Liberty Glen Campground

19 Tuesday Feb 2019

Posted by wyndes in California, Campground, Travel

I have spent so long struggling to post my time-lapse sunrise that even though the quality loses everything I wanted to share, I’m still posting it. If you watch it very closely, in the bottom right corner, you might get a chance to see the sun sparkling on the water drops that covered the tree. In the moment, it was crazily magically beautiful. On the time-lapse… well, you can’t really see it. Maybe if you watch it in a very dark room, you might get a glimpse. Mostly, though, you’ll have to use your imagination and trust me that it really was gorgeous!

So! Moving on… I left Half Moon Bay on Friday morning and literally prayed on the drive into the city to find a parking place. Literally. Out loud. I apologized to the universe for asking for favors — I have a pretty strict policy of only praying in gratitude and appreciation and to ask for blessings for other people — but I was envisioning driving around and around in Serenity, finding only parking spots that would require parallel parking in tiny spaces. Instead, there was an open parking space — not parallel! — directly in front of my favorite dim sum bakery from decades ago. Yes, it felt like a miracle. A really nice minor miracle. I envisioned my guardian angel patting themself on the back in that pleasure and delight that you get when you find someone the perfect gift.

I parked… and then I did not go in for dim sum. I watched people going in and out, most of them taking packages of deliciousness to go… and I thought about how miserably sick gluten makes me. And then I thought about how much I love shrimp dumplings and pork siu mai. And then I thought about the sore throat and the aches and pains and the feeling of having so little energy that even standing up is an effort… And eventually my friend S arrived and we went down the street to Burma Superstar, currently the #8 restaurant in San Francisco according to Trip Advisor, and ate delicious gluten-free tea leaf salad and braised pork with coconut rice. I’m pretty sure that means I am never going to willingly eat gluten again. I don’t know how many times I’ve said that San Francisco dim sum would be the place/food that I would pay the price for, but apparently it’s not. Fortunately, lunch was delicious.

While we were eating, it hailed! I took a video but I’m not even going to make an attempt to post it, but here’s a picture from the window, including a little girl picking up pieces. Hail must be pretty amazing if you’re a San Francisco kid.

little girl picking up hail in San Francisco

After lunch, S and I went to Golden Gate Park and took Zelda for a good walk, and then I dropped S off sorta close to the de Young Museum and headed north across the Golden Gate Bridge. I did debate going to the Museum myself, but I wanted to get to my campground before dark and I didn’t want to get caught in traffic.

That was a really good call. The campground would have freaked me out after dark. It was remarkably isolated, considering it was in Sonoma. No cell service, no electricity, and a steep and winding road in lousy condition to narrow, hilly campsites. Also mostly deserted. On Friday afternoon, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to stay.

But it was gorgeous.

Zelda had no such doubts. She was bouncy and excited, loving the weather — cold and sunny — and the smells. So we stayed through Sunday morning, with a mostly very quiet Saturday. I could have run the generator to give myself some electricity (I did manage to get it working again) if I’d wanted to use my computer or cook anything complicated, but instead I read books and ate leftovers. I wasn’t as tired as I’d been on my quiet day in Half Moon Bay, but it was nice to have a day where I didn’t have driving goals.

On Sunday, I headed off reasonably early, and finally finished my long drive. I arrived in Arcata around 3, pulled into S’s driveway and got comfortable. My journey lasted seventeen days, and over 3000 miles. Some parking lots, some driveways, some campgrounds — and I ought to count them up, but I spent a long time trying to get that video to work and I’m ready to move on to other things! But it was a good trip. I’ve driven across the country four times now, with timetables ranging from four days (not solo) to about eight weeks. Seventeen days was probably a little too fast — I’m really ready to not drive again and I was pretty tired by the end — but I think I managed a good balance of driving days and restful days.

Still, I’m glad to be here. Yesterday S didn’t have work, because of the holiday, so we did laundry, ate a big breakfast of bacon and eggs, went to the beach with the dogs (briefly, because it was cold!), and had pumpkin soup and salad for dinner. It was a lovely beginning to my lengthy visit. Today, I’m hoping to put on my yoga clothes and wander down the street to the nearest yoga studio — a five minute walk away — and go to my first yoga practice in over a year. But first, breakfast.

