jmcampervan

Coda

2009-10-05T01:54:00.003-04:00

i sold the van last week. today while riding the bus i saw the van parked in an autodetailing lot. it had been stripped of its stripes and was between two other white vans.

a few things conspired to result in the end of the van trip. my original plan, as i described on this blog, was to find a parking space in seattle and go from there. i never succeeded at that. seattle is a very busy city and its oversaturated in cars. that's my impression, anyway. parking spaces in any meaningful part of the city simply didnt exist. not to mention that seattle has an ordinance against vehicles over a certain length being parked overnight on the street.

i took a trip down to portland just to regroup. but i wound up staying. i reclaimed my old van spot, the one i utilized in april, which gave me access to internet, coffee, a gym (showers) and a downtown strip. it was all right. then one day i happened to look at the registration sticker on my windshield and i realized it was about to expire. within 3 weeks.

i wrote up my options. i could renew the registration online, but it would cost me $160. but the inspection sticker was also about to expire and that was a pisser. i would need a RI inspection sticker, i learned, and clearly i wasnt going to get that in portland.

my conclusion, after a lot of considering, was that it was time to let go of the van and start a new life here in portland. so i started that process. i found a room which i populated with the bed and decorations from the van. i sold or traded the rest off the van merchandise. cleaned the van. and put it up for sale.

it was the wrong season to sell it as a campervan. nobodys buying campervans in autumn. i tried to advertise it as a work van. with the hi-top and battery system, it could be an excellent work van. for whatever reason, i got no takers. nobody even emailed me with questions. i lowered the price and still nothing. maybe the leak scared people off... i dont know.

finally somebody called. he wanted it for a work van. i sold it to him that day. the van was worth more than the bastard paid but that's life. i had to let it go and move on.

so that's that. i wont deny that selling the van caused me some serious internal psychodrama. it had been such a loyal and trustworthy van. i hated giving it away to these strangers, especially since it was going to become a workhorse. but, i guess the van had some good adventures with me. it got to drive cross-country 3 times. it saw everything i saw and i saw some great stuff.

that's that. i'll leave this site up as a resource. thanks for reading and for all your positive feedback. take care,

JM

It's over.

2009-09-26T15:57:00.003-04:00

That photo could have been from exactly 1-year ago. Instead, it's from this morning. The van is empty and for sale. I'm living in an apartment in Portland. And the adventure is over.

I think once (if) I sell the van, I'll do a more involved entry about what motivated me to call it quits. For now, I just wanted throw this message up as a quick and somewhat bittersweet update.

What will become of this site? I don't know. I presently have no plans for it.

Thanks for reading,

JM

Rain Forest Adventure!

2009-08-31T15:51:00.006-04:00

if you've been checking this blog lately and finding no updates, i apologize. so here comes a long and colorful one for you.

long story short, i drove to seattle. the next day, 2 life-long buddies of mine, DS and MCM, flew in from the east coast for a backpacking adventure on the Olympic Peninsula and Canada.

the Olympic Peninsula (OP) is a humongous chunk of land west of Seattle. there's a little road that winds around it, but the most of the land is rain forest and mountains and is only accessible if you hike in. its a great and weird frontier which doesnt seem to belong in the continental United States. it's both a National Forest and a National Park. our plan was to hit the National Park for a few days, then head north and do a loop through Canada.

on the first day we loaded up our packs. we did a poor job of this. it was strange. i've had the same external frame-pack for over 10 years. i know its a bit dated as far as outdoor gear goes (it belonged to my older brother first), but in that time i never had any problems with it, either from discomfort or via organizing it. this trip, though, it was a constant nuisance. it hurt my back and shoulders, it felt big and unwieldy, i couldnt get stuff to stay on it firmly, and the big compartment seemed less than adequate. DS and MCM also had some packing difficulties.

in retrospect, we all brought far too much rain gear. since this is the pacific northwest and since we were aiming for the rain forest, we anticipated rain. but August is the dry season. it only rained once all week, and that was just a spattering during the night. the rest of the time was hot and dry and sunny.

we loaded up our needlessly heavy packs and took the bus to downtown seattle, where we checked in at the Green Tortoise Hostel. it was my 26th birthday so we did a bar crawl and got appropriately hammered (or inappropriately, considering we had a long backpacking trek ahead of us). there was some mixing of beer and whiskey, which is never wise, and when we returned to the hostel around 1 AM, my head was spinning too much to lay down. i spent an hour pacing around the corridors of the hostel waiting for my equillibrium to come back. there were other night owls up, kids from around the world, roaming like i was. i hate being that drunk. there's no joy or grace to it.

i got to bed at 2 AM. my alarm went off at 5:30 AM and we showered and packed and marched off into pre-dawn Seattle for the ferry terminal, where we eventually caught a ferry to Bainbridge Island (below).

what can i say about Seattle? where to begin? its an astoundingly beautiful city, especially on the waterfront. and its not just beautiful but its got an edge to it - its got edge and grit and style and soul. there's a free-spirit feeling to the place. all the good music and literature and coffee that's come out of there over the past 200 years is alive in the streets, its alive in the people. you look one way and see the ocean, or you look elsewhere and see Mt. Rainier's snowcapped peak in the distance. what a place.

actually getting to the rain forest is kind of a hop, skip, and a jump. i'm not going to waste your time with all the details of how we finally got out there. but we did. the first thing we stopped off at was Lake Crescent (above). Lake Crescent is off Rt 101 and west of Port Angeles, on the northern side of the peninsula. its a great lake with water like you've never seen before. the above picture doesnt do it justice. you can see straight down to the bottom. from a distance its a perfect blue-green. its looks clean enough to drink. we stopped there and dipped our feet and continued on.

The above picture is of Rialto Beach, which is in a reservation on the western shores of the Peninsula. the whole beach is strewn with huge sun-bleached logs. these are some of the biggest downed trees you'll ever see, and they're stacked helter-skelter and many trees deep, thrown there during violent storms. you can climb all over them. we went for a quick swim at Rialto just to get refreshed (it was very cold and the water is dangerous because of all the trees floating in it!).

that first day, since it was getting late, we car-camped at Mora Beach, a state park near Rialto Beach. this was a fine state park, on par with the excellent state parks I encountered up the Oregon coast. the fire ban in effect throughout the rest of the peninsula was not in effect here and we were instructed by the ranger to collect driftwood to burn.

the next day, we parked at the Hoh Rain Forest visitor center and backpacked into the rain forest. the photograph at the very top of this post is from that area of rain forest. we pulled off the trail at the Happy Four campground, a small site between the trail and the Hoh River. it was one of the most beautiful backcountry sites I've ever seen. it was truly a once-in-a-lifetime camping spot. we pitched our tents in the sand on an embankment over the river. there was a fire ban in this area, so we had to rely on our headlights and candle latern once the sun set, but it was OK.

the only problem with Happy Four was the bear situation. bears, raccoons, and other scavengers are active in the Hoh Rain Forest, and they want your smellables (food, toiletries, etc). you've got to either hang your belongings from a very high tree to make them out of reach or rent an airtight bear canister from the rangers. before we left on the trip, we discussed our route with a ranger, and he assured us that Happy Four would have a built-in bear wire (a metal cable strung tree to tree, with wires hanging off it for you to string up your smellables). so we declined renting a bear can and didn't even pack a length of rope.

you should never go into the woods without rope. it's one of those essentials like a knife or first-aid kit, stuff you bring whether you anticipate a need for it or not. this was our mistake.

so we were at Happy Four, the sun was setting, and I set out to find this bear wire. it's always wise to find the bear wire before dark. you dont want to be out there at 10 PM with your flashlight shining the trees and tripping over branches searching for it. i walked around the whole campground twice, and even went out to the trail, and couldnt find it. i told MCM and DS that i couldnt find it, so they went out and searched, and also couldn't find it.

so we had no bear wire, no bear can, no rope, and a whole lot of smellables. it was time to improvise. ultimately, we filled a stuff-sac with our smellables, attached it to the end of a huge branch, then raised up this branch and looped the stuff-sac onto a tree. this took about 30 minutes and involved a lot of grunting and cursing. it even involved, at one point, me crawling onto DS's shoulders to try to reach up and guide the bag into the branch. but we did it and in the morning we found our smellables were unmolested.

ABOVE: DS cooking our pasta dinner on a backpacking stove at Happy Four. the mosquitoes were a nuisance, hence the bug netting over his face.

the whole rain forest adventure lasted 4 days. it was a great success. i endorse the OP as a hiking and travel destination. one note on weather, though. as i said earlier, this is the dry season. that made for beautiful, dry days - perfect for camping. but as far as the ecosystem was concerned, the flora and fauna were very stressed. i had visited the OP once before, in March, when it was raining all the time, and the colors were far more vibrant. in March the OP seemed to be exploding with color and life. in August, it was spectacular, but didn't have the same vibrancy because of how dry it was.

we left the rain forest and took a ferry across the Strait of Juan De Fuca to reach Victoria in British Columbia. at the Canadian Customs Office, the 3 of us were singled-out to be searched for drugs. this was no surprise as we were three dirtbag backpacker young people. i expected as much and didn't necessarily blame them for choosing us. we were led into a backroom of the Customs office and then split up among 3 different agents. my agent was very harsh. he had a "bad cop" vibe going as far as how he talked to me. i wasn't nervous because i didnt have any drugs or contraband or subterfuge, but he still kind of scared the shit out of me. its hard to stay relaxed when a Customs agent is waving a finger in your face and accusing you of being a druggie. (the good news is that the whole incident will always be a funny story to tell people).

they searched us and found nothing since we had nothing and then released us into Victoria. we took a taxi up the island to reach Swartz Bay where we caught another ferry into the gulf islands. this ferry took us to Mayne Island, where we had a reservation at an eco-campground on Seal Beach.

Seal Beach was a real delight. the owner has built a beautiful, eco-friendly campground around his gorgeous log cabin house. you camp on a very tranquil harbor (above). there is an awesome treehouse shower. they recycle and compost everything. the water was a bit too cold for swimming, but the shower was very refreshing. a fireban was in effect on Mayne Island, so again we relied on our small light devices once the sun set. we cooked rice and beans and drank a bottle of red wine (beer is always preferred but when you can't keep your booze cold and dont want the harshness of liquor you go with red wine).

the next day we woke at 5:30 AM, packed our gear, and took a ferry from Mayne Island to Tswassen Bay. from there we rode public transportation into Vancouver. we didnt have Canadian tokens but the bus drivers were very forgiving and let us ride anyway.

we had 3 beds lined up at the Same Sun Backpacker's Hostel in downtown Vancouver. we checked in there, dropped off our gear, then left on foot to explore the city. it was early (around 11 AM) so we had plenty of hours for tourism.

i'll admit we had very high expectations for Vancouver. i always imagined it completed the trilogy of awesome northwestern cities which includes Portland and Seattle. i was expecting an alternative vibe, great architecture, lots of trees, and a feeling of mystique. however, from what we saw, it really had none of those things. it was a city of concrete, litter, drab architecture, rampant homelessness, and little green space. even the famed Stanley Park was kind of dirty and depressing.

in Vancouver's defense, they are in the middle of a drought, so that could explain the drab appearance of their greenery. they are also feverishly prepping for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and so constructions was happening all over the place. and of course, 24 hours isn't really enough time to intimately get to know a city.

as the sun set, we initiated another bar crawl, but 1-2 beers in, an undercurrent of exhaustion i'd been feeling all day blossomed into a full-blown case of I-feel-like-shit. so while DS and MCM continued to party i returned to the hostel and was passed out in my bunk by 8:30 PM. i took the below picture from the window of my room in the hostel when i woke up later to pee and saw the beautiful colors on the street below.

out of Vancouver we rode a Greyhound. ironically, passing through US Customs at the Washington border was no-sweat. they didn't pull us aside or interrogate us or anything. we were waved through with the rest of the bus passengers.

we enjoyed one more night on the town in Seattle. it was Sunday, so many bars closed early, but we did find some cheap beer and greasy food at El Malecon, a fun little cantina/sports bar in downtown Seattle. then we retired and the next day we went our seperate ways.

all in all, it was an awesome trip, and we accomplished everything we wanted to accomplish. thanks, fate!

as for my future -- I'm staying on in Seattle in the van. i'll try to do a post about my explorations of Seattle soon. Thanks for reading!

catching up

2009-08-16T13:12:00.005-04:00

shortly after my last post the summer took some unexpected twists and turns. due to a family emergency, we had to fly from Phoenix to RI.

the day before we flew out of Phoenix, we needed some long-term internet access so we could buy airplane tickets online. that, plus the fact that we needed to clean the van and shower before flying out, made us decide to get a motel room. at that point were driving down the eastern edge of Utah. there were many motels along the way, many tiny towns whose economy seemed to orbit the outdoor industry. but the motels were usually too expensive.

finally in Blanding we found a little motel that was 30 bucks a night plus wifi. the lady at the desk complained that it was a bad summer for the motels in town. she claimed that people were renting RVs rather than renting motel rooms. she seemed to have a point; i saw more Cruise America rental RVs in Utah than anywhere else.

the room was just what you'd expect at $30 a night. of course, having been sweating it out in the van for a week or two it felt luxurious. TV! hot showers! a big bed! electricity! we walked up to the A&W and bought fast food then ate it in the room and began the depressing process of trying to find cheap airplane tickets. it seems like the airplane companies spike or drop the prices based on the time of day when people are most likely to buy tickets. we ended up buying tickets at some ungodly AM hour. then we high-tailed it to Phoenix.

Phoenix was burning up. night fell and it was still burning up. we slept in the van. it was a long strange feverish night. we slept, but it was a weird sleep where you're sweating profusely and kind of delirious. i kept waking up and shining the flashlight on the thermometer. it hovered between 95 and 100 in the van all night. dawn came and it thumped up to 100 and stayed there. we got up at 6. from the rays of sun coming thru the windows it felt like noon.

the we realized we'd left a wallet at the motel...

anyway, we got to RI, where it was surprisingly cool weather-wise, and we did our thing there. after 2 weeks, things were resolved, and we flew back to phoenix. i was relieved to find the campervan had survived its lonely stay in the economy lot, which cost $8/day. the interior of the van had that "toasted leather" smell which i associate with the way my great grandparents' car used to smell; they were Tucson residents.

now we're in California. readers of this blog may recall how in April I chickened out of a tour of LA. well, this time I went in! the driving was not disastrous but was indeed high-octane. within 90 miles of the city there was a perceptible change in the road vibe: people started driving faster and more aggressively, the road expanded from 2 lanes into 4 or 5, and the traffic thickened. i had to keep my wits about me. once we penetrated the city there were some crap drivers who cut me off and forced me to slam on the brakes (when you do that in a campervan you hear all your worldly possessions go crashing about behind you). but we made it to a friend's house in west LA where there was overnight parking.

in addition to visiting friends in LA, we visited the famous Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City (west LA). The museum is a deliberate blend of fact and fiction. Some of the fiction is blatant fantasy, such as an exhibit about a tropical bat which can fly through solid matter, and some is a more subtle distortion of history which leaves you wondering what exactly is real and what is not. its really genius --- imaginative, hilarious, weirdly fascinating. and affordable, at a suggested $5 donation for entry. check it out next time you're in LA!

we continued up the coast. the California coast is notoriously unfriendly toward vandwelling. the walmarts all forbid it (that's the word on the street, at least). we aimed for the town of Paso Rubles, where there was a movie theater showing "District 9" which we were itching to see. we got there and saw the movie then we decided to take a risk and just camp in the van on the street. it was a major street but in a quiet part and there were other cars parked around us which suggested you were allowed to leave vehicles out overnight.

me being me, i went for a walk to try to find a police station or cop just to get an informal OK. i figured if i was honest and told the cop that we just wanted to get some shuteye and we'd be gone by morning, he wouldn't mind. no subterfuge, you know? well, i couldnt find a cop, and since it was saturday night, the police station desk was closed. so we went to the movie then got out around 11:30 and discretly entered in the van and went to bed.

around midnight somebody pulled up behind the van and sat there with the car idling. there was the sound of a dog barking. the headlights were very bright. we lay there waiting, trying not to make any sounds or movement. this went on and on --- just some dude sitting behind us with his headlights blaring through the back windows (the back windows have translucent coverings so you can't see out or in, but light gets through). then we heard the guy get out saying, "... Shine both windows with the light..." then we heard them walking over. clearly, they were police.

so i jumped out of bed and pulled on my pants. at that point the officers had made their way to the front of the van and they were shining their superpowered maglights into the windows. and weirdly, one officer was narrating all this loudly, "... now, shine these windows, and look for any activity there. now move onto the front..."

it was strange, but i was a nervous wreck, and it happened very fast, so i didnt have much time to reflect on what was happening. i went up to one of the slider windows. "Hello, officer?" I called in a friendly tone. There was a police officer at the driver's side window, shining his light in, and another person, not in a uniform. They turned, startled. "Oh, sorry," the police officer said, "We were using your vehicle for practice. Are we cool?"

"Yes," I said.

Then they turned and walked back to their cruiser and sped off.

"What the HELL was that?" Jora asked.

My hands were shaking, I felt like puking. You'd think I actually had something to hide. "I don't know," I said, "I guess they're cool with us being here."

"Really?"

"Well, I DON'T fucking know!"

Once the adrenaline had drained out of us we sat there trying to make sense of what had happened. Ultimately, we decided to take the officer at his word - that he was just giving a lesson to a trainee - and we stayed.

nobody bothered us. morning came and we drove out of there. such is van-dwelling, i guess...

