An abandoned camp site at Lake Orchid

From Albania I made a short trip to North Macedonia and Lake Orchid. In this area there were none of the small mountain roads I use mainly in Albania to go offroading and to find cool spots to stay for a night or two. On the way I took around the lake, all official camp sites were closed because of the winter off season.

But then in the dead end of a small road directly at Lake Orchid, I found this abandoned camp site. It is really crazy because everything is still there. The reception building, the rest rooms, the small bungalows, wrecked caravans etc.

I had a lot of fun just going around and exploring this special place. By the way the lake and my spot were really cool, too. Rosinante parked right on the former volleyball field at the beach. After a morning run I tried to take a swim, but the water was cold like crazy.

At the evening three very friendly police officers knocked at my door, checked my id and we had a short but nice conversation about the Rosinante and the region around Lake Orchid and they had no problem with me staying on the volleyball field.

A solar storm and more in little Montenegro

I did not know much or anything about Montenegro. It’s a really small country with lots of mountains and fine it’s somehow cute.

I found this awesome spot that is not reachable with every car. At least I would not want to reach out with any car. But you never know: the locals are going all sorts of crazy tracks with there VW Golf, which are very popular here. After I arrived at this spot a storm started. My weather app claimed that there were wind gusts with about 81 km/h. When there storm started I decided to pull down the roof and this was as difficult as never before and a very good decision. Rosinante was shaking like a spaceship in a heavy solar storm!

Washing day and I knew that these ski sticks would come in handy for different use cases.

There is one main road going art the coast line and through wonderful small cities. Btw: 500GB mobile traffic cost 10€.

Montenegro means “Black Mountain” and I think the name fits quite well. The rocky mountains often have dark rocks and are covered with dark forests. It looks amazing. And in front of the small coastal road there are tiny isles with just a couple of houses or one church on them.

Offroading was a quite restricted and if I see a sign like this I take it serious. And I think that’s good because the road after the sign really got heavy as seen on the photos.

Taking the last part to the summit on foot through these foggy mountain forest was cool.

Above 1200m there was still snow and ice and some of the roads were blocked so hard by snow that going there was to risky for me or maybe even impossible.

So I decided to head on to Albania where a lot of offroad routes are below 1000m.