Category Archives: Randomness

Toad Suck

09 Monday Apr 2018

Posted by in Campground, Randomness

≈ 4 Comments

River view from Toad Suck campground, Arkansas

My view

Every once in a while I get into a conversation with someone in a campground where the longer we speak, the more I sense them becoming convinced that I’m kind of a flake. Not in the special-snowflake sense, but in the… hmm. You know, some internet research has now convinced me that “flake” is the wrong word. Eccentric is much closer to what I mean. It’s not that I think they begin to believe me unreliable or selfish or scatterbrained, more that I can see the confusion growing in their eyes. In today’s example, it was a conversation at the campground office about my reasons for being here.

I’m not here because I am on my way somewhere. I’m not here because I have family in the area. I’m not here because I am a hiker or a biker or a water sports enthusiast. Nope. It’s just because the place has a really good name: Toad Suck

I think that’s a perfectly sensible reason to visit a place, but the nice older gentleman I was speaking to found it mystifying, I believe. Fortunately for me, it’s also a lovely campground and I have an extremely nice spot in it. I’m right on the river, facing the water.

My usual routine when I get to a new campground is to plug in to the electricity, connect to the water, and then putter around the van for a little while. I check my internet connection, check my email, see what kind of music is within range, get out some of the things that are put away from travel but pleasant to have out, like my essential oil diffuser and my induction cooktop. Maybe I rest for a while from my drive, maybe I take the dog for a walk. At Toad Suck, I immediately got my chair out, set it up under the tree shown at the edge of the picture, and sat and admired the river for a bit while Zelda tried to sniff every blade of grass. I’m hoping that this is going to be a peaceful place to get some writing done.

Also, hoping, I have to admit, for some steady sunshine and warmer temperatures. The more time I spend outside Florida, the more I realize that it’s called the Sunshine State for a reason and that I have been profoundly spoiled by living there for so long. Also, that I like sunshine. Also, that part of the purpose of this extended journey was to figure out where I was going to settle long-term and the longer I’m on the road, the more I like Florida.

Not that I don’t love Arkansas! I definitely do. It’s such a pretty state. My drives have been lovely, and the campgrounds are spoiling me for other states’ parks. Even the grocery store sushi was good (Kroger). But the more cold days I spend in the van — not cool days, but days where the temps go below 35, so COLD days — the more I know that the van is not a cold-weather lifestyle, at least not for me.

In interesting timing, (related to thinking about settling down again), I received an email message about a job possibility today. It’s for a position that I would define as a realistic job, one for which I’m well-qualified (or for which I would have been very well-qualified seven years ago and for which I’m still reasonably well-qualified). Given that I’ve been thinking for several months that I should consider getting a job, I should probably jump on it. But since even the thought makes me want to pull the covers over my head and spend the rest of my life asleep, that will not be happening.

Which means it’s time to write more Grace. Back to work!

Not quite a parking lot

03 Tuesday Apr 2018

Posted by in Campground, Randomness, Travel

≈ 6 Comments

parking lot with campers

My current “campground”. If you look real hard, Serenity’s a tiny speck in the background.

I woke up this morning in a field in Arkansas. It’s not a campground, it’s not a parking lot, it’s a field. I’m not the only person camping here. There’s a tent that I can see without moving my head, an Airstream trailer and truck combo that I can see when I turn my head, and off in the distance a run-down Class C RV that holds a family having an amazing adventure. I know the latter because I drove by them last night — at least three kids aged 7 and under, with hippie parents, and everyone was smiling. That might have been because Z was sitting in the passenger seat, playing co-pilot, which she does sometimes, and I was driving by very slowly, so giving them plenty of time to point her out and admire her cuteness.

Yesterday I screwed up. But I’ll start at the beginning: I left Lake Chicot with enormous regret. After my electricity travails, I wound up in a perfect spot there, so nice that I was seriously tempted to go back to the office and extend my stay for as long as they would let me. Water view, glorious sunsets, lovely long walks, what more could anyone want?

