Category Archives: Serenity

Grayton Beach State Park

25 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by in Campground, Florida, Food, Serenity, Travel, WIP

≈ 3 Comments

Grayton Beach sunriseBeautiful beyond words.

I used my grill twice, once for a hamburger that I ate with baked white sweet potatoes, and the second time for bacon. Bacon on a grill was… fiery. That feels like the wrong word, but I can’t find a better one. I had to throw some away after it turned into charcoal, and while I didn’t burn myself, I honestly don’t know how I managed not to burn myself. Seriously, the flames were leaping high. So that was an interesting experiment, and I will not be repeating it. I guess bacon is just not a food I get to eat while I live in a camper. But if yesterday was my last bacon, at least it was delicious: I mixed it in with scrambled eggs with cilantro, rice, and hot sauce, and it was very yum.

I met some fellow Travato owners and had a very pleasant hour or so chatting with them and seeing their camper. They’ve got the other model, the G, and they’re about two years ahead of me in traveling. It was so fun to hear their adventures — their favorite ghost town in Arizona, the restaurant parking lot where they spent the night in Malibu, the tram parking lot with the view of the mountains, the Walmarts & the beaches. They love their Travato for the flexibility, for the ability to just stay anywhere, and they’re very forthright about asking if they can park for the night. When they got here last night, the campground was full, but the ranger let them stay in the overflow lot — they were right on the water this morning, with a view that must have been amazing.

The writing is not going well, much to my frustration, and I’m starting to strongly suspect that I’ve caught a cold. But it is wonderful to be on the road again and going places.

Today is six months since I started this journey, an anniversary I very nearly missed until I was about to post, and blinking at the calendar wondering what was significant about January 25th to me. I meant to write about the highs and lows of my first six months when this day rolled around, but… well, I wasn’t thinking about it. And I actually feel like I’m kind of too busy living in one of the highs right now to write about the lows. I don’t even have words to express how beautiful this campground is, how perfect the weather, and how content and serenely happy I am to be here. I’m moving on today, though — the next campground is beckoning to me! — and that makes me serenely happy and also sort of bubbly with adventure excitement. Life is good. I guess that’s pretty my summary of my first six months on the road, too: life is good!

Roadtrippers

19 Thursday Jan 2017

Posted by in Reviews, Serenity, Travel

≈ 1 Comment

I’m having so much fun playing with Roadtrippers.com. I haven’t really planned out my previous adventures, except in terms of which family member or friend I was headed to visit next, with stays at Thousand Trails campgrounds or state parks between visits and errands. But I decided I needed to map out my next few weeks of adventure while I had plentiful internet access, so I spent a big chunk of the past few days reading links off roadtrippers and being alternately wistful about the things that just don’t make sense to do with two dogs in tow and excited about the ones that do. In other words, no Mardi Gras, even though I’ll probably be in the right area around the right time. But Dauphin Island might work out and it looks lovely.

I say “might” because I’m not making reservations. Not yet. Serenity is in for service again today and I’m… well, not doubtful, exactly. But I lack faith. I’m not really thrilled with the fact that I’ve gotten so comfortable at the RV dealer’s service facility that I bring my own coffee cup along to help myself to their (really quite decent) coffee rather than making my own coffee on service days, and that the vast multitude of people who work there are starting to become familiar to me. There are three women who work behind the service counter and I have a favorite, the one whose line I prefer to get in. (Short version: the cheerful, helpful one, of course.) That’s not a good sign. But fingers crossed, today might be the day I’m done for a while. This morning I noticed a latch sticking and I just closed my eyes to it. I’ll live with a sticky latch. If it does break, I’ll figure out how to fix it myself.

Serenity did get a nice upgrade this week. My dad and an old family friend installed a shower curtain rail for me in the bathroom. I’m waiting for clips to actually hang the curtain, so I can’t say for sure what it’s going to be like yet, and I’m going to need to get a tie of some sort to keep it bunched in the corner when not in use, but I’m very optimistic that this will make showering in the van seem like less of a project. Previously, every shower required snapping the shower curtain along the ceiling and walls to protect the closet and drawers, and it was kind of a PITA. In the last two months, I haven’t showered in the van once — I’ve learned a lot about campground bathrooms, and never ever forget to bring my flip-flops to wear while I shower anymore! — but it’ll be nice if showering in the van feels easier now.