Edited to add: I can’t believe I forgot to include this rainbow. It felt like a beautiful welcome to California!

Half Moon Bay State Beach

15 Friday Feb 2019

Posted by wyndes in California, Campground, Travel

≈ 8 Comments

It’s very hard to take a picture of a mud puddle. At least one that demonstrates its depth and size without just looking like a dirty spot in the ground.

There is no way for Zelda to avoid this mud puddle when leaving the van. She doesn’t mind — she’s perfectly happy to wade in the water. But muddy dog + small van = sad dog mom.

Also, I am so tired that it took me three tries to spell the word “puddle.” I nearly went into that space where it stopped feeling like a real word. Puddle? Pubble? Pebble? What’s that thing called again?

Yeah, I’m guessing this is not going to be the most coherent blog post ever. But I’m currently at Half Moon Bay State Beach, which is a lovely — also, currently, extremely muddy — campground just south of San Francisco.

Not an impressionist painting, just a misty morning. It was rainbow weather, although I didn’t actually see any rainbows.

By about 2PM on Tuesday, Serenity’s tires were back in place and I was back on the road. I managed to get to Tehachapi in time to meet Carol (hi, Carol!) for dinner at Blue Ginger Pho, just one day late. Pho was just what I needed, because I was thoroughly cold-ish by then, tissues constantly in hand. I spent the night parked on Carol’s street and headed out early the next morning.

Wednesday was a grueling day. I had campground reservations that I’d paid for, so for the first time my schedule wasn’t flexible: I needed to reach Half Moon Bay by 5PM. I also needed to refill the propane. I’d filled it just a few days earlier, in Albuquerque, but it takes a fair amount of propane to keep a metal box warm when it’s 2 degrees outside and I didn’t want to chance needing it. And I needed to get the tires rechecked, to make sure the lug nuts weren’t working their way loose again. I also wanted to go to the grocery store. I managed all of it, except for the grocery store.

But when I woke up this morning, I proved completely unable to talk myself into doing anything else. Instead of going to the grocery store, I ate oatmeal for breakfast, lunch, and maybe for dinner, too. (I’ve got other options, but I’ve also got more oatmeal, and I haven’t had dinner yet.) Half Moon Bay is a charming town, lots of cute shops, just five minutes away. I did not explore it. My favorite sushi restaurant in the entire world is an hour down the coast, a beautiful drive. I did not go there. Instead, I hung out in the van, admired the sea gulls, and tried to keep Zelda out of the mud puddles on our brief walks.

Tomorrow, I’m going to briefly go into San Francisco. When I started planning this journey, I wanted to take a couple days and play in the city. But the closer I got, the more I stumbled over the reality of traveling with a large van and a small dog. Like every city, San Francisco has terrible parking. Once, when I was pregnant, I drove around my apartment for an hour trying to park and then gave up and drove to my brother’s house and spent the night there, because he had a driveway. So the sensible thing to do would be to leave the van outside the city and travel into the city on public transit. Except what would I do with Zelda? I’m not going to leave her alone in the van for that long. So I’m going to give San Francisco a try, but I’m not going to stress myself out dealing with city hassles.

A view from the van window. That’s ocean back there, but Z isn’t allowed on the beach.

Then one more weekend on the road, but by Monday — I hope! — I will be settling down in Arcata, ready to get back to writing the sequel to A Lonely Magic again. I tried today, even managed to pull off a few words, but I currently can’t spell puddle, so it’s not exactly gone well. But a previously written snippet made me laugh…

Fen sighed. “I wish I could turn into a bird.”
An owl would be perfect. Silent flight, good night vision. She could glide away on spooky owl wings. No one would hear her or see her. She’d just be gone.
“Why would you wish to do that?” Elfie asked, sounding puzzled. “Transformation is always fatal. The magic cannot sustain cellular life through the process of re-shaping and re-forming. If you became a bird, you would be a dead bird. This seems ill-advised.”
Fen’s lips twitched. Elfie, so literal.
A Precarious Balance

The wheels on the bus go round and round…

11 Monday Feb 2019

Posted by wyndes in Campground, Travel, Vanlife

≈ 13 Comments

The van started making a weird noise while I was driving yesterday, so I did what all grown-ups do when their vehicles start making weird noises: I called my dad.