Alas, clean clothes. I was as close to being entirely out of clean clothes as I’ve gotten since I was in college, I suspect. And I did consider the virtues of hand-washing socks and underwear in the sink, but really, everything was dirty. It was time for clean pants and clean sweaters and clean sheets, too. And the town around Lake Chicot didn’t appear to have a laundromat, or at least Google wouldn’t find one for me. Google liked a place called Pine Bluff for laundromats. So I packed up and headed to Pine Bluff.

Google lied.

The first laundromat I tried to find didn’t exist. I drove around in circles at the spot on the map, trying to locate it, finally pulled over right where it should be, and it simply was not there. No big deal. I found the next closest laundromat and headed to it. Nope, not a laundromat. Laundry, yes, but it was a dry-cleaner and professional laundry place, one of those running big machines with trucks loading out front, not the kind where people sit and watch the dryers spin. On to the next one. It was closed. Very closed, very dead looking. It still had the washers and dryers inside, but it looked like no one had used it in years, forlorn and abandoned. Fine. I was not liking Pine Bluff much by this time, but fine. Off I went to laundromat #4. It didn’t exist. Again, I drove around in circles until I could find a spot to pull over and check the map location against the physical reality and they simply did not match. There was no laundromat there and no sign that there ever had been one there.

Oh, Google. Why were you failing me? Or maybe it was the town to blame, but either way, I was feeling pretty frustrated. Driving the van in circles in an unfamiliar city — albeit a small city, with reasonable traffic — is really not my idea of a fun way to spend an hour.

But it wasn’t like I had any better ideas for how I was going to solve my clean clothes issue. So off I headed to laundromat #5 and when, on the way, I spotted a “laundry, 24 hours” sign, I did not hesitate. It wasn’t listed on Google maps, but I swung right in with a sigh of relief. Two hours, two loads of clean clothes, and some friendly conversations later, I got back on the road.

It was later than I wanted it to be, already after 1, and I made a key mistake — I didn’t eat lunch. I was headed to Hot Springs National Park and a campground that doesn’t take reservations, Gulpha Gorge. In my (limited) experience, the national campgrounds are perennially busy places, so I wanted to get there as close to noon as possible, to catch people as they were leaving, for my best chance of finding a good site. I was over an hour and a half away, so I was already later than I liked. And I needed to stop at a grocery store on the way.

Why did I need to stop at a store? I have no idea. None. I knew I did, but I got to the store, started wandering around, and — Oh! Drat. Gluten-free oats, that was why I wanted a store. Sigh. I’m out of granola. Alas, Alexa didn’t work while I was at Lake Chicot because I had no T-Mobile connection, so I was relying on my own memory instead of a grocery list and my own memory totally failed me. Instead I wandered the store buying things that I absolutely did not need — spice gum drops, potato chips, dip, sugar water, sushi — the stuff that you buy when it’s 3PM and you didn’t eat lunch and you’re in a grocery store and can’t remember what you’re looking for. In my defense, also pot roast, mushrooms, some healthy noodle bowl thing and eggs, so not a totally useless, nutrition-free visit. But pretty close.

And then, finally, I headed to the campground. I got there and felt a little dubious. The campsites were close together, a few neat rows of them. There were some empty spots, but they were sloped or right next to the bathrooms, so heavy traffic flow spots. I like quiet campgrounds, peaceful places, and this didn’t look like that kind of place. But there was a site on the end of a row that was open so I noted its number and went back to register.

The registration was by computer — first time I’ve seen that. Like a parking spot computer in a parking garage, you put your number in and the days you wanted to stay, fed it your credit card, and it printed out a little slip for you, your receipt, to clip on the camp site’s number post. I wasn’t feeling overly thrilled by the campground, but I’d read great reviews about its nice trails and I’m resolved not to move so often that I don’t get any writing done, so I decided to stay three nights, moving on Thursday. I got my receipt and went back to set up.

Except, when I got back there, there was already a receipt on the post. The site was already taken. I couldn’t figure out how I’d missed seeing it. Had someone been just slightly ahead of me at the registration kiosk? But no, it was just the angle of the van and a branch from a bush — the receipt had been hidden by leaves. And the campers hadn’t left anything in the site, so they were probably van campers like me.

