Apr 25, 2007

The MayFire Pack-Up

It's that time again... when I am off to the Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada. This area just east of Las Vegas is home to some 2,000 year old petroglyphs and some friends of mine host an annual gathering, where we use one of the group campsites at the park. Having now been to this location for the past two years, I feel I have a better handle on what to expect and what to bring.

It's not as self-sufficient a gathering as something like Burning Man, but then again, this is a group that is only about 100 people. It's much more about a quiet, connecting experience. We have potable water on site and we have pit toilets. Other than that, we do take care of ourselves. I've got a small group organized who are a little "supper club" where the few of us have banded together to deal with food. The person driving in is bringing the stove, people flying in chip in for supplies brought by folks locally. Dinner preparation rotates and so does dish-washing. This lets us create easy meals in a situation with high temps, refrigeration that's only as sophisticated as ice coolers and camp stoves.

Two folding tent poles and a shade cloth are going to provide extra shade, so that some of the day sleeping that goes on will hopefully be more cool than inside the tents. You need max shade and max airflow to stay comfortable during the day, and often it seems cooler in shade outside of everyone's tents. I'm arriving a touch earlier this year, determined to get a better piece of tenting real estate this year. We're expecting day time temps into the mid 90s Fahrenheit.