Simple Living and Simple Travel

Well August started off with a twist. I got evicted. Lightning started a forest fire in the next canyon to the south. Hot Shot crews, 10 smoke jumpers, eight 20-person crews, a Type 1 helicopter, a Type 2 helicopter, and two Type 3 helicopters were assigned to the fire. Last night it came over the ridge and started burning down into South Willow Canyon. I took the night shot from in front of my camper at 4:00 am when one of the Hot Shot crews stopped by to give me a heads up. Everyone in the canyon was told to leave. When I left, the fire was close to the top two, of six, campgrounds. Now I hear it is two miles down the canyon. That would take in four campgrounds and possibly the old guard shack if it reached down to the road. We’ll see what’s left when I get back up there next week. I’m presently visiting friends in Salt Lake. One good point is that the fire crews rescued the lost dog. Rizzlo was out on his own for over a week coping with a night of thunder, lightning, and pouring rai...

Well, been here a month and its been okay. A lot of rattlesnakes, though. After seeing and hearing about over twenty, I stopped keeping track. Maybe I should learn how to milk venom to pick up some extra pocket change. There has not been any problems with them so most campers just leave them alone. Never thought I would be shooing rattlesnakes off the road with a broom so they would not get run over. Can one carry ahimsa too far? Don’t really think so. Fewer rowdy groups coming up. Most notable was probably the two groups up one Saturday night. Starting dealing with that situation at 12:30 when a camper drove down and gave me a heads up. Got back to bed at 2:30 am. Needless to say, when the alarm went off at 5:00 am, I did not get up and go out for a run. Had a fabulous hour the next morning going around talking with the campers in the other five sites affected by these lowlifes. Been getting a nice 3 1/2 to 4 hour hike in each week on my day off. Generally nice and quiet duri...

Maxed out on the RV park so went off and dry camped for a couple nights in the Uintah’s before heading to my first campground position. Nothing special but at least there was breathing room. Good grief, how most can do RV parks all the time is beyond my comprehension. My trail runs are still giving me a beating&#151must be taking a full body slam to the ground two out of three runs. Sure do miss the mere tripping and stumbling from when I had foot speed. At least I’m seeing some progress towards my goal. Then there is the tick factor. With all the sage (tick heaven) around, I have to remember to check my body and clothes whenever I get back from a run. A couple of times I missed one and didn’t notice till later after it was dug in. For joy. The camper tires were three years old so got some new ones just to play it safe. Do too many dirt roads to mess around with questionable tires. There was still too much snow up at Bountiful Peak so they asked me to fill in at South Willow camp...

Have to stay in a RV park for two months, definitely not my favorite thing, but as you can see, for an RV park, it is not all that bad. When I got here at the end of March, the dirt roads out on public lands were under snow and now they are WAY too muddy. Am definitely chompin’ to get out and dry camp. Doesn’t look like I’ll be doing any of it until after my primitive campground host job ends at the end of September. If you use Google Earth, type in latitude: 40°58'54.29"N and longitude: 111°48'23.08"W. Will be nice there&#151but it’s not the boonies. Once the snow melted in the RV park, I moved to this site along the edge by a wooded section. Aren’t any other rigs in this corner so I let Meadow and Onyx out a couple times a day. They were sure ready after a month of walks on a leash. This site also has access to plenty of deadfall. Any night it isn’t too cold has me sitting out by a small campfire. I get in some decent hiking a few days a week over in Midway. No...

Springtime, time to start thinking of heading north. It’s nice to take a month or two to make the trip. This year, however, that time came WAY too early. My first job was in Park City, UT, starting at the end of March. Having lived in Park City in the past I knew what it was going to be like but it still felt like getting use to winter all over again. Down around Bisbee and Naco, AZ, I was wearing T-shirts and watching roadrunners. I pulled out Don Wright’s book and DeLorme AZ and UT map books and planned the route up. Wright’s book is pretty good but even with the current edition, many fees will be higher than those stated in the book. Also, sometimes a place listed in the book is no longer there. So, anyway, it has its faults but it is still a very useful resource for those who don’t like staying in RV parks. I probably find most of my camping spots with just DeLorme, anyway. BLM land and forest roads are easy to see. One thing to keep in mind if camping on BLM land that is used a...

Here’s a list of items mentioned in the previous entry that I find useful for full-timing in a small trailer. Low Rider chair, either a Remington furniture chair from SLC, UT OR a chair from Blue Ridge Chair Works in Asheville, NC 7-gal Reliance water jug (I have 3 7-gal, 1 4-gal, and 1 2-gal jugs) (I’m no longer a fan of the 7-gallon jugs > read the October 2012 entry) I keep a 4’ hose handy for filling the Reliance water jugs when refilling the Reliance jugs from 5-gal buckets, a grain funnel purchased from a feed/ranch supply store works well. For a narrow neck, cut down an oil refill funnel Coleman stove (I have the old fuel type stove) (May 2012 update – If one will be doing one-pot meals, get a single-burner stove. I have yet to use the second burner so I purchased a single-burner stove and will be dropping my two-burner Coleman off at a thrift store) small one-piece European surplus shovel steel feed pan for campfires—CAL Ranch store $1 box of birthday candles for ...

Different friends, acquaintances, and others who have come across my blog have asked for more details of the lifestyle of dry camping and living-on-wheels in a small rig with two felines. This entry talks about breaking and setting up camp, ideas on dry camping, meeting people, ongoing tasks, keeping in touch, staying active, and other things to give an idea of what it’s like day to day. When I first started thinking about doing this back in 2005, there was not really a whole lot of info on the web that I found to be useful. Even now, just about all of the full-timing sites are geared to large rigs and living in RV parks. Even the sites on boondocking and dry camping focused on all the gear one could pack into a much larger RV. I found them pretty worthless. Then again, I have a camper’s mindset, not an Rver’s mindset. I want this to be informative and somewhat entertaining so I’m using some writer’s leeway here. Everything that I state does/has happened. I’m just putting it all in...