Kit Carson Campground, Toiyabe National Forest

16 Saturday Sep 2017

Wildflowers at Kit Carson Campground

I hate sewing. Like, really, really hate it. Hate it so much that when I was sitting on my friend P’s couch, working on my screen door project, every other sentence out of my mouth included the words “hate” and “sewing.” Some of them included words that started with f, too.

But I really need a screen door.

I can’t remember what I mentioned about the screen door before, but the van came with a very nice (albeit fragile) screen that worked sort of like sideways Venetian blinds, folding up into a metal frame and maintaining the proper tension through string. From the moment I saw it, I didn’t think it would last long with two dogs, so I’m sort of impressed that I managed to keep for over a year. But back in early August, Zelda walked through it as if it didn’t exist, shredding one of the strings. From that point on, it was a lost cause, hanging loose and falling out of the frame no matter what I tried.

When I was camping with P and R, we took the remnants down and experimented, trying to see what could be done. How about a screen that rolled up? Ugh, clunky. How about one that swung loose? Fine, as long as the weather was perfectly still, otherwise useless.

It obviously was a project that required ingredients and tools, so we set it aside, but when we got back to Seattle, I started strategizing. Eventually, I bought a roll of screen. Some glue. Some magnets. Some different magnets. Some velcro. Some different velcro. I experimented with magnetic tape and spray-on adhesive and began to be grateful that I’d bought a whole roll of screen. That was deliberate, actually. I am not a crafts kind of person, so I anticipated mistakes along the way.

Finally, I had a plan, more or less. Two pieces of screen, separated in the middle. Strong magnets along the top, sewn into the screen. Velcro along the sides of the door, on the inner part of the seal, so it didn’t interfere with the door closing. Velcro on the screen, with the edges sewn over so they didn’t catch and pull. Tiny magnets along the bottom of the screens, to link to the door frame, but still be weak enough to easily push the screens aside to go in and out. And in the middle… well, something still undecided, but whatever it will be, it would probably work best with a seamed edge. Maybe magnets, maybe just overlapping screen.

It wasn’t a bad plan, but it required a lot of sewing. Yuck. Even more because of screw-ups along the way, like sewing in a whole row of little magnets without checking to see which direction they were magnetized in. Not a good idea. They don’t work so well when they’re repelling the door frame instead of attracting it. Duh.

I did learn something really interesting, though. If you’re a right-handed person, sewing is a lot easier and a lot faster if you work left to right, like you’re reading a book. That way, you can use the fingers of your left hand to keep the thread from getting tangled. If you’re a right-handed person and you sew right to left — the way I seem to — the thread is constantly getting tangled and knotting up. I suspect my mother, who was left-handed and loved to sew, taught me to sew the way that worked for her and neither one of us ever realized I was doing it wrong. By the time I finish making these screens, I might not hate to sew anymore.

And I’m getting close.

That’s because I’ve been camped for two delightful days at Kit Carson Campground in the Toiyabe National Forest, near South Lake Tahoe. It’s been awesome. The park is tiny — maybe a dozen campsites — and empty. There was one other camper here last night, but by 8 AM this morning, he’d packed up his tent and was gone. It was just me and nature. Beautiful nature, too. A stream, or maybe a river. Mountains, trees, flowers. Crisp air in the morning and sunlight in the afternoon.

The campsite

And no internet. Minimal cell service. No electricity.

In other words, a distraction-free zone. After a long stretch of falling for ALL the distractions, it’s been great. I made good progress on Grace, finally finishing a chapter that I’ve been working on for a while. The new version is very different from all previous versions, which is both annoying and satisfying. And I made great progress on my screen door, which is getting close to being usable.

By the time you’re reading this, I will obviously have moved on, though (since I can’t post it until I do). I’m tempted to stay longer, but I don’t want to feel rushed on my way to the Grand Canyon, and my reservations are less than a week away. Six days, seven hundred miles: totally do-able, but not if I linger.

And I don’t want to base my driving decisions on speed. On my way here, I had to fight with my GPS to take the slow, scenic route, instead of the fast highway. I then ignored all sorts of roadside signs warning about construction and delays to stubbornly take Highway 89 around Lake Tahoe. It probably added at least a couple of hours to my drive, but the scenery along that road is gorgeous. It was so worth it. And earlier in the week, I drove on Route 1, down the Californian coastline — again, not the fast route, but wow, such a fun drive. I’m not sure Serenity was the best vehicle to be driving it with, but it was two-thumbs-up beautiful.