I went to the registration window, wondering what to do, and there was a big sign on the door — No Refunds. Bah humbug. I’d just spent $97 for a site I couldn’t use. I putzed around the campground for a while, trying to decide what to do. Pay for another campsite? Go find a less expensive, less crowded campground? I parked in another site and took Z for a quick walk, still pondering. We didn’t walk far, because I didn’t want to get a ticket, but I decided that the trails were nice enough that I did want to explore.

When we got back, I took a closer look at the receipt and realized that the people in the site were leaving today, the 3rd. I’d paid for the site through the 5th, so if I got there before someone else in the morning, I could maybe save two nights of my stay. But I really didn’t want to spend another $30 for a different site in the campground. Long story short (well, less long than it already has been), I waited at the site until its previous occupants returned around 7PM, told them what had happened, asked if I could leave my receipt there so no one took the site the next day, and then headed off in the growing dark to find myself a free spot to park for the night. My options were a nearby Walmart or a county park that was described as having unofficial camping. Since it wasn’t totally dark, I decided to try the county park. And thus, my field.

It wound up being a long day and it felt quite wasted while I was engaged in it. Driving in circles, shopping for sugar, sitting in a campsite, poised to depart at a moment’s notice, while waiting for its real owners to get home… I didn’t feel good about the day. But I liked waking up in my field this morning, and all my clothes are clean, and when I finally do get into my campsite, I’ll plug in the instant-pot and make myself some pot roast for dinner. Things could definitely be much, much worse.

The wisdom of a feather

29 Thursday Mar 2018

Posted by in Campground, Randomness, Serenity, Zelda

≈ 5 Comments

I started counting the number of birds I could see from my window — like, right outside the window, fifteen feet away — and then something startled them and they swooped away and I realized that all the things I thought were dark leaves on the ground were actually small birds. I’m going to say — 200? 300? Not a countable number, that’s for sure. Sadly, they’ve now all moved on, but that’s probably a good thing for my productivity, since I find watching a flock of birds to be surprisingly compelling.

The last time I was in Arkansas, I got the very last space at an absolutely packed campground, Lake Catherine State Park. It was lovely, but it was spring break and it was crowded. Since this is Easter weekend, I decided that this time I’d be a little more proactive and I made a reservation at Lake Chicot State Park for five nights, taking me safely through Easter.

Ha.

I’m going to say that last year, lots of Arkansians looked at the weather, decided it was a glorious time to go camping, and headed for the park. It was a glorious time to go camping. This year, those same Arkansians looked at the weather and decided it was a fine time to hunker down in their houses. It so is.

The campground is pretty close to deserted and also pretty close to drowned. The puddles are like lakes. The lake is not overflowing its banks, fortunately, but there are a lot of semi-underwater trees. Even Zelda, who doesn’t usually mind getting wet, stood at the open door of the van this morning and then decided against her walk.

Fortunately, my deserted rainy underwater campground is also very green and pretty. Loads of trees, all in early-spring mode instead of tail-end of winter mode. Light green leaves and life bursting out all over the place. So I’m not finding it spooky, I’m finding it charming. I’m helped just a little in this by the fact that I checked out the bathrooms this morning and they are terrific. I might have to take a shower every day just because the bathrooms are so clean and nice and new.

I’m slightly less enthusiastic about the fact that even though I paid for a full hook-up site — not a thing I do very often, so in the nature of a pleasant luxury for a holiday weekend — the separate pieces (water, electric, sewer) are positioned poorly for Serenity. Technically I have all three, but I have to choose which one I want to be connected to at any given moment. My hose isn’t long enough to reach from the water outlet to the van intake while the power is plugged into both the van and the power outlet, and ditto the sewer. So it goes, I guess. At least I have access to all three if I need them.

And I’m feeling pretty fortunate on at least one of those three. When I got here yesterday, I couldn’t get the electricity to work. I called the campground host, who sent someone down to take a look, but it was raining and he couldn’t figure it out. They moved me to a different site, and then a third site, so it started to look like the problem was Serenity, not the campground. I was not so happy. I can live without power for a while if I have propane, but because I expected to have power, I hadn’t refilled the propane tank. Frustration!