But back to Roadtrippers. You set a starting point for your trip and pick a destination, and select what you’re interested in discovering along the way. Roadtrippers has data on hotels, restaurants, points of interest, campgrounds, all sorts of places. And links to their sites, of course, so when I find a campground or state park that I like, I can find out more about it by following links. It currently doesn’t have enough reviews — I wish they and TripAdvisor could join forces because Roadtrippers’ mapping software is way more useful than TripAdvisor, but TripAdvisor wins for quantity of reviews — but roadtrippers is very fun to play with and explore. When I’m on real internet, of course, not cell data!

My bed of roses

29 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by in Randomness, RV, Serenity, Travel

≈ 2 Comments

I have no data — I’m even out of data on my phone! — so I can’t look up the origin of that phrase I’m using as a title. But I’m coming back to it in a minute.

Night before last, my fan went crazy. I bet that’s the kind of description that drives mechanics crazy, too, but believe me, it is an apt description. When the craziness settled out, it was beeping. Beep. Five second pause. Beep. Five second pause. Beep.

The five seconds is a weird number. It is just long enough that there was no way to turn the beep into background noise. No possible way to ignore the noise, convince myself that it was cicadas or a crazy bird, no way to fall asleep between beeps and not wake up for the next one. Five seconds is maddening.

By 6AM, I was at my RV dealers (getting sent away by the security guard) and by 7:45AM, I was back at my RV dealers, plaintively begging for help. I didn’t have an appointment, of course, and they don’t generally take walk-ins, but they said they’d try to take a look and at least figure out how to cut power to the fan and shut it up.

While I sat on a couch in their show floor, dogs beside me, desperately wishing for sleep, I catalogued Serenity’s problems. There was the leaky air-conditioner that let so much water in the first night that the beds got soaked. The window that once opened wouldn’t close. The screens that weren’t properly placed in their tracks. The propane tank that wouldn’t fill. The thermostat that didn’t measure the temperature correctly. The sticky drawer latch that led to the facing of the drawer pulling off, exposing bare nails. The sink latch that jammed, had to be replaced, promptly broke again, and while I waited for my service appointment to get it fixed a second time, let the sink bounce around enough that the hinges broke, leaving the sink dangling half off the wall. The dead awning which fortunately died while closed. And then, of course, the fan going crazy.

All that in the first six months of ownership.

I was filled with gloom and doom. After the air-conditioning and until the fan, none of the problems had been major livability issues, but what next?

And then I took a deep breath and began re-cataloging. The air-conditioner was fixed. I don’t open the window that’s hard to close. I got the screens into their tracks and yes, it was a pain, but they work fine now. The propane tank’s sensor reset once the tank was empty and now I know to tell the guy filling it to go very slowly. The thermostat was user error, albeit based on unclear instructions, but still, no longer a problem. The drawer had been repaired. The sink was scheduled for repair. The awning was scheduled for repair. The only real problem was the fan.

And I went to Vermont. I watched the sunrise over farm fields and mountains, and waded in a mountain stream with the dogs. I sat next to the ocean and wrote. I wandered around the cutest little Massachusetts town at dawn. I’ve seen owls and coyotes and manatees. I’ve visited relatives and friends, gotten to have real time with people that I hadn’t seen in years. Sat around the table with my dad and stepmom on Christmas Eve eating chocolate cake.

The service guy came back. He told me they’d pulled the fan out and ordered a new part for it, but wouldn’t be able to get it fixed until the part came in, some time in the next couple of weeks, but that they’d stopped the noise. Oh, and that they’d fixed the sink and the awning. I hugged him.

Beds of roses do have thorns. I’m not excited about how many things have gone wrong with Serenity and I’m definitely not looking forward to whatever goes wrong next. But the last thing I have to do in Florida now (depending on when the part for the fan comes in) is a vet appointment on the 10th of January, which means that in less than two weeks, I can be heading west. And just thinking about that makes me want to bounce with excitement. Or you know, roll around on my bed of roses, hoping none of the thorns draw blood.