But I am feeling wistful about leaving. This feels like the kind of place where it would be nice to stay for days, to just settle in and write and think and breathe and be. Maybe next time!

Colusa-Sacramento River State Recreation Area

14 Thursday Sep 2017

Posted by wyndes in Campground, Travel

≈ 4 Comments

The Colusa-Sacramento River State Recreation Area is an odd place. And odd is a really vague adjective, but honestly, I’ve got no other. I don’t want to weigh it down with negative connotations, like weird or strange, and it’s not so different that it deserves to be called unusual. It’s just… odd.

I suspect it’s because where once there was a river, now there is dirt. There’s a sign that I should probably go take a picture of, because I have no scenic pictures to go with this post, that reads something like “Danger, Steep slope leads to deep water with strong current.” Um, no, it doesn’t. Yes, there’s a steep slope, but it leads to a ditch, with plants growing in it. The boat ramp is closed and there’s not even any evidence that it should or would have led to water. Not even puddles.

Meanwhile the campground is basically a deserted parking lot. A nice parking lot, though, with even paved sites, picnic tables, electric and water hook-ups, and plenty of trees. It was hot yesterday, but there was a cool breeze for most of the day, and I only ran the air conditioner for a little while in the afternoon.

Still, the emptiness and the pavement combine to give it a vaguely unsettling air. I could see it being a good setting for a horror movie. And, in fact, when I was walking the dog this morning I was headed down a path that seemed like an old road, asphalt cracked and broken, when I started telling myself stories about serial killers and deranged clowns, and wound up scaring myself into cutting my walk short. Note to self: scary stories are more fun behind locked doors.

I was thinking about being homesick this morning, though — homesick for a home I don’t have — when I realized that my feelings of homesickness have completely dissipated already, and it’s because of my nice campsite. When I’m in a campground, I tend to extend into the outside space. The plastic box containing my sewer hose gets stored outside, under the van, instead of on the bathroom floor. My chair gets set up by the door. Kitchen stuff, some of it, moves onto the picnic table.

Those few feet of outside space, probably especially in the bathroom, make Serenity feel more livable, more like home. It was a good realization. Of course, I still love camping in driveways, because it’s nice to visit people, but on my next extended driveway visit, wherever it is, I’m going to make more of an effort to feel less squashed in my lovely tiny house on wheels. And meanwhile, she’s feeling very cozy and homey today and I’m feeling pretty content with her. Just in time to pack up and move on!

Van Damme State Park

13 Wednesday Sep 2017

Posted by wyndes in Campground, Randomness, Travel

≈ 2 Comments

At Van Damme State Park in California, $45/night gets you a sloped campsite with no electric or water hookup, plus access to a shower that costs $1 for five minutes of water. I suppose I sort of get the shower thing as a method of water conservation — limiting the amount of water campers use is probably good for the environment. I still resented it, though. Seriously, $45 should get you a free shower.

That said, you do get the sound of the ocean. Admittedly, I kept waking up and being grumpy about being so close to a highway, and then having to remind myself that it was the ocean I was listening to, not the highway, but it was the ocean. And it smelled like ocean and pine trees and campfire smoke, which is a decidedly different and nicer fire scent than the wildfire scent that’s been so oppressive throughout my west coast travels.

Plus I got to meet @theroadtoadventure, aka Kate, who is on a quest to see all the national parks and monuments (443 of them), taking beautiful pictures along the way. Her van is extremely cool inside — she turned one bed into a desk space, and put a real mattress on the other — so we talked mods and campgrounds and places I should see.

And yesterday morning, I got to take the dogs to one last beach before I turned my back on the Pacific Ocean and headed inland. It was a rather seaweed-y, rocky beach, but we did enjoy it. Not as much as the beaches in Arcata, though.

B, wondering why we’re at the sandy place again. He’s not as much a fan of the beaches as Z is.

I’m pretty sure that some of my (I’m sure detectable) grumpiness is just reluctance to move on. It was probably a good thing that there was a nest of yellow jackets (hive?) right in the corner of the house by the side door of the van or S might have had an electric cord dangling out her kitchen window all winter long. I really liked Arcata.

Some of that, of course, was the company I was with. But we also had a really good time mixing tourism with domesticity. The grand plans we concocted when I arrived — of kayaking, cruises around the bay, maybe camping — did not all come to fruition. But we went to the beach a bunch of times; wandered around Eureka and ate oysters; visited the Trees of Mystery and admired the objects in the Native American museum there; saw Serenity in a movie theater; visited a friend’s photography exhibit; went to the farmer’s market… a good and busy set of tourist-type activities.