And then, for no reason I could see, the electricity started working. Based on the symptoms, the smart people in the Travato Owners FB group suspect that I might have a problem with my Automatic Transfer Switch — maybe a loose connection? — but it’s working now, so I’m just counting my blessings and hoping for the best.

blue jay and cardinal feathers

Speaking of blessings, did you know that it is illegal to own most bird feathers? It still feels magical to find them, though, especially when they are truly beautiful. It would never have occurred to me that picking up a feather could be a crime, but after I’d picked up the above, I was remembering the park ethos — take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints — and so I left them behind. Well, first I googled to find out whether something in nature would use leftover bird feathers — was I leaving them behind to simply decay and rot? — and that’s how I found out that feather possession is a crime. They probably will simply decay and rot, but I’m glad I got to appreciate them first.

Along the way, I stumbled across all the many spiritual meanings of blue jay feathers. I suspect the spiritual meaning of feathers is sort of a choose-your-own adventure spirituality, because wow, people sure have found a lot of deep significance in some poor bird having a misadventure. But I was pretty amused by one site that told me the meaning was to “Choose a couple of the many projects on your plate and complete them.” How perfect is that?

Time to listen to the wisdom of the feather!

Anthropomorphizing birds. Or just projecting.

25 Sunday Mar 2018

Posted by in Birds, Campground, Randomness, Travel

≈ 2 Comments

Canadian geese

I woke up to the sound of Canadian geese complaining. Then I spent the next several minutes sleepily castigating myself for negatively anthropomorphizing birds. Surely they were honking or calling or murmuring. Then I woke up a little more and realized that it was still the middle of the night and those birds were definitely complaining. Not sure what they were complaining about — were they drifting in the water? Was some raccoon disturbing their slumber? But they stopped their complaining and I went back to sleep and eventually, when I woke up again, their noises were much more like daybreak murmurings.

I’m in Tennessee, currently at a Thousand Trails campground on the Natchez Trace. I was driving yesterday and remembering the last time I was in Tennessee. I thought then that the state would probably be really pretty in about two more weeks, in spring, but that at that moment, it was bleak and grey, trees all ugly spires of bare trunk with dead, hanging leaves that should have dropped months ago. When I reached my destination, I looked up the date I was last here — coincidentally, but not surprisingly, it was March 24th of last year. The exact same day.

And yeah, I think this state will probably be really pretty in two more weeks, but today, it is the epitome of March showers. Overcast, mildly foggy, everything looking gray. Not pretty, but lovely in a very Goth sort of way. The kind of lonely beauty that makes cups of tea seem highly desirable.

I was planning on spending more time here, but I think instead, I’m going to drift my way south. Or maybe west. But first things first: Z wants her walk.

And later.

I walked Zelda, got back to the van, and instead of making myself some coffee and starting the day, I packed up the van and got on the road. The campground was probably a perfectly nice place. But it’s the kind where people have annual memberships and leave their trailers at their sites year round. Stuff accumulates outside the trailers. Not necessarily bad stuff — potted plants and lights and chairs, golf carts and grills, holiday decorations and signs. But time and weather and entropy combine so quickly to turn pleasant vacation gear into shabby, run-down debris. It didn’t just feel like a trailer park, it felt like an abandoned trailer park. Half depressing and half spooky.

(The bathrooms, however, were excellent — clean and shiny new — and the view was terrific. I had a waterfront site with a lovely lake view. If the weather had been nicer, it might have been a perfectly nice place.)

lake view

So I got on the road and headed south, along the Natchez Trace. It’s a scenic highway along what was once a trail used by bison, Native Americans, and early settlers. At 8AM on a Sunday morning, I was pretty much alone on it and it was lovely. Absolutely peaceful and beautiful. I took a couple breaks along the way, went to a grocery store in Tupelo, Mississippi, and then found myself a campsite at Trace State Park.