He said, “That sounds like a tire problem, probably a loose lug nut. Get off the highway.”

At various points in the last few days of driving, I have been very much in the middle of big deserts and extended mountain ranges: Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and finally into California, and so my protest was automatic. “But I’m in the middle of nowhere.”

Even as we spoke, though, I saw the signs for an exit up ahead. Said exit wasn’t just an exit, it had an AutoZone immediately off the ramp. Yay! A place to buy a tool to tighten the loose lug nut. I drove into the parking lot, got out and looked at my wheel.

Hmm. “Loose” applied but only to the lug nuts that were left. Two of them were missing.

Inside the store, I chatted with the nice guy, who came out and took a look at the van and said, “You’ve been driving on that? Don’t do that anymore.”

He went back inside, talked to his manager, and sent me across the street to the Shell station. The nice guy at the Shell station said, “Whoa. That’s not good. You might have a real problem.” He jacked the van up, took the tire off, looked at the remaining lug nuts and said, “You were about five miles from disaster. And I mean a real disaster.”

Fortunately, the nice thing about being five miles from disaster is that you’re still pretty far away from actual disaster. As a result, though, I am now hanging out in an RV park in Needles, California, waiting to find out how much new wheel studs are going to cost me and when they’ll be able to get here.*

I don’t mind too much. I’m a little disappointed that I’m not on my way to Tehachapi, where I was going to introduce Carol to Vietnamese food (one of my personal favorites) tonight, but the park I’m staying at (Needles Marina RV Park) is the kind of resort park that I don’t usually stay at, with full hook-ups, laundry facilities, even a swimming pool. I will probably not be swimming, given that it was 41 degrees outside this morning, but I am going to take the chance to do some laundry and clean out the tanks.

I also will probably spend at least a little time trying to get the generator working. I haven’t been able to turn it on since Texas. I blamed both the elevation and the cold initially, but yesterday morning, neither of those things applied, and I still couldn’t get it working. I’m hoping that the problem then was that the battery was charging and pulling too much energy from the generator. (You usually want to let the generator run for a couple of minutes before letting things start drawing power from it.)

So, yeah, the technical difficulties of van life definitely reared their heads this weekend. So it goes. It’s impossible to feel anything other than really lucky, though, when I consider how much worse my yesterday might have been. There are youtube videos of people driving on the highway when their tires fly off — I’m guessing most of them don’t end well.

I also appear to have a cold: I thought it was allergies in Texas, was sure it was allergies in Albuquerque, but now… well, yeah, it’s a cold. Interestingly, a cold is so much less sick than a gluten-reaction that I’ve had trouble deciding that I was really sick. Congested, yes. Sore throat, yes. But until I added a cough this morning, I just wasn’t feeling the level of misery that would have deserved to be called “sick.” Even now, I’m not miserable. I just don’t feel well. I’m just as glad not to be driving, though.

Before I move on to the more useful parts of my day, however — a quick summary of the past few. I left Texas on Thursday and spent a long day on the road, winding up at Kyla’s house in the mountains that night. There was snow! Zelda liked it, I think. But there were probably also a lot of great smells around, because she was busy, busy, busy — heading off in all sorts of random directions. I was freezing, but she would have happily stayed outside for hours.

On Friday, Kyla and I enjoyed an art project. We took three of my photographs, and printed them out on canvas, then stapled them to pieces of wood. They’re hanging in the van now, and I love them. (Picture posted on instagram, so in the sidebar of the blog, if you want to see.)

Instead of returning to Kyla’s place in the mountains that night, though, I headed farther west, trying to get another hour or two of driving in. I spent the night in a Walmart parking lot outside of Gallup. Not my favorite ever parking lot, but it was cold and that was when I discovered that the generator wasn’t working. Friday was another long driving day. I’d intended to stay near Flagstaff, but when I got there, comfortably early, it was freezing cold and gray, with mounds of snow piled high on the corners of parking lots. I was so unenthusiastic. I might go back someday — it looks like an interesting place — but not in February.

