Tag: Military Family Camps

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Red Rock Canyon, Springs Preserve, and other Las Vegas Sights

twosnatravels5 Comments

One of the things that made for a good stay at the Nellis AFB RV Park, Desert Eagle, was that there is actually an event coordinator here by the name of Lori. She and her husband, Troy, who also works at the park, were an awesome team who headed up the events Lori planned. We went to a chili cookoff, and then the next event was a hike at Red Rock Canyon National Preserve.

This park requires entrance tickets, which Lori took care of. It receives local visitors and tourists from the Strip alike, since it isn’t all that far from the city, so it can get busy. It was nice not having to drive, as Lori has a large van at her disposal.

The Willow Spring Trail at Red Rocks is rated moderate and is 1.5 miles one way. There were some tight spots–

— and a bit of rock scrambling —

— but we enjoyed the trail and meeting our fellow RV’ing hikers in the group. Coincidentally, several were from Alaska. Military folks get sent, and put down roots, in a lot of varied places.

The trail took us to a pretty waterfall.

An unexpected treat near the end of our hike was a native American agave roasting pit. It is to the right of this picture, and you can see the soot marks on the hollowed limestone rock. Underneath, rocks were placed and heated, and the heated rocks formed an oven. These seasonal roasts were a time of feasting and gathering for dances and religious ceremonies.

If you can zoom in, and you would like a little “seek and find”, you can look for the ancient hand prints to the left of the top of the crack that rises up from the ground, near left center of the picture.

After our hike, we had the picnic lunch that we’d brought along at a shelter. There was a spontaneous second walk on a boardwalk loop trail nearby before returning to Nellis.

We returned to Red Rocks another day with our ebikes. The park road goes one way in a loop for 13 miles, and is recommended for biking. We arrived at 8:15 AM, with park entrances in hand. We saw no other bikes and only a handful of cars, so it was perfect timing. In a natural park like Red Rocks, the uphills are steeper but easily tackled by ebikes. And the downhills – wheee! I had my bike up to 25 mph, which would normally be too scary for me. The road was empty of traffic, though, and the surface smooth.

Seeing the park at our normal biking speed of 10 mph gave us a slower view of the scenery, including those red rocks for which the park is famous.

Sitting to take a break, the silence was profound.

We took another of Lori’s excursions to Springs Preserve. This park is much closer in to the city. It is on the site where a spring with water was originally found and the city of Las Vegas was born. There is a whole exhibit here about water, and the Charleston Heights pump station is here. Most of Las Vegas’s water comes from Lake Mead.

That’s not all there is to Springs Preserve, though. There is a botanical garden, a butterfly house, a train that goes to a recreated Western boomtown, the Nevada Museum, the Origens Museum, and a tasty cafe overlooking the park where we had lunch. I’m sure I’m forgetting something. It is not hard to fill up a day here.

This is the Western Town, from the train station. It was still early in the day and not many people were about.

At the train station, I found the old photos of Las Vegas to be fascinating.

In the Western Town, there were period homes to visit:

And things I never heard of were here, too:

This is a solar chimney, which is used to cool a room. The sun heats the air in the chimney, causing a draft, which draws warm air up and out of a room. Native plants (that you don’t see in the picture) cool and dampen the air, which is also pulled into the chimney.

The Origen Museum here was great for several short movies in various rooms as you walked through. The flash flood exhibit is everyone’s favorite. There is a video on the screen with two rangers walking around in the desert, talking about the dangers of the heat and other desert-related information. Then, all of a sudden, 5,000 gallons of water are coming at you! The water goes right under a bridge under your feet and does a great job of informing the visitor about just how fast a flash flood can come up.

The last thing we saw here was the Liberace Room in the Nevada Museum, with Liberace’s piano, chandelier, and other assorted items on display. Liberace was a flamboyant pianist and singer who had concert residency in Las Vegas. Besides Liberace, you can see a dinosaur fossil, listen to stories of Nevada miners, and hear about Nevada’s part in atomic history in this museum.

We did a fair amount of bike riding while in Vegas, besides Red Rock Canyon. Nellis Air Base was interesting in and of itself. The Thunderbird flying team is here, and we saw them lined up on the airfield.

They did zoom over us at the RV park a couple of times, but mostly they were out of town doing shows. We were delighted to discover a small museum dedicated to the Thunderbirds near their parking spot.

The Las Vegas Upper and Lower Wash Trails provided a chance for a longer ride. What the trails lacked in beauty, they made up for in urban interest. Going from east to west, it was all suburbia, starting at the prettily landscaped Centennial Park. As we got more into the city, it became more industrialized and gritty.