I picked the park based on the fact that I like state parks, that I didn’t want to keep driving, and that the sun was showing through the clouds when I walked out of the grocery store. All excellent reasons, but it turns out that somewhere within this park is the birthplace of Davy Crockett. I’m sure there are reasons to disapprove of Davy Crockett these days, but the Disney song is running through my head. And I just read the wikipedia entry on him and he was the only representative from Tennessee to vote against the Indian Removal Act (aka Trail of Tears) and was thanked for it by a Cherokee chief, so yay. I will continue humming cheerfully.

And even though the sky has clouded up again, I feel much happier here. The lake is currently gone — undergoing renovations apparently — so my waterfront spot is really just a “looking out onto a grassy pit” spot, but it is peaceful and quiet. I remember — again from last year — sitting in a campground somewhere in the south and realizing that there are places where those noisy birdsong relaxation medleys that always sound so fake are actually real. This is one of those places. If it weren’t for the hum of the computer, the only sound I’d be able to hear would be the birds chirping and squeaking and whirring and making all those different mysterious sounds they make. Not complaining, though. They sound quite happy! (I could be projecting, though. 🙂 )

Reed Bingham State Park

16 Friday Mar 2018

Posted by in Campground, Randomness

≈ 5 Comments

spring in leaves and flowers

“… early spring, when the first leaves are at the bottom of the trees and they seem to float in space in a wonderful way…” – David Hockney, on wanting to paint spring

Zelda and I went on a three mile hike today, through pine scrub forests and wetlands, along a boardwalk and a bumpy, tree-root-filled dirt path. And some paved road, too. It was glorious. It was not, however, our usual first thing in the morning walk, because a) it was COLD at 7AM, here in Georgia, and b) it was also crazily dark.

Sunrise was at 7:44 AM, which I know because I asked Alexa. That’s actually a solid 32 minutes later than sunrise wherever Alexa thinks I live, which I know because while I was staring out my window at the barely lightening sky, we had this conversation.

Me: Alexa, what time is it?
Alexa: It’s 7:08 AM.
Me: Alexa, what time is sunrise?
Alexa: Sunrise is at 7:12 AM.
Me: So why is it so dark outside?
Alexa: …
Me: Alexa, why is it so dark outside?
Alexa: Sorry, I’m not sure.
Me: Alexa, what time is sunrise in Adel, Georgia?
Alexa: Sunrise is at 7:44 AM.
Me: Wow, that’s weird.
Alexa: …

She is not always the best conversationalist. Still, it’s pretty cool that from the comfort of being buried under my covers — two blankets last night for the first time in months! — I can find out what’s happening with the sky.

Anyway, Z and I wound up taking a quick walk, then coming back to Serenity for breakfast and miscellaneous chores. Well, I did miscellaneous chores. Zelda had a nap. But around lunch time we went for our walk and it was spectacular. Probably about fifty-five degrees, with spring popping up around every corner: those pink flowers, and yellow flowers, but also just the early green leaves starting on bare branches. It made me very happy to be in a spring that felt so spring-like.

And I’m happy to be on the road again, too. I really had a lovely last couple of weeks in Florida: I got to spend time with lots of friends, and finished it off with a couple fun days with family. Movies and interesting food and writing with friends, some great conversations and coffee dates — what more could anyone want? But apparently I also want nature and bird song and for the van to be connected to a safe water supply.

And long walks through interesting terrain, the smell of my neighbors’ campfires, and starry, starry night skies.

Magical Eureka

12 Monday Mar 2018

Posted by in Randomness, Travel, Writing

≈ 4 Comments

I saw manatees this week.

At least, I think they were manatees. They were big gray lumps, breaking through the surface of the water and then disappearing again. Too big to be otters, which was my first thought. Too inland to be dolphins or whales, which would have been my second, if I’d been at the ocean.

I wasn’t at the ocean. I was actually at a lake whose name I don’t know, but which is right down the street (more or less, a few minutes drive away) from a driveway that has been a very regular campsite over the past four months.

It made me think about magic. And adventure. And the difference between them. But also, more importantly, about needing to remember that there is magic right around the corner, all the time, if we just remember to look for it.