So I kept driving, planning on continuing until I hit 50 degree weather. Fortunately, that happened sooner rather than later, and I spent Friday night and most of Saturday morning at Cerbat Foothills Recreation Area, my first (I think) Bureau of Land Management site. I was a little mystified when I got there — I’d pictured a road into the desert with visible spots where people would/could camp on the sides of the road. Instead, it was basically an unpaved parking lot with a low fence around it. I didn’t know whether to take a parking spot or to drive off the road into the scrub, but since I was only planning on spending the one night there, I just parked.

The sunrise was amazing. Walking the dog was terrific. It felt like I was out in nature, having an adventure, venturing into the unknown. I took dozens of photographs, and if I had more time, I would be sorting through them right now to find the best one. But I’d rather do laundry.

Little tiny white dot in the sky is a star. Many more of them were visible, but it’s hard to take photos of the stars.

Funny unrelated note: on Saturday night, I was tired after a long, largely uncomfortable day. I’d had a couple of restless nights, including one that was very much sweaty and miserable, between congestion and trying to keep comfortable in ever-changing temperatures. I looked at my bed and thought how much I wished I had clean sheets. And then I looked at the other bed and thought, um, self? It felt so lovely to crawl into the driver’s side bed with its clean sheets that night, and so absurd that I’d never really maximized my clean sheet potential before by using both beds. For the last two nights, I’ve slept in the driver’s side bed, which I’ve only ever done when I’ve had a tall guest in the van. Turns out, it’s perfectly nice. And the clean sheets felt like a luxury!

*I got new tires right before I left Florida. Apparently, you should check the tightness of the lug nuts after driving 1000 miles, which I never knew. I think I’m going to have to get myself the right kind of wrench for the job, though, because it would certainly have been useful to have about a thousand miles ago, well worth the space it would take up in the van.

Palo Duro Canyon State Park, Canyon, Texas

08 Friday Feb 2019

Posted by wyndes in Campground, Photography, Travel, Vanlife

≈ 6 Comments

I am sitting at the bottom of a canyon in Texas and it is cold. For the first time, the van really couldn’t keep up with the chill during the night. That was mostly my fault — there are a bunch of heat conservation tips to living in a van that boil down “cover windows” and “block off unused areas.” Basically, the van stays warmer when I curtain off the cab, close the bathroom doors, and put the shades down and the window covers up. Not complicated. I didn’t do it, though, because hello, canyon. Beautiful isolated rocky cliffs, incredible dark starry night, and the only light that which came from all the myriad ridiculous little lights that shine in the van all night long. Well, and off in the distance, lights to the bathroom.

From the van, I can see one lone tent camper, and I would feel sorry for them, except my friend P goes camping in snow, and at least there’s no snow here. I’m assuming those campers were prepared for the weather.

Speaking of weather, that’s why I’m in a canyon in Texas. (Did you know there were canyons in Texas? Total surprise to me. Not as implausible as discovering, say, a waterfall in Texas, but surprising nonetheless.) I was headed toward New Mexico and making great time, when I checked in with Kyla, who I’m hoping to visit. She mentioned the dreaded word, “snow.”

I am not doing snow. When I first moved into Serenity, I thought it might be fun to experience snow again, but it’s not. I don’t like snow. In fact, if you’ve read all my books, you probably know that because I’ve mentioned it more than once. My characters seldom like snow either! So I’m not going to places where the snow is or is likely to be, and for a couple days that included Kyla’s part of New Mexico. I could have gone on to Albuquerque and met up with her there, but it was raining in Albuquerque and I am not in such a hurry that I need to drive in the rain.

So I took a snow day and paused in Palo Duro Canyon, south of Amarillo, for a couple of nights. (The actual town name is Canyon, Texas, which I like, because it’s so very descriptive. Yep, that’s where we are. In a canyon.) On the first night, I was in the Hackberry Campground. I think the ranger gave me the site because it was reasonably close to the entrance of the park, within very easy walking distance to the bathrooms. Efficient, in other words. And it was certainly nice, with lots of short trees, which in the summer, when its hot, would probably be lovely, and a fun winding path up to the outside theater.

But on my snow day, I went exploring. I drove miles into the canyon, down to the river (lots of flash flood warning signs at the bridges), and took a look at a the campground at the very end of the road. And then I went all the way back up to the front and asked if I could switch sites. Then I came back to my new site and took a hundred photographs, none of which turned out particularly interesting. I think the light was too bright, actually — everything from the camera looks flat and bland. But here’s the view from the van window, taken with the iPhone.