Oh, before I end this, here's my 2 cents on "District 9", the new alien sci-fi movie which everybody is really excited about. The idea is that harmless aliens crash-land in Johannesburg and become the victims of human cruelty, prejudice, bureacracy, and greed. that's a great concept, with huge potential for all sorts of commentary.

but "District 9" blows it. it's unrelentingly bleak and sadistic, with virtually no redemption at the end (there is an attempt at a redemption story, but it rings very, very false). the social commentary is aggressive, but misdirected. and sure, there's a big man vs man / man vs alien shoot-out in the end, and if you like that sort of thing, you may be titillated. but don't buy into all the hype about this movie being a more "cerebral" sci-fi tale. it's not.

thanks for reading!

westward ho...

2009-07-19T13:03:00.003-04:00

when i last left off, i was seeking out swimming holes in the southeast. that trip was actually a slow descent toward Cullowhee, NC where j. and i had enrolled in a Wilderness First Responder (WFR) certification course with Landmark Learning.

the course lasted 9 days. the theory behind WFR certification is that it prepares you for medical emergencies in the back-country when an ambulance/hospital/MD is an hour or more away. the skills are helpful, but not intended for, medical emergencies in urban environments. it was super interesting. despite being a very common certification and low-level (as far as complexity) i found it to be very in-depth. they really taught us some useful stuff.

we lived in the van at the Landmark Learning facility out in the NC mountains. the weather was fine; very cool and often rainy. as students we had 24-hour access to a student lounge which had wifi, a kitchen, bathrooms, and hot showers. if you're interested in Wilderness Medicine (WFR, Wilderness EMT, Wilderness Life Guard, etc) I definitely recommend checking out Landmark Learning. the teachers are top-notch. they really have their shit together (and at a much more affordable tuiton cost than other wilderness medicine schools).

as soon as we passed the final exam and packed up, we drove north to Knoxville. it was miserably hot and swampy there. we connected with the interstate and began the long westward trek for Arizona. the pictures ABOVE and BELOW this paragraph are of rest-stops we stayed at. the rest-stops along I-70 in the midwest can be really charming. look at that little pavilion we fixed our dinner at. it had a covered eating area, a charcoal stove, and a water pump. there was a dump station around the corner, and free WIFI in the air. and all for free. thats a better deal than many state/national campgrounds.

ive lost track of the whole sequence of days. but we inched through the midwest. we slept at many rest-stops, and some walmarts; we went to the movies. we stopped at the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in Kansas, and also did some birdwatching. then we hit Colorado and the Rockies. neither of us had seen the Rockies before. what can i say? theyre big and beautiful, very inspiring. unfortunately the towns along I-70 were vomitously touristy, and geared to the winter sports crowd (which i dont relate to).

we stopped off at Colorado National Monument for some camping/hiking. CNM is on the western edge of Colorado, not far from the Utah border. the picture ABOVE is me hiking in one of the canyons. it was very hot. and very beautiful. there were many lizards, and we saw a snake, too.

because of the heat, we set up my tent and slept in it rather than the van. it was a relief not to be crammed shoulder-to-shoulder on the van mattress. and i enjoyed seeing the stars through the screen-top of the tent. the picture ABOVE is a long exposure of the Grand Junction cityscape as seen from our campsite.

thanks for reading!

a pool, a dome, and a bug...

2009-07-03T12:29:00.004-04:00

we got out of Blacksburg and renewed the search for swimming holes. this led us to a little nature area in southwestern Virginia called Dismal Falls. it had a waterfall/swimming hole (pictured ABOVE) and some hiking and a campground (below). there were always folks at the swimming hole. dogs, too. it seemed like a popular place.

the campground was about a mile walk from the swimming hole and at the end of a gravel road. there were 2 people camped when we arrived but they cleared out and for the next 2 nights we were alone. it was free, too; a sign said it would cost $5/night but nobody came to collect it and there wasn't an iron ranger to leave cash in. there was a cool water pump at the campground i forgot to photograph. it had the traditional pump fixture but then sticking out of it was a water fountain.

we got out of there and spent a night at a walmart in some random commercial plaza. we ran into some other van-dwellers who were going in the opposite direction, toward Rhode Island. then we crossed into North Carolina and drove into (or rather up into) Stone Mountain State Park. the park was substantial. it had dozens of electric and non-electric sites and it was all beautifully groomed. there were hot showers too (free, too - no coin-op crap). we spent 2 nights on Stone Mountain and went on 2 of the hikes available in the 19 miles of trails.

pictured ABOVE is Stone Mountain's famous granite (?) dome. this giant bald thing is really awe-inspiring to see. its kind of freakish. you can see all the streaks and pits from rain run-off. im not sure what created it and why more mountains dont look this way.

on the hike we encountered this bug. he had eyes on back of his head. we urged him to move off the stairwell, fearing he'd get crushed. when prodded with a pine needle he retracted all his legs and played dead, or something like it. it was neat. we moved him into the leaves. who knows, maybe he wanted to get stepped on...

this picture ABOVE is of the Stone Mountain waterfall. there were numerous scary-looking signs warning people not to swim on or walk anywhere near it. you can see why.

thanks for reading.

south through Virginia

2009-06-27T10:33:00.003-04:00

upon entering Virginia out of DC we drove southwest in order to hit Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park. its a pretty drive that curls and bends and goes up and down across a strip of mountainous midsouth forest. the picture BELOW is from one of the many scenic views along the drive. we stopped there and hiked in the woods for a few hours before getting back on the road.

the big highlight of the drive was seeing a black bear run across the road in front of us. it wasnt a very big black bear but it was still a bear and seeing one is always kind of magical. it climbed the embankment then stopped and looked back at us over its shoulder with those weird dark thinking eyes all bears have.

we visited friends in Charlottesville and spent a night there then continued south along the Virginia and West Virginia border in search of swimming holes. we found one at Blowing Springs National Recreation area (pictured BELOW).

the water was cool, not frigid. we swam. the whole floor of the swimming hole and all the underwater rocks were covered in tiny watersnails. i like snails and kept a few as pets briefly while living in RI and it hurt my heart to feel them popping underneath my bare feet. eventually i found a clear place to stand. i was paranoid about snapping turtles even though i know they prefer murkier water. fortunately there were no close encounters except for some little fish floating up to me and nibbling on my calves.

Blowing Springs Recreation Area is named after some kind of warm-air cave across the road from the campground. the water coming out of this cave is always 53 degrees no matter the time of year. i walked across the road and felt the water; it was indeed cold. the campground was simple but well-manicured (see pic BELOW). it was $10/night and had well-water and toilets. there were other RVs and tent-campers. around mid-day an entourage arrived that looked like something out of Slab City. they had a van, a tow trailer, a car, and a converted schoolbus (!), and they set up a wall tent, a dome tent, a dining tent, a picnic table, and many chairs, and dumped out a big pile of firewood too. oddly i only ever saw 2-3 people at the site at a time...

being in the mountains as we were it was a little cooler at night. the fireflies were out and up in the trees as high as 30 or 40 feet and it looked like a big blinking wall towering over us.

we spent 2 nights at Blowing Springs. at the end of the 2nd day we both started to get a little antsy. there really wasnt much to do other than swim or lounge around the van. so today we set out early (6 am) with it in mind to reach another swimming hole / campground further south along the virginia / west virginia border.

what ensued was a weirdly "unfortunate" driving experience (to quote Jora). it looked on the map like it would take 2 or 2.5 hours at most. i was anxious to get there early and snag a site since it was a saturday. so we just woke up and took off without coffee or breakfast or anything. 1 hour passed, then 2, then 3... and according to the map we still had a trek ahead of us. what the hell? why was it taking so long? the road was very twisty and turny and the line on the map didnt do justice to all these squiggles. driving squiggly roads in the van is very stressful for me. youre constantly fighting momentum. on the downhills you fight with the brakes, on uphills the engine strains.

at 4 hours we were both unraveled mentally. the lack of caffeine, combined with the unprecedented driving time, did us in. it was one of those situations where if i'd known it was gonna be 4 or 5 hours, i would have been OK; but i didnt... so we called it quits and stopped in Blacksburg for the day. we'll try for that swimming hole tomorrow.

thanks for the positive feedback, and thanks for reading.

philly/DC

2009-06-23T23:54:00.004-04:00

A quick update from the road.

After my last entry, I spent time in RI and NJ with friends/family. This included a few trips to NYC to visit friends in Manhattan and Brooklyn (by train of course; I'd never involve the van in that). It was unusually rainy and cool in the northeast. NJ in particular seemed to be drowning in its own rain.

Not much went on with van-dwelling aside from telling people stories of my year on the road. I'm not much of an oral storyteller and I had to mentally plan which story to tell to who and how to tell it. The story I found myself telling most often was of Slab City and all its weirdness. But most of the trip involved long bouts of quiet solitude and contemplation which doesn't make for good stories.

I remembered how a year ago while preparing for the trip I kept imagining myself coming back to these places post-vantrip and seeing these people. I imagined I'd be a different man: older, wiser, and so on. I wouldn't feel angsty or amateurish and maybe I'd have a scar or two as well as a handful of crazy stories. I guess I am some of those qualities and did get some scars and stories but it doesn't seem that way. I feel like the same guy except I'm poorer and the whole "solo road trip" thing is crossed off my list of "shit to do before i die". The feelings of angst (or whatever you want to call it... hunger, uncertainty, anxiety, etc) persist and I don't really know what I want to do with my life. In "Into the Wild", Jon Krakeur talks eloquently about that sensation... he describes quitting his job to undertake a severely-difficult solo climb, barely surviving the climb, then coming back and returning to the same job and the same town and so on and so forth, with all his old problems still haunting him.

Now I'm on the road again, this time with co-pilot Jora Johnson, for another month or two of road-tripping.

First off, we visited a friend in Western Philadelphia. The friend lived in an apartment in a dilapidated old house that had no electricity but for that which the rooftop solar panels provided. This amounted to enough power for a few lights and a radio player. Water came from the city. There was a kind of camping, squatting, and city-living fusion going on there. Space was limited so I spent the night in the van alone. People walked by the van all night and some cats got into a fight underneath it (or at least it sounded that close). It's always a little unnerving van-dwelling in a new city.

The next day we walked around Philadelphia a little. I always think of Philly as being bleak, gray, and balmy, and it was all 3 of those things today. It seems like a harsh metropolis as big and complicated as NY or LA but which never achieves the lunatic-joy-chaos of those cities. I think of M. Night Shamalayan's horror movies set in Philly, or of Bukowski's poems about bar fights in Philly, or of the Philadelphia Eagles, a team known for being kind of brutal on the field. This is just my impression as a once-in-awhile visitor to the city. I know its not such a bleak place...

After getting lunch we drove to Washington DC. Jora had her first experience driving the van and did well, even in the hellish traffic surrounding the city. It was odd being a passenger. In DC we met with another friend and are spending the night in his apartment. The van is sleeping on the street below in an unmetered area.

Tomorrow we drive for Virginia...

Thanks for reading...

Back east

2009-06-04T22:55:00.006-04:00

I left Portland on Saturday morning around 8 am. I had packed the van up the night before so I just had to get gasoline.

If you've been reading this blog then you know I'm a baby when it comes to long-distance driving. I don't like to drive and I hate driving for more than an hour. Much of this year involved inching across the country hour by hour.

But for this east-bound trek I wanted simply to get it over with. I decided I'd push 'the limit' of my tolerance and see just how long I could stand it.

The result: On Saturday, I drove 12 hours. Sunday, another 12. Monday, 10. Tuesday, 10. And Wednesday, 8.

Those totals include 4-5 stops per day at a rest area to jump out, go to the bathroom, splash some water on my face, buy a coffee, and jump back in the van. On the first 3 days I stopped at 12 hours because that was around when it started to get dark out and my night-vision is poor.

The pictures on this entry show how quaint and often beautiful the rest areas along Route 84 and Route 80 are. The first picture of the cows is in Idaho. The one above, of me on the ledge, is the southern Idaho/Wyoming border.

To keep my mind occupied while driving, I listened to Podcasts on my iPod. I'd never bothered with Podcasts before; but they're really cool! Now I know why everybody else was always raving about them. The most enjoyable listening was from the "Well Told Tales" channel, which offers short stories of the sci-fi, horror, or hard-boiled variety, read aloud by professional actors, sometimes with sound effects.

Above is a truck stop I stayed at in Ohio. By the time I pulled in each night I was usually pretty fried. I'd have just enough energy left to eat a sandwich, have a drink, put on the radio, set my alarm, and pass out.

Above: self-portrait called "rest stop blues".

The hardest segment was crossing Pennsylvania on the last day. It took me nearly 7 hours. It was mountainous, rainy, and I was surrounded by trucks the whole way. Then when I crossed the Delaware River and hit New Jersey, I saw an epic traffic jam on I-80 Westbound. It was 3-4 lanes deep and at least 7 miles long. It was, I'm assuming, all the people who work in NJ/NY but live in Penn trying to get home.

Above: My cat Summit.

I'll be in NJ for a few days, then RI, then NJ again, then I'm heading down to North Carolina (and I'll post entries here about it all).

There was a very strange moment once I got into NJ and got to my mom's house. I went into the little guest room where I usually stay when visiting. It was around dusk, raining, and cold out, and I could see the van parked in the driveway, and it brought me back to when I was here in October. That was before I'd done any van-dwelling but was about to embark on the adventure. I was all anxious about shit that didn't turn out to be important at all. I had no idea what was to come. I remember sitting in that room reading about camping in the Pine Barrens. There was a tremendous feeling of uncertainty; I was on the precipice.

Now it's essentially over. Interestingly, when I think of the whole trip and try to conjure one essential image, I think back to those first few nights on the road, in the Pine Barrens of NJ, in November. Cooking the first meal. Sitting bundled-up and half-frozen in the van listening to country radio and writing in my journal. Hiking in Wharton State Forest. Maybe those days made such an impression on me because I was so electrified by the trip finally starting after so many delays and doubts.

I was thinking today how funny it feels to be living in a house all of a sudden. I feel acutely aware of the floor, and the feeling of other floors below me; of the sound of electronics humming; of the safety, of the mindlessness, of the ease.

Last night I woke up from a dream and looked out the window. It was raining hard. I could see the van down there in the driveway getting soaked. I felt guilty; it was as if it were my close friend, rather than my ride, trapped out there in the storm. I thought about all the nights the van had kept me warm and dry (more or less) in storms.

And I reflected on how I never really named the van, and I never got into the ritual of personifying it like some people do to their vehicles. I never called it "her" or "she" etc. I never talked to it.

So looking at it out there in the rain, I sent it a little thought: Thank you.

Leaving Portland...

2009-05-29T14:32:00.002-04:00

May flew by; now it's time for me to leave Portland and return to the east coast.

Before I talk about that upcoming journey, I thought I'd reflect on the vandwelling experience of the past 40 or so days in Portland. What did I do? How expensive was it? and so forth....

As I reported in my 2 earlier Portland posts, I found a space to park overnight, discovered a source of very cheap hot-food, and joined a local gym to shower. Those 3 were the game-changers as far as the experience being comfortable or rough. It wasn't rough at all. It was comfortable; in fact, it was downright luxorious.

Getting to shower everyday made me feel civilized. The gym was open 5 am to 10 pm which was good enough for me to get in there once a day. I exercised pretty hard and got back into running shape. I've gained weight on this trip from the beer, calorie-rich food, endless sitting, and lack of exercise, so it was really refreshing to kick my ass again. This gym was Loprinzi's Gym, down near 41st and Division.

In general, I avoided spending time in the van. One, it was hot in there during the day, and two, there was a big beautiful city outside; I didn't want to lurk in the dark. I used the bathrooms at the gym or coffee shop and swore off the Port-a-Potti in the van. I'd really only use the van for sleeping, then come morning get the hell out of there.

Nights in the van were fine. The temperature usually dropped to the 50s so I was comfortable. Of course in an urban area you get disturbances such as motorcycles, trucks, bums wheeling rattly shopping carts etc., but that's OK. I wore an eye-mask to block out the glow from street lights.

Discovering super-cheap hot food at Fred Meyer's every night meant I didn't have to deal with cooking in the van. Cooking in the van can be fun and it's usually more cost-effective, but it creates a lot of waste water. And when you're parked indefinitely in an urban area, getting rid of that waste water is tricky! I don't like dumping on the street. It's offensive, it's ugly, and it can get you in trouble.

How cheap was the Fred Meyer's special? Well, typically, if I eat out, even just buying a sandwich, is 3 - 10x more expensive than cooking rice and beans in the van. I estimated that a standard van-cooked rice/beans meal came out to approximately $1.50, maybe less. The can of beans is around $1, then you factor in the cents for the helping of rice and the propane to heat it. But by hitting up Fred Meyer's every night at 9 PM when they slash the hot-food prices by 50%, I could get more food for less than $1.50. No mess, no prep. And the food wasn't all that bad, either.

I did have to buy coffee everyday in order to sit in a coffee shop to type. That bothered me. But I didn't want to hang out in the van; I wanted to sit somewhere with cool air, electricity, bathrooms, and so on. And there weren't any viable libraries in my neighborhood. So I spent more at coffee shops than I liked to spend. A cup of coffee is anywhere from $1.25 to $1.75 and that's for their stale-ass house brew. Then it's .50 cents a refill, or maybe free refills if it's a larger shop. That adds up. I much prefer brewing my own coffee but it was a sacrifice. I cringed every time I forked over that $1.25...