On Wednesday, I’m finally starting my travels again — heading north, with plans to explore Georgia and Arkansas and the states between the two. (That vagueness is because I could hop up to Tennessee and drive across Tennessee to get to Arkansas, or I could stay farther south and drive through the northern ends of Alabama and Mississippi. I think which I do might depend on the weather, might depend on what sounds interesting along the way.)

My Arkansas destination is Eureka Springs. Why Eureka Springs? Well, why not? But that’s not the entire answer. This weekend I got an email from fanfiction.net, a review on one of my last Eureka stories. It was really good timing, because it reminded me of what happened in 2010. I had given up on writing fiction, almost a decade earlier, because… drum roll? … nothing I wrote ever satisfied me. Much like I’ve done for the past three years, I wrote in circles, I over-wrote, I edited to death, it was never good enough. Writing was an exercise in frustration, not a satisfaction or a joy. And so I quit writing.

Then I fell in love with a television show, Eureka, and more specifically a relationship on the show and wanted desperately to know what happened next. I discovered fanfiction. But none of the stories were quite the one that I wanted to read, so I wrote my own. And then I wrote more, and then I wrote more, until I had written hundreds of thousands of words of fanfiction, with stories that ranged from a few thousand words to full-length novellas of 35,000+. But I had a strict rule, which was that I didn’t edit. I wrote and I let go.

Literally, I would write during my free time and then before I went to sleep, I would post what I’d written. I never went back and questioned myself, I never edited, I never agonized over plots — it was all spur-of-the-moment, top-of-my-head, as fast as I could write, writing. I wrote in 1000-word blocks and then I shared them. Are the stories perfect? Nowhere close. Are they fun, fast, readable, entertaining, creative, amusing… yes, all of the above.

I need to get back to that kind of writing. I don’t know whether I can entirely, because one of the joys of writing fanfiction was the community, the instant-feedback from supportive readers. I don’t know how many times my author notes on those stories say things like, “I wouldn’t have written this if it weren’t for reviews from x, y, z,” but it’s often. Really often. Those reviews motivated me.

But I also look at the stories and I didn’t worry about grammar, about perfection. I’ve got sentence fragments and run-ons, dialogue-style construction in narrative, adjectives used with blithe abandon, and jumps in point-of-view whenever I felt like I needed to be in a different point-of-view, sometimes with breaks but sometimes just done. And all those things work just fine. I just wrote and let go. So that’s my new resolution for working on Grace, to write and let go.

And I’m going to Eureka Springs, because I saw the name on a map yesterday and thought, Yes! I want to go back to Eureka. It won’t be the same, but as long as I’m on my way there, I’ll be reminding myself every day of what it meant to me to be living in Eureka.

Making plans

20 Tuesday Feb 2018

Posted by in Bartleby, Campground, Randomness

≈ 8 Comments

I was feeling gloriously happy this morning — the medical escalator came to a screeching halt yesterday, and I was ever so ready to get off and get moving! — and then I got an email from my doctor’s office with a new appointment for March 13th. Three weeks away! sigh But I am not going to fuss about it. It is what it is. I did consider calling and canceling — I’m not sure why that appointment needs to be in person, except for the general medical need to follow-up face-to-face when firm cautions are involved — but I’m not going to worry about it.

I’ve realized a couple things about my next couple of months, anyway. The first is that without B, I don’t have such an imperative need to get out of Florida. He was miserable when it was too hot. Even without the congestive heart failure, he was a pudgy little guy with a thick coat of black fur, and the heat was hard on him. Even in 70 degree weather, he’d be panting. Zelda — white dog, thinner coat, skinny and energetic — doesn’t mind the heat nearly as much. And one of the big issues about the heat was that I needed to be able to leave B in the van while I walked Zelda, so I always needed to be able to have the AC running. That’s no longer a problem. I wish it was. I’d much rather be worrying about B and trying to make him comfortable than living without him. But again, it is what it is.

