When the lady in Ray's Food Place suggested my companion and I check out a BLM campground - I admit, as a Northern Californian - I had my doubts: images of dusty, dry, rattlesnakey territory without toilets, tables and no fires allowed instantly filled my brain. However, we did not want to sleep under the fog so we headed north to Sixes and turned east. After following a curving riverside road - we found ourselves at the camp host's site and the sign in board. The camp host popped out of the window of her RV to greet us and give us an orientation, pointing us to a spot where we could camp.
This was the most POSH BLM campground I have ever seen: neatly manicured green grass bisected by a flat gravel driveway, concrete picnic tables and fire pits on each site, well behaved Douglas firs sprinkled around. The site was $8 for the night and $5 for as much wood as we wanted to load in their wheelbarrow and haul back for the night. Most folks in the campground seemed to turn in early - including the couple camped near us with a cat and a dog in their tent (woof! mew!). Even the most drunk guy there seemed to go down at sunset.
We slept in the open with a view of the Milky Way traveling across the sky - and I got to see two shooting stars. There was NO fog, no noisy traffic - just the sounds of the creek nearby and some birds who thought 3:30am was the right time to start greeting the dawn. No showers, either but that's what a creek or river serves when you camp like this (unless you leave at 6am like we did!). read more