What else... entertainment was cheap too. I'm entertained by browsing bookstores and there's Powell's (and it's mini-versions) in Portland. Many an evenings were spent trolling the bookshelves. Portland also has some good discount movie theaters and I got to attend some cool "retro" screenings including a splendid showing of THE RUNNING MAN (in case you're unfamiliar, it's a 1980s sci-fi film in which Arnold Schwarzenegger is trapped in a gameshow. it's great, and seeing it on the big screen, surrounded by like-minded fans who cheered every time the Governator said something ridiculous, was very fun).

The first few weeks, I was really excited by the bar scene, especially on Hawthorne. I went there every night. But that got old and also costly. A pint of tap beer was usually $3 - $4. A tall-boy of Pabst was $2 to $2.50. And Pabst makes me feel like an alien is about to hatch from my stomach so I generally avoid that crap.

So toward the end of my stay I changed the alcohol-getting ritual. I'd buy a tall-boy at the drugstore. A tall-boy of Tecate or Budweiser - both totally tolerable beers - was around $1.50. I'd take it back to the van, kick off my shoes, put on NPR, and drink it in there like a true wino. This was my little decompression ritual at the end of the day after typing for 8-10 hours. Then once the buzz faded I'd get up and walk over to Fred Meyer's and join the crowd of young people, bums, and hippies who arrive for the hot-food happy hour.

I benefited from arriving in Portland just as the rain stopped and summer began. It's been dry and sunny here the past 2 weeks.

I guess that's it. I had a lot of fun here and I hope to return someday.

Now, I'm driving back east. This time I'm taking the direct route --- straight mind-numbing interstates. No wandering, no exploring, etc. On the east coast I'm going to reconnect with friends and family, then in July take a Wilderness First Responder Course in North Carolina. And after that, I don't know...

I'll try to post from some point on my cross-country express trip. Thanks for reading!

ESSAY: FOOTBALL

2009-05-23T18:09:00.009-04:00

This entry has nothing to do with Portland, van-dwelling, or road-tripping.

On my friend Olivia’s blog she recently posted an entry called “stuff boys like”. Beer and sports seemed conspicuously absent from this list, so I asked her about it, and she stated that she didn’t know any guys who liked those things, and, furthermore, thought these things were gross.

That was the catalyst for the following essay. Many of my friends have been surprised to hear what a football-fanatic I’ve become over the past few years. A common reaction is a curling up of the lips in disgust and “Really?!” as if I just admitted I'm into scat porn. It's true that 5 years ago, the only sport I watched was the annual broadcast of the New York City Marathon and I sneered at football and fans of it. But when I moved to Rhode Island, I started hanging out with football-watchers, and game-by-game, I got hooked.

So I wrote the following essay to describe the elements of football that I find interesting, as well as some of its qualities which I object to.

***

Let's begin with something I've often heard: “I HATE THE NFL; ITS A BUNCH OF FAT MILLIONAIRES RUNNING AROUND IN THE MUD!"

You 'hate' it for that reason? What? Did you hear what you just said? How could that not be appealing? Where else in the world do you get to watch one millionaire force another millionaire to eat turf? Where else do you get to see a millionaire sit sobbing on a wooden bench wiping the tears with broken fingers while having some kid walk up periodically and squirt gatorade into his mouth? Where else do you see a 400-pound millionaire legally chase down a 140-pound millionaire (I’m referring to when a tackle goes after a kicker, by the way)? Nowhere.

Player payrolls are indeed a turn-off and I think the scale of wealth - in the NFL, or in modern civilization in general - is completely out-of-whack and unjust. But, if you accept the extravagances of football on the level of absurdity, it’s very enjoyable. Society is brimming with the ridiculous and the NFL is just one of its biggest and most conspicuous cases of it. Just consider the NFL on par with the stuff of a satirical novel like "Starship Troopers"- except it’s really happening! In fact, if these guys were making regular salaries, I wouldn’t enjoy it at all; that would just be sick.

THE ANNOUNCERS: The sentences that comes out of those guys mouths... holy shit. It's a show unto itself. But I think in order to appreciate it, you have to be removed from the game and look at it objectively. The whole joke is to take what they say out of context. In fact, for awhile, this was the only way I could enjoy football - by making fun of the crazy sentences uttered by John Madden and his cronies. Classic lines include: “And there’s another Bear on the field!” and also, from this last Superbowl, “He’s one of those guys who always gets penetration!"

THE ATHLETICISM: Football is the fusion of many other sports. Running, jumping, wrestling, throwing, catching, marksmanship, strategy, and leadership. Players in the NFL are at the peak of human fitness - even the “fat” dudes can make incredible jumps and run like The Flash. In each game, no matter how lame the game may be, you’re likely to see some brilliant leaping-catches and bullseye-throws --- all shown in glorious slow-motion, of course. It should make you appreciate the nutty marvelous potential of the human body.

THE MAYHEM: Football is one of the only sports that encourages instances of total mayhem. The best example of this is the fumble. If a ball is dropped but is still alive, the field becomes a real circus. It’s total chaos. If the weather is rainy or snowy, it’s even better. Sometimes a ball will be fumbled 3 or 4 times within the same play; it just keeps flying out of their hands like a bar of soap. The announcers go crazy, the fans piss their pants, and the coaches have aneurysms. Often quarterbacks or kickers who aren’t supposed to get involved in the rough-stuff will be forced into the fray because the ball bounces their way. I wouldn’t be surprised if one day the waterboy surfaced in the aftermath of one of these pile-ups.

And yes, in the above graphic, I juxtaposed Bosch to the NFL.

THE MYTHOLOGY: I’ve been reading a lot of Joseph Campbell’s writings on mythology lately and one thing that seems missing from his essays is an analysis of modern sports in the context of mythology; maybe that’s because Campbell spent the bulk of his career working from the middle of the quad at Sarah Lawrence!

If you follow football, you'll realize early-on that it's not just about winning and losing. Each season has a cast of heroes, villains, dark horses, underdogs, and so on. There are tragedies, comedies, mysteries, science-fiction (thanks to the crazy drone cameras floating around the field!), and even some romance (players are always running around dating celebrities and it often spills over onto the field). Football can be absorbed and enjoyed as modern mytholgy just like comic-books and modern fiction can.

Much of this has to do with how the sportswriters interpret the teams. For example, Tom Brady is always portrayed as noble and unselfish, but who really knows? You have to suspend your disbelief and just get caught up in the myth-making, even if its clearly fiction.

For example, the Dallas Cowboys are “America’s Team”. They’re supposed to be on par with Superman or GI Joe: brave, noble, and 'the best'. That’s why when they are totally dysfunctional, as they were last season, it can be really entertaining. Imagine watching John Wayne have a hissy-fit while shooting himself in the foot and falling down the stairs of the salloon - that was the train-wreck that was the 2008 Dallas Cowboys.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have a team like the Baltimore Ravens which is universally vilified and portrayed as barbaric. You WANT the Ravens to seem dysfunctional otherwise you’d say they were losing their edge. Is this just because Ray Lewis plays for them and their mascot is an animal synonymous with death? Maybe.

Everyone loves to hear the myth about the back-up player who relieves the injured starter and wins the game; Tom Brady became famous that way. And everyone knows that the Philadelphia fans are some of the cruelest, most abusive spectators in the history of sports, while the crowds at Green Bay are known for have a nearly religious-attachment to each game (I’m sure they’re asshole hecklers, too). The fans for the Oakland Raiders come dressed as skeletons and monsters and form a “black hole” in the stands meant to intimidate the opposing team and invigorate their own. There are the scary linebackers who fulfill the role of the Minotaur at the end of the maze and, in turn, you have the brainy Daedelius-esq coach who enables the player to beat the Minotaur.

The best storyline last year was in the Superbowl, where aging, troubled Arizona quarterback Kurt Warner (above) pulled his shit together for one last hurrah. In 1993, they almost gave Clint Eastwood an Oscar for playing that very same character in “Unforgiven” - so why not enjoy it in the NFL, too? Warner lost, but he went down with his guns blazing, which was the perfect ending.

THE PERSONALITIES: OK, this falls into the “Why I hate the NFL” category. The players and coaches usually do NOT seem like likeable guys to me. Either they take the game so seriously you feel embarrassed for them, or they’re so egotistical and playful that you get mad at them for squandering their gifts. Of course, there’s a whole middle-ground of dudes who just show up and play without being melodramatic, but the networks never show them; why would they when Terrell Owens is just a few yards away throwing a temper tantrum?

THE TENSION: There are only about 12 meaningful games in a season before the play-offs. A team can only fuck up so many times before the whole season is considered a catastrophe and the management starts firing people and planning for next year. That means that every game has a special tension. Compare that, to, say, baseball, where those pot-bellied, polyester-wearing, tobacco-chewing douchebags play, what, 900 games per year? (to baseball fans: relax, in a year or 2 I'll probably be writing an essay about why I like MLB...)

THE FUCKUPS: Making a mistake in front of millions of fans is the risk these players take when they step onto the field. They’re under a level of pressure and scrutiny most of us will never know. It’s inevitable that within each season, there will be a handful of egregious, unbearably-humiliating bloopers. I don’t mean a simple dropped catch. I mean when a player runs the wrong way on the field or a kicker misses the ball. I’m not too proud to say that I really enjoy these cringe-inducing incidents.

THE STRATEGY: Don’t ask me to explain football. I can’t. I might try: “Well, there are two teams, and one ball, and... most of the mascots are cartoon animals!” that’s about as far as I’d get. The NFL rulebook must look like the Encyclopedia Britannica. Every time I watch a game, I’m constantly going “What the hell?” in response to some weird play, penalty, or decision. At first, this made me feel disoriented, but now I’ve come to appreciate the depth of knowledge. I like the fact that it’s so fucking complicated; that makes the jobs of the players and coaches that much harder.

Coaches must forgo eating, sleeping, and sex for 6 days out of the week in order to prepare for Sunday... I imagine them sitting up round-the-clock staring bleary-eyed at videos of opposing teams and drawing plays out on chalkboards. And still, more often than not, come game-day, they see their gameplan get totally dismantled by a smarter coach. That’s tragic! And it makes for good entertainment! You often hear how football is like a chess-game. I don’t know how to play chess, so I can’t vouch for that metaphor... but I do know how to play Battleship, and I can tell you that the NFL is a lot more complicated than that...

THE VIOLENCE: When I was a kid, there was nothing I enjoyed more than sitting on the carpet and bashing 2 action figures together for hours on end. I grew out of action figures and matured into playing video-games which were more often than not about 2 guys bashing into each other. Now I’m an adult and I watch that happen in football (of course, I still collect action figures and still play video games...).

Some people object to the violence in football as if it represents some kind of barbarism and, as a civilized people, we shouldn’t bother with that. What? Sure, it’s technically barbaric, but it’s the most controlled, ritualized barbarism imaginable. It’s only barbaric when compared to how soft, quiet, and safe many of our lives have become; it’s like Candy Land when compared to the true war and cruelty that still goes on around the world and that will persist no matter how “civilized” we get.

And this is when I get to the “beer” part of the essay because when I drink beer and watch football, I often find myself getting philosophical and dwelling on how violent the NFL is, and how it fits into society as a whole. I don’t like all violent entertainment. Anything involving unwilling or exploited participants does not interest me. For example, those fuckheads who paid homeless guys to fight and videotaped it: No!!! I’m still scarred from the day my older brother rented “Faces of Death” and I snuck-watched it through the living room window and saw those dudes torturing a monkey: No!!! I also had nightmares after seeing that power-lifter’s elbow pop the wrong way during the Olympics. Again, no!!!!!!

But a bunch of super-athletes in high-tech pads, earning paychecks that range from decent to spectacular, fully informed and fully consenting to the risks of the game, taking to the field and trying to outwit, outrun, outthrow, and outstrong-arm each other - Yes!!!!

Note that there is an element of violence in the NFL which I can’t stand and that’s the freakazoid injuries which happen a few times each season. The photograph of Tom Brady’s knee getting bent the wrong way is burned into my mind, and I still get shivers thinking about how Roy Williams horse-collared Musa Smith and broke his fibia so severely his whole shin looked wobbly! AAGH! That stuff is gross, man! I don’t object to it --- it’s a risk of the game that all those guys take for a chance at fame, glory, and wealth. I just think it’s disgusting, and I don’t want to see it! (it should be noted that the NFL banned maneuevers, such as the horse-collar tackle, which tend to result in those vomit-inducing injuries).

The other dark side to the NFL which has been getting much-deserved attention is the long-term effects of concussions. First of all, let’s all remember what a concussion is: it’s your brain banging against your skull. Now, you can imagine how for these players, who have been diving headfirst into linebackers since 6th grade peewee football, all the way up to age 40, their brains have done a lot of slurping around! Many of these guys go into retirement and, tragically, by age 50 or 55 they’re demonstrating neurological problems normally reserved for people of age 70 or 75. According to critics, this was “covered up” or swept under the rug by the NFL for many years because, obviously, it’s a pretty sad and sobering destiny for these much-beloved sports personalities, and it sucks some of the magic out of the game. Recently, the NFL has opened up to it, and *seems* to be trying to raise awareness about the long-term repercussions of football-related injuries.

THE FANDOM: When I was living in RI, I cheered the New England Patriots, and was lucky enough to follow their magical season where they went undefeated until the Superbowl. I'll probably always have a special place in my heart for the Patriots since they were my "first" team, but really, I don't care. So long as you're familiar with the mythology of the league you should be able to enjoy any game that's showing on the TV over the bar. This past year, while road-tripping, I watched games in cities up and down the east coast, and the season was no less enjoyable.

I can see why people hate NFL fans or sports fans in general. How can you not be condescending towards a guy walking up the street wearing an ill-fitting Drew Bledsoe jersey? There are always stories in the paper about sports fans behaving badly (or in some cases, criminally). I'm not one of those guys and I try very hard to avoid them. I don't wear a jersey, I don't pelt anybody with anything, and I don't cry when my team loses (or wins, for that matter).

Every time you feel repulsed by those types of fans, remember that there is a minority of dudes like me sitting back and interpretting the game on the level of Greek mythology! Thanks for reading.

Tour of Portland

2009-05-12T15:50:00.005-04:00

Hello readers. Thank you for all the positive feedback to my last entry. In response, I've written this entry to give you my impressions of Portland after about 3 weeks of vandwelling here. I've shrunken the images on this entry since there are a ton of them, but as usual, by clicking on them, you can see the full picture in a new window.

ABOVE: A view of downtown Portland from the Burnside Bridge. Portland is known for its many bridges and the Burnside Bridge provides a conduit into the heart of downtown. It's always scenic and windy up there. There's a sidewalk for pedestrians and a lane for cyclists, but sometimes these asshole cyclists come flying down the sidewalk anyway. Why?

ABOVE: The green space along the river. Portland is famous for its abundant green space. The whole river walk area is really gorgeous and pedestrian/cyclist friendly. On weekends, this area becomes a big craft/food fair, with live music, street performers, and a beer garden.

ABOVE: One of the many walkways along the river to encourage outdoor recreation and walking/cycling commuting. May is Bike to Work month in Portland. One of the events includes the city giving free breakfast to cyclists.

ABOVE: World-famous Powell's Bookstore, which I mentioned before on this blog as being the biggest used bookstore in the world (supposedly). You literally can get in lost inside it.

ABOVE: Downtown Portland has these funny water fountains that are always spouting water, without any prompting by a potential drinker. What's with these? Why are they always running? Is that more hygienic or something? Is it just because it looks cool? Or is it Portland's way of boasting about how damn wet this climate is? If you know, please post below.

ABOVE: The endearing food trucks (or carts, whatever) of downtown Porltand. They sell delicious food at low prices.

ABOVE: Plaid Pantry. They're all over the place. They're the 7-11 of the Pacific Northwest.

ABOVE: The Laurelhurst Movie Theater, in the Laurelhurst neighborhood. Note the great coincidence that as I took that picture of the vintage movie theater sign, a vintage yellow car rolled up to the traffic light. Laurelhurst is a fun old-school neighborhood with bars, coffee shops, music/book stores, and so on. The Laurelhurst Theater shows slightly older movies at a discount price. And you can drink beer and order pizza while you're watching.

ABOVE: Laurelhurst park.

ABOVE: I took this picture to show what most of the houses look like in the neighborhoods farther from downtown. I don't know how you'd describe them in proper architectural terminology, so here I go: they're typically low and wide, with big porches, big gardens, and a kind of chaotic, dilapidated look to them. It's great. That's how yards should be. Of course, there are also some stupid-looking houses with senseless amounts of grass, just like anywhere, but they seem to be in the minority.

ABOVE: Fred Meyer's - the Wal Mart of Portland. If you go around 9 PM, they slash the prices of their hot food by 50%. You can get a full hot dinner for 3 or 4 bucks. I've gone a few times for this, joining the crowd of other dinner-bargain-hunters. Its like a weird happy-hour of supermarket dining.

ABOVE: The Hawthorne neighborhood strip. In taking this photo I realized how difficult it is to take pictures of a street. You'll just have to trust me that it's a cool strip of bars and restaurants that seems to make overtures to college-aged people. It's the closest hub to where I've been parked. This is where I go at night when I want to get a beer. There's also a smaller Powell's here for book-browsing.

ABOVE: Rosie the cat, looking pensively toward the Portland skyline from my brother's apartment.