And we also cleaned out and organized her storage shed; cleaned out and organized her refrigerator and freezer; cleaned out and organized the wall of bookshelves in her living room. A few more days and I would have been painting her kitchen. And we cooked some delicious meals: pot roast, sautéed shrimp in summer rolls, sous vide steak. Plus shopped and did laundry and went to the thrift store… it felt very homey. I guess I understand why six weeks of feeling very at-home in other people’s homes has left me feeling a little homesick.

Or maybe worrying about R has just made me miss him. The good news is that he made it through Irma without excitement, although he did decide to evacuate Friday night. Is this ironic? He evacuated to Jacksonville, where the flooding was apparently much worse than it was in Sarasota. Oops. But it was still an enormous relief to me as the storm made its way up Florida to know that R was inland, not on the coast.

In other news… oh, so many things I want to remember, and of course none of them are coming back to me now that I’m sitting in front of my computer. I’m not a cat person, largely because I’m very, very allergic, but S has one that I developed a serious infatuation with. They call him Tank, but I was calling him Zen Kitty by the time I left. On the morning I left, I said goodbye to him, and he indicated that I was allowed to pet. I did, despite the whole “very, very allergic” thing, and his purr was a rumble like a massage chair, almost more felt than heard, but very solid and definite. I suspect Zen Kitty would be a good traveling cat: he seemed to take all things in stride. If he had a voice, I think he might sound like Morgan Freeman.

Another random memory: on the way to the photo exhibit, we stopped at a candy store. It had salt water taffy, which I don’t much like. But the sign by the counter of taffy intrigued me. I can’t recall the exact words, but it was a warning that the candy would taste salty. I bought five pieces. I put the first one — peppermint, I think — in my mouth and was transported back in time. It was my madeleine. A flood of memories, of my grandparents, of sitting in the backseat of the car with my siblings, of sand and salt water and the sound of the ocean… I ate all five pieces in about three minutes and if I ever pass by that store again, I will definitely be getting more. Turns out I do like saltwater taffy, just real saltwater taffy, the kind that actually has salt in it, the kind that tastes like the past.

And a sad one:

Sealandia didn’t make it through the storm

That’s the catamaran we sailed on during the Best Vacation Ever. She’s still floating, but the damage doesn’t look pretty. Looking at pictures of the British Virgin Islands is so sad. Some of the places that brought me so much joy just a few months ago are basically gone. And people will rebuild, of course. Five years, maybe ten years from now, there will be new places, shiny and fresh. But that doesn’t make the present moment any easier.

It feels wrong to end a post on a sad note: let’s see, homesick and grumpy and sad, this is not the most optimistic post I’ve ever written! But I’m actually doing well, grateful that everyone I know made it through Irma safely, and looking forward to my upcoming adventures. Tomorrow I’m headed to Lake Tahoe, and next week it’ll be the Grand Canyon. Finally!

But first, some time with Grace.

Arcata

05 Tuesday Sep 2017

Posted by wyndes in Personal, Randomness, Travel

≈ 4 Comments

In my vague mental plan, I was going to spend some time exploring Oregon this fall. Two things happened to change that plan: 1) Oregon, like far too much of the west, started burning down and 2) my friend Suzanne, who lives in northern CA, had a week off in early September.

I know the wildfires are sort of making the news, but at least in my window on the world, they seem to be overshadowed by politics and floods. And they’re not completely out of the norm: although 2017 is winning for number of fires, 2015 is still in the lead on acreage burned. Both years are statistically significantly higher than average, though, and more to the point, if you’re living in the smoke, the air quality is miserable. I can’t imagine how people with asthma are coping. It’s been years since I even owned an inhaler, but I felt the urge to reach for one through my entire drive through Oregon.

So instead of wandering around Oregon, I drove straight through, with a single, largely sleepless, night at a rest stop, notable only because it was my first ever night at a rest stop and my first chance to discover that rest stops are not very peaceful places to try to spend the night. It might be my last night at a rest stop, too.

I got to Arcata on Friday night. It was nothing like I expected. I knew it was a small town. I knew it was remote. I knew it was foggy a lot of the time, with year-round temperatures in the 50s and 60s. And I guess all of those things are true, but apart from the remote — yes, it was difficult to get to — it was still not what I expected.