The second thing isn’t a realization as much as it is a hard look at my timeline: I need to be back in Florida in the middle of May for R’s graduation. That gives me two months. And I don’t want to spend them driving. Long driving days are exhausting and time-consuming. There are places I wanted to go — I’d rather be spending spring in the northeast than the south — but I don’t want to be rushing around, spending hours on the road and worrying about getting to my destinations on a schedule that doesn’t give me enough time to enjoy them (and to write a book along the way!)

So my current plan, such as it is, is to relax and enjoy the south. I’ll have a few more weeks in Florida and then I’ll do some exploring in Georgia and maybe South Carolina, maybe even back to Arkansas, and then I’ll swing back into Florida for the first part of May. And then May 20th or so, I will head north, taking my time about it.

And after a stressful couple of weeks, I am relaxing and enjoying my day today. I’m in Lake Griffin State Park, which is a place I’ve stayed before, but I like it more every time I’m here, I think. It’s a small park, close enough to a busy road that you never stop hearing road noise, but I don’t mind that. This morning I took Zelda on a walk down a path that we’ve never gone on before, because of warnings about mud. I could hear the traffic, but being surrounded by nature, breathing fresh air, seeing greenery and giant palmettos and pretty yellow flowers scattered across dead brown leaves on the ground felt magical. Like I’d discovered a primeval swamp in the backyard of a strip mall. And then we reached a place on the trail where the mud was thick and black and goopy and Zelda decided she wanted no part of it. She dragged me back the way we came. Now I’m sitting in the van, windows open, listening to traffic but also birds and breezes in the leaves and a far distant barking dog, and watching a yellow butterfly. It’s a beautiful day for writing many words. Here’s hoping lots of them are on Grace!

A crescent moon through trees

Last night’s sliver of moon

A new year begins…

03 Wednesday Jan 2018

Posted by in Personal, Randomness, Vanlife

≈ 7 Comments

Sunflower honey from the Ukraine

Sunflower honey from the Ukraine

Today’s honey was sunflower honey from the Ukraine. I wasn’t sure about it on my first taste — it was definitely less sweet than the clover honey I’ve been eating — but I was sold by the end of my oatmeal.

In my head, before I took this picture and realized what the real name was, I was calling it “sunshine honey.” And it’s a good day for sunshine honey, because, wow, it is cold and gray and wet and bleak outside.

I love the sound of rain on the roof of the van, but taking the dogs for their walks in cold, gray drizzle and returning to the van means wet clothes, wet jackets, wet towels everywhere. The van isn’t big enough for rainy days. And it’s actually cold enough today that I’ve closed off the cab and the bathroom to try to keep it warmer, making it feel even smaller.

An interesting irony: tea is an obvious pleasure of a cold, rainy day. Mmm, nice warm beverage to cuddle between my hands. But I usually heat water on the propane burner and I don’t use the propane without opening up the overhead vent and running the fan. Today is not the day for that. I don’t actually know what the risk is — explosion? carbon monoxide poisoning? — but I take my warning labels seriously. Fortunately, I have an induction cooktop and electricity, so tea remains an option.

I’m currently at Lake Griffin State Park, in central Florida. I’ve stayed here before, so don’t have a lot to say about it — it’s a small park, but cozy and pleasant. The sites feel more cramped and close together than the average Florida park, but there’s loads of greenery. My view right now is all palmettos, although if I turn my head, I can also see the trailer in the site next to mine. If the weather was nicer, I could rent a kayak and go out on the river for a while, which would be lovely but is totally not going to happen today. I’m not adding any more wet clothes to the pile already slowly steaming up the front.

Some of the RV blogs that I read have done end of 2017, beginning of 2018 posts: miles traveled, places stayed, money spent. Plus plans for the new year. I’m not going to do that, except to say that I came pretty close to 20,000 miles in 2017. I think I drove through 38 states, and I know I visited four different coasts — Atlantic, Pacific, Gulf, and Caribbean. Can I count the Caribbean as a coast? I think so.

As for my plans for 2018 — I’m going to watch my son graduate from college in May. I’m going to celebrate my stepmom’s birthday sometime around July, somewhere unknown, but maybe Ohio. And I’m going to write a lot of words. Apart from that, I honestly have no idea what I’m going to do or where I’m going to go. Adventures await!