ABOVE: I hadn't showed the interior of the van in awhile, so I thought I would. I strung up an extra line to dry my gym clothes. I've kept the van parked more or less in the same spot since I've been here (with 2 or 3 voyages to my brother's neighborhood) and nobody has bothered me. I've been able to get my drinking water from my brother; I'm not sure where all the other RVers and van-dwellers get it (I haven't seen any of those 25 cent/per gallon vending machines like in the southwest). I also don't know where they go to dump waste, but since there are so many people living in vehicles, there must be some place.

I had been burning candles in the van to combat the moisture level (which may only combat it on the psychological level, but so be it) until I mentioned this to my friend Kate, and she said, "Dude, don't fucking burn candles in the van!" and alerted me to the very depressing health hazards of parafin (google it yourself to learn more). So now I'm in the market for beeswax candles.

Also, for people who follow van-dwelling, there's an important bill underway in Maine that will seriously curtail vehicle-living. Some people are afraid it will set a precedent for laws in other states: http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=255609&ac=PHnws

If you read that article, it basically sides with the bill, and portrays the campground owners as these pitiful business owners who have been unfairly harmed by Walmarts and whatnot. It doesn't describe how disgusting and overpriced most of these RV parks are, nor does it question WHY many campers might choose a parking lot over a campground (because RV parks are disgusting and overpriced). I know some RV parks are family businesses... I'd like to see them thrive, but they've got to come to their senses, and change the way they run their campgrounds if they want to draw in the modern frugal RVer.

Anyway... this is only a snippet of Portland. I'll keep taking photos and do another entry soon. Thanks for reading!

Portland, OR

2009-05-05T18:55:00.005-04:00

This post is a little different than the usual. The course of my trip has changed. I've parked in Portland, OR and I plan to stay here for another few weeks.

This was a long time coming. Let me explain. In 'Travels With Charley', John Steinbeck's novel about traveling the country in a truck camper, he notes how at one point, without warning or explanation, he stops "seeing". No matter how beautiful or interesting the world is around him, he's done. Done, done, done. It's not a choice but an irrevocable mental state brought on by, simply, seeing too much for too long. He's burnt-out. And he's sad about it. But he accepts it, eventually, and steers the camper around and drives back to his home in NY. (It's an amazing, sweet, hilarious novel about road-tripping... I highly recommend it).

Anyway, that's how I've felt for a while. In fact, I'd say my "seeing" stopped after I left Slab City in southern California way back in February. I can't explain why, but everything after that felt a little flat, a little drab, a little lifeless. Locations of exceptional beauty, such as Death Valley, just made me feel tired as I drove through them, whereas earlier in my trip, I was thrilled by comparitively insignificant and mild scenes.

So, I've stopped. It seems senseless to continue driving when your heart isn't in it. It's almost worse to visit a place like Death Valley and not appreciate it, than to not visit it at all and save it for a time in the future when I can "see" again.

Portland has proven to be a fine place for parking the van. First, it's very, very easy to find a place to park overnight on the street without being harassed, and many others are doing it, so you're not a freak. There's campervans and RVS and trailers all over the place. Second, it's a small, pedestrian-friendly city, so I can get around and do stuff without having to move the van.

My brother lives in Portland, so I've been able to spend time with him. For the past week I've been parked in a little neighborhood near a little family-owned gym. I joined the gym (month membership: $40, no sign-up fees!) to exercise and to have shower/bathroom access. Being able to shower everyday seems to bet the key for me not to go crazy. I go in there every morning, exercise, use the bathroom, and shower.

The pacific northwest is coffee-crazy so there's cafes on every corner. I've been going to a cafe a block from my van and using it for internet and to power my computer. I'd prefer a library (libraries don't expect you to buy anything and are quieter) but weirdly there are only 2 libraries in this neighborhood, and neither of them have desks!

At night, there's many bars and movie theaters, as well as some nice walks. Powell's Bookstore, the biggest used book store IN THE WORLD, is just over the Burnside Bridge.

My only complaint at this point is the precipitation. Portland has so far been as rainy as everyone warned me it would be. Rain comes every day, many times a day, often with no warning. Of course, the mentality toward rain is totally different here than on the east coast. Portlanders just walk around in the rain without umbrellas or raincoats. They don't give a shit. From a van-dwelling perspective, it's difficult for me to keep the interior of the van dry because I have to keep the windows closed all the time. My gym clothes are always still a little cold and wet the next day when I put them on. Oh well....

I'll probably do another update about vandwelling in Portland, complete with pictures, in a week or two. Thanks for reading!

Up the corridor, into Oregon...

2009-04-26T12:50:00.005-04:00

There's been significant driving since my last post. I emerged from Death Valley with a craving to see the Pacific Ocean. But logistically, the California coast appeared like it might be a headache for a camper-van to explore. I had driven the California coast once before, so I decided to skip it and head directly to Oregon, via Interstate 5. This corridor runs medially up California. Everything on it below Sacramento is nasty and industrial, but north of that, its quite pleasant and pastoral.

The Pacific Northwest comes on very suddenly. I went from this:

to this:

... in what seemed like a relatively short time. Rain, cold, swamps, and trees, trees, trees. I was a little discouraged at first by just how swampy and drab the southern Oregon coast is. Houses seem to be melting before your eyes. There's no beach - only a marsh-like disintegration of land into saltwater. The towns appeared impoverished and empty. It was depressing.

But as I inched northward along 101, the landscape improved. I spent 3 nights at the campsite pictured ABOVE. I don't recall the name. It was a state park. I was driving by and I saw it had a vacancy sign, so I pulled in just to see. It turns out that this is still considered the off-season by Oregon State Parks so the rates were lower. And although the park system uses the abomination
that is ReserveAmerica for booking campsites, if you just show up, there are some sites you can claim in person without paying the reservation fee. This campsite was $12 a night. That included electricity and water, and access to a dump station and hot showers. And these were REAL showers, with scalding hot water - not those bullshit Nevada showers which mist you with lukewarm water and charge 25 cents a minute. So all around it was a good deal.

This campground had a recreational lake, pictured ABOVE. I went for some pleasant walks around it.

As I continued north on 101, I still hadn't seen any real shoreline. It was still swamp. Then, all of a sudden, I turned a corner, and...

That's the van in the bottom center. Just over that guard rail loomed the Pacific shoreline I'd been hoping to see. Feeling refreshed, I continued up the coast and camped at some different sites. I've included some Oregon beach pictures below. The best campground was Beachside State Park. I was within 30 feet of the beach and could look at the ocean from the window of my van.

Nevada, Spam, and onwards...

2009-04-13T19:27:00.006-04:00

OK, after Utah, I drove west along southern Nevada. This was the most direct route to Death Valley, although it was also the most barren. 150 miles of this trek included the "famous" Extraterrestrial Highway, where supposedly a lot of people see UFOs. I didn't see any UFOs, but there was a sonic boom (or whatever its called) when a military craft zoomed by. Scared the shit out of me.

ABOVE: The amusing UFO display outside "Little Aleinn", a motel/bar/diner in Rachel, NV, along the ET Highway. Aside from this place in Rachel, there really isn't anything on the ET Highway.

I spent a night at a tiny state park along the way. The modest campground is pictured ABOVE. That nasty picture of the caterpillar web is also from there. While camped there, I decided to try Spam for the first time, out of curiosity.

Spam comes in a vaccuum-sealed can. When I peeled it open, I expected a foul odor; but in fact, it just smelled kind of salty. It wasn't any grosser than how canned beans smell when you first open them. Consistency-wise, as you can see in the picture ABOVE, it's really jammed in there, and as you fork it out, it breaks up into shreds.

I decided to combine it with corn and carrots in a tortilla. The label on the SPAM can instucts you to simply fry the Spam in a skillet "until golden brown", which is what I did.

It wasn't good or bad. It just tasted like salty gook. I only needed 1/3 of the can to fill me up so, on the plus side, a little goes a long way. But no, I don't recommend it. You can get a can of beans for $1.50 less and get more nutrients and more taste and less salt (and less weirdness in general, too).

I spent a night parked in casino lot in Beatty, NV, then scooted through Death Valley. This is the optimal time to visit Death Valley due to the mild weather and blooming wildflowers. It was pretty cool to see it all, although by this point, I feel a little National Park-ed out (especially tiring are those $20 entrance fees).

I'm in California now and about to drive northward to Oregon. I've included below pictures of two really cool RVS camped at parking lots with me. The first appears to be some kind of custom job... it looked like a truck with one of those cargo units on the back, with a cab-over unit stuck on top of that. The next one is a rare Tiger Motorhome, built on a truck chassis (I've always only seen them on a van chassis).

Snowed in...

2009-04-07T22:28:00.003-04:00

I think the above-picture says it all as far as my state of mind. At the time of the picture, I was in good, goofy spirits, having just departed from a sojourn in Page, AZ. The weather was crisp and sunny and the driving was going by easily. I cut westward through the lower regions of Utah, toward Cedar City.

In the mountains of Rt. 14, however, I screwed up. There was a succession of 4% - 8% downgrades and I rode the brake all the way rather than engine braking. Why? Inexperience with mountains, I guess. I knew vaguely about how you're supposed to shift to 1 or 2 in order to slow the engine and relieve the brakes, but I didn't know enough to implement it (this website has since educated me: http://thefuntimesguide.com/2005/07/downhilldriving.php). So somewhere near the bottom, the brakes started to smoke. I pulled over and it took 15 minutes for the smoking to stop. When I got into Cedar City I took it to a garage. Well, here comes a $500 repair bill, I thought grimly as I waited at a nearby coffee shop. But, the mechanic called and stated that although the brakes had overheated, it seemed I'd stopped just in time, and he didn't see any permanent damage (I'm sure, of course, I took months, maybe years, off those brake pads).

By that point, it was close to 6 PM, but I resolved to continue to my original destination, that being the Three Peaks Recreation Area, outside of Cedar City. I had it in mind that the campsite might be full since it was a Thursday night and so late in the day. But when I arrived, I found it to be completely, utterly deserted. Not a soul in sight. As I approached each bend I anticipated the familiar white box shape of a trailer. But no. For some reason, nobody wanted to camp at Three Peaks Recreation Area.

As an aside, I don't like camping in such isolation. I like to have folks around. I don't usually want to talk, look, or interact with them in any way, but it's comforting to know they're there. So no, classic hermetic images like Walden's Pond don't excite me, and this barren scene at Three Peaks made me uneasy.

Why was it empty? Was it closed? Was this the off-season? But even that seemed peculiar, because the weather was very fair. Well, when I woke up the next morning, I got my answer:

It snowed for about 48 hours. I'd guestimate that close to 5 inches fell. This made it impossible to maneuver the van out of the campsite. The roads were already dirt and designed for 4x4, so with soft snow atop, my wheels just spun away in vain. I decided to wait it out. I had plenty of fuel, water, and food.

I had to kind of laugh, as well. This whole trip I nuerotically avoided getting snowed-in. But it being April, I assumed I was in the clear, and wandered off into the mountains without checking the weather. Gotcha! says Mother Nature.

ABOVE: The little outhouse near where I was parked. This seemed like a very nice *free* campground, if not for the foul weather. Developed sites, drinking water, trails, and decent outhouses.

While I waited for it to melt, I did some snow-hikes, made some snow forts and snow men, and mostly read and listened to NPR.

On Saturday, the sun beamed the snow, and it melted enough for me to make an escape. There were a few close-calls as far as getting stuck but I made it to the concrete road and zipped onwards to Cedar City.

I've been in Cedar City since. It's a nice little town with a splendid public library with free internet and a fine view of the mountains (below). One half of Cedar City is kind of old-fashioned and charming, and the other half is a weirdo shopping plaza themed after Providence, RI (yes, you heard me correctly). But in this plaza was a 24-hour Walmart where I was allowed to park at night.

So now I'm contemplating where to go next. I've ruled out going any further north as all forecasts seem to indicate meteorological nastyness that way. I think I'll head west...

Grand Canyon

2009-03-25T18:27:00.003-04:00

The squirrels in the Grand Canyon are comically tame. Take this one in the above picture , for instance. Some hiker had left a banana on a rock on the trail and this little guy was meticulously peeling it to reach the pulp. A crowd gathered (including me) to take pictures and gawk. The squirrel didn't care. He went on with his business. I held my camera 5-6 inches from his head for that picture.

Then there was this dude (ABOVE). I hiked down into the canyon and rested at the bottom. While sitting there drinking water and eating nuts, enjoying the view, I noticed a flurry of movement between my legs. The squirrel was scrounging around under my knees! I jumped up and he ran off but soon came back for the above photograph.

The Grand Canyon is pretty damn cool. I mean - it's big. It's fucking huge. The park itself is the most built-up, touristy national park I've visited yet. This park has its own free shuttle bus system. It has resorts, restaurants, museums, and campgrounds. The entranceway consists of 5 tolls and they were all backed-up when I pulled through.

I have some gripes with the campground end. You're charged $25 to enter the park. That gets you a 7-day pass. But in order to camp overnight, it's $18 / night, on top of the entrance fee. And that's 18 bucks for some damn primitive camping. No hook-ups, narrow, potholed roads, and heavily-vandalized bathrooms which don't have soap. That's right, no soap. I don't mean that they'd run out - I mean there wasn't even a fucking dispenser on the wall. Just 2 toilets and 2 sinks and the sinks only squirt out cold water in timed bursts.

There's a showerhouse which costs $2 per 8 minutes of showering. Are you getting the idea? You just paid $25 to drive in, $18 for a parking space jammed in between other campers, and these fuckers can't find it in their budget to stock the bathrooms with HANDSOAP???

Ok, I needed to get that off my chest. I'm glad I went to the park, as costly as it was. The first day I walked up and down the North Rim (didn't get all the way in either direction - it's long) then turned in early. The next day I hiked down into the canyon. It's 3 miles down and then 3 miles straight-up. The trail was packed with all sorts of hikers.... hikers who looked like they'd just stepped out of an REI dressing room, hikers wearing white speckless Keds and button-down shirts, child hikers, teenage hikers, old people hikers... and none of these surface traits could predict who was going to handle the hike comfortably, and who was going to be pulling over every 5 minutes gasping in agony.

On the first day, I was lucky enough to witness a snow/hail storm raging across the canyon. Check out the picture below. Doesn't it look prehistoric? It was all ooh's and aah's until the hail pummeled the sight-seeing area and everybody ran helter skelter for cover.

Thanks for reading!

Las Vegas

2009-03-22T17:49:00.003-04:00

Where to begin? This was my first time to Las Vegas. My central impression is that most of the depictions of Las Vegas in cinema and television are accurate. The only difference is that when you actually walk the strip you can't mute the sound or change the channel when the atomic bomb of sound and neon strikes you. It's completely outrageous, utterly overwhelming, and definitely worth-seeing once in your life.

It was a fun trip for observational purposes, but I can't imagine going to Las Vegas to "party" like most of the others there seemed bent on doing. The drunk and merry poured in and out of the casinos and restaurants, people of many ages, carrying cigarettes and oversized margarita tubes and $1 beers. At the slot machines sitting side by side were people dressed to kill and people looking like they'd just rolled out of bed. Whether it was 10 AM or PM, they were out there getting drunk and gambling.

I met my mother and older brother in Vegas; it was a family vacation. None of us gamble but for experimental purposes we did feed about 75 cents into a slot machine to try it out. We lost. We walked away.

Shows are abundant. There's the famous Las Vegas headliners... Don Rickles, Wayne Newton, Sigfried and Roy, David Copperfield, etc... then there are the musicians and comedians present on temporary gigs. Either way, their faces are all over the place. Via our hotel we got free coupons to attend a show by "mentalist" Gerry McCambridge. It was totally entertaining. He was very funny and foul-mouthed on stage and the tricks were curious.

Of course, there's the specter of prostitution everywhere as well. Sex working is illegal in Las Vegas (and its whole county), but legal elsewhere in Nevada. Still, it seems to be happening in the famous Sin City. On the streets you can pick up little trading-card sized hooker advertisements and there are Adult/Escort newsletters in boxes on every corner. Yes, I collected as many as possible.

There is a casino for every famous city and historical context. 1920s NY, medieval times, Hollywood, Paris, Nascar... every theme has been mined and interpreted in the form of gawdy interior design. This makes for good sight-seeing. You're free to walk in and out of whatever casino you want. It's strange... many of the sights were "beautiful", but due to their nature as imitations, due to their inherent falseness, I didn't feel moved by them. It was more of a freakshow. The one exception was the elegant and understated Belagio fountains show (remember the triumphant crooks relaxing in front of it in the end of "Ocean's 11"?).

ABOVE: We attended the famous "Fremont Street Experience", which is a gauntlet of shops set beneath an enormous digital screen "ceiling" that blocks out the sky. Musical tributes are played on the screen; we saw the tribute to Queen. It was pretty neat seeing humongous lightning bolts and visages of Freddie Mercury soar across 3 city blocks.

We took some day-trips beyond Las Vegas. Red Rock Canyon has a fine driving loop with many stopping points to enjoy the big rippled rock faces and gorges. We also went to the Hoover Dam.

Joshua Tree NP

2009-03-12T14:00:00.002-04:00

From Slab City, I drove north in California to Joshua Tree National Park. I camped for 4 nights at different sites throughout the park, but was not blown away by it. That's probably indicative of me being a little burnt-out rather than the park being lackluster. I did a few hikes, including one to a palm tree oasis in a little valley. The weather was sunny and cool. After the landfill that was Slab City, every campground seemed pristine. Joshua Tree is popular amongst climbers (see the many boulder pics below) but I don't know how to climb.

