Muncho Lake British Columbia...Paradise

Motorhome travelers looking for information on camping at Muncho Lake, let me say that the Provincial Park is where you want to be, provided you arrive early enough to take advantage of 30 sites available along the seven and one half mile long lake.  Some of these are obviously only intended for tents, which are excluded from the 72 site commercial park —comparably priced— in a meadow across the road, used mainly by those who lead RV caravans who do not have the luxury of shrugging a shoulder at 23 foot wide parking space, (leaving only six feet after slides and canopy are out for an outdoor dining room), or paying $27 at a lakeside resort where cabins are higher up the social status than RV spaces— and that of turning the key and moving on.

You may find this a strange place to bring in what we think is the biggest negative of the whole motorhome idea, but we also have a lot of Baby Boomer readers “kicking tires,” looking forward to their retirement.  Before making the last big investment of their life (with an Enron, etc. diminished portfolio) by trading a appreciating asset (your house), for a declining asset that looses 20 percent in value just driving it off a dealers lot, you need to know that gas will not be your biggest expense— it will be where you park for the night.

I have mentioned that the reliability of today’s engine, transmission, and motorhome chassis and tire combinations enable even retired mechanics to relax and enjoy miles clicking by.  As one of those “save a tree, ” low cost E-TravelMagazines.Com publications, we can afford to take our reader’s side in warranty disputes over the way the “box” was stuck on the wheels.  But, having sort of “retired’” ourselves from an advertising agency we feel that four-color magazine ads that imply you can camp in a 40-foot Class A, all by yourself, at a lighthouse overlooking a pounding surf, or in a meadow beside a babbling brook, or the favorite setting of all at a lake with dynamic and changing colors as Muncho —almost constitutes false advertising.  The musical chairs of twilight time are bound to become more frantic as the 62-somethings take to the road.

I, in love with actually living in an intruder and bear safe, mosquito free, mobile wilderness cabin where rain dancing on a fiberglass roof is fun, have spent many nights in absolutely incredible places. You need to know that this takes a lot of work, a complete set of maps as gazetteers, a way to access the Internet, and a bravado of assuming that parking is legal—in lieu of a sign saying you can’t— where recreationalists who only take photos, and are very conscious about leaving any tracks, may need to rest during nighttime hours, when it truthfully is dangerous driving a big rig.

One of the great things about traveling the frontier — besides scenery— is that the U.S. has vast sections of Bureau of Land Management, or U.S. Forest Service lands, where regulations permit self contained, and respectful to the environment RV visitors to “park” at “un-organized” campgrounds for fourteen days at a time, before moving at least twenty-five miles.  Those motorhome dwellers in desert California, and outside Quartzite, Arizona, who are not travelers, but smart enough to have replaced an expensive on-board generator with solar panels at the largest flea market in the world, are welcomed to stay up to six months for a $100 pass.

Most of the Canadians I know RV style by a first name, and e-mail address, I met while camping in the desert at Quartzite, or places as on the Rio Grande river in Big Bend National Park, or the beaches of North Padre Island Seashore, or a Francis Marion the Swamp Fox style informal US Forest Service campground in South Carolina.  These all were affordable camping sites.

As Americans visiting Canada our friends have also pointed out that, as an official website conforms, Crown Lands are also accessible to recreationalists, if they aren't leased or restricted for other reasons such as fire.

But — and I am getting to the point here— where you camp is not about the money. It should be emphatically stated to self-serving chamber of commerce directors, that most fulltime motorhome travelers are not indigent, and that we are willing to pay for value.  As a class we all have paid more than it really is worth for our rig.  We, unfortunately pay more in local sales taxes (especially in Canada) on gasoline, already taxed for road maintenance, than can be accounted for in benefits.  We even accept the craziness of commercial RV parks charging a hotel/motel tax that in states as Washington, and Arizona, goes to support advertising resorts that charge $300 a night.  I don’t have any scientific proof, but I would bet something of real value besides paper money that the majority of full-time motorhomers are not members of the doomed (hey, read your Bible) twenty percent of Americans who control over half of the nations wealth, and cry about inheritance taxes.  Best of all, as mature senior citizens supplemented by Social Security, we even exhibit tolerance to those who still think it is possible to keep up with those nouveau riche Joneses. 