Rainbow of honey

26 Tuesday Dec 2017

Posted by in Food, Randomness

≈ 5 Comments

I bought myself a present at Trader Joe’s on the day before Christmas Eve: a rainbow of honey. Six kinds, ranging from light to dark, from different parts of the world and from different bees that collected their pollen from different plants. At the time, I thought I was being ridiculous — seriously, a person who lives in a van does not need six different types of honey. And the tops on the bottles were corks, which meant chances of spilling and sticky mess were probably pretty high.

But I couldn’t resist. I’ve never thought much about honey before the last year. Yellow stuff, from bees. I would buy your typical generic honey-bear plastic container and it would last me months or even years, because I would only ever use it for occasional tea, usually when I was sick.

But then I started using it when I made granola and then, instead of buying pre-sweetened yogurt, I started using plain Greek yogurt and adding my own sweetener. Way better idea! Not only do you get to control the level of sweet, each bite can taste slightly different depending on how much honey it gets. It turns same-old, same-old yogurt into something new with every bite.

And then — the real key — my friend P, in Seattle, gave me some of her home-gathered honey. (Total struggle with the words there, ha. She raised bees, but obviously she didn’t grow the honey or make the honey, so not home-grown or home-made. Home collected?) It was the best honey I’d ever tasted. It was a qualitatively different thing than honey I’d had before. It was almost spicy and rich, heavy and dense. Delicious. Really, seriously, incredibly delicious.

I didn’t use it as the sweetener for my home-made granola because I didn’t want to waste it, but even only using it on my morning yogurt, I used up the jar she’d given me in August by the end of November. I replaced it with some farmer’s market raw honey infused with cinnamon that was… okay. Nice enough. Not something that would inspire me to fall in love with honey, but fine.

Today I tried my first new honey from the rainbow: the clover honey from the USA. It was light and sweet and lovely. I ate my yogurt and then before I was done, when I only had a bite of yogurt left, I added another little bit of honey, just because it was so yummy. Not like Pam’s honey but way better than typical honey.

So I’m really pleased with my present to myself, despite how silly it seemed. Yep, I live in a van with incredibly limited space, but room for seven different types of honey. But there’s something so wonderful about discovering that a thing I never really thought about, just took for granted, has such variety and possibility within it. It reminds me of when the sweet olive tree outside my bedroom window flowered and became incredibly fragrant. For a moment in time, my familiar backyard became a different world — exotic and tropical, almost magical.

Hmm, and now I’m reminded of a Robin McKinley book in which the heroine is a beekeeper, Chalice. Her different types of honey have different magical attributes. I just never realized that the honey was real, even if the magic was maybe not.

Early morning surprise

22 Friday Dec 2017

Posted by in Personal, Randomness

≈ 1 Comment

R’s neighborhood in Sarasota is an interesting mix of small houses; some run-down and worn, some polished and sterile, others quirky and whimsical and obviously loved. I’d guess much of the first are student housing while much of the second are vacation rentals. The third category is the best, of course. Lots of interesting artwork and sculptures. Maybe someday this week I’ll do an art walk and bring my camera, so I can post pictures. The neighbors across the street have a big purple sculpture in their yard; down the street, people have old records lining their fence; today I passed a house with about eight different pieces of artwork in the yard. Even the Christmas decorations are interesting — fewer of the inflatables that are so popular in other places, and more ornaments dangling from pine trees or along roof lines.

This morning’s walk was my favorite, though. I wandered down a road where the yards changed from bedraggled grass and gravel to rain forests of ferns and palm trees. At the end of the road, a small sign said something like, “John Smith Memorial Nature Walk.” And at the end of the nature walk…

sunrise on the ocean

It was a total surprise. Ocean! So close, so beautiful.

It was a lovely way to start the day.

Less lovely, I’ve got no electric hookup in R’s driveway (there’s no outlet within reach), so yesterday I took my coffee maker inside to make coffee. I left it there, assuming I’d do the same thing this morning. Alas, I left the keys inside, so this morning my coffee is on the wrong side of a locked door. I’m very ready for R to wake up!