I emerged on the north end of Joshua Tree and proceeded west, stopping in 29 Palms, Joshua Tree, and Yucca Valley. In 29 Palms I filed taxes at an HR Block. Thn I met with an old friend in Yucca Valley and hung out there for about a week. Parking laws are lax in Yucca Valley and I could more or less park overnight wherever I wanted. I had access to internet via coffee shops and there was a movie theater within walking distance where I saw WATCHMEN and THE INTERNATIONAL. Since I have nothing else to report in this blog entry I'm going to play the role of a movie critic for a few paragraphs...

I went into WATCHMEN as a loving fan of the novel. The film is a triumph in many ways but it stumbles severely with its climax and it's that misstep which is, unfortunately, the most memorable. At one point, about 20 minutes before the ending, audience members at my screening got up from their seats and collected their coats and cups and started to exit --- not because they were unhappy with the film, but because all signs seemed to indicate that the credits were about to roll! Then the action resumed and they sat down again. They looked embarassed but really the shame belongs solely to the filmmakers for their tone-deaf pacing and editing in the final act.

If I had to sum up WATCHMEN I'd compare it to that goofy football blunder by Philadelphia Eagle DeSean Jackson this past season. In an important game against a rival, Jackson, a rookie, made a stellar reception and began running toward what would have been his first NFL touchdown. However, about 1 yard from the goal line (and glory!), he "fumbled" the ball. Calling it a fumble is too forgiving. In fact he tossed it to the ground as if he were already in the endzone.
The Eagles eventually recovered and won the game, so 'no harm, no foul'. Unfortunately, we can't say the same for the makers of WATCHMEN.

Then there was THE INTERNATIONAL - a film which I saw mainly for Clive Owen, who with each of these types of movies becomes more and more gloomy (and he's all the more magnetic for it). The film didn't disappoint me.

That's it for this post. I don't have much else to report. I've included some photographs from Joshua Tree below.

Slab City & Quartzsite

2009-03-02T15:38:00.006-05:00

Slab City is located in southeastern California, not far from the Arizona border. Back in the day it served as a military installation and as a result there are the so-called "slabs" (planes of concrete) jutting from the sand, as well as a few concrete tanks and bunkers still standing. Via what I suspect is some substantial looking-in-the-other-direction by the government, Slab City is the "last free place" in America, where you can literally drive in, choose a spot, and camp there indefinitely, without paying anybody.

I'd known about Slab City for awhile. I knew what it was conceptually, had seen photographs and read about it, and like everybody else, seen it depicted in "Into the Wild". But none of this information really prepared me for just how colorful and outrageous it would be.

Imagine hundreds of people, young and old, American and foreign, from all walks of life, camped in a desert flatland. Hippies, nomads, veterans, students, drunks, bums, hitchhikers, snowbirds, businessmen... anyone and everyone (although it seemed to be a predominantly male population).

There is no running water, no electricity, and no sewer system; there are no real roads; and there is nobody in charge. Residents live in everything from super-expensive Class-A motorhomes to ancient-looking schoolbuses. Every manner of car, van, and RV living can be found in Slab City, as well as some shack and tent dwellings.

Some people come just for a visit, like me; others spend the winter; and the real toughguys sweat it out all year long, even in the 125+ degree temperatures of summer. There are 3 social clubs. I attended the Oasis Club. There was a very good feeling at the Oasis Club, a real sense of community and friendship. On Saturday nights, there is a lively "open mic" type event at a makeshift concert stage called The Range. People go up and do acoustic sets while the audience mingles and parties down below.

By walking around Slab City, you can see many innovative "living off the grid" practices. Everybody has solar panels (a solar panel dealer/installer is a permanent resident). There are rainwater collectors, solar ovens, and complex arrangements of roofs and tarps to ward off the heat. The residents who have moved into the old military bunkers and containers have customized them into livable homes.

Of course, there are downsides to a place like this. The "anarchy" atmosphere means that people can dump trash wherever they want. Some areas in Slab City are veritable junk yards (composed largely of RVs reduced to their elements). While skeletal RVs can be kind of charming to look at, the endless piles of household trash are not. Almost every bush or tree has a bedding of waste around its roots. It seemed like the culprits were the residents as well as outsiders who come in to the Slabs solely to dump. I don't know which case is more reprehensible: outsiders driving in to dispose of garbage, or those who call this place home and still trash it.

What was all the more confounding to me was that just 3 miles up the road, in Niland, was a recycling plant where they PAY YOU for your scrap!!! I stopped by on my way out of Slab City and made a few bucks off my cans, bottles, and plastics. If somebody in Slab City organized a system of collecting recyclables they might be able to make a pretty penny AND clean up the place. Or who knows, maybe I'm being idealistic; maybe it's been attempted already, to no end.

ABOVE: The famous Slab City "shower". This concrete pit receives the run-off from a hot spring about 100 yards away. By the time the water reaches this pit it has cooled down. So you can climb down and wash up. Obviously the cleanliness of the water is questionable but its better than nothing (as well as quite refreshing on a hot day).

ABOVE: The Slab City library. I spent some afternoons reading and browsing in this lovely little open-air library.

Another famous Slab City landmark is Salvation Mountain. It's not really a mountain, more of a rock formation, that has been painted beautifully top to bottom in bright colors. The creator, Leonard, lives there year-round and is present to give tours. There was a regular stream of tourists coming into Slab City just to see Salvation Mountain.

The partying never stops in Slab City. Because really, unless you have a private past-time, there's nothing to do in Slab City but visit people, get drunk, and eat food. The oppressive heat for most of the day makes a cold beer pretty desirable as well - even if its 10 AM. You can make friends very quickly in Slab City and everybody is more than happy to share food, drinks, and stories.

Unfortunately, I need a little bit more than just partying to feel content. As the days passed, I grew increasingly itchy to leave. The ice in my cooler melted. I ran out of food and electricity. My porta-potty grew precipitously full. A swarm of black flies invaded my van and many duels occured between me, armed with a rolled-up magazine, and these desert flies. Justin 7, flies 0.

So, after attending The Range on Saturday night, I left the next morning. I'm sure if I'd stayed longer I'd have met many more cool people and developed a deeper understanding of its community. Maybe I'll go back one day... maybe not. If you want to see a truly other-wordly place and meet some colorful personalities, visit Slab City. Don't forget to pick up a shitload of beer on your way in, though!

OK, now for the other RV heartland in this corner of the country: Quartzsite, AZ. A perfect storm of conditions have made Quartzsite into an RV mecca: the presence of several enormous flea markets and swap meets, as well as a thriving rock trade; easy access to free BLM camping; being located halfway (more or less) between LA and Phoenix.

Quartzsite is apparently at its peak in January and February. I arrived at the tail-end of this and parked in the Hi Jolly BLM area (BELOW: a van among buses).

There's not much to do in Quartzsite other than shop. By the time I arrived, most of the flea markets seemed thoroughly picked over. But I did buy find a few treasures (aka junk). The BLM land was congested with buses, but it was clean and peaceful, and only 3 miles from town.

The best thing about Quartzsite was this rockin' used bookstore on the edge of town, Readers' Oasis Books, owned and managed by the famous Naked Paul (BELOW).

This bookstore had everything a used bookstore should have (including a fluffy cat sleeping on the discount paperbacks as seen BELOW). Big stacks of books, rare editions, collectibles, vintage paperbacks, books on tapes, records, and magazines. There was always the feeling that if I dug a little deeper into a stack I could find a real gem... I traded some books in and got a fair amount of credit for them. I talked to Naked Paul and it turned out he used to do a naked blues set in Providence in the 1970s.

BELOW: an abundance of stuff at one of Quartzsite's junk/antique dealers.

Thanks for reading!

Southeastern AZ

2009-02-19T12:50:00.006-05:00

Co-pilot Jora Johnson (see the second Smoky Mtns. entry from December) returned to the van for a few days of exploring southeastern Arizona. We had it in mind to find hot springs and do some camping/hiking. Starting in Phoenix we drove south to Picacho (sp?) State Park, located off of Highway 10. This lovely little park is situated below some fine mountains. The campground consists of paved loops and sites with firepits and benches. The shower and bathroom facilities were top-notch. We arrived in mid-morning and set out to hike Picacho Peak (seen in the photograph BELOW... at least I think that's the peak. If not that one then a similar-looking formation to the right of it).

The park brochure warned that the hike was 4 hours round trip and had two parts: first, a moderatly-difficult beginning in which you loped through the desert, and second, a difficult portion of mountain climbing, using cables, as you ascended the peak.

ABOVE: The first half of the hike included many Saguaro cacti, ranging from robust, multi-limbed monstrosities to little knee-high baby Saguaro to long-dead Saguaro skeletons.

ABOVE: The difficult part of the hike. You are expected to scale the mountain using these cables. It turned out to be easier than it looked although many less-fit hikers and hikers with pets / small children couldn't attempt it. I liked it, though. It felt good to use the arms a little instead of the legs. Bits of controlled peril sprinkled throughout a trail always make for a good day hike. The peak had a fine view of the surrounding flatlands.

From Picacho we drove south to Red Rock where, according to a document provided by the Arizona Tourist Dept, there are free hot springs. This document did not provided exact directions just stated that the springs were "in and around the town of Red Rock". Perhaps they were describing another town? We couldn't find any nor anybody to ask for help. Consulting tourism officials, rangers, and locals resulted in us being sneered at as if we were dirty. I didn't realize that hot springs had such a bad reputation. It's not as if I was asking where to get laid.

We continued south and wound up at Colossal Cave Mountain Park.

"Mountain" of mountain park is the key word. Not "state" park. Although Colossal Cave uses the reassuring brown signs of state parks to lure you in, it seemed to be a private enterprise and a very touristy one at that. $5 just to get inside the park then $7.50 per person to enter the caves. The visitor center was full of swarming bees and little children cacophonously tooting flutes purchased in the gift shop and the whole thing made me want to run away. We hoped to see some bats but we learned that the bats aren't really present until the summer.

We passed on spending $16 to see the caves, but did decide to spend the night in the park since we'd paid the entrance fee already. I'm not sure what the story is with these campgrounds but they seem to be from another time. They're on the premises of Colossal Cave but seem only peripherally related. The roads are in sorry shape, the pit toilets few and far between. Only two of the sites are big enough for an RV. Then came the real shocker: a sign stating that Colossal Cave Mountain Park actually LOCKS campers inside the grounds from 5 pm to 9 am!

I thought this must not be true. We must be misreading the sign. So when the "ranger" (notice the quotations) came by to check us in for the night I asked him about it.

"We can't get out?" I said.
"Nope," he said, recording the van's license plate.
"Not until 9 AM?"
"Nope."

Then he suggested that we might be able to escape 15-20 minutes early if we waited around the gates for when the employees arive. Oh, and there's a 9-1-1 call box down the path. THANKS! I've never heard of campers being physically locked inside a campground for 16 hours. That's the stuff horror movies are made of. Usually there is an exit-only gate (enforced by an electronic code or metal spikes). Of course it fit perfectly into the weird and somewhat disturbing entity that was Colossal Cave Mountain Park. The ABOVE picture is of night fall at our campsite there.

We were out of Colossal Cave State Park by 9 AM, I can assure you. We drove to Safford and got a site at Roper Lake State Park where, unfortunately, I forgot to take any pictures. But I can tell you it was a pleasant little campground. We parked by the fishing lake; we soaked in the hot tub (which is fueled by hot spring water). Roper provided free firewood - a nice bonus.

The next day, en route for Phoenix, we stopped off at Boyce Thompson Arboretum State Park (ABOVE picure). Although the trails are a little muddled direction-wise, it makes for a good day trip, with many beautiful / strange / gigantic / unique plants and trees to see.

While the weather is still cool I'm going to take a peek at Quartszite and Slab City. I'm not sure when I'll have wi-fi for another entry...

Into eastern AZ...

2009-02-14T15:40:00.004-05:00

Upon leaving Santa Fe, I drove southeast to Villanueva State Park. This delightful little place is accessible only by a very twisty, narrow road and for that reason I suspect is not hugely popular. But I found it to be quite lovely. There were excellent shower, toilet, and water facilities, a simple network of roads around camp, and a good hiking trail accessible right from the grounds. It had a very "nestled in the mountains" feeling.

BELOW: Looking up at the campsite where I stayed.

It snowed in Villanueva but none of it stuck. I grumpily got my cold weather gear back out - the sleeping bag, the Coleman lantern, the quadruple layering of socks, pants, and shirts. You take the toothbrush from your mouth and its steaming like a ladle of soup.

The next day I drove west on Route 40 for Arizona. BELOW: I spent a night at this little rest-stop outside Springerville along Route 61 (a very peaceful and scenic road at the easternmost fringe of AZ).

Springerville seemed like a neat little mountain town. Perhaps it thrived on tourists like myself who drive in, buy coffee, buy a used paperback, buy gas, and so on. I continued to travel thinking it would be interesting to drive through Tonto National Forest. The first 50 miles, however, were the most psychologically grueling of the road trip thus far. There was a violent north-blowing wind and for those 50 miles I was driving directly west across flat, steppe-like plains where not a tree nor building stood to impede the gusts. In those scenarios the high-top on the van becomes a sail. I had to perpetually steer slightly leftward to keep from blowing off the road. I kept thinking, "This is it. This is the day the van is going to tip over. Its inevitable. It's going to happen..." and all the while cursing myself for buying a high-top van rather than a normal one. Little sedans and SUVs buzzed by me, annoyed and unsympathetic to what I was going through. I couldn't take my hands off the wheel for a second. My iPod, which was set to shuffle, played songs at random without my intervention and so I had to sit through odd tracks from Books on Tape and what not.

My only comfort was knowing that as soon as I hit the town of Show Low, the road turned south. And, as I'd hoped, it did, and the wind ceased. At the same time, the terrain changed dramatically. It seemed I'd emerged in the Swiss Alps:

There were many valleys and gorges to my right and so I pulled over to take pictures.

BELOW: The view I am seeing from the picture ABOVE.

BELOW: Extreme muddyness around the cliff.

The road descended and the snow and firs vanished, replaced by big red rocks and shrubs and small fruity cacti. BELOW: another vista off the side of the road. (This road is Route 60 and if you're ever in the area I highly recommend it).

ABOVE: Exactly 2 months after Frank inscribed this legacy I arrived from Rhode Island to photograph it. How are you, Frank and Jessica? How did you celebrate Valentine's Day? Are things OK? How lovely of you to grace the Arizona desert with a tribute to your blooming relationship. Thanks. Thanks so much.

I'd gotten off to a late start and the sun began to set. I didn't want to navigate those twisty roads with the sun in my face, much less in the dark. So I spent the night at a rest stop beside the ABOVE bridges. Painting a bridge goes a long way toward making it handsome, doesn't it? This was a fine place to park overnight. As the sun set I crawled down to the river and soaked my feet.

The next day I continued on, aiming for Superior, AZ but like the day before I was caught by the setting sun. I saw a sign for "Oak Flats Campground" and followed it. I had heard of these free BLM Arizona campgrounds but always envisioned more of an empty plain. But this was a real campground with firepits, tables, and toilets (no potable water, though). It was a little more rundown than a state park, but so what? I got to park the van beside a little river of snow run-off. All night long I heard it babbling.

Now, for some "Reader Mail". Kate from Purchase, NY writes:

"Take pictures of you and of people and put them on your web page. Thats what i want to see. And animals. More you and animals. And videos. I basically want your face in every picture. In some goofy state! Like with your eyebrow raised or your tongue sticking out. Haha...yea. I can't go to sleep cause i'm tipsy. How about a video you talking to yourself then?"

Thank you, Kate, for reading the blog and for feeling compelled to write me. Unfortunately, since I'm traveling alone, pictures of me with others would be something of a farce. As for animals, I'd love to photograph them and I have (see the San Angelo entry) but for the most part they're evasive. I do have a video camera but at this time have no plans to embed video on the site. Keep reading!

More New Mexico...

2009-02-08T13:54:00.003-05:00

After leaving Oliver Lee SP, I spent a few days longer in Alamogordo than I intended as I awaited forwarded mail. I slept for 4-5 nights in the Alamogordo Super Walmart and noted numerous other van-dwellers and RVers. This included a pleasant talk with a New Zealand woman who parked her little Class-B van next to mine and who was on a 10-month van-dwelling stint herself. Less pleasant, though, was the dickhead who parked his truck camper in the middle of the lot and ran a noisy generator non-stop, day and night. He even had the little accordion-shaped stairs down and everything, as if he were out in the woods. What the hell?

I visited the much-hyped White Sands National Monument but left feeling dissapointed and grumpy. Or perhaps I was grumpy to begin with. You know, the sand was a little brighter than what I encountered at Monahans Sandhills SP, but not by much (or so it seemed). I didn't like how you had to drive the 8-mile road rather than get a chance to bike or walk it. Then came the real pisser: at about the halfway mark, the paved road inexplicably turns to dirt. It was so severely riddled with bumps and holes that I began to hear things breaking in the back of my van. This is a road you pay $3 to drive down and it's only 8 miles long. They claimed the road was friendly to all vehicles - sedans, trucks, trailers, and so on. I disagree! Is there some ecological reason they couldn't finish paving it? If you know, please post the answer below, so I can forgive them...

As soon as my mail arrived, I drove south to Las Cruces, then north again but on the opposite side of the mountains. I spent a night at Elephant Butte State Park...