Owls are cool

15 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by in Florida, Grace, Randomness, Serenity

≈ 2 Comments

I saw an owl this morning. Two of them, really, although the second one was a black blur on the wind. I wouldn’t have recognized it as an owl if it were not flying in collusion with the first one. And the first one… well.

It flew across the sky in the pre-dawn light, clearly a bird. Clearly a big bird. My brain had to process. What is that bird? In Florida, the default on a big bird is vulture. That’s what we’ve got the most of. But this bird didn’t say vulture to me. The wings were wrong. The flight was so smooth, such a glide, so quiet. Eagle? No. Hawk? No. Falcon?

The bird settled on a tree branch and finally my brain — in my defense, it was early, before coffee — put together the flight, the time of day, the size of the bird, its silhouette on the tree branch, and the calls of Whoa-whoa-whoa-whooooo that I was hearing and said, “Owl.”

Actually, it was more like my brain said, “Owl. Owl, owl, owl, owl, OWL!” I’ve seen them in captivity and I’ve seen them in photographs and once or twice, I’ve seen one in the wild from a far distance when someone else has pointed it out to me, but this was my first real close-up of a wild owl. And then another one flew by, and the first one joined it and they tried a different tree. I tried to follow them, but they moved again, out of the campground and deeper into the fenced-off forest that surrounds the campground, and I resumed walking my dog. But my morning no longer felt prosaic and dusty, but a little bit magical.

Owls are cool.

In other news, I’ve been having the most amazing time writing. Not, alas, writing Grace. But approximately 16 days ago, I got impatient and frustrated with myself and I decided that every day — every single, solitary day — I would write 1000 words of fiction. Not careful polished words, not words where plot and characterization mattered, not words that built to something, that were part of some larger whole, just… words. Quick sketches. Snippets of scenes. Bits and pieces of story. But a thousand of them every day.

I missed one day, because it was a moving day. That was the day I left Trimble Park and spent the night in my dad’s driveway, so it included cleaning and organizing, drying and stowing the kayak, loading up the camper, and then much sociability. Apparently I just didn’t even think about writing that day. But every other day for the past two weeks, I have written 1000 words and wow, I have been having so much fun with them! There is something about the freedom to write terrible words, the joy of pointless words, that has let me get madly creative. Most of the words have been starts to stories, world-building that goes nowhere, but I’ve had magic and vampires and dramatic confrontations, children of the gods and immortal courts and SO. MUCH. FUN.

I’m trying not to stress about the future. A writer who only starts things and never finishes them is really never going to earn a living, even if she’s trying to subsist on ramen noodles and other people’s driveways. And I’m still working on Grace every day, even though what mostly seems to happen is that I have a great time writing for a few hours and then grimly open the Grace file about mid-afternoon and stare at it until I can escape into feeding and walking the dogs. But yesterday I actually had some Grace insight and my 1000 words of fiction included several hundred on Grace, so maybe today…

The loneliness of joy

08 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by in Boring, Personal, Serenity

≈ 7 Comments

I know solitary confinement is torture, but part of me thinks I’d do just fine with it. Obviously, I’d prefer it if it included my dogs and a fully-loaded ebook reader and something to write with and on, preferably keyboard-oriented, but even without all that, I think I’d be okay, at least for a longer while than most people. I’ve never been one of those people who can’t stand their own company and after almost twenty years of primarily working from home, I’m really pretty good at solitude.

Obviously, that doesn’t stop me from getting lonely–everyone is lonely sometimes–but I didn’t worry about loneliness being a problem in my traveling life. I considered it, but I thought I’d be fine. And I am. Mostly.

The interesting discovery I’ve made/am making is that loneliness is deeper, at least for me, when it comes with joy. When I’m having a bad day or something’s gone wrong, I might want someone to vent to or share with or even get help from — I spilled coffee everywhere this morning and it would be really nice if someone could have grabbed the computer while I was getting the dogs out of the way — but generally speaking, the thought doesn’t even occur to me. I grumble to myself or to the dogs and I try to take my time with problems and if I really need help, well, that’s what the phone is for. I don’t usually feel lonely because something’s gone wrong.

