Simple Living and Simple Travel

I didn’t like the bluff spot as much as I have when I stayed here in the fall. For some reason, it just felt like another place to set up camp. In the fall, it feels special. Maybe part of its allure then, is knowing those are my last few weeks with a sense of being free before moving into the state parks for the winter with designated RV sites and rules. Now, in the spring, I still have months to feel as such. It’s not as if I’m a non-comformist, it’s just that, at times, the ‘norm’ can be kinda dull. One day I drove up to the Manti La Sal National Forest looking for possible places to camp in warmer weather. There are plenty of places for RVing up there along the main forest roads off rt46. There’s plenty of places to turn off the forest roads that will generally go off 50-100 yards, opening to an area plenty wide enough for manuevering an RV. It’s pretty much scrub oak, so no shade, unless you keep driving higher into the La Sal Mtns. If you do the generator/AC thin...

One morning before I rolled out of CoR, I hiked up the mesa, using a game trail, which I much prefer, rather than the hiking trail, and then around the top rim. I stopped on the north side for a while to drink some juice and read a paperback. Nice and quiet. I stocked up at the Silver City food co-op with enough dry staples to last most of the year. I wish quinoa did not become so popular. I swear it was only a year or year and a half ago when it was less than $2 a pound and now it’s close to $7. Guano. It’s my favorite grain; sure glad a pound goes so far. I know, I know, not what you expect to see in my room-with-a-view photos. I took a spot at the Queen Mine RV Park in Bisbee for a week. It’s a small park with 25 sites, in the shape of a teardrop. Some sites are wedged in tight. Wi-fi reception varies depending where you are in the park. Some RVers live in the park for months. You can probably guess I listened to Pandora for the whole week. It’s an easy walk into Old Bisbee s...

I take a day to weed through my 5x8x4.5’ cargo trailer each winter. I exchange items, pick up some clothing and paperbacks, get rid of a few things, and top off the tires. This year I picked up my granmum’s blackthorn shillelagh which she brought over from Ireland. It’s not something that is practical for me to be hauling around—but it is WAY COOL. She was a great person. I decided to not go to the Burros for the two weeks between my two stays at CoR. Since it’s my social-fix season, I should be around people so I headed back to Oliver Lee. Sure do like the Dog Canyon hike. The park was pretty full but my favorite site was empty. I didn’t even finish setting up before I was thinking, it was kinda dumb to drive all this distance. In two weeks I have to drive all the way back. Next year I’ll go somewhere closer. I managed to get in a hike eleven of the fourteen days I was there. Racked up 60 miles in my Keen hiking boots. Definitely not something I could have done three or fou...

I’m not a campground-type person. On my 65th birthday last month, I celebrated with a six-mile hike up Dog Canyon at Oliver Lee SP and did 1000 reps of various leg, delt, pec, and core exercises. Not anywhere near the stuff Jack LaLanne did to celebrate his birthdays but probably better than most of those my age. Not all that shabby for both a cancer and transplant survivor. I also had a glass of wine from a bottle of 7 Deadly Zins (which Larry and Judy suggested a while back), very tasty. Had my first physical since 2001; weighed in at 20 pounds less than when I graduated high school. I love not being part of the ‘norm.’ I used my last loaf of Dave’s Killer bread that I picked up in Moab; life is over. Guano. At least I have my freezer back. Remember I’ve said that I don’t tend to relate to solo full-timers who don’t have a pet? Often there is something missing when caring for an animal/human on a daily basis is not part of one’s life. I realized that I also don...

If you were at Bottomless or Brantley SPs in the past year or so, you might have noticed a family living in a 13’ x 27’ tent with an 11’ vestibule. Well, I went over to Diana and Ross’s site (yep, hard to forget their names) a couple weeks ago as they were striking their tent for the last time. Ross works in the oil industry around Artesia and the family rented a U-Haul trailer every two weeks to move back and forth between the two state parks. Diana home schools the two girls. They found a house to rent in a decent area of Artesia and are going to settle in for a while. They liked the lifestyle, although the summer was tough, and at some point will come back to it or get an RV. The day after I got back to Bottomless, the water was turned off, the bathroom/shower was closed, and the wi-fi was down—merry christmas. Then two days with highs in the 20s, when it’s usually in the 50s. Had to run the furnace to heat up the area where the gray water tank is until it thawed out and I c...