And here’s my favorite photo from the last few days, also taken with the iPhone. It was at a rest stop on the highway, headed west.

Today’s plan: New Mexico.

Beaver Dam Campground, Kisatchie National Forest

04 Monday Feb 2019

Posted by wyndes in Campground, Travel

≈ 2 Comments

I had grand plans for Sunday: I was going to get ALL the things done. Writing and email and updating files, cleaning the van, cooking for the whole week ahead.

Funny thing, spending two solid days driving does not motivate one to get ALL the things done. It motivates one to pick things up and then set them down again, that sort of helplessly fluttery, “can’t keep track of what I was doing for more than ten seconds” mode.

I was helped in my useless state by having it be a grey day in a mostly deserted national forest. All around me were barren trees and dead leaves. Beautiful nature, but beautiful in a bleak way. Beautiful in a “nice day for warm beverages and soup” sort of way.

Beautiful in a dead brown debris sort of way.

But let me backtrack. I left Florida on Friday morning, not crazily early but reasonably early. I intended a long driving day, but I’d had a mostly sleepless night of anticipation. I have no idea why I was so wound up about leaving, but I was. When I was trying to fall asleep, it was as if I needed to wake up early to catch the last helicopter out of the city before the invading army arrived. Win one for the anxious brain.

But the mindful brain got the last laugh: instead of stressing the next day, I forced myself to relax. I took my time, ate a good lunch, let Zelda enjoy the rest stops to her heart’s content. Well, almost. I’m pretty sure Z would spend forever in a rest stop if I let her. It’s got to be like an art museum for dogs. Or maybe a theme park. So many interesting smells! So much to sniff! I did eventually make her get back in the van, but first I let her check out far more of the trees than I usually do.

Eventually, we wound up at a Cracker Barrel outside of Mobile, Alabama. I’d hoped to make it into Mississippi — Hattiesburg at the very least — but it was not to be. Still, it was the nicest parking lot I’ve ever stayed in. Quiet, dark, peaceful.

But I noticed before I closed the blinds that the camper next to me — an old one, from 1982, as I learned the next day — had its parking lights on. I wondered whether they were leaving, then thought nothing more about it.

Until the next morning, when George and I puzzled out how to jumpstart his camper together. We were on the verge of giving up when I pulled up a youtube video on my phone and we learned that we had it right, we just needed to be patient. I ate my breakfast sitting in Serenity’s driver’s seat with the engine on, and George’s camper finally rumbled back to life.

I think George and I were almost equally satisfied when his camper was finally running: him, because hey, he was no longer stuck in a parking lot, and me because it is so very satisfying to be able to be helpful. Well, and also a little bit because he wasn’t a serial killer, lying about his dead battery in order to hit me over the head and murder me horribly. I never really thought he was, but… well, yeah. Anxious brain did not get the win on that one.

So my Saturday started off well and it continued well. The driving was… driving. Not much to say about it. Sometimes I admired the scenery; sometimes I developed complicated speeches to convince people of the rightness of my political philosophies; sometimes I contemplated systems to quickly determine whether a number is prime or not; sometimes I worked on stories (although never the one I meant to be working on); sometimes I got in the zone and just drove. Around 3 or so, I started considering whether I should pay for a campground for the night or whether I should just push on for another few hours, find a parking lot, and look for a campground for the next day. As is probably obvious from the title of this post, I went for the former.

Something about knowing I’m going to be driving 3100 miles in the next two weeks, though, makes me very reluctant to take lengthy detours. I’d been looking at an Army Corps of Engineers campground, because I like the ACOE campgrounds usually, but when it came down to it, I didn’t want to drive as far away from the highway as it would have required. Round trip, I believe it would have added 52 miles to my journey. Not a huge number, but approximately 1.67% added to my drive. (Along with the political arguments, I spent an inordinate amount of time on my drive calculating gas costs, mileage, and whether cruise control was economically prohibitive. Answer: Yes, although not if my entire drive was taking place in Mississippi and Alabama where gas prices are crazily low.)