But when something’s gone right…when I see an incredible sunrise or a mysterious animal or have a funny story I want to share (like the text I got from my son the other day, where he said, “It is a mark of how Floridian I am that when I first started seeing icicles I thought they were decorations,” which just makes me smile every time I think of it)… that’s when I notice how alone I am. I’m still okay with it — it’s not like I’m in solitary confinement, my solitude is not breaking my spirit or driving me insane — but those are the moments when I feel lonely.

I suspect I will also notice how alone I am the first time Serenity has a major breakdown. Life happens. If I spend all my life on the road, then at some point, I will be stranded or I will have a flat tire and I’m definitely going to be wishing for company at that moment.

Anyway, I feel like I should be going somewhere profound with this thought but I’m not. It’s just an insight. I truly love my life right now. I feel incredibly lucky to be living the way I’m living, even when what I’m basically doing is sitting in a parking lot (as I am right now). My mobile tiny house life is far from perfect — I’ve got a pile of coffee-stained stuff in the middle of my floor waiting for me to solve the laundry problem and something that I haven’t been able to track down yet has made the van smell musty for a couple of days — but it is really damn good. So good, in fact, that I am lonelier than I imagined being. I’d call that ironic, but really maybe it’s just incongruous?

I’m currently in Wildwood, Florida, in a Thousand Trails campground. Yesterday, I was trying to pull a burr off Zelda and it just would not come — I finally realized it was a tick, incredibly bloated. I suspect half of it is still in her, but the internet assures me that it’ll probably come out on its own. So gross. The campground… well, I’m here because it’s a cheap place to stay while I work on Grace. I’m making a conscious effort, a quest, to find something beautiful every day. It’s harder than it should be. Fortunately, looking up almost always works.

 

sunset-at-wildwood

 

The epitome of the everyday

28 Monday Nov 2016

Posted by in Personal, Serenity, Travel

≈ 6 Comments

I posted a picture of this morning’s sunrise, completely unedited, to Instagram using my phone. (You can see it on the side of the blog, in that Instagram widget, if you don’t use Instagram. I’d post it here but I’m out of data for the month on my internet plan.) It was so pure — the sun sliding up the horizon, completely unencumbered by clouds. The sunset last night was amazing in a totally different way—lots of clouds, lots of layers, many shades of purple and red, going on for what felt like forever. And the sunrise yesterday morning was pretty nice, too. The night before, sunset, also spectacular. Sunrise that day, also lovely.

Sunset and sunrise are so ordinary. We all get them, every single day. They are the epitome of the everyday, in fact. Ha. And yet, in my current life, I spend so much time appreciating them. It’s something about being in new places all the time. Well, okay, also sunsets (and rises) over water are twice as spectacular as the ones without water. It’s the reflection that does it, of course. And when you’re sitting on a bench next to a fire pit watching the sky while a giant, gawky bird with legs longer than its body goes flapping by, awing you with the miracle of flight, appreciation comes easier than when you’re sitting in rush hour traffic, worried if you’re going to make it to the daycare before they start charging $10/minute.

Of course, the corollary to spending more time appreciating sunset and sunrise, water and birds, spider webs and flowers is that I also spend a lot more time wondering how I’m going to get my laundry done. Or whether the grocery store is going to have coconut milk. Or how to find a vet when the dog has yet another ear infection. It’s like my life is simultaneously sort of ethereal and sublime and also really mired in the daily necessities of existence, much more so than when I lived in a house and the question was just, “Do I need to do laundry?”, not “How am I going to get my laundry done?”

On Saturday, I was walking the dogs with my friend, E. I was crossing the road when I glanced behind me and saw that she and B had paused. I was the one carrying the clean-up bags, so I paused, too, to see if I needed to go back. Z kept going, though, tugging me along, so I took a few slow steps forward. Then I looked around and realized that I was standing on the double yellow lines, in the middle of the road, walking forward along them. It felt… thrilling. There was absolutely no traffic coming, so it didn’t feel dangerous. But the yellow lines beckoned the way ahead of me, like the yellow brick road in the Wizard of Oz.