It’s actually cute as anything, and not so small. Two bookstores, three movie theaters, multiple grocery stores and sushi restaurants, art galleries and housewares stores and furniture stores… I guess small is relative, but when I think of small, I picture southern small, where a single road has a gas station, a Dollar General, and a donut shop, and that’s considered a town. By that standard, Arcata is a city. But really, it’s the perfect small town from the “quirky town” trope. I saw the town square on Saturday morning, when I was walking Zelda, and immediately thought, “Stars Hollow, I am in Stars Hollow!”

On Saturday, S had to work, so I had a mostly quiet day — much needed after my long drives of the previous two days — hanging out at her house. At lunchtime, though, we met up at the local farmer’s market, held on the aforementioned town square, where I bought some corn & artichokes. But it was insanely hot. I say that as a Floridian. Insanely hot. I’d been promised cool weather and fog: instead I got bright sun, 97 degree temps, and smoke-filled air. The heat broke records, not just for the day but for the entire time temperatures have been measured here. I was very happy to get back to the relative cool of her house, where all the dogs (her two, my two) lay around and panted, while G (S’s husband) and I, sat on our computers, every once in a while saying, “Wow, it’s hot.”

The next morning, we went to the beach with all the dogs. It was glorious. Hot enough that shorts were fine, but with a cool breeze. The dogs were allowed off-leash and three of them ran around like puppies, while even B managed a good long walk and a lot of sniffing at interesting smells. Z chased sticks and splashed into the water and smiled happy dog smiles. Once they were tired out, S and I went to a local fish market and picked up some fresh rockfish, then stopped at a local artisan’s market and admired art and had interesting conversations about the age of some beautiful polished stones turned into jewelry. One green stone, kambaba jasper, was, according to the seller, 3 billion year old fossilized algae from Africa, and a purple stone was charoite from Russia. (Yep, I’m writing that down so that I remember it later.) That evening, instead of having our rockfish, we wound up going out for sushi.

Yesterday, I made us breakfast in the morning, of sautéed carrots, beets, bacon, and sweet potato (previously cooked sous vide, so quick to sauté), over arugula, topped with a soft-boiled egg and some fresh parsley and cilantro. It was heavy on the beets, but really pretty good. I still haven’t mastered sous vide eggs, though. Then we went to the redwoods and wandered up a trail for a while.

The pack in the redwoods

Our walk was pretty short, because the hills were a little much for B. I probably should have left him at home. I wound up carrying him, but an uphill hike carrying a wiggly dog was a little much for me, too. Next we went looking for wild blackberries, and found plenty. We came back to the house, went down the street to a “block party” fundraiser, ate some delicious albacore for lunch, put some bids in on the silent auction, ate dessert — a gluten-free apple muffin for me — and then came back to the house and got to work.

First, we baked. I made blackberry crisp and Suzanne made blackberry calzone (pie without the pie pan). Next, I prepped baked artichokes with onion, lemon, mint, and olives, one of my favorite recipes from The Zuni Cafe Cookbook.

After that, we seriously got to work. S and G have a storage shed in the back of their house and I think my Seattle efforts inspired S. The shed was (is) stuffed to the ceiling with boxes and bags and furniture and miscellaneous objects of more-or-less emotional significance. We started pulling things out, piling them up in the yard, trying to sort them, with the aim of turning the storage shed into more usable space by emptying out some room. By the end of the day, we’d definitely made the space more accessible, but since neither S nor G really want to get rid of anything, I think the shed will be staying pretty full. But at least they can get to the boxes if they want them now.

Usable enough that the dog approved.

This morning, S and I headed off to the beach again, bright and early. We were on our way home by 9, so I think we probably got there around 8. It was a different beach, but even more wonderful — big and wide and empty and just a little foggy. I think a lot of people think of beaches as places to go to sit in the sun, but I’m never really interested in sitting on a beach, nor do I much want to go into the ocean. I like watching the waves and taking long walks. On this beach, we could have walked forever if we’d left B at home. He was a trouper, though. He probably walked a solid mile, which is a long, long way for a small dog in congestive heart failure.

Since then, I have been writing and S has been working on her storage shed. But I am about to finish this blog post and drag her away, so that we can go visit the nearest big town, aka Eureka. Yes, Eureka. I seriously hope there’s a nice town sign that I can take a picture of myself by, because it amuses me to no end that I am so close to a town named like one so dear to my heart.