Anyway, all that to explain why I wound up in this national forest. I would have liked to go to the Turtle Slide Campground, because what a great name, but it was tents only, and hike-in, so I’m at the campground with electricity instead. The price is right, though — $15 for a site with water and electricity. I think it was $10 for the tent sites. I haven’t seen much of the campground — combination of a gray day and Zelda being very disinclined to go for a walk this morning — but the sites are nice and spacious, with fire pits and picnic tables. Mine has a bit of a water view.

And at night, there are no lights at all. The darkness is impressively dark. I could wish for clearer skies, because the stars might be amazing, but the darkness is kind of amazing on its own. Most campgrounds are actually not that dark, because of all the ambient people light — lights on campers, lights on bathrooms, sometimes even streetlights in the campground. Not this one. Across the water, one lone light is shining, but it doesn’t even make a dent in the blackness. It makes me look forward to getting out west and camping in the desert, so I can see the serious nighttime sky.

And it’s good that I’m looking forward to it, because off I go. Tonight, Texas and a stop at HEB to buy some spice gum drops!

Published

14 Friday Dec 2018

Posted by wyndes in Campground, Marketing and promotion, RV, Self-publishing, Vanlife

≈ 9 Comments

I’m at Trimble Park, one of my favorite campgrounds, and I spent all day yesterday on the computer, fighting to post Cici in the various places that I publish books. All the usual suspects, in other words, including Google Play, which honestly has such a ridiculously bad interface that I’m not sure it’s worth the bother. I kept telling myself that I should just wait until I went back to my dad’s house because internet is a lot faster when it’s not a cell connection, but I guess I felt persistent.

By evening, it was up in most spots — not Apple, of course, because Apple takes forever and a day — so I went ahead and sent an email to my mailing list. This morning I posted to Facebook, my three different pages, and paid $5 for an ad, so that people might actually see the post, and now I’m posting to my blog, and then I will be done with publishing Cici. This is why I’m really not a very good self-publisher — one is supposed to do all kinds of marketing, release day promotions, newsletters, giveaways, ad campaigns, blah-blah-blah. Does knowing what one is supposed to do and not doing it mean that one is: a) bad at business, b) rebellious in all the wrong ways, c) lazy? All three, obviously. But Cici is available for purchase, so at least I’m getting the “Step One: Write a Book, Step Two: Publish It” part of self-publishing right.

Meanwhile, it is raining. Not heavily, but persistently. The main reason why I am sitting in this lovely campground is to dump the tanks and I cannot express how unenthusiastic I am about doing that in the rain. Also, I left stuff outside which is now going to have to come into the van and be wet and drippy inside. Sigh. But! The good news is that it’s a lovely tropical summer-feeling rain, so I should be counting my blessings. And I need a shower, anyway, so probably I should just enjoy it. But sewage in the rain always seems to smell more: psychological, I think, not real, but still.

And the clock is ticking, so I guess I can give up on the rain stopping before I pack up. It’ll be good for me, right? Right.

Bet Me for $1.99

04 Tuesday Dec 2018

Posted by wyndes in Books, Reviews

≈ 6 Comments

My favorite romance novel of all time is available in Kindle on Amazon today (December 4th, 2018) for $1.99: Bet Me by Jennifer Cruisie

Now I’m second-guessing myself, though — is it really my favorite of all time? There have been others I have loved along the way. There was an Elspeth Thane book, sadly not available as an ebook, that I adored as a teenager. (The fact that it is about ghosts might have had something to do with my future leanings.) There’s a Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign, that doesn’t call itself a romance but really is. There are definitely books outside the romance category by Robin McKinley and Sharon Shinn and others that might be slightly higher on my favorites list.

But you know, now that I’ve analyzed this question deeply, I’m going to say yes, Bet Me, still my favorite romance novel of all time. I love the relationships between the characters, the representation of male friendship, the way that the hero/heroine support each other in stressful family situations, the way the hero encourages the heroine to enjoy food, and absolutely the humor. So much the humor. Also, though, the actual romance — the attraction between the characters is fun. So much “romance” these days feels like obligatory lust followed by insta-amazing sex and I find that seriously boring. Cal and Min are attracted to one another, wish they weren’t, still are. It’s appealing. And now I’m going to go read a good book all morning. 🙂

Crooked River State Park

29 Monday Oct 2018

Posted by wyndes in Campground, Personal, Reviews, Travel, Writing

≈ 4 Comments

The sky at Crooked River State Park, Georgia

In winter, days last longer in the south. In my head, I’ve known that for a long time. Alaska & Scandinavia = dark all day in the winter = duh. But in the past few days, I’ve really noticed the difference.

