Canyon of the Eagles Review

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We arrived at the Canyon of the Eagles on Monday, Labor Day, after most people had long cleared out. The signs coming into the park didn’t make it exactly clear where to check in, though I figured the one labeled “Resort Area” probably pointed to the front office. Rather than risk getting the rig into a place where it would be difficult to get out of, I decided to skip that area and proceed until I found a sign pointing to the RV area. Since we didn’t know our site number, I called the front office and obtained our number, then proceeded to drop the trailer off and set up before heading back up to the resort area to complete the registration. Registration was quick and the host was both nice and informative.

The RV park only contained four RVs when we arrived yesterday, and one of them left today. No more have arrived so there are only four rigs in the park, including us. One of them doesn’t look like it has anyone staying in it. It is a newer Montana 5er, so it isn’t an eyesore, but the slides are all in and there hasn’t been a vehicle parked around it that we’ve seen. The other two appear to be full timers, which I didn’t know they allowed here. They have the more permanent accommodations you’re used to seeing with people who set up shop for a while. While I love parks with trees, they need to be trimmed back quite a bit, as you can’t drive a 12’6″ or taller rig through here without scraping the roof, and especially not one over 13’4″ like ours. Fortunately we have the FlexArmor roof so I don’t have to worry too much about it.

We took a couple mile hike after we got back from registration, on mostly well maintained trails with good trail markers and a nice map that we obtained at the main office. We didn’t see much wildlife on our hike, during the heat of the day, but saw some massive mounds of ants that we had to leave the trail to stay clear of. Because of the heat we cut the hike short and headed back to the rig.

About an hour before dark, we took a little driving tour, which lead us down a gravel road past a closed and locked gate for the Eagle Eye Observatory. We turned around at the end of the dead-end road and on the way back noticed that the gate had been opened. Curious, we drove on down to the observatory. We met a guy down there that was just opening up the observatory for the night, and since we were the only ones there for quite a while, we spent an hour or more conversing personally about the stars and planets. He showed us the two telescopes they have: a 12.5″ Dobsonian and a 16″ Cassegrain, as well as his personal 11″ Cassegrain that is set up for astro-photography. After it got a little darker, he focused on the moon, Mars, and Saturn, and pulled up several interesting short videos about the scale of the stars and the known universe. We used a star map to find some stars and when a few other people began to trickle in used a laser pointer to point out all the Zodiac constellations we could see. We had to leave since we weren’t expecting to stay as long as we did and needed to return to the dogs, but will be going back when he opens up for Thursday and Friday nights. A while ago I did a lot of research and nearly bought an 8″ Celestron Cassegrain to deep dive into the hobby, but realized it’s one of those that turns into a time sink and money pit very quickly; I have enough of those already (though astronomy may still make the list).

This evening we drove around the camp, taking all the campsite access roads, looking for a good place to observe the sunset. We saw a lot of wildlife and took several pictures, and are posting a few of the better ones here.

This resort is really nice. It has a nice restaurant, gift shop, cabins, and some beautiful views. However, they used to offer Kayak and SUP rentals, and still advertise such on their site, but no longer do, and the trees in the RV area are in desperate need of trimming, and for those two things I would have to take off a star if rating from one to five. It is a solid four with all things considered.

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