We rode on what seemed like the longest pedestrian bridge ever, over the rail yard and the highway with a view of the Strip. The end of the bridge can be seen on the left center above.

The only thing about this trail is that their trail maps are miniscule and not well placed. Peering down to see where we were was always a challenge!

Another day, we drove out to artwork in the desert south of the Strip called Seven Magic Mountains. The artwork is by Ugo Rondinone, and has something to do about the continuity and solidarity between man and nature. I captured six of the seven “mountains” in this photo.

This little boy laboriously building his own Seven Mountains was more inspiring to me.

Last, but certainly not least: we have family everywhere, it seems. Cal found a distant cousin a few years ago who lives in Las Vegas. He had met Andy on an earlier trip to Vegas, but it was my first time meeting him, his wife Iris, and their son Daniel. We went out for dinner one night and got to know one another better. Daniel took this picture of us. I could for sure see the family resemblance between Cal, Andy, and others in his family.

I’ve covered a lot of ground here, and haven’t even noted everything we did while staying in Las Vegas. The city surprised us with all that it had to offer, and the RV park at Nellis, Desert Eagle, certainly lived up to its reputation as a great place to sojourn for a little while.

Something different…a highway view from the Upper Wash pedestrian bridge

Next time – back to Arizona and the Grand Canyon

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Military Family Camping

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Sunset at FE Warren Air Force Base, Cheyenne, Wyoming

In the last blog’s look-ahead, I promised that I would be writing about Phoenix. If you were looking forward to that blog, you’ll have to wait for one more. I’d like to tell you about another aspect of our RVing experience before I dive into our Phoenix adventures.

Long ago, both Cal and I were in the Army. I did six years but he went for the whole enchilada – 20 years and retirement. That retirement has been a gift that keeps giving. The latest benefit that we’ve uncovered since we started RVing has been our ability to stay at RV parks, called Family Camps, that are on military bases nationwide. As with normal RV parks, some are jewels – from what I hear, mainly those that are located primarily on the east and west coasts. We’ve stayed at several now, some better than others. Usually we stay for the convenience of their location on the route we’re traveling. They are also a budget-stretcher. Family camps generally cost much less than what regular RV parks do. And like regular RV parks, they are all different.

Barksdale Air Force Base, Shreveport, LA

The funds for each camp are allocated by that base’s commander as part of “Morale, Welfare, and Recreation”, which is why each one is different. Some commanders make the camps a priority, some don’t. The current trend is for parks to be upgraded, or even rebuilt. This section of Barksdale’s family camp is brand-new. We were in the back row on the end, with a huge lawn all our own, very private. Barksdale gets the prize for most spacious site.

A bugler at military bases still sounds reveille in the morning, retreat at 5:00, and taps at the end of the day, but now it comes over a loudspeaker. At some bases at the Family Camp it is faint or not noticeable, but at Barksdale it was definitely attention-getting. 5:00 retreat is accompanied by the playing of the National Anthem. If you are outside, you have to stop what you are doing until the song is over.

Man emptying his trash, walking his dog, and standing at attention (facing the loudspeaker) for the National Anthem.

When we were in the Army, we would always check to see if it was near 5:00 before we would go outside, or else would do a dive for a door if we were outside and could go in. Especially in inclement weather. We are amused to find that on military bases and posts, old habits kick in; we do the same thing!

Air Force Bases are notorious for placing the family camps at the end of the flight runway. On our first day, this B-52 bomber zoomed over us right after the playing of the national anthem. What a show! Lest you think this was an every day occurance, this was a Friday and we were only here for the weekend. On weekends the bugle is silent and the planes don’t fly.

Kirtland Air Force Base, Albuquerque, NM

View of Sandia Mountains from the parade field and walking trail at Kirtland AFB

The reservation system is different for each family camp. At some, you can reserve a few months in advance, and usually active duty military have priority. Rightly so, since many of them use the family camps as a residence while they are making a move to or from other bases. It’s a much better place for kids, I think. Kirtland’s family camp, like many, is first come first serve. It makes me nervous, just showing up, but we had no problem getting a site.

I didn’t like our site at Kirtland. Because this is desert, the sites were gravel and close together. But again, we were here for just a couple of nights and weren’t at the site much. We visited our nephew Mike, who is stationed at Kirtland, and his wife. I’ve already blogged about our cable car ride up the Sandia mountains, and there are many other things to do in the city. Kirtland did have a walking track around the parade field within walking distance from our camp, and a great view of the mountains.

F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Cheyenne, Wyoming

Squeezed in at Warren

F.E. Warren was the most scenic base with the campground that needs the most updating. I presume it was built back in the 50’s or 60’s, when most people just had a tent or small trailer. It had the feel of a campground from my childhood. We were side-to-side with our neighbors here. There was a green area behind our RV that had a picnic table, but if you sat there, you had a nice view of everyone up and down the row.