But let’s start at the beginning: I was staying in PA to watch my niece play Piglet in her school production of Winnie-the-Pooh, but I had one eye on the weather report and I was getting increasingly nervous. It sounded like it might be bad, and definitely not driving weather. I didn’t want to miss the play, though, so I took my chances and stayed.

It was the right call. The play was fantastic, and kinda crazy. The story is that Kanga is coming to the forest and all the other animals are scared of her because she insists on baths and medicine. I can see that in some version of this story, it’s about not being afraid of the unknown and maybe even understanding that baths and medicine are good for you. But in this version of the play (dialogue unchanged, merely a matter of delivery), it’s about child abuse and kidnapping and revenge. At one point, Rabbit is offering Roo candy in order to kidnap him so they can blackmail Kanga into giving up Piglet who has already been kidnapped and is being tortured… who knew Winnie-the-Pooh was such a psychopathic story?! But it really was all about the delivery. M played Piglet, which I had assumed would be a minor part, but it was not, and she was terrific. Her expressions in the scene where Kanga is forcibly giving her a bath were hysterical. I laughed so hard I worried I was being disruptive. I’m so glad I stuck around to see it.

The next day I braved the rain and started to drive. My tentative plan was to make it to a campground around the Virginia/North Carolina border and stay there for a few days. The weather did not cooperate. Neither did the traffic. As is the way of traffic in the rain, a major accident closed the entire highway for a while and probably added a solid two hours to my journey. I managed to view it as an adventure, getting off the highway and roaming around side streets at 25MPH, and obviously, my day was a hell of a lot better than that of the people involved in the accident, but still…

After I made it through the traffic jam, I stopped at CostCo for gas and snacks and bought myself, among other things, an LL Bean winter coat for $40. It rolls up and fits into a small sack like a tiny sleeping bag. I suspect it makes me look like a plump eggplant, but that’s okay, I was a warm plump eggplant! And I’m going to need it again within a few months, I think.

Eventually I wound up at a noisy Walmart in Virginia, not sleeping, but at least not driving. The next morning, I considered simply driving to the campground I’d intended to reach on the first day, but it was cold and gray and it seemed pointless. Why would I want to camp in cold, gray misery? Instead, I resolved that I would keep driving until I reached 70 degree weather and sunshine.

It didn’t happen. Instead, I spent another night at a Walmart parking lot. It was a longer day, because I stopped when it got dark, but it got dark later, followed by another sleepless night. I’m not anxious about parking lots the way I used to be. I don’t lie awake worrying about every strange sound. But at the very best of times, I’m not a great sleeper, and strange noises wake me up. Parking lots are filled with strange noises.

By Sunday morning, I was feeling exhausted and unwell. I walked Z around the parking lot, made myself some coffee and breakfast, and considered the miles. Another six hours of driving would get me to a driveway in Florida, at which point what I would really want to do would be to crawl into bed and take a nap for a day or two. Or I could take a break, stop at a campground, have a day or two to rest, clean out the tanks, do some organizing, get the van ready for another couple weeks of driveway days. The campground won.

So this morning I am at Crooked River State Park, in Georgia. It’s a nice campground, huge sites, with plenty of space between them. The landscape reminds me very much of Florida, with lots of scrubs pines and palmettos. I’ve seen the river, but only from a distance, but Z and I had a nice stroll this morning around the campground, the mini-golf course and playground. My one real negative about this campground is that Georgia State Parks are comparatively expensive: I’m paying almost $40/night for a water-electric site and if I’d been willing to drive another hour (and possibly had made a reservation ahead of time), I could get an equivalently nice site, possibly even nicer, for $24 night. Florida State Parks are a much better deal. And since this park is so much like a Florida park… shrug. But it’s a convenient stop for me and just for a couple of nights, so it felt worth it.

