Day 21: Big Valley, scary campground
We camp at a private place in the orchards region. We get in late and the lady lets us in through a gate. No visitors allowed. It’s a family-values area, a sign says. It seems kind of prison like. She says there aren’t many people, with plenty of prime spaces left down by the river. We drive in and find lots of people and one space left by the river. They also charge by the camper, not the site. We see why when the first site by the river has maybe 6 tents. Shirtless people with tattoos and pitbulls stare at us as we roll past. There are hotrod boats and jetskis pulled up by every site. We pull into the empty site. When we get out of the car we are blasted by rock’n’roll. I immediately panic and say we can’t stay here but M says to just get used to it. I try for a couple minutes by walking around. I tell her I can’t take it–she’s freaking, too–so I walk over to the neighbors. I say Hi. They’re drunk and tease me a bit but the music gets turned off. A teenage girl had been doing her makeup for 20 minutes in the huge new SUV and no one had cared that she had the sound system on max. Whew. We settle in.
The kids invent a new game in the tent, while we read outside by the river, called “Baby’s Bonnet” where one wacks a pillowcase off the head of the other with the pillow.
The huge irrigation river (the Sacramento?) flows past seemingly higher than the level of the ground, just bulging with water. In the twilight under a rising full moon someone starts their hot-boat, the silence shattered by a flaming, erupting, engine–8 exhaust pipes pointed skyward–as it gently idles its way around to another campsite.
There are teens drifting about. After we go to bed the fireworks start. But at 11pm, silence. Whew. We leave early. It seems like the owners have firm but tenuous control. I sense a lot of pent-up raving up and down the beach. Man, the American public is a wild, thoughtless, animal thing.
We’re starting to realize that tenters are discriminated against. We have a camping guidebook and see that many of the nicer places say ‘no tents.’ I guess the wildest screaming riffraff party away their weekends in tents. People want huge RVs with loud generators and babbling TV sets instead. Too bad normal humans get lost in the cracks.
We also notice that tenting costs $15-28 in most places. With $25 being very common, almost the new standard. State places are $15. All this for the privilege to be with either a raving mob and/or a bunch of roaring generators. Open state land is the best bet left–other than somehow building a national directory of sane campgrounds. But out in the open, this land is your land, this land is my land.