I said to E, “I don’t think I’ve ever walked on the yellow lines before. I’m not really a middle of the road kind of person. I’m a safely on the side of the road person. Or better yet, a sidewalk person. It’s sort of weird.”

She laughed at me and then her expression changed. I could see her go thoughtful  before she said, “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever walked along the yellow lines either.” So then she joined me in the middle of the road, and we walked down the yellow lines until we reached the corner and another sidewalk. It was ridiculously fun, in the way adventures that aren’t really adventurous can be.

On Friday night, I grilled steak and asparagus and roasted white sweet potato for a simple yet very tasty dinner. On Saturday morning, I made spicy sweet potato hash with a poached egg for breakfast. The sweet potato was orange that time. On Saturday night, I baked chicken thighs with lemon and capers and a little garlic salt, roasted purple sweet potatoes, and made a salad of mixed greens, apple, radish, cucumber, red onion, and a fig balsamic vinegar. Three different meals, three different sweet potatoes, all of them delicious.

I don’t know why those stories felt connected — something about the ordinary, the everyday, the sameness of sweet potatoes at every meal? But I don’t have time to ponder the relationship of adventure and the mundane in my new life anymore. Or to write about loneliness and joy, which was what I was thinking about while I watched the sunrise this morning and which is definitely worthy of a blog post of its own.

Instead, I’m going to solve the problem of getting the dog to a vet, not worry about the laundry, and write at least a few new words on Grace. May all our Cyber Mondays be productive!

Fighting to be flexible

18 Friday Nov 2016

Posted by in Personal, RV, Serenity

≈ 2 Comments

On Tuesday, my writing group friends reminded me that our monthly dinner would be happening Wednesday night. Unfortunately, I was at a campground about ninety minutes away. Lynda offered me her driveway — a nice long driveway, with plenty of room — but my instinctive response was “No, I can’t, I’m at this campground for another two days.”

It took me a while to question myself. Why was I staying at that campground when I could be going out to dinner with friends? Why did I feel locked in to a commitment that I had made to absolutely no one? The campground didn’t care if I left early, and it was a Thousand Trails campground so it wasn’t costing me much money. And even if it had been, even if it had been a $50/night campground (which I have stayed at only once), the money was spent, one way or another, and it wouldn’t cost me anything to go spend the night in Lynda’s driveway instead.

So Wednesday morning, I packed up and headed north. What a great decision. I had a lovely day of writing with L, a really fun dinner with a terrific group of people and good conversations about writing, and although I didn’t sleep well, at 4AM, my characters got chatty again. Yay!

Today turned out to be another totally unexpected day: my plan was to find a quiet place to sit and work, but a friend needed some help and so I wound up venturing forth to unexpected places. I didn’t get much writing done — witness the blog post that I am finally getting to at almost 10PM — but if life were a game, I would have racked up some excellent karma points.

Last night at dinner my friend Angela (hi, Angela!) asked me what had surprised me about life in the camper. I don’t think I said this then, although I might have, but one of the things that has surprised me is how uncomfortable I am with uncertainty. I like knowing where I’m going to be spending the night. I like having my calendar mapped out. And while I want adventures and new places, I am much more prone to deciding where I’ll be camping two weeks out and then sticking to that decision than I am just going where the wind takes me.

But I think I want to work on that. I think I need more days of going where the wind takes me. Some of the nights that really stick out in my memory are the ones that were unexpected: the Harvest Hosts stay at a farm in campground, the parking lot in West Virginia. I’m pretty sure today will be a day I remember for a long time, too, even though I’m parked in a familiar driveway this evening. But being flexible, being willing to be spontaneous, being able to live with uncertainty… it’s all part of living in the now, being present for my life as it is and as it can be. I want to be able to embrace the uncertainty, because the surprises that come with uncertainty are worth the effort.

