Monday, February 24, 2014

Finding Campsites On The Tandy Hills

This morning during my hot tub hydrotherapy session the session was held under a sky covered with fast moving clouds. No wind was blowing on the surface, at my location, which made it seem odd and oddly hypnotic watching the fast moving clouds, high above.

The clouds are being blown in in preparation for the predicted precipitation that is predicted to arrive later today or at least by tomorrow morning.

With rain incoming I thought it sounded like a good idea to get in one more high speed hill hiking session before the arrival of mud.

So, I drove myself to the summit of Mount Tandy, on the east side of the Tandy Hills Natural Area and hiked to the west side of the Tandy Hills Natural Area.

A short distance from the cable fence which marks the boundary on the west side of the Natural Area I came upon the abandoned campsite you see above. The abandoned campsite looked to have been recently lived in, judging from what looked to be fairly fresh burned remains of a campfire.

To the north of this abandoned campsite, a few hundred feet, I came upon the remains of another abandoned campsite.

The first abandoned campsite was fairly close to Ben Street and not a long haul over difficult terrain to get to the spot where one was hauling in ones camping material. The second abandoned campsite was more secluded and would have entailed a lot of effort to haul in ones camping material.

I'm assuming these were the campsites of homeless people.

Last April a Fort Worth cop showed up just as I was ready to leave the summit of Mount Tandy. The cop asked me if I'd seen any homeless camps in the east side of the Tandy Hills. I told the cop that the east side was not a likely location for homeless camps, but that I'd seen campsite setups on the west side of the trail that leads into the park from View Street. The cop told me there had been multiple home break-ins in the area and he thought it might be homeless people doing the break-ins and using the Tandy Hills as their hangout.

This seemed unlikely to me.

I have never noticed a "NO CAMPING" sign anywhere in the Tandy Hills zone. Is it some sort of crime to do so?

1 comment:

Ant said...

As far as I know sleeping in public is not illegal in Fort Worth, but being in a park after a certain time of night is.