The Angry Ranger Story

Some of you may have seen my status on Facebook earlier this week about our disappointing Memorial Day camping trip. As promised, I am blogging today to tell the story of the state park ranger who ruined our weekend.
Early last Saturday afternoon, Matt and Alissa and I and our friends Nick and Carlene arrived at our reserved campsite at Golden Gate Canyon State Park (GGCSP) for a long awaited weekend camping trip that we had on the calendar for months. We wasted no time setting up our tents and unpacking our cars. A couple hours later, we noticed a state park ranger approaching our campsite. He noted several violations in our campsite, including our three tents on the pad (only 2 are allowed) and the fact that we had Perdi teathered around a tree with her leash. He asked us to take down a tent and tie Perdi to the picnic table, which we immediately did. He left shortly after that. We were slightly annoyed at this, but didn't really think much of it for the remainder of the afternoon.
We enjoyed our afternoon, playing board games, snacking and having a couple cold beers. We noticed that some storm clouds were rolling in, so we hung up a tarp over our picnic table to have shelter from the rain. It ended up raining and hailing for a couple hours. We were cold and miserable, but we stayed pretty dry! It even hailed for a while, so we were especially glad to have the tarp up.
At dusk around 9:30 pm, I went to the Highlander to put some food away so we didn't attract any bears. I noticed the ranger's truck pull up as I was heading back to the campsite. Two rangers got out of the truck and headed directly to our campsite, which was set back in the woods a little bit and not visible from the road. I got back to the site before them to warn everyone that our ranger friend was back.
This time, he had a really bad attitude with us. He asked us why we had the tarp hung up in the trees. We reminded him of the hailstorm and said we would take it down right away. He asked us if we had ever camped in the state parks before and we said we had camped there on numerous occasions. He also asked if we had ever been approached by a ranger before, and we said no. He really thought that was funny...he asked us if that was the case, then did we remember what he had just talked to us about yesterday. Since we had arrived at the park that very afternoon, we had no idea what he was talking about. We told him he had talked to us earlier that day and that we had complied with his requests, but he didn't seem to remember that. He had it in his mind that he had paid us a visit the day before, and that we were deliberatley disobeying park rules.
We were all really flustered by then, as we were no more in violation of camping rules than any other campsite. (lots of people had trash bags and clotheslines hanging in the trees and one campsite with a family was way over the six person limit.) What really freaked me out was when the ranger asked if we were aware that quiet hours were at 10 pm. Since it was about 9:35 by this point, we didn't know why he was asking. Matt politely asked if anyone had complained about us being too loud, as we tend to have animated conversations at times. I thought the ranger was going to use a taser on Matt for asking that question. But he said that there had been no complaints. We told him that we would observe quiet hours and the rangers left without visiting any other campsites with the same "violations" (or worse) than ours.
We were angry and perplexed after that confrontation. We had not been being loud or obnoxious. Frankly, we had been sitting under a tarp in the rain for hours not doing much of anything. We tried to think of ways that we were over-reacting or being dramatic. But the fact of the matter was clear: we were the only "young" group of campers in a campground full of families and older couples. We had clearly been targeted because of our age, with the assumption that we were there to be loud, drink and party all night. Ironically, we went to bed shortly after the ranger left. We didn't feel like staying up to risk another visit.
We had a nice conversation with the head ranger the next morning. Ranger Todd asked us to provide written documentation of what happened. He even came to our campsite and picked it up himself. Finally we were being treated with respect! Ranger Todd promised to address the ranger who had visited us the previous evening and apologized for how we had been treated.
We decided not to stick around and find out if he would follow through with his promise. We didn't want to risk another night filled with visits from that ranger, since we knew he would be on duty again after talking to Ranger Todd. We took a quick hike, packed up and left. Luckily, we were able to salvage the rest of our weekend with Alissa, but she still didn't really get to experience camping with us, which was the main point of her trip.
I wrote a two page letter to the Colorado State Parks Board on Tuesday and mailed it to the Denver Admin office as well as GGCSP. The way we were treated was completely unwarranted and very frustrating to five responsible adults who simply needed a couple days of solitude and relaxation in the Rocky Mountains.
Some children go through an "awkward" age. I know I certainly did, probably for most of my childhood. :) But I believe that we twenty-somethings are still in an awkward period in our lives. We are working HARD at so many aspects in our lives: careers, relationships, educations, friendships, and on and on. We want to be taken seriously. We want to prove to the world that we are responsible and capable and that we can handle it all and succeed. And, like anyone else, we just need a chance to get out of computer/cellphone/reality and relax for a while. It is so upsetting to me that five twenty-something friends can be written off as loud drunken partiers with just a simple glance. That is all it took for that ranger to judge us.
GGCSP used to be my favorite place to camp. It is beautiful and set way up high in the mountains. The scenery is breathtaking. At least it used to be. I hate to say it, but I don't know if I will be able to go there again without feeling the dissapointment of last weekend.