I Love Beaver

As in life, not everything goes as planned when RVing. Sometimes camping sites aren’t passable. Sometimes even backup plans fail. Luckily, with a good partner and a sense of humor, you can make the best of a bad situation. We can both now proudly say, “I love Beaver.”

I Love Beaver

This place has capitalized on those of us who giggle when we drive in and see the “Now Entering Beaver’ sign. Driving through town you will see businesses like Beaver Cleaners, Beaver Tacos, Beaver Drug, and Beaver Nursery. You get the idea.

The best part of this? Most of the locals don’t seem to understand why the rest of us are laughing. This town has been compared to Mayberry by several people we have talked to since and it is an accurate description. We enjoyed our exploration of Beaver and look forward to visiting again.

Boondocking (Mis)Adventure

We had planned on boondocking and spent a couple of hours searching for the area where we wanted to stay. After parking the truck to explore the area, and look for the best spot for our rig. We thought we found it!

Z even though it was the perfect spot, laying down in a field of flowers.

 

After finding the most level part of the perfect spot, we pulled the rig in. And it sank. Luckily Lance saw this and kept driving back onto the road instead of stopping. We were so lucky not to have gotten stuck. Even though we had walked around the site and it felt dry, 20,000 pounds of truck and trailer told us otherwise.

This is the downside to boondocking (Click here for blog) that, it seems, nobody talks about. What happens when your planned spot doesn’t work out? Usually, I have a couple of spots in the area picked out just in case the first one doesn’t work. In this case, it had snowed a couple of days prior to all the land off the main roads were muddy and none of the spots were viable.

At this point, we were tired, irritable, and hangry. I looked up a truck stop as well as a rest stop nearby for a place to park for the night. Both had tight parking spaces where we wouldn’t have been able to pull out the slide. Beaver was the next town and there we found Beaver Canyon Campground.

Beaver Canyon Campground

Eclectic is the best way I can describe this campground. It was the closest Passport America campground to our boondocking (mis)adventure and we just needed to park for the night. We obviously didn’t have a reservation, but luckily, they had opened for the season the day before so there was a site available for us.

We pulled in, set up camp and needed to find a place to eat. There was a Mexican restaurant on the property. Score! I have not been to a park that has a restaurant on site so this was a nice surprise and couldn’t have happened on a better day.

After dinner, we were much happier campers. We took Z for a walk to explore the park. He is obsessed with grass. He will roll, and roll, and roll, and then smile at us. As we were walking around the park we noticed that most of the sites had enclosed sheds on them. They had been transformed into enclosed living spaces, tiki bars, and workshops.

A Friendly Place with an Amazing Vibe

After talking with our neighbors, we learned that only 5 sites rent at a daily rate; yearly leases occupy the rest. The owners of this park have created a space where people love to be, in turn creating a fun, welcoming park. Everybody is outside visiting with everybody else.

Our Kind of People

We have found that the wider range of golf carts and ATVs in a park, the more we like the park. These are our kind of people. And they tend to spend more time outside visiting with their neighbors and are generally friendlier. This park lived up to it. One of our neighbors was an active Escapees member and encouraged us to go to a meetup.

We’ll have a future post about our first Xcapers Convergence coming soon.

Each of the daily rental sites has a covered picnic area where one of us got a lot of work done.

After Dinner Produce?

As we were unhooking I noticed a pile of carrots in the grass. I didn’t pay much attention to it and went on about my business. When we came back from dinner, I noticed a piece of lettuce on the ground. I have never had random produce dropped off on my site before! It turns out that the neighbor kids saw a rabbit there a few days prior and were trying to lure it back.

Conclusion

Have you been to Beaver and now own some fantastic I Love Beaver gear? If you boondock, what do you do when your planned spot doesn’t work out? We’d love to hear your stories and advice. Please comment below.