On my birthday on July 4th 2021, in order to get to Chaco Canyon with time to spend there, we headed out of the Phoenix valley at 10:30pm after attending a party for a short time. Knowing we would have to setup camp late, we reserved a 2.5 acre camping spot near the Petrified Forest National Park for $39 by AirBNB. We arrived in the area at 2:30 in the morning to find it had recently rained and the dirt roads had large puddles. Being it was dark, we had a difficult time locating the exact spot, so we parked and walked a short distance to locate our camp site. When doing so we saw frogs and woke many birds that had been resting in the bushes. We located the camp site that was equipped with a small "shade" structure that was missing the shade, a picnic table and a fire pit with a small bundle of fire wood. We returned to retrieve our truck and made our way to setup our tent.
We enjoyed looking at the stars for a bit and listening to the frogs and nearby trains before getting a little bit of sleep. In the morning we packed up and hoped the muddy roads had dried up, this was not the case. The second puddle on this narrow road, I got us stuck, due to insufficient speed. While I'm equipped with a shovel, I had yet to purchase recovery tracks. We messed around with shoveling dry dirt and rocks, but no success. We recalled the logs at camp and sent my son a short walk to bring a few. Using the logs, we were able to get free and on our way we went for the rest of our 8 day adventure. I since have purchased recovery tracks from Go Treads. I'm all about saving space and products that are made in the USA. Check them out at https://gotreads.com