I lost my awkwardness as a newbie motorhomer “only” driving, at first a 27-foot, and then only a 33 (if you counted the manufacturers deliberately wasted space) when I realized the high profit 40 + foot monsters the industry is pushing on us —photographed in settings the equal to Muncho Lake— would not fit into a Muncho Lake Provincial Park campsite, and other camping opportunities where one had a view across a “living room,” decorated by Creator.

To me, as a photographer, that’s what it is all about. The view.  Standing on a rim of the Grand Canyon, looking down upon Phantom Guest Ranch, directly alongside the Colorado, that charges $500 a night, I was very aware of the value of the big picture.

This is why I cannot understand why commercial RV parks in outstanding settings are so insentient in cramming freedom of the road travelers into city style car parks.  Yes, the land is precious; so go take a look at the Hondi RV Park designed by the White Mountain Apache in the “pines” of Arizona to see how to accommodate RV campers without cutting down trees to see the forest. 

I also cannot understand how it is with some investors, as the KOA franchise purchaser in Montana who has been complaining on the Internet lately about how cheap RV travelers are, why they feel so justified in gouging because of their need to recoup campaign contributions to a friendly county commissioner.  Or that RV park owners can get away with charging ten times (or more) the cost to park a rig all night, as what the owner of the asphalt parking lot across the street charges for almost the same space? Or how Beaudry RV of Tucson, Arizona can actually get $45 per night for a site, so you can be besieged by salesmen telling you it is time to trade your recent two -year old purchase, on a new diesel pusher! Or in Kingman, Arizona, where renting a motel —complete with hot showers, fresh sheets, and parking space— is cheaper than a RV campground two blocks away. 

Most of all I cannot understand how government tourism agencies in charge of the best use of “our land,” along highways can support local businesses through advertising (often by dollars collected from RV travelers) intent on making RV sites scarce?  Oh, yes I know that is a totally radical thought for some. But, witness what happened to a historic traveler’s stop at the Nut Tree in Salono County, California, when the county commissioners sided with resort developers promising to bring in jobs through tourism. There is no room for nuts, here, anymore. 

I admit I am totally spoiled by being from a RV friendly Alaska. And, having camped there many times, I do love experiencing the ever changing colors of Muncho Lake just as much as the fly-in celebrities at the lodge.

Attention, also, all of you money changers that have brought about a situation where North American mining companies have merged into multinationals, and taken their mineral investment to South America to take advantage of “Nike,” wages, and under-regulated air quality control.   It is true that the incredible jade color of Muncho was caused by copper oxides leaching into pure snowmelt waters.  This condition, however, is more natural than the 400 pounds of copper supplying your needs in your Phoenix area home, just down the road from the “eyesore” mines you complained about.  And know that some of the crazy “desert rats” at Quartzite actually feel saguaro cactuses transplanted to golf courses watered by water stolen from Hopi farmers, is absolutely an environmental disaster.

I love camping at Muncho so much I made a mistake two years ago by suggesting the campgrounds to a fellow motorhome travelers we met at Stone Mountain.  We were delighted in turn about their invite to a dinner party at Strawberry Point, so we could share more of our favorite camping sites ahead, only to find they were parked in the last available space. Next time, friend.

So, my point. Why should anyone drive all this distance to park in lot without a view?  Those of us that actually have one could do that at home.  And why should I spend my professional time and money promoting, for free, tourism to anywhere where only our dollars are wanted?

The secret is to finding yourself being sniffed at by a commercial park operator with an attitude, is head on up the Alaska Highway to one of those little side roads used by water truck access —usually near a bridge, always a waterfront view— for highway construction, rafters, moose hunters, and the almost pampered recreational fisherman. If you own a pole, do what RV people in the South, and Skagit County, Washington, do — buy a visitors license so you can say. “I’m not camping. I am fishing!”