I've followed The Free Range Naturist blog for years. I enjoy the in-the-moment reporting - I often read from the end to the beginning or start at random points and move in either direction. Several locations discussed have been added to my bucket list of places to explore. I've intermittently read posts on this forum but resisted registering since I add yet another 70ish guy. I see several familiar names here from the Naktiv site.
So - my wife (Brigitte) and I (Mike) live on a small island in the Puget Sound between Seattle and Tacoma. We have 15 acres of land with pastures, forest, gardens, goats and sheep. The (cold) Puget Sound is a 5 minute walk from the house. Summers in the northwest are fabulous. Winters seem to get longer as I get older. I frequently work nude in the yard. We ride a ferry to get "off-island". I've been posting on Naktiv for 9 years (as user Mike Brown) and have a gallery with hundreds of photos. Unfortunately, when that site streamlined its engine all the notes and comments about sets of photos disappeared. Like JMF's blog, I placed a group of photos from some outing and included a discussion of the area - now all that is left is a long gallery of photos - including free range naturism in the US, Canada, Caribbean, Europe, and South America.
My parents were “free range” nudists in the 1960’s – mostly skinny dipping in mountain lakes. They discovered organized nudism in the early 1970’s and progressed from joining a landed club to organizing a travel club – Northwest Mountain Bares. I was a family member from high school on. Brigitte, born in Germany, was always comfortable with their FKK environments. Three of our combined four grown kids are comfortable with home nudism in our hot tub and sauna. One rolls her eyes and lets our grandkids run around nude at our house but doesn’t participate.
One region we have not visited (until now) is southern Arizona. Our daughter and family moved to Tucson in the last year. Since COVID limited travel, it has been two years since we have had time with the grandkids. With parents both working and kids in school we can do day trips in the area. Yesterday, based on a 4-year-old blog by Jbeegoode, we hiked the Maverick Springs trail from the lower Green Mountain trail head. Temperatures were mid 70s and as advertised trail traffic was light. We passed a guy with two dogs coming down and chatted with a ranger near the junction with the Arizona trail. He paid no attention that I held a tee shirt on my front side as we discussed the area. Later, we heard a group far below us and I slipped shorts on to walk past more than 20 people lounging around where the trail crossed over a wash. They appeared to be a group outing. As noted in trail reports, the side spur leading to the spring is more of a game trail. It is well marked with “ducks” – the stone cairns that show where someone else ended up. The concrete box at the spring contained darkly stained water. The damp hillside adjacent was covered in remains of last year’s ferns. A small pool of algae-filled water could be seen in the cleft of the drainage. We enjoyed experiencing the varied microclimates and observing the different stages of recovery from several forest fires of the last decade.
Before Tucson, we camped on the shores of Lake Mead at a primitive camping area in Kingman Wash – without the prolonged drought and overuse of Colorado River water, our campsite would have been a hundred feet under water. Wild burros came up to our campsite in the morning hoping for handouts. We hiked to Arizona Hotspring – lots of traffic on the trail and at the hot spring. Unlike past times (20 years ago) that I had been there, textiles fully dominated the space.
After Tucson, we plan to stop at Deanza Springs – another find from having read jbeegoode’s blogs – Thank you again. We enjoy both trail running and hiking – different days and goals. It looks as if we can find all sorts of opportunities there.