ABOVE: My campsite over the lake, or reservoir, whatever it was. The view was pretty but overall Elephant Butte SP was my least favorite state park thus far, mainly because it revolved around watersports, which don't interest me. Also, the "freshwater" coming up from the pumps was brackish.

From Elephant Butte, I drove north to Albuquerque. I'd heard that Albuquerque was an up-and-coming city... well, it was so up-and-coming I'm not certain it really exists, yet. Construction everywhere. And where there wasn't construction, then strip malls. I parked at a church downtown and walked around... the downtown area seemed to have that same lousy city-planning syndrome that Providence had, where too many too tall buildings crammed together kill any sense of community or rhythm from block to block. It makes you feel small.

BELOW: My impression of Albuquerque...

The next day, I drove north to Santa Fe. Perhaps the city-planners in Albuquerque decided not to make it interesting because Santa Fe is so close - and so interesting. It's immediately appealing for a visitor. The roads are wide, the signs clear, and the buildings low, giving you a view of the surrounding snowy mountains. It was chillier in Santa Fe than anywhere else in NM and there was old snow on the ground in places.

ABOVE: I was able to park overnight at the visitor's center, since the Santa Fe Walmart supposedly forbids camping.

ABOVE: The whole "clay abode" style architecture was refreshing. It may be a gimmick but I'm all for gimmicks if they're pleasing to the eye, modest-looking, and make for a fun downtown area. The "Plaza" in Santa Fe was geared toward tourists (BELOW: one of the many vendors), but it was very pedestrian-friendly and vibrant.

I walked all day which included a jaunt up a sidestreet to enviously look at the houses. On my way back I had a burger and some beers at a hotel restaurant where nothing was more expensive than $6. Another bar-goer told me that New Mexico should be called "Land of Entrapment" rather than "...enchantment", due to how often people tend to fall in love with the place and stick around.

Today I will begin the trek westward into Arizona. But before I go, check out this awesome little truck camper I spotted:

Van life observations thus far.

2009-02-02T12:47:00.009-05:00

I've been on the road for 3 months and so here are my van-dwelling observations thus far. Perhaps some of the tidbits in this entry will prove useful or amusing to other van-dwellers or people thinking of van-dwelling. Warning: if you're not into van-dwelling this entry may make your eyes glaze over.

OVERNIGHT PARKING
When I was on the east coast, it was often hard to find reasonably priced campsites. It was winter and so many state parks (normally the cheapest) were shut down. I spent the majority of my nights in parking lots of Walmarts and Costcos. As I've inched westward, it's become easier to find open state parks where you can get water, take a shower, enjoy the outdoors, and sleep overnight for $6 - $12 a night...

But those prices are still too expensive for me to do every night. I mix it up with parking lots and rest stops. My van is small compared to other people's rigs; it fills 1 parking space. I don't run a generator, I try to keep a low-profile, I arrive late and leave early. I aim for 24-hour stores like Super Wal-Marts where you're less likely to get in the way of a night crew that cleans the parking lot.

Ill will towards the labor policies of Walmart aside, there are many advantages to camping in these parking lots. Those towering, glaring security lights can actually illuminate the van enough that I can move around without my lantern or flashlight (when it comes time to sleep I just put on an eye-mask if it's bothering me). You always have access to a real bathroom as well as groceries. There is a security presence in case something goes wrong.

FOOD, WATER, AND COOKING
I eat cheap. It hasn't broken my budget. I usually eat fruit and eggs for breakfast. Nuts or a snack for lunch. Dinner is often some kind of canned food, preferably beans, or a sandwich, or both. A tall can of beans may cost 60 cents and last for 2 meals.

Water is easy so long as you're frequenting state parks. On one occasion, in the midwest, I asked the folks at a little coffee shop if I could fill up my water container in their kitchen. They let me come in through the back and fill it up. But other than that, I've always managed to subsist on water from campgrounds.

Early on it seemed wasteful to use my good drinking water for dish-washing, while meanwhile I was dumping my melted cooler water. I compromise by filling a gallon jug with the waste water from the cooler and using that for my dishes. This doesn't always work. Sometimes the cooler water gets contaminated by the food floating around in it.

As for cooking - you have to think through the entire process before doing anything. Every step must be considered because you have limited space and resources. For example, when frying eggs, you might crack the eggs into the pan forgetting that immediately thereafter you've got drippy egg shells and dirty fingers. So before I even light up the stove, I position the garbage beside it, as well as a cup of soapy water for rinsing off my hands. You also don't want to waste any of your fuel, be it propane or over a fire, while you're fumbling to find the next ingredient. I do all my prep-work before hand --- opening cans, slicing cheese, dicing vegetables, and so on. I position it all across the desk in the order I'm going to need it.

I have a Coleman two-burner propane stove. The 16 oz cylinders will last about 2 weeks. I have had some problems with them. On one occasion, the valve on a cylinder went haywire and sub-zero propane started spraying all over my van. Another cylinder was missing a thread on top, so it couldn't connect to anything. In both cases I returned them and got my $2.50 back. I don't really like using the propane stove. You're anxious the whole time about setting the inside of the van on fire; the flames, for some reason, seem to promote moisture; the hissing sound is irritating; and so on.

I keep a mini charcoal Smokey Joe grill in the back for campgrounds. This is my preferred cooking method. It's safer, it's more fun to cook outside, it's a dry-flame, and so on. I don't use lighter fluid; I use one of those brilliant Charcoal Chimneys which requires a few wads of burning newspaper to get the charcoal red-hot.

THE COOLER
My Coleman "5 day" extreme cooler has been pretty reliable. I can't vouch for the 5-day claim. The make-or-break point seems to be whether it gets very cold at night or not. Obviously, when I was traveling on the east coast in the dead of winter, I had no problems with refridgeration. I would actually open the cooler at night to let it freeze over, or leave perishables sitting on my desk all day to stay cool. Once I crossed into Texas and struck heat, the cooler began to falter. The ice melted very quickly, even though I was only opening it 1x or 2x a day and keeping it in shade. Here in New Mexico, where it gets very cold at night, the ice has stayed more or less intact.

I don't have many perishables, though. And the ones I do have are flexible about getting warm. I keep butter for lubricating my frying pan. Cold cuts. And eggs. When I buy meat it is only when I plan to cook it that day (i.e. en route to a campground where I can grill).

One problem with the melting ice is that your groceries end up floating around in a mixture of ice and ice water. It's not a problem for a bottle of beer, but it's disgusting when it's a stack of sliced cheese or a stick of butter. My solution: a screw-top plastic jar. They're 2 or 3 bucks in any kitchen goods section. I stuff in my butter and cold cuts, screw it closed, and let it float around in there as much as it wants. It stays dry inside but still gets all the cold from the water.

ON STAYING WARM AT NIGHT...
My van has a regular bed built in -- mattress, sheets, pillows, blanket. On cold nights, I unzip my sub-zero sleeping bag so it's more of a blanket shape and layer it in with the other blankets. On REALLY cold nights, I zip up the sleeping bag, put it in the bed, and use it the way you're supposed to, albeit inside a bed.

I prefer to sleep in as little clothing as possible, as I hate the feeling of clothes getting caught on sheets. This is also conducive to generating body heat in a mummy bag. But I've noticed that my legs and feet tend to struggle to stay warm so I'll often wear thermal socks and long underwear. I pull the tab on the sleeping bag over my head and sculpt a hole for fresh air, and voila, I'm set for the night.

When it's not sleeping time and the van is frozen, that's different. I'm a writer and I like to sit in the van at night and type. Sitting still like that, plus the cold nights, can be hard. I'll often sit bundled in long underwear, sweats, slippers, sweaters, winter coat, fingerless gloves, and with a blanket wrapped around my legs. I get up periodically and do push-ups to get the blood flowing. What can I say? The van is cold inside and that's that.

When I burn my Coleman propane lantern, it can take some of the chill out of the air. But it's a catch-22, because when I'm burning the lantern, I always want to have a window open so as not to die of CO poisoning. If anything, the lantern, with its warm, yellow light, seems symbolic of heat and works psychologically. Just looking at those blazing mantles makes you feel a lot warmer than, say, an LED flashlight.

ELECTRICITY
My deep-cycle battery and inverter have done me well so far. The battery only ran down once and that was after sitting parked, without running the engine, in the mountains during a deep-freeze for 3 days. I can run my computer and charge my phone / camera on a daily basis. If I'm at a camp-site where hookups are cheap then I'll do that and run an extension cord and splitter into the van. I have a string of yellow chain lighting for those special occasions.

INTERNET
Wireless internet is very easy to come by these days. Starbucks is the most consistent source. If you have a Starbucks account with at least $5 on it and you show some account activity every 30 days, you get their free Wi-Fi.

In Texas, the rest stops offer free Wi-Fi --- an amazing deal. I've also gotten free wi-fi at Tourist /Visitor Centers, bookstores, and locally-owned coffee shops. RV parks offer "free wifi" but it's not free in my book if you're spending an absurd $30 or $40 a night for a parking space.

When I'm at these places I usually take the opportunity to charge up my computer and phone as well.

BATHROOMS
I keep a jug for peeing in the van. It was once one of those large kitty-litter containers with a curved handle on top. I also have a Thetford chemical toilet for emergencies, but I've barely used it. If I have to shit I'll go into a Walmart or use the campground toilets. As soon as you start filling up the Thetford toilet, you have to consider dumping it (not to mention worry about odors or spillage).

Then there comes the time when you have to dump the jug of piss. I don't believe in dumping it in parking lots. That's disgusting. It stinks and then the poor shopping-cart guy will walk through it. Not to mention that its behavior like that which has made many Walmarts ban overnight parking. I try to find woods or a grassy area where it'll be absorbed into the earth and not ruin anybody's day (and I try to do this in places where nobody will see me dumping it, either). Obviously, if you're in a campground, you should dump it in the provided toilets, or their dump tank.

KEEPING CLEAN
Being a little dirty is part of living in the van, in my opinion. I wear under-garments for 3-4 days, while things like shirts and pants I'll wear for weeks without washing them. If you hang your clothes up to ventilate overnight or in the sun, it can go a long way toward making them last.
Eventually I run out of clean socks, underwear, and undershirts. I know I could wash them in my bucket in the van, but it seems less time-consuming and laborious to simply find a coin-op laundromat. It will only cost you $3 or $4 bucks for everything.

As for personal hygiene --- many state parks have showerhouses, so if you're visiting them, you should have no problem getting regular hot showers. Remember that many state parks will let you enter for free or a small charge (a few bucks) to just VISIT the park, assuming you're going to hike and enjoy the scenery then vacate by nightfall. If you're discreet you should be able to stroll over to the camping area, take a quick shower, and skirt back to your vehicle without anyone noticing you're not a camper.

When I didn't have access to campgrounds, I had to do it the old-fashioned way - with a bucket, or in a bathroom sink. I have very short hair now, but early on in the trip it was lengthy, and I had to sneak into bathrooms and shampoo it in their sinks to keep the oils under control. Obviously, single-user bathrooms are the only way to do this. I found I could get in, wash, dry, and clean up in 3 minutes just by thinking through the process beforehand and arranging the towel and shampoo properly in my bag. I always wipe up all the suds and fallen hairs after, too - having had to clean bathrooms in different jobs over the years I don't like leaving a mess for anybody.

What I find to be more difficult than personal hygiene is dishwashing. It takes alot of water and time to scrub a pot clean in a van. If I could rebuild my kitchenette again I'd install a much deeper sink and a stainless steel countertop to give me a better work area. In the morning, i fill my tea kettle up with a little extra water. After I pour the hot water into my mug, I pour the extra hot water into a dirty pot for cleaning. The warm water is better at loosening up the gunk and it's easier on your hands when you're washing. Again, campgrounds often solve this problem, especially onces that have designated dish-washing stations.

MAIL
Before leaving Rhode Island, I rented a mailbox at a UPS Store and re-directed all my bills to it. I talked to the manager and explained I'd be traveling and would need to call in once a month and have my mail forwarded to strange locations. The staff at this store has thus been very accomodating; when I call in, they'll sort through my mail with me over the phone, telling me what it's in there, so I can decide if its time to forward it or not. It costs about 6 bucks to have it forwarded. If I am nearing the home of a friend, I'll have the mail forwarded there. Otherwise, I have it sent General Delivery to a post office. A phonecall ahead of time to a post office to give the staff a heads-up is also helpful.

I also informed my health insurance and car insurance companies that I'd be traveling and that there might be delays in communication between us. They supposedly put notes on my record as such.

VENTILATION
It's a major issue for living in a vehicle - one which, I think, doesn't get enough attention. You want fresh air, obviously, but more importantly, you want all your stale, wet air to constantly be on the move OUT.

In my van, the only vent I can keep open 24/7 is the one on top, which is sheltered against rain. The pair of slider windows cannot be kept open during rain. In cold weather, its tempting to close the sliders to keep out that frigid draft.

I do wind up with a lot of moisture on the walls, so much so that its caused the paint to peel. This is obviously a failure in the design of the van itself. I didn't plan properly for ventilation. If I could do it all over again I'd install a fan system in the cieling - perhaps one of those solar fans.

---

That's all for now; maybe I'll update these thoughts in a few months.

Guadalupe NP and Oliver Lee SP

2009-01-31T17:04:00.005-05:00

I don't have much time to do this entry, so it's going to be brief...

ABOVE: Parked beside a rare Sportsmobile van from Alaska.

ABOVE: I hiked up Mount Guadalupe, the highest peak in Texas at around 8700 feet. It was a very fun hike. Strenuous, but consistently spectacular. I left at sunrise and was back before noon.

ABOVE: The USPS pyramid monument atop Guadalupe.

ABOVE: I sat for a little while on the peak, in the shelter of rocks to duck the wind.

ABOVE: I continued north into New Mexico and stayed at Oliver Lee State Park. I had a great parking spot right against the mountains.

ABOVE: The Charcoal chimney doing its thing...

Monahans Sandhills SP

2009-01-26T18:53:00.004-05:00

All my gloating about the sunshine and warm weather caught up with me and the temperature plummeted. For a day it was 43 degrees and at night below 30. Now today it's warmed up again, although I chatted with a ranger who warned of potential "sleet" for tomorrow.

Let me digress for a moment about weather warnings. After living in Rhode Island for 2 years I'm very wary of people who tell you about bad weather to come. Many RI residents love to spread fear about the weather. In the Ocean State, its a ritual, a hobby, a tradition even. The mentality seems to be, Why simply recite what the Weather Station predicted when you can come up with your own fire-and-brimstone threats about snow and rain? Why be accurate? Why be reasonable?

I worked in a gym and observed first-hand how a "chance of flurries" mentioned by one customer at 7 AM had become "possibly 3 to 4 feet of snow" intoned somberly by another customer at 4:30. After hearing of such doom people would stare bitterly out the windows, shaking their heads --- the very people who on another day might spin their own web of meteorological deceit! It was a twisted version of the "Telephone" game we've all played, which poses an allegory about misinformation. However in this case it was not simply miscommuncation but, I suspect, intentional paranoia-building. They liked to scare one another.

You'd mention to someone how you planned to drive to Boston after work. "Oh, I wouldn't do that, buddy," this character says gravely, "They're saying rain, sleet, and hail... I'd keep off the roads, if I were you!" So you're alarmed and you check the weather... "Chance of rain 10%..."

It was all the more comic because it was New England which is famous for its harsh winters, rainy springs, steamy summers... Yet it was the life-long residents - supposed veterans of the climate - who seemed to regard any remote chance of precipitation as a signal of the apocalypse.

Anyway... while driving today I stopped at Monahans Sandhills State Park in central Texas. I had it in mind to see what all this "sand sledding" business was about.

True to its name, the park is composed of dunes for as far as you can see above. There are picnic areas and an RV campground. I'm not sure why you'd camp there except as a pitstop. $14/night and you can't even cook outside due to the dryness. There really wasn't much hiking or sight-seeing - just dunes, which you were welcome to walk on, and this "sledding".

ABOVE: The sled rentable at the park headquarters. You lube it up with a chunk of wax. Then you walk out into the dunes and begin the laborious process of carving out a tract. You see, the first dozen or so attempts down the hill, you don't slide at all. You have to drag yourself along by clawing in the sand in order to create a tract. Keep in mind that after each descent you must slog back up the dune and re-wax the sled.

I was eventually able to descend sort of quickly. I think it must be easier for children who won't sink as easily into the earth. It would also be easier with friends, because you could work cooperatively to make a very deep and smooth tract together.

ABOVE: A Texas rest-stop. Many Texas rest-stops offer free wireless internet. It is through one of them that I'm typing this very entry. The idea is to encourage people, especially truckers, to pull over, check e-mail, and maybe sleep a little. I guess they also figure tourists can use it to find out about more tourist stuff. Thanks, Texas!

Tomorrow I drive to Guadalupe National Forest.

Armadillos, wasps... San Angelo SP

2009-01-23T16:55:00.008-05:00

It had been over 8 eight days since my last shower so I had it in mind to pay for a campsite where there was a showerhouse, or get a cheap motel room. I also wanted to coordinate the bathing with doing laundry, as getting my body clean and then lying for 10 hours in my stinking bedding, or vice versa, would be pointless.

San Angelo State Park turned out to be the best option. I spent the afternoon at a coin-op laundromat in the college neighborhood, then drove into the park, which is only a few miles from downtown.

