolitan area, it still has its share of nature surrounding it. The Rio Grande flows alongside the campground - you can’t ask for much more than that. And the first night’s sunset was spectacular. The campground was relatively full when we pulled in. Fearing a night of campfires, we asked the host about their campfire policy after we registered. She hesitated, looked leery, and asked us what we wanted her to say. We told her we try to avoid them as much as possible. She said that if the wind was 10 mph or faster, fires were banned. Otherwise they had to be confined to the provided fire rings. Pat held up a finger
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Smoke Bomb by the Pecos

We were hooked on boondocking after Santa Fe. Our discussions now included solar panels. We saw one trailer in the forest campground set up with panels. Could that be for us? The day we left the Santa Fe Forest, we had planned to go to a campground with hookups closer to Albuquerque. But one road led to another, and in true rambling fashion we ended up by the Pecos River at the Villanueva State Park. They had electric/water hookups at this campground. But once we saw the more spacious and, in some cases, private sites without hookups at the top of a mesa area, we were ready to boondock again. It was nearly dark when we arrived. We chose an open site at the very top of the mesa and set up for the night. We noticed when we chose the site that it consisted of two sites very close together. We had placed our trailer in a way that appeared to occupy both sites, but with the campground likely to fill up for the weekend, we knew we might have to move over and allow another camper in
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