 

Here Be Alligators

14 Monday Nov 2016

Posted by in Anxiety, Personal, Pets, Randomness, Serenity

≈ 4 Comments

The signs actually say, “Warning: Alligators may be present.” The signs below those, smaller, say, “Watch out for snakes!”

It’s astonishing how threatening I find them. Really, they don’t say, “Alligators, sure thing, your dogs are going to get EATEN! And by the way, the snakes are poisonous and deadly.” But I seem to read them that way. As a result, despite being camped right next to a lovely river, I haven’t done any kayaking and my walks through the nature trails tend to be hasty and paranoid.

Florida does have a lot of snakes, but they really aren’t interested in eating people. The most deadly was going to feature in A Gift of Grace, a coral snake. Mostly because we stopped making coral snake antivenin a few years back, because it was too expensive, and that seemed like such a statement about modern society. Bit by a coral snake? Tough luck. We could have saved you ten years ago, when we cared more about people than money, but those years are gone. Not that doctors won’t try, but the antivenin they have available is both expired and so scarce that they try to save it until they’re sure you’re dying, not just paralyzed and struggling to breathe.

Also, coral snakes are a very pretty snake. I saw one in my backyard a couple of years ago — several inches away from my bare foot — and stood frozen, watching it slither away, while my brain said, “red on yellow, red on yellow, red on yellow, pretty sure that’s bad, bad, bad. But there can’t possibly be a deadly snake in my backyard. Can there?” Once it was gone, I went inside and looked it up and yep, red on yellow = deadly. That’s how I found out about the antivenin. The experience would have made for a fun touch of realism in the book — I’m pretty sure I was holding my breath the entire time I watched that pretty little snake and I know my heart was pounding so loudly I could hear it in my ears, that sort of throbbing you can get in your head when your heart is working too hard.

But I finally gave up on the coral snake. For whatever reason, it never worked quite right. Maybe some future book.

Meanwhile, in this book, everything I’ve written for the past several days has turned out nihilistic and bleak. Grace would turn into a tragedy if I let it. So I’m going to delete everything from last week and try, try again. Someday I really will finish this book. It won’t, however, be this week. Drat.

 

Simplicity

31 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by in Food, Serenity

≈ 2 Comments

Last Monday, I was waiting for my friend to get home, so I could go into her house and start cooking dinner. For a variety of reasons, we were eating really late — it was already around 7:30 — and I was starving, so while I waited I put together some side salads for us. On a base of mixed greens, I added red onion, red pear, radish, and cucumber, topped with balsamic vinegar. She still hadn’t arrived and like I said, I was hungry, so to distract myself I put together a little appetizer plate, too: dates wrapped in prosciutto and some mixed olives. When she got home, I topped some salmon with lemon preserves and put it under the broiler. About fifteen minutes later, we were eating. The salmon needed some salt, but it was fast, efficient, and delicious.

On Saturday, I showed up at the same friend’s house, and we had no plans. But we were both tired. Around six, we finally decided — well, I think I finally decided — that we should just cook something. I had boneless chicken thighs, so I sprinkled an herb mix (coriander, chili, cumin, parsley) over them, tossed in some dried apricots, and stuck them in the oven. While they baked, I made some brown rice, and salads of mixed greens, chopped dried apricot, pecans, avocado, radish, green onions, tomatoes… I think that was it. Again, it was delicious, but it’s not like there’s a way to go wrong with baked chicken thighs.

While we were eating, E gave me the loveliest compliment on my cooking. I wish I remembered her exact words, but alas, I don’t. But I know it was something about simplicity. I think, actually, she first told me I was an incredible cook and I pointed out that baked chicken thighs and salad are pretty much lowest common denominator — it’s not like it’s even possible to ruin a salad and it would be pretty challenging to mess up baked chicken thighs. Well, I guess they could be overcooked. Or undercooked. Or flavorless. But they were none of the above: they were very yum. But it wasn’t like it was a planned meal: I was literally just pulling stuff out of my cabinets and fridge to make us something to eat because we were hungry and feeling lazy. I guess, though, that was her point, because that was when she said… oh, I do wish I remembered her exact words! But something about while she was sure I could cook intricate meals, it was my ability to make simplicity wonderful that she admired. Something like that. And it’s funny that I can’t remember the exact words, but I still feel the glow of pleasure they gave me.

