Camping in Goreme

We got to Goreme, the main destination in Cappadocia, in fine order, and headed to the Goreme Open Air Museum, the main sight, theorizing that we could spend a free or low-cost night in its parking lot. This worked out fine, and gave us some insight to just what a mad-house Goreme can be even in the off-season. Happily, the tour buses left by 7PM, and we had the place to ourselves.

The Goreme Open Air Museum parking lot, next morning;

we are parked, grid-locked, at the bottom left; but it was OK;

we were touring the museum

It being time to wash, water, dump, etc., we spent the next

two nights at the very nice Kaya campground, overlooking

the Meskindir and Rose Valleys, Goreme, and practically

everything else in Cappadocia

Meskindir Valley, from our campsite

A few of the nearby "fairy chimneys"

Not all that far away, Mt. Erciyes, whose eruptions millions

of years ago laid down the dominant surface rock layers of

the area; differential erosion has done the rest; it is nearly

13,000 feet high, almost perennially snow-covered, known

to the Hittites as "White Mountain"; only Ararat, in

eastern Turkey, is higher

The campground had other advantages, including a market,

a rug store (!), and bunches of grapes hanging from arbors
all around; ripe, too