ABOVE: My campsite. It's $3 to enter plus $8 for a primitive campsite. If you're already paying the camping fee it seems like San Angelo is double-dipping by making you also pay the entrance fee. But hey, they're a state park and they're probably barely scraping by. The park is mostly desert hills centered around an enormous fishing lake (unvisited by me). There are winding trails for hiking and mountain-biking. There was a fire ban in effect due to a lack of rain, so I couldn't barbecue like I'd hoped to.

It was peaceful, warm, dry, and windy. Early in the morning I woke to the sound of rustling outside the van. I quietly rose and peeked out my window. There was a smallish dark shape foraging in the brush, but I couldn't make out any details (more on this later).

The next morning, I decided to do some hiking since I'd paid the $3 "Park Entrance Fee". The map provided by the office was, unfortunately, one of those dumb-headed maps that only shows you the park trails and none of the other intersecting roads or paths. This baffles me. If you are in unfamiliar back-country, without any way of measuring distance, your ONLY hope for taking the correct turn is by counting off trails and roads. It's the very principle which inspires people to count traffic lights when they're giving you directions. I found it, eventually...

The trails were also in need of a good working-over. Signs were either missing or so run-down as to be unreadable.

(BELOW: the Burkett trailhead with a primitive bathroom).

Not far down the trail, I had an encounter with an armadillo. The next 3 pictures tell the story. First I heard it rustling under a cactus. It came lurching into view and toward me.

It walked right onto the trail, seemingly fearless. It paused intermittently to sniff the air and feel about with its little lizard feet.

Then, once it got really close, it changed its mind and turned tail and crossed the trail. I think it just wanted to cross the trail and I was in the way. In that picture below doesn't it look like a total lizard? That's Godzilla's tail right there. In retrospect, having seen how this armadillo moved, I think it was an armadillo lurking around my van in the morning, too.

After hiking for a few hours I returned to camp. There was a dumpster off the road and I had it in mind to toss in my bagged garbage. I guess the smell of my garbage was strong, because as soon as I stepped out of the van with it, I was mobbed by wasps. They were obviously some sort of killer Texas wasp - they looked like a yellow jacket except between each black stripe it was HELL RED! Fucked up, huh? They started landing on the garbage and me.

The truth is that one of my deepest discomforts is to be touched by an insect, any insect. If it is a harmless insect like a moth then I am merely offended for having been touched against my will. When it is something potentially painful like a wasp or spider, I go absolutely apeshit. When these satan-wasps landed on me I ran cursing trailing garbage - beer bottles, empty cans, and so on - down the road.

It took a long time for me to recover from this, in terms of my emotions. I took a long walk to calm down. I hadn't been stung. I returned and picked up the garbage which the bugs had curiously lost interest in. I put it in the dumpster then drove over to the showerhouse intent on taking one last shower before hitting the road.

Now, I sat in the van for probably 10-15 minutes looking at my map. Then I went into the back and gathered together my towel and toiletries - probably another 5 minutes. I went into the showerhouse, undressed, and stepped under the water. I felt something heavy on my calf, running down my ankle, and then move under my foot. It was one of those red fucking wasps! It had been riding my leg THAT ENTIRE TIME! It must have been stunned or something, that's the only explanation as to why it didn't sting me.

I'll never be the same.

Ozarks to Texas

2009-01-22T14:08:00.003-05:00

From Memphis I drove into the Ozark region and spent a week camping on Mount Magazine, the tallest peak in Arkansas. The price was right, the facilities superb, and the hiking decent.

It was pretty cold up there, though. It dropped below 10 degrees a few nights. When you wake up and your bottle of piss is frozen solid it makes you wonder what you're doing camping in the dead of winter when you could be elsewhere...

... and so upon descending from the mountains I made up my mind to hurry to warm weather. I spent a night at Fort Smith then drove south through Oklahoma, stopping in Durant. The next day I drove to Dallas. Upon crossing over the Texas border the landscape changed almost immediately into beautiful, sunny desert. I pulled over at the Texas welcome center and ran prancing around the sand in my t-shirt and sandals (well, not quite - but I felt like doing that...)

I spent 2 nights in Dallas, where I watched the play-offs. I also watched "Gran Torino", which was excellent.

From Dallas I drove to Austin. Austin has the coolest strip of bars I've ever seen, on the famed "6th Street". The bars were big, open, and inviting, most with huge entrances open right onto the sidewalk, and there were many good restaurants sprinkled between them. I attended a showing of "The Wrestler" at the famous "Alamo Drafthouse" on 6th street, where you can order food and drinks while you watch. The seats are arranged so that you have a little counter in front of you and servers can walk up and down the aisles. I ordered a house salad and a vodka on the rocks. The food and drink were good and modestly priced. The movie ticket, since it was a matinee, was only 7 bucks. And the screen and sound quality were top-notch. The Alamo Drafthouse puts all those bullshit, overpriced cineplexes to shame...

"The Wrestler", though, was so painful that afterwards all I wanted to do was go to sleep and forget I'd ever seen it. I'm not saying it was a bad film - no, it was very good, flawed only by a crap ending - it just had a current of extremely depressing emotion running through it from start to finish. So I got in the van intent on driving to a Walmart for the night which, according to the GPS and map, was only 1.2 miles south.

45 minutes later, I arrived, and that was after shutting off the GPS and getting directions from a Shell Station. Something about Austin made the GPS go schizophrenic. It had me get on, off, and back on 35N four times in a row before I wised up to its treachery. There was a lot of construction happening, so maybe that's to blame.

The next day I drove westward - with the GPS deactivated, using my road atlas - aiming for Brady, Texas. This was a glorious little ride through the hills of central Texas. Surrounding me was that delightful "green desert" which I tend to associate with California. Not much in Brady, TX although I was perplexed by the sky-high motel rates advertised: $45, $60, and even $75 for 1 bed for 1 person for 1 night. In Brady fucking Texas. Where do they think they are?

Today I'm in San Angelo, TX, 2 hours from Brady. I'm aiming for New Mexico as I inch westward...

Memphis and so on...

2009-01-09T17:56:00.006-05:00

So here is a "van-dwelling" update: the original freshwater system in the van sucked. It was a pressure activated pump-sink linked by a hose to a 6 gallon freshwater tank (bought at West Marine), which in turn was connected by hose to an inlet on the kitchen counter for refills (Click the November entries for pictures of it). The main culprit was the pump sink. The pumping motion makes it difficult to wash your hands or fill containers; in addition, the pumps tend to spray water all over the place. And the 6 gallon tank was excessive; I've never needed that much water at a time.

So, despite how much money and time that system cost me, I decided to rip it out and go for something simpler. As you can see ABOVE, I ripped it out, patched the holes with an old cutting board, and put in the simplest possible alternative: a water jug with an adjustable spigot. When I'm driving, I simply stow it under the sink where the tank used to live. When I'm cooking or cleaning, I take it out. That labor is worth it for how neat and efficient the jug is with its water dispensing. I highly recommend it, if you've got it in mind to build a sink in a van...

As for the travels... I left Nashville. There was an 80 mile detour when the GPS sent me 40 miles in the wrong direction (the road was not finished). Many foul things were uttered and curses directed at the lowly Magellan GPS. That threw off my schedule, so I spent a night at Natchez Trace Park in Tennessee, which is cut in half by Route 40.

ABOVE: As usual, I was the only camper present.

ABOVE: A pit in the camp lake below a dock.

BELOW: The next 3 pictures show a beaver dam that was blocking the hiking loop around Cub Lake. The ranger had warned me before I left, "Part of the trail is flooded... the beavers did it." But he didn't say just how flooded it was.

I'd never seen such a humongous beaver dam. Now I appreciate why in cartoons the beaver characters are always engineers, builders, or demolitionists. This dam was a work of art. There were HUNDREDS of trees cut down with the telltale pointed ends. The water on the reservoir side of the dam was several feet deep. It was probably 30-40 feet long and it took me 15 minutes to carefully navigate it.

I explored Memphis the next morning. I don't have any photos to show, though, because I wasn't in the mood to carry the camera around. Memphis has a beautiful river walk. The famous "Beale St" neighborhood, though, was very touristy, on par with that heinous "Fisherman's Wharf" tourist trap in San Francisco.

There were signs for "B-B-Q Ribs" everywhere and since I'd enjoyed BBQ chicken in Georgia, I decided to give the ribs a try. NEVER AGAIN. It was one of the most disgusting things I've had to choke down, rivaled only by the time in college I accidentally bit into a deeply moldy muffin. And I HAD to choke the ribs down because the cook was also the bartender and he was tending bar right in front of me and he kept asking if I liked it or not. The meat was BBQ-colored on the outside, but inside it was puddle gray. It had to be peeled like duct tape from the bone. What really made me gag were the presence of "smaller" bones, in addition to the ribs. These "smaller" bones must have been cartiledge; they were translucent, almost the color of latex, and were very difficult to chew. The ribs I could avoid easily, but these smaller translucent bones were hard to see in the restaurant's dim lighting. What the hell!

From Memphis I drove toward Little Rock. As soon as I crossed over the Mississippi into Arkansas, there was a perceptible change in the world. It all had a very 1970s feel, or at least what I imagined the 1970's looked like. Something about the colors... I can't explain it. The road quality is significantly worse as well, the bumpiest, most cracked interstates I've encountered yet. Still, in Arkansas you can camp at State Parks with hook-ups for just $9 / night, and you're allowed to sleep overnight at rest stops as well. I'm hoping to explore the Ozarks next.

But first I'm in Little Rock to watch the play-offs. Go Ravens!

Georgia

2009-01-06T12:18:00.005-05:00

I spent the past few holidays weeks at a farm belonging to a close family friend in Georgia. I didn't have cell phone reception, much less internet access, hence the lack of blog entries. The picture above is of Ollie the llama, who I fed grains to each day. Ollie, as well as a female llama, were adopted by the farm owners after they were mauled by dogs at their original home. Everyone believed Ollie had been castrated by the dogs, but after the attack he still managed to impregnate the female llama. To quote Dr. Ian Malcom of Jurassic Park, "Life finds a way."

ABOVE: Another interesting character at the farm. A nameless donkey isolated from the other animals after supposedly trampling to death a calf he was charged with protecting. The farmhands universally agreed that this donkey is "mean". He was prone to appearing out of nowhere and staring you down from the edge of the fence.

ABOVE: There were also these "Angus" cows. They were very noisy.

ABOVE: Part of my stay in Georgia involved a return trip to the Smoky Mountains with co-pilot Jora Johnson. It was cool and rainy down in the campgrounds, but at the top of the mountains it was bitterly cold and frozen over, as shown in the photograph.

ABOVE: Me at some sort of dam as we first entered the Smokys.

Right now I'm in Nashville. It's 43 degrees and raining, and the van windshield is leaking in 3 places. I'm sick of this chilly, southern-wintern rain. I'm going to where it's warm.

Tomorrow I'm going to do an entry about some of the modifications I've done to the van.

PS: In response to the comment/question posted on my last entry about internet access: I take my laptop computer into Starbucks. Most Starbucks have Wifi and if you register a Starbucks gift-card with their website, they let you access it. It's not free but it's close to it. Thanks for reading!

To the Smoky Mountains!

2008-12-15T16:45:00.006-05:00

The past few days have consisted of a trek inland. I spent nights in Greenville, Raleigh, Greensboro, and Asheville.

At some point in that trek I noticed signs for the "Country Doctor Museum". I was curious so I followed the signs off the highway(264?) and into the small town where the museum resides. The tour was $5 and included many interesting bygone medical tools, devices, and "cures". Above is a steel lung; above that, some Civil War prosthetics. There were also live leeches floating around a jar. The tour guide explained that leeches require very little maintenaince. You simply drop in "chicken liver" every few weeks and they're set.

Asheville had a neat little downtown run that reminded me of Brattleboro, VT -- lots of coffee shops, art galleries, locally-owned businesses, and so on. I walked around it with the intention to take pictures, but a passing cop, upon seeing my camera, warned me that the streets weren't "as safe as they look" and that I should put it away. So I did.

Leaving Asheville, I finally hit some mountains. The van held its own on the long inclines, albeit with abysmal gas mileage, but that's unavoidable. It was stressful on the curvy roads, what with freight trucks bearing down on me. I always feel bad holding up the trucks, but I figure it'd be much worse for everybody if I tipped over in front of them.

The part of the Smokey Mountains I hiked was along the northern flank. The colors and scents reminded me of the Adirondacks in the late spring. It was very warm; I had to take off my jacket to be comfortable.

BELOW: This lagoon was the goal of the hike. The picture doesn't honor just how truly emerald green it was.

BELOW: Bear scat?

The Outer Banks, NC

2008-12-11T18:21:00.008-05:00

I drove southwest from Virginia Beach and spent a night in Elizabeth City, NC. I chose it because it had a coffee-shop with WiFi and a Super Walmart. It turned out to be an actual "small town" with a downtown area and locally-owned stores. It had a harbor. It seemed to be trying really hard NOT to be a shithole. I bought a fruit smoothie and slept at the Walmart. I rented "Tropic Thunder" from one of those "Red Box" dvd rentals. The movie was lame; it turned into the very type of movie it seemed to be initially mocking. I cooked soup and had a beer and went to sleep.

The temperature was a radiant 45 degrees in the van. I was able to walk around barefoot and wash my dishes without being in pain. Glorious.

The next morning, I crossed over into the Outer Banks. It was gray, humid, and raining. I always feel a little embarassed for a summer-vacation town when I see it during foul weather. The whole of NC-12 was deserted. Many businesses, motels, and campgrounds were closed down.

I underestimated just how long the Outer Banks is. Or perhaps because the landscape is so repetitious it just FEELS like that shot of the Imperial Cruiser in the beginning of Star Wars. My eyes started to cross after awhile. There seemed to be three "locales" which occured again and again, but never mixed: strip malls, vacation homes, and craggy dunes. It just went on and on. None are very interesting. The vacation homes are monstrous, built only to rent out to multiple families / frats (I imagine?), and they sit in these big ugly plains with no vegetation. And many more were being built everywhere you looked. I can't imagine spending a week at the Outer Banks in the summer.

Upon arriving, I stopped off at a visitor center to dump my recyclables and use the toilet. I also picked up some pamphlets and motel brochures. I was amused to see a pamphlet titled "SO YOU WANT TO DRIVE ON THE BEACH?" with a picture of a sandy SUV on the beach. I guess many visitors have it in mind to drive on sand. What, exactly, is the allure? Perhaps you can get to remote beaches. I don't know. there are so many rental units I imagine that come July there isn't much free sand no matter how far you drive down the beach.

My first order of business was to figure out where I was going to sleep. On a small, mostly-empty island I felt like my chances of going unnoticed while parked overnight on some side road were poor. I called over a dozen campgrounds. 2 were open and both had closed down their amenities (shower, bathroom, laundry, etc) yet refused to lower their rates. I explained that I just needed a place to park and that it was technically impossible for me to even use the hook-ups. Would they sell me a space for a few bucks? No. So I began calling motels. Most of the motel brochures had "rate sheets" and I started with the lower-end ones. Most were around $60/night. The first one, the Avon Motel, was only renting out cottages. I told the lady it was out of my price range and she suggested I call "The Falcon Motel". So I 4-1-1ed the Falcon Motel. But there was an error and the operator connected me by mistake to The Cape Hatteras Hotel.

The man who answered sounded reasonable so we talked. It being the off-season and a rainy Tuesday night, he was willing to lower the price. I really lucked out. The room was on the 3rd floor right on top of the beach. If you fell off the balcony you'd just land in the sand and probably get hit by a wave. In fact the waves were so close and so noisy I had to close the window to sleep. It had a little fridge, free Wi-Fi, coffee, and a TV. I took a hot shower then bought some beers and made sandwiches. I watched an Arthur C. Clarke marathon before falling asleep. It felt extraordinarily indulgent. But, hey, if you're paying for a motel room, you had might as well go all the way...

Who would have thought a classy hotel would lower their rates to accomodate me while those shitty RV parks wouldn't budge? I drove by those parks and they had dozens of empty spaces. What the hell is with that?

I also watched some "Ultimate Fighting" on the TV. I'd never watched it closely. A childhood of action and karate movies has made real-life punches look slow and oddly silent. It's hard to tell if the fighters are even connecting with each blow. But then the cheekbones purple, the noses turn into bloody cloves, the ears explode...

As for sight-seeing, I visited one of the state parks and hiked over the huge dunes. It was spectacular in a low-key way. So much silence and softness in all directions. There was also a nature exhibit (as per the photo at the top of the blog; I'm always a sucker for nature dioramas).

ABOVE: Due to the rain there was no horizon, just this gray wall about a half-mile from the shore.

BELOW: I photographed this unusually comprehensive urinal cover in the park restroom. I'd never seen a urinal cover like this. Usually people just tie a plastic bag around a urinal to indicate it's out of order. These guys built a plywood box!

Continuing on, I parked off of NC-12 and took a stroll on the beach, just to see it. The water was in the 40s.

When I woke up after my night in the motel, I found that my van had once again leaked badly around the windshield. Seeing as how there is a 3" deep ribbon of sillicone around the periphery of the high-top I am now officially at a loss as to how the water is getting in. It's not the windows. It's not the windshield either, as I've had that tested by professionals (and besides, the water comes in slightly above the windshield). But what can I do at this point? I've already spent over $1000 trying to fix the leak. It's hopeless. I think it's just a hexed van in that regard. I toweled it up and begged God for a chance to torture the dumb motherfuckers who originally installed the roof.

I took the ferry from Hatteras to Ocracoke and then from Ocracoke to Swansquarter. The attendant told me to store my bicycle inside the van so I'd fall within the "20 footer" bracket and save $15.