This air base was originally built as Ft. Russell in 1867. It has gone from being an outpost on the lonely frontier to its current mission as a missile base, making it the oldest continually operating airbase. There’s a cemetery, and the graves do go all the way back to the 1800’s. What’s crazy is that the old buildings are still here, and any new construction is made to match, except for new housing. It was like staying in a living history museum. Today’s officers are still staying in those original homes. We saw this also at Barksdale and Kirtland, beautiful century homes that reflect the character of the region they are in.

Antelope could be seen at any time, even lounging on the officer quarters’ lawns in the evening:

The old entrance to the family camp

We were visiting nearby Cheyenne while here. In the evenings we enjoyed long walks in which we strolled out in nature or up to the parade field area that had the officers’ quarters and the other old buildings, including the large ones that housed the enlisted mens’ barracks back in the day. It was so peaceful, usually with hardly a soul about, and even the camp was quiet. There are some big meadows next to the camp, so perhaps one day it could be enlarged just a bit.

Only in a Family Camp…this was in the front of someone’s RV

Ft. Bliss, El Paso, Texas

Ft. Bliss was our first Army post stay. When I was still active duty it was considered an “armpit” assignment, not a place you’d want to be. It has 1,700 square miles and is home to the 1st Armored Division. The post is weirdly chopped up, with highways cutting through it. The Family Camp is an example of another one that has been beautifully updated. But – and this was a deal breaker for me – the highway is right in front of it, as you can see by looking carefully at the top picture. See that guardrail? Ummm… yes. I can put up with a lot of strange RV sites but highway noise, no. And it was loud. There were a lot of families living here, with loads of kids running up and down all the time, and that highway didn’t seem to bother anyone but me.

No matter, we were here for well over a week but only physically in the RV for two nights. We left it here while we drove up to Denver for Thanksgiving with our family. It was perfect for that, and we may do it again. We were able to leave it here, plugged in and snoozing, for a paltry $17 per day.

When we returned from Denver, we needed to go over to the commissary (grocery store) and Cal needed a haircut, because it is cheaper on post. We stopped in to the PX shopping area, which generally has two or three lunch choices, and our jaws dropped. This is the Army?? We have never seen an actual “food court” on a post or base, and this one boasted around 18 choices. Outside were many shops in an outdoor “mall”. It was truly amazing. I would surmise that your tax dollars have been poured into this facility not only because of the size of the post but also because of their participation in numerous overseas deployments.

Buckley Space Force Base, Denver, CO

Out on the prairie

Buckley is our “home” park. We can stay here 45 days in a season, which is nice because the two state parks that we normally spend time in make us move every two weeks. Right behind the RVs in the above picture is the airfield. But what are those weird white balls?? Golf balls? Something dropped from outer space? Actually, they house huge satellite dishes used to detect missiles and other space activity, with the white aluminum shell on the outside to protect them from the weather. There are actually ropes hanging down them to aid in brushing off the snow, and they can withstand a powerful tornado.

Cal, and our grandson, love Buckley. They can watch airplanes come and go. Our grandson loves trucks and RVs, and there are no trees at Buckley, so he can see them all at once. Very exciting, along with those big white balls!

As for me, I prefer the state park. Everything is too far away for walking except for the walking path in front of the camp. For a longer stay, I begin to feel isolated and I miss seeing trees. Accountant that I am, though, I can appreciate the savings on our budget, since staying here is half the cost of a stay at the state park. We couldn’t stay here much in 2021 because earlier in the year the camp was closed to retirees due to COVID. We’ll be adding it to our mix in 2022.

US Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, CO

I’ve saved the best for last, my favorite so far. The camp is called Peregrine Pines, aptly named for the pine forest that it is in. The campground roads wind in and around instead of being laid out in straight lines, and the park has the feel of a National Park campground. We were here only for a couple nights and definitely hope to return for a longer stay another time. It’s easy to visit the whole Colorado Springs area from here.

When I was a young soldier, my life didn’t intersect much with retirees. My friends and I would good-naturedly complain about them when we wanted to make a quick run into the commissary or PX. They would take up room in the aisles or be ahead of us in line and we had more important things to do, or so we thought. We would poke fun at retirees who spent years in the military only to take up permanent residence outside the main gates. Cal and I think it’s pretty amusing that we have become that which we once made fun of. It’s a convenience to be able to use military facilities, and a benefit that we are grateful for. We’ve met people who only stay at military camps when they travel. That would certainly be a savings, but we think there are many different places to stay on the road to experience.

Next time – Phoenix, really!