Forest Road 634 Camping- Sacramento Mountains, Lincoln National Forest

 There many miles of backroads, most in pretty good shape, in the Sacramento Mountains. Along those roads in the Lincoln National Forest are many beautiful spots for dispersed camping. The only problem is: it's definitely not a secret anymore. While many folk trampled down the same places right outside of Cloudcroft, or used the quickly filled designated campgrounds, many others are in the know that five, ten or fifteen miles away await beautiful, usually peaceful spots in clearings beside narrow, gravel country lanes.

 We got out to one early (before lunch) on Friday. It was a nice wide spot on FR 634, big enough to  easily pull our little trailer around to the back end where there would be a shady forest of fir trees.

Luckily, it wasn't quite big enough that some other camper, many of whom passed by the next two days eyeballing the site, would have felt comfortable setting up as well Although be forewarned, sometimes, especially on long weekend, folks get desperate and do some weird things in the Sacramento and Smokey Bear districts of the Lincoln.

 It was a nice trip. We walked on old, mostly abandoned roads nearby in the mornings and evenings. On Saturday morning we hiked a nice shady section of the Rim Trail ( FT 105) from the FR 634 crossing north to the parking area directly across from Russia Canyon Road ( FR 247). We encountered three motorcyclists and two bicyclists but no other hikers.

 There was a lot of broken glass at our campsite and we picked most of it up, while marveling at the inconsiderate nature of some people ( let's be honest here: men, mostly likely young men) who were not just content to litter, which would have been preferable, but leave behind hundreds of shards of blue, green and brown bottles at a site that gets a fair amount of use, sometimes by families with pets and children.
 Another oddity worth pondering was several fire rings of various ages at the site. I have never felt the need to build a fire ring when there was already one there, but apparently some people ( men, I would guess again) do, as if modifying or repairing existing one wasn't good enough for their purposes.
 We weren't sure if fire restrictions were still in place (they weren't), but we couldn't smell anyone else having fire, and really it wasn't cool enough to have one, unless you were just really desperate to toast marshmallows.
 It was peaceful for sure. No partying type campers showed up in our little neck of the woods. It was a little hot, even at over 9100 feet to do much for most of the afternoon, but the evenings were delightful and once the half-moon had set, the stars and the Milky Way were a joy behold. A local hummingbird visited both days. A butterfly landed on the flower pattern on my wife's shirt. The clearing had abundant elk scat, but we only saw one, a young male, on our last morning there.