Yesterday I dumped the tanks and rinsed them out, and one of today’s goals is to fill them again, so that they can have an almost clean flush when I leave tomorrow. Also on my agenda: washing lots of dishes, defrosting the freezer, showering, sweeping, and appreciating the sunshine. Lots of appreciating the sunshine and warmth, I hope. It’s supposed to go up to 80 today, which would have annoyed me a couple of months ago, but which is going to feel very pleasant today.

Also on the agenda, doing some real writing. I’m thinking about doing a NaNoWriMo project this year. I’ve never succeeded at NaNo — the pressure freezes me up immediately — but I feel like it might be really fun to spend a month writing something with no goals, no agenda, but just trying to let the words pour out. I haven’t decided yet, because obviously, I’m currently working on projects that are “real,” ie, intended for eventual publication, and from a life perspective, I need to start doing things that will earn me money eventually. On the other hand, from a life perspective, maybe I should be working on maximizing the fun I have from writing for a while?

At any rate, NaNo starts on Thursday and one of my ideas for how I might make it work for me is to have a list of questions that I can use every time I get stuck on my story. Like story prompts, but for within a story. Maybe even a numbered list to go with rolling dice. Get stuck, roll the dice, use the idea. So examples of ideas — #2: what can the POV character smell right now and what does it mean to her? No #1, because obviously, with two six-sided dice, you never roll 1. But maybe I should get a RPG die instead, because also with two six-sided dice, your odds of some numbers come up more than others. Two and twelve are a lot less likely than six and seven. And talk about getting lost in the weeds! I need to make my list first, and then I can worry about how I will use it.

But for my fellow writers who might be reading this, if you have ideas about questions, please share them!

Mine so far:
1) What does the POV character smell and what does it mean to her?
2) What is an unexpected sound that would change the scene?
3) How can the character say “yes, and…”?
4) How can the challenge facing the character be immediately made more difficult?
5) What would an Aha! moment look like for the character right now?
6) How is some detail of the character’s past important in how they’re perceiving the current situation?
7) How does the POV character read/understand what a non-POV sees, believes, or feels in the situation?

I don’t know whether this will work. Like I said, I’m lousy at NaNo. But it feels like it might be fun to try. I also have absolutely no idea where or what my story is. I feel like if I start a new Tassamara story or work on Fen, I’m already constraining myself to worlds and characters and rules already created. But maybe that story snippet I posted the other day would be a fun project to keep going with. At any rate, I should stop writing this blog post, and start some of the other things on my list. I can think more about it while I wash dishes!

Blueberry Pond, Pownal, Maine

28 Friday Sep 2018

Posted by wyndes in Campground, Reviews

≈ 3 Comments

Not Blueberry Pond

Blueberry Pond Campground in Pownal is a nice little family-run independent campground, just about five miles away from Freeport, Maine, and the outdoor shopping available there: ie, LL Bean, North Face, Patagonia, and so. The above picture, however, is not of Blueberry Pond, but of a sunrise at Glooscap in Nova Scotia, because I left Blueberry Pond yesterday and only this morning realized that I took no pictures while I was there. None, nada, zip, zilch. It was actually a reasonable campground: my window faced onto forest, so my site was nicely private, and it was green and pretty and reasonably spacious. I would happily stay there again.

But it was no Glooscap. I sort of suspect that’s what I’m going to be saying about a lot of campgrounds in the future: nice, but no Glooscap. This is made somewhat more amusing to me by the discovery that Glooscap is a legendary native figure who is “kind, benevolent, a warrior against evil and the possessor of magical powers.”

But I’ve moved on, both from Nova Scotia and from Maine. I’ll be spending the next week or so visiting friends and family in Massachusetts, and by this time next week, I expect I’ll be back in Pennsylvania, staying at my brother’s house for a while. A more organized person would be making a list of all the self-publishing related things I should be doing while I have good internet — updating keywords, revising print files, exploring AMS ads — and probably even getting started on that list, but I’m going to treat the next week as mostly vacation time. Yesterday, I broke my writing streak of 661 days of writing 1000 words every day, and I actually felt fine about it. It felt like a very conscious decision to let go of the requirements I impose upon myself.

Wynded Words

~ Home of author Sarah Wynde

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