Upon landing in Swans Quarter a very hellish trek to Greenville began. It was already late, close to 4:00, so it was getting dark, and the storm was really getting psycho. The van handles terribly on wet roads. You must constantly grip the steering wheel and watch for every approaching puddle; a bump on the road or a draft from a passing truck makes the nose jerk. That fiberglass high-top is like a sail and crosswinds slap the whole 10,000 pound vehicle about. The majority of the journey was on single lane roads with the locals pulling JasonBourne-maneuvers and passing me on the left. Most were nice about it, seeming to understand that I can't drive this whale as fast as a compact car, but on occasion there was the blared horn, or the teenage goblin in the backseat giving me the middle finger.

I passed many accidents. I probably should have just pulled over and waited out the storm. I'm the only guy on the road who actually can pull over and cook/shit/sleep/watch movies in his vehicle indefinitely while a storm passes. But I continued on like the rest of them. Now I'm in Greenville, NC, heading west.

Virginia Beach, VA

2008-12-08T17:05:00.005-05:00

After visiting friends in Charlottesville, VA for 3 days, I drove to Virginia Beach intent on exploring the shoreline and First Landing State Park.

The weekend was rather sedentary and full of good food and beer, so I felt like exercising. I thought I'd bicycle from the Walmart where I was parked to First Landing State Park, which at the end of the day would give me 30 cycled miles round-trip.

I woke early this morning. There were seagulls on the roof of the van. It was one of those cold mornings where you have to get dressed inside your sleeping bag. I brewed tea and made a sandwich, then bundled up and set out on my bike trek.

I only lasted 4 miles. The "bike lane" frequently disapeared into a busy road popular amongst dump trucks driving 50 MPH. I thought my year of cycling around Providence had hardened me against bad drivers, but I forgot that in the city the streets are short, which prevents drivers from really getting up to speed. Here there are great long straight-aways and the drivers, no doubt listening to "Life is a Highway", seem to revel in blasting down them.

When there is no bike lane or shoulder it's difficult for drivers and bikers to share the road. I don't blame the drivers for that. What I do blame them for is for driving weirdly close to my bike or not signaling. At moments like that you understand those stories of cyclists going apeshit and beating at passing vehicles with their bicycles and tire pumps.

The final straw came when I tried to cross a street and nearly got hit by a Prius (aren't hybrids and cyclists supposed to be on the same team?). I had been watching the incoming traffic; the Prius most definitely had not signaled it was about to turn. It came to a screeching halt. I looked at the driver. The woman looked back. If I had any balls I'd have said some truly cruel things to her at that moment but instead I just kind of waved and wobbled toward the curb.

So I went back to the van and vanned it to the shoreline.

The "beach town" area was deserted but not dilapidated. It didn't scare me the way Wildwood's beach town did when I visited it in November. The streets were clean, the buildings well-kept, and so on. I walked on the beach and took some pictures.

There was a dude feeding seagulls out of his balcony:

The main drag along the shore leads right into First Landing State Park. I parked in the visitor area and went to the office to get a map, but found it was closed. In the absence of the office, visitors were directed to this thing:

It seemed to be an outdoor computer. It was "on" in the sense that I could hear the machinery whirring and there was this touch-screen showing a pastoral scene. But that was it - it wouldn't function. It had no buttons and the screen didn't respond. I guess it was frozen. Or maybe the staff at First Landing has a philosophical sense of humor and they like to have the information-needy jab fingers at an open, unresponsive landscape.

I walked the "Osthamanthus Trail" where there were many bald cypress trees and their so-called "knees". It was pretty neat, all the moss and boggery. That trail was 3.1 miles and went by quickly. I saw many squirrels and heard woodpeckers, as well as ongoing gunfire from Fort Story.

After finishing that trail, I got out the bike and began the Cape Henry Trail. It was 6 miles. It had another one of those fun "Exercise Trails". I did them all except the tire jump, which I skipped due to my bum knee.

I reached the end of the Cape Henry Trail. There was a boat landing. I meant to photograph it but then this predatory-looking white sedan with black-tinted windows pulled into the parking lot and made me uneasy. I could see the outline of a man's face through the black tinting. First he slowed down to a crawl right next to where I was riding and looked at me then he parked way off in the corner of the lot where only a pervert or a drug dealer would think to park. I continued over to the next lot and he followed me there as well. At one point he started to get out. I saw one red-swishypants and Reebok sneaker leg. I began pedaling quickly in the opposite direction. Then a second later he roared by me in the sedan.

After evading that freak, I found this little historical loop about the Chesapeake Indians. It had these cool re-creations of houses.

It's supposed to start raining for 3 days, so tomorrow I'm leaving Virginia.

Richmond, VA

2008-12-02T17:12:00.003-05:00

I parked in a parking lot on the other side of the river in Richmond. Today I rode my bicycle over the Boulevard Bridge (above) to explore the downtown / historic area of the city. The first leg of the ride lacked a sidewalk or shoulder and the Richmond drivers competed with me for space on the road (it was two lanes and not congested, mind you, so they could have easily just gone to the left of me, the assholes...). I thought I might die.

You can't ride your bike across the bridge; you have to walk it over (above). It's too bad because it's such a smooth, straight chute, it'd be lovely on a bike. Well, that's probably why they outlawed bike-riding on it. People got carried away. The water below is very shallow. Lots of rocks.

The highlights of the day were riding down the Boulevard and also Monument Way (err Ave?). These were bicycle-friendly rodes with lots of beautiful architecture. There was also a sequence of increasingly grandiose monuments of famous men like General Lee on horseback. Being on a ride of my own, I felt inspired.

There weren't many decorations up and perhaps the people in the next picture aimed to compensate for that. With balls.

Lastly, I took a detour through a park on the north side of the Nickel Bridge. It had one of those Physical Fitness Trails where every 100 feet there is an apparatus to test your strength. I did well on the ropes but found that I'm largely out of shape. I could only do 5 chin-ups comfortably. A week before leaving on this trip I fell off my bike and injured my knee. The injury has persisted and prevented me from doing my daily jog or any strenuous hiking. Cycling, though, doesn't affect it.

No martinis allowed in the park!

Shock and Awe in Outdoor World

2008-11-30T11:19:00.005-05:00

I stopped at a Starbucks in Hanover, MD. I noticed a big store called "Outdoor World" across the road. I'd never heard of "Outdoor World" and decided to check it out.

"Outdoor World" is an outdoors superstore. Hunting, camping, backpacking, fishing, and riflery are its main themes. But it's more than just a superstore....

The first thing you notice are the elaborate dioramas. Meticulously detailed, illuminated dramatically, and towering over you at every shirt rack, these stuffed-animal displays are on par with The Museum of Natural History.

Below is a diorama I couldn't really figure out. While most of the dioramas depicted animals in the wild or hunters stalking these animals, this one is just of some poor schmoe plunging through a crappy bridge. ("Outdoor World" doesn't sell bridges. Maybe that's the point.)

There was also this airplane.

In the marine section there was an enormous aquarium where you could watch employees feed the fish.

In the children's section I found this awesome toy set. I'd have loved this as a kid. The Jeep, ATV, hunter, rifle, and buck are mediocre, but there's a CLOTH TENT! That tent would have been a real jewel. It would have become a mainstay in every action figure set-up, from He-Man to GI Joe. Oh well.

There was a target range kind of like what you'd see at a carnival.

In the camping area there was the most comprehensive cooler selection I've ever seen.

Dead center in "Outdoor World" is a functional climbing wall. Well, one side is functional; the other is a diorama of a moose getting sprayed in the face by a skunk (while standing on a waterfall with real flowing water).

Last but not least, there were many displays of the "Butt Out" tool. This barbed, plastic anchor extracts the rectum of a deer, as the instructions explain. There were many "Butt Out" displays, not just one, spread out around the store. Maybe it's considered a good stocking stuffer.

Maryland RV Park!

2008-11-28T11:38:00.008-05:00

I needed to shower and do laundry, and with Thanksgiving / Black Friday I was skeptical about parking overnight at Walmart. So I decided to cough up the dough and spend a night at an rv park in Abingdom, MD. I figured that in addition to the amenities it would make for a good blog entry, as I'd never been to an RV park before.

Here's a curiosity: the dump system. I watched some guy back up his monstrous Class-A and cautiously link his black tank to this little hole in the ground. It didn't take long to empty. Then he packed it up and drove off.

This RV park advertises that it's anti-activity. I guess other RV parks have big dinners and parties and whatnot. You're on your own at this place. Still, there was this pool for warmer weather, as well as numerous little docks, benches, and the "Wilderness Trail".

Below is the van in my space. For once, the van was the smallest vehicle around. Everybody else had enormous trailers or Class-As (enormous by my standards, at least).

It was $46 for that space. Since I couldn't use the hook-ups, that's a rip-off. I asked the desk if I could get a discount for not using the hook-ups. No, they said, but there is a 5% discount for paying cash. This was a nice park and the owners seemed like nice people, and I don't blame them in particular; all RV park rates, across the board, suck. It's what drives people into Walmart parking lots. If you're the owner of an RV park, why not just have a crappy overflow lot, $5 - $10 a night, for folks who can't afford / don't want hook-ups?

It WAS, however, glorious to take a warm shower, shave, and do my laundry.

The park also featured wireless internet. But since I arrived on Thanksgiving, the office was closed, and I couldn't find out the password. I asked another camper and he gave me a password which was completely wrong. Oh well.

Each site had a firepit. My Thanksgiving dinner consisted of 4 grilled veggie burgers and 3 beers, eaten while I watched Lord of the Rings on my laptop. Then I finished the movie and ran out of propane for my Coleman lantern. It got very dark in the van.

A little bit later in the night, the family in the next site over started building an enormous chimney fire. It was 5' tall. I guess they saw me staring at it enviously because they invited me over for beer and steamed oysters. It was a good Thanksgiving.

Elkton, Aberdeen, and Abingdom, MD

2008-11-28T10:40:00.003-05:00

Traveled west on the Pulaski Highway through Delaware and Maryland.

At night, in the dark of the van....

Cape May, NJ

2008-11-23T15:28:00.003-05:00

Cape May State Park - the southern most tip of NJ. There is a WWII bunker, a lighthouse, and a trail for raptor-watching. South Jersey continues to impress me with its oddball scenes and quirks, as I tried to capture in the following photos...

The famous Cape May lighthouse. And the van in the lot.

Supermarket parking lot camping:

The Pine Barrens 3

2008-11-21T13:45:00.002-05:00

I camped for the past 3 days in the Pine Barrens of NJ, at Wharton State Park. This time of year the grounds are essentially deserted. Camping is cheap ($2 a night) and the trails are flat but interesting.

The bike was put to use for traveling between the campsite and the hiking trails.

All photos of me courtesy of Mr. Timer T. Tripod.

The Pine Barrens 2

2008-11-21T13:38:00.003-05:00

Wharton State Park. Home of the Jersey Devil... and other things...

The Pine Barrens

2008-11-21T13:31:00.003-05:00

Shots from hiking in Wharton State Park:

Camping at Bodine Field:

Conversion: Part 4/4

2008-10-29T14:46:00.005-04:00

Hello!

Since the conversion is more or less complete, I've taken new pictures of the finished product. They're spread out over 4 posts to quicken the download time. Enjoy!

Note: Clicking on the pics will load up a significantly larger version... if you have a slow connection, don't do it.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

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BEFORE:

AFTER:

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BEFORE:

AFTER:

Conversion: Part 3/4

2008-10-29T14:36:00.003-04:00

I'm putting up a series of posts with pics of the conversion, organized by areas of the van.
Note: Clicking on the pics will load up a significantly larger version... if you have a slow connection, don't do it.

Conversion: Part 3/4

View from behind. Bike rack, frosted windows... and racing stripes.

Frosted window panels for privacy.

Box on the left is the toilet. On the right is the bed and the crawlspace underneath it.

Plastic drawers hold my clothes. In the far corner is the cooler which slides out. In the near corner is my Weber grill inside a plastic tub for washing.

There is a crawlspace under the bed where I keep my bicycle stuff, cables, tools, extra cooler, charcoal, and art supplies.

Curtains!

Conversion: Part 2/4

2008-10-29T14:26:00.004-04:00

I've divided the pictures of the final conversion into 4 posts.

Note: Clicking on the pics will load up a significantly larger version... if you have a slow connection, don't do it.

Conversion: 2/4: The Kitchen

Here you can see the opened propane stove, sink, and towel rack. The unit mounted below the towel rack is a barometer/thermometer panel from a boat.

The top cabinet is for kitchenware. I've driven 300 miles with this set-up, highway and city, and surprisingly nothing moves around or bangs too much.

The cabinet below that holds a tub of disorganized food.

This plastic shelf unit holds cleaning products, toiletries, and some kitchen odds/ends.

The view under the sink. On the left, the sink drain feeds directly into a water jug. The gray fitting between the jug and the white pipe is flexible. On the right is the fresh-water tank. That straight-looking hose connects to a water inlet on the counter (see the next pic). The curly hose connects to the pump faucet. Over all, the sink is only useful for dumping and for washing. The pump faucet is too slow to actually fill anything unless you want to heave at it for 5 minutes.

While driving, the stove is bungeed tight to the counter. I never keep the propane connected except when cooking.

Conversion: Part 1/4

2008-10-29T14:13:00.010-04:00

Conversion Part 1/4

Note: Clicking on pics will load significantly larger image.

Here is the desk unit. The desk folds down and the chair straps across it when not in use / during drive.

The bed.

The toilet. For emergencies only... The toilet is not mounted to the box. It sits inside it and there is an opening on the front so I can check the fullness meter and pull the lever.

Storage space built around the driver's side tire.

Bookshelf, fully loaded.

Detailing

2008-10-19T20:16:00.005-04:00

Me with the van shortly before departing RI for NJ.

I added some simple red and blue stripes to make the van a little more festive-looking. The stripes are for boats, $15 per 50' roll.

Here is the bed with a mattress and bedding.

Construction 3

2008-10-13T18:20:00.005-04:00

self portrait - sitting on the bed frame. having a beer.

The completed bed frame.

The frame is 26 inches high; there is good storage space beneath it.

There is a drop-leaf desk attached to the headboard. Here it is in the down position. Then...

In the up position. Apparently, a Narragansett beer appears whenever you erect it.

Final details to the sink.

Construction 2

2008-10-06T10:13:00.005-04:00

Self Portrait: me very proud of how the kitchen unit turned out.

On the left are the basin and pump faucet. Next, the cutting board and propane stove. The countertop is butcher block spruce. It won't be as food-friendly or durable as maple, but was far more affordable. The cabinets are 3/4 plywood.

The thin cabinet holds a plastic storage tower that will keep toiletries and cleaning supplies.

Next over is the 2-tier shelf. On the top is a tub of kitchenware. On the bottom will be a tub of food supplies.

This is the space under the sink. It's not rigged up yet. The red tank will receive gray water from the sink. The white tank holds fresh water and will be connected to the pressurized pump faucet. The white tank is fed by the portal on the side, as seen in the next photo.

Construction 1

2008-10-01T17:51:00.004-04:00

The walls have been paneled with thin plywood. The smaller box covers the tire and is a small storage space (see pics at bottom of post). The larger box contains the chemical toilet; the top lifts off and there is a small window to check the volume gauge.

Covering up the ugly pattern of holes, curves, and wires running the length of the van required some creativity. I bought 2 lengths of 10 foot vinyl drip guard normally used on house rooves. These were screwed to the van and curved to hide the wiring. On the underside I attached ferring straps to conceal some of the ugly handywork as well as to create a surface for hooks. The top of it has become a lightweight shelf.

The shelf over the cab is now a gear loft. Twin posts, screwed into the van, provide the anchors for a mesh screen.

Above is the open storage space built around the tire well.

And above is the book shelf using the rear space. I leveled a sheet of thin plywood to form the floor of it and ran a ferring strap along the bottom for support. The "fancy" railing is actually part of a baby crib I picked up in the garbage awhile ago. The railing is buttressed on both ends by pine plywood.

Walls and Floor 50% finished

2008-09-16T20:58:00.006-04:00

The flooring tiles are wafer board on a ribbed plastic base. The idea is to allow air floor beneath the floor for insulation and to clear out moisture.

The threshold is red oak.

The strapping is ferring that is sold at Home Depot in 10-packs.

The walls are thin grade plywood. I originally wanted to go with decorative wood until I learned that they release toxic gas.

The insulation is simply layers of Reflectix.

The blue box is the dual battery system, currently disconnected while we wait for a missing part.

Windows

2008-06-13T09:38:00.004-04:00

In Rhode Island, every other person seems to have a beat-up old truck cap lying in their yard and they'll give them to you for very little cash or for free, just to be rid of them. I decided to buy a truck cap, rip out the windows, and install them in the van.

I responded to an ad on Craigslist and purchased a cap with 3 functional windows for $35 from a guy in South Providence.

I stripped the windows using a hexagonal screw driver and a jigsaw.

In the end, I had three functional windows for $35.

Introduction

2008-06-13T08:54:00.004-04:00

This is how the van looked when I first bought it. According to the seller, the van began as an ice cream van. It was then sold at an auction to an environmental testing company which used it to analyze mold in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. They downsized their laboratory and no longer needed such a huge van, so I bought it from them.

The van is a 2000 GMC Savana 3500 with a fiberglass high-top. The high-top gives the interior 6'4" of headroom.

The interior consisted of a black insulated floor cover, a red fiberglass high-top, and two bubble windows.