When I got to her house on Saturday, I was feeling stressed and over-tired and drawn back into a world of responsibility and worry. But we took the dogs for a long walk, then sat in her back yard and admired the trees and the birds. While I cooked dinner I felt the internal hum of satisfaction of being in a kitchen creating something and while we ate, I was almost purring with the delight of delicious food. By the time I fell asleep in Serenity that night, I was calm and mellow and happy again.

I wish I could get to a place where those things were instinctive — where I knew intuitively that what I need when I’m feeling off is outside, exercise, healthy food, creation, and companionship. Because earlier on Saturday I seriously wanted computer time and junk food and solitude. But it’s just not intuitive. Still, every time I learn that lesson maybe it sinks in a little more and I definitely learned it this weekend. The switch in my mood from Saturday morning to Sunday morning wasn’t dark to light — I’d had a really good week, so I wasn’t starting off from a bleak place — but it was definitely from heavy to light, if that makes any sense to anyone besides me.

Today is going to be a day of adventure — I’m headed to a haunted plantation to explore. And it’s Halloween! And then a new campground tonight, up in St. Augustine.

I should note, though, that I seriously love the state park I’m camped at — Tomoka State Park. It was an impulse stop when I didn’t know where I wanted to be yesterday, but it’s beautiful. I’m definitely putting it on my mental list of places to come back to and stay much, much longer.

I should write more about it — I hope I remember writing this blog post outside Serenity, in my little (not very comfortable) camp chair, with the white sand, palm trees and palmettos and live oaks, and the dogs peacefully snoring on either side of me. It also looks like a perfect place to pull out the kayak. But I’ve already spent over an hour writing this blog post — it was a lot of thinking, and a lot of words that went in circles and wound up getting deleted — and it’s time to get going.

Happy Halloween!

Paying attention to what’s there…

28 Friday Oct 2016

Posted by in Meditation, Personal, Randomness, RV, Serenity, Travel

≈ 7 Comments

I’ve bought a bunch of graphics apps recently — one for my laptop, a couple for my phone — in the hopes of producing better images. But I still forget to take pictures, making the graphics apps a little pointless. Alas.

But this week could have had some good photos. I’ve been doing useful things — doctor’s appointment, service on Serenity, visiting friends — but in between those useful things, I’ve had times when I had no place to go, no place to be. It’s sort of a weird feeling. I can’t decide to go home or back to the campground because I am at home and my home is not situated in a campground. I just have to figure out where home should be, in between movements, if that makes any sense.

The easiest option is always to just find a big parking lot. There are seriously a lot of big parking lots in the world. Walmart, grocery stores, shopping malls… sadly, Trader Joe’s never has big enough parking lots, but I can usually find a parking lot somewhere in which to sit. However, parking lots are mostly boring. (I say mostly because the one I sat in on Saturday for hours and hours had a rescue group looking for homes for puppies. I was too stressed about my dogs to appreciate them, but cute puppies everywhere definitely improves a parking lot.)

This week, however, post-my lovely scenic ocean parking lot, I’ve used my GPS to find the nearest parks. It’s been weird because I’m very close to… well, to what was home. On Monday, I was three minutes away from my old house, because I was visiting my storage unit. I hung out in a park that I spent seven years living not five minutes away from and had never visited. The next day, I went to one that was about five miles away. It was lovely. A beautiful county park, next to a big lake, with boardwalks through old Florida cypress forests. And the whole time I lived here, it was right around the corner and I never knew, never looked…

It’s a good lesson, but I have to admit, I’d still much rather be off exploring parks in new places. I’m doing my best to appreciate where I am — and I do, definitely, appreciate my time with friends and family — but I’m also yearning to be off again. I’ve got things to do in Florida, but I’m pretty sure Texas is calling my name. Soon. First, though, a few more weeks in Florida and a few thousand more words in Tassamara.