Skunk Lake Camping

So due do our not entirely conventional work situation and the fact that our weekends from now until forever are pretty scheduled, we've decided to start taking short camping/fishing trips during the week. Since we haven't done much fishing or camping since moving here, we just picked a random place. This week's pick was Lynx Lake, which will forevermore be known as Skunk Lake. More on that later.

So Skunk Lake is just outside of Prescott, AZ, which is about a 90-minute drive from home. So after my Tuesday conference call ended, we threw all of the stuff in the car and headed out. The camping area was more expensive than we usually go for ($18 a night) but it was also more developed than we usually go for (stairs and LOTS of outhouses and designated fire pits, etc.).

As soon as we go the tent set up and gave the kids some food, we headed straight down to the lake, which was a very quick hike thanks to Jacob's planning and selection of campsite. The fishing looked very promising but in the end was pretty unfruitful. Jacob did catch several small (about 3 - 4 inch) fish - we cut one up and tried to use for it bait with the bigger ones that were jumping up out of the lake, teasing us, but no luck. In the meantime, the kids were WONDERFUL and just played on the shore of the lake and got disgustingly muddy. After the kids just couldn't take anymore and we were pretty sure that the big fish were just trolling us, we headed back to camp to our back up dinner of hot dogs.

In the middle of cooking and eating said hot dogs, Jacob jumps around like something just stabbed him in the ankle. Nothing had actually stabbed him in the ankle, but there was a HUGE beetle crawling up his leg. Seriously, this thing was nasty. Once that drama passed, we were once again roasting and eating our hot dogs when Jacob says almost too calmly and too loudly, "Cari, don't move." So of course, I figure I either now have one of those giant beetles on my back or he was just being really, really mean and trying to make me think that I did. I gave into my more girly instincts and started jumping up and down and ran toward him.

So guess what. No beetle. A skunk however? Why yes.

There was a skunk underneath our picnic table no more than 2 feet from me. As calmly as I could, I gathered the kids up and moved out of range while Jacob tried to figure out what the creature was doing. In a move that shocked us all, he didn't spray us, but ran away when Jacob threw a rock at him. After the excitement died down from that and Jacob yelled to the other campsites to be careful, we settled back into our hot dogs.

But about 30 minutes later, here comes the skunk again! It didn't get as close this time before Jacob scared it off. Again, we were pleasantly surprised about not getting sprayed. About this time, the kids had been asking to go to sleep, so we had a quick family talk and decided that we'd try to stay the night even though there was obviously a skunk in the area. I mean, it had already come by twice - how many more times would it get brave enough to visit?

The answer: 16 times. And no, I'm not kidding. About the fourth visit, I had backed away and Jacob was following the skunk to make sure it got farther away from our camp when I told him I found it over on the other side by the campfire. To which he replied that he still had skunk Alpha in his sights about 10 feet away. So what do you know, there's two skunks.

And wait! There's more! By the last sighting before we went to bed, we counted FOUR, yes that's right, FOUR different skunks hanging around our campsite. We had stayed up late to do some star and planet gazing with our new telescope (got a great view of Jupiter!) and eventually Jacob just got a big pile of rocks near our chairs for whenever the little bandits got close. And somehow, we never got sprayed, though tails went up several times. Even after we went to bed, we could still hear them moving around in the campsite and walking next to the tent. It made for an interesting night's sleep. The fact that our air mattress couldn't seem to hold a full helping of air also made it interesting, but the ground wasn't that hard and was pretty even, so we lived.

After our eventful night, the next day was pretty relaxed. We got up, ate a nice breakfast of Spam and eggs, and broke camp. Then we drove down to the creek where the map said we could pan for gold. We didn't find any ourselves, but we did run into a nice man from Tucson who had found some. In fact, he told us he had been there for 5 days panning for gold. Interesting people you meet while camping. Then on our hike out of the creek, we met another nice woman who was on the hike to "scatter the ashes of her departed hiking companion". Again, such interesting people.

 We then decided to try one more hike even though the kids were tired to these ruins at the top of the "mountain" (after living in Utah, it was a small hill, but whatever). I had fun finding all of the plants in the little pamphlet at the trailhead and the view from the top was pretty cool. We're not entirely sure how those rocks count as "ruins" but we're not anthropologists. We also saw this cool horned lizard on the trail.

After that we were on our way home and back to work. It was a good trip despite the skunks. It'll probably be another week or two before we can go again, but we're excited to keep having these short family camping trips. We might even go back to Skunk Lake again sometime, but we'll definitely be staying in the other campground and bringing something a little harsher than rocks to take care of the skunks should they have a repeat performance.