Camp Luke

I went camping this past Friday and Saturday night with a group of friends from my work. We went north near Flagstaff, to a place I affectionately call Camp Luke. The name is derived from a couple of the participants at this year's camp. This is a new site from the place we stayed at a couple of years ago which we called Camp Shane. I use the term "camp" rather loosely, because if you look at the map of the site you'll see that we weren't far from Flagstaff which made the entire trip very comfortable. If we needed anything we could just run into town and pick it up. In a way, we were just escaping the heat of the desert by going up into the mountains. We ate like kings - we had steak on Friday night, and BBQ pulled pork on Saturday night. Some of the guys went fishing in upper Lake Mary but didn't catch anything. Lower Lake Mary is dry and looks like a marsh. I went for a hike on Saturday. Overall the forest is extremely dry and there were very restrictive fire conditions including no campfires.

The roads around the campsite were very dry and dusty. The main road was some distance from our camp, but one morning I was able to get a picture of the sun rays as they reflected off the airborne dust in the air. Both mornings and evenings were terrific, as the transition from a warm day into a cool evening took place; or as a very cool night would turn into a warm early morning.

My friend Shane organized the entire trip; he is a very experienced outdoorsman which makes camping with him ideal because he has all the necessary stuff and knowledge. He also has a good attitude about life. He appreciates the simple things, good food, an open campsite and decent fishing. Sometimes it is the simplest things in life that can bring us the most happiness, we just have to slow down enough to appreciate them.