In one final note, I’m really surprised by how much I like Arcata. It wasn’t actually on my list of places that I was thinking about for possible future long-term living, but it has not only joined that list, it’s jumped pretty close to the top. I could see living here. Not in S’s driveway, which sees/hears foot traffic all night long, and not in S’s storage shed, despite its resemblance to a cute tiny house, but it’s a lovely small town. However, that’s a thought for some time far in the future. For today, I should get back to writing Grace, so I can do some more playing later!

Grace Lake

23 Wednesday Aug 2017

Posted by wyndes in Bartleby, Food, Randomness, Travel, Vanlife, Zelda

≈ 1 Comment

So we were walking along, climbing a hill, on our way to a trail that would lead us to a place called Grace Lake, which I wanted to go to purely because it was going to amuse me to write about visiting Grace Lake instead of writing Grace. I was planning the blog post in my head, about how even though I’m being a terrible writer, I’m having lots of fun experiences.

We’d just seen the eclipse and even though we weren’t in totality, it was pretty damn cool. It hadn’t gotten dark, but the light had definitely changed and there’d been a noticeable drop in temperature. But it was warming up already and the sun was beautifully golden. Nothing like an eclipse for making one appreciate sunshine. There was no real path to where we were going, so we were making our way along rocky ground, through scrubby bushes.

Blueberry bushes, in fact.

I’d gotten out in front with the dogs (three of them, all off-leash), probably because they didn’t care about blueberries and I, having spent hours already this summer picking blueberries, wasn’t all that excited about discovering the random leftover ripe berry on bushes that were mostly over for the season.

I turned and looked back. It was so incredibly beautiful — the mountains, the clear sky, the pine trees — that I pulled out my phone and took the above picture.

And then Reino (in the red shirt in said photo) straightened up. In an absolutely casual voice, he said, “Bear.”

I waited for him to continue the sentence. Bare what?

And then I followed his gaze, out across the hill in the other direction.

Oh. Right. Bear.

No, no, I mean, BEAR!

I did not take a picture. It didn’t even occur to me until later, actually.

Instead, I dropped to a crouch and put a hand on Zelda’s collar. She, of course, was right next to me. I held out a hand for Bartleby, who, upon the indication that a treat might be in store, promptly joined me. He wasn’t overly put-out by the fact that instead of giving him a treat, I grabbed his collar, too.

And then I realized that I didn’t have their leashes. I’d been carrying B up the hill before I set him down to take a picture, so P had my bag with their leashes inside.

So I waited. It felt like a very long time before P made it up the hill to me, but I’m sure it was about a minute. I think we were all torn between wanting to watch the bear and wanting to get the hell out of its way. If it had been going in another direction, we probably would have stood there and admired it, just like we’d been admiring the eclipse. An incredible feat of nature, right? But since it was trundling toward us, or rather toward the blueberry bushes that we were standing among, getting out of its way seemed like a very good idea.

It wasn’t until we were moving away that I realized I was maybe a little scared. I didn’t feel scared, but I know you’re supposed to make noise when you’re around a bear — they don’t want to run into us anymore than we want to run into them. And with three people and three dogs, there was no way a bear would approach us if it realized we were there. All we needed to do was make sure it was as aware of us as we were of it and our encounter would get no closer.

In other words, we needed to sing.

But I could not think of a single song lyric. Seriously, not a one. No Christmas melodies, no hymns, no pop ear worms, nothing. I had nothing. Total adrenaline brain fog.

Fortunately, my singing was not required. But we never did make it to Grace Lake.

Other things I want to remember:

Last Saturday, I met up with some internet friends and played games. (Betrayal At House On The Hill and Fluxx, specifically). It was very fun. I had the occasional moment of thinking that I really didn’t know the people I was with, but actually it felt like I’d known them forever, that I was a casual friend who lived around the corner and dropped in for games all the time, instead of being a real-life stranger.

On Sunday, we drove up to Stevens Pass. P is volunteering at Stevens Lodge this week, basically a hostel-like place for Pacific Crest Trail hikers to stay. It’s the first time it’s been open in the summer — usually it’s a ski lodge — so she didn’t really expect anyone to show up. Reino and I came up to keep her company and watch the eclipse. But some hikers did show up, so we got to meet some people hiking the trail, which was cool. I don’t really understand the desire, personally. But it’s always fun to talk to people who are in the midst of an adventure.

Before the hikers showed up, I was wondering if I could make eggs Benedict in the hostel-style kitchen. Many, many years ago, it was the thing that I wanted to make — the reason I wanted to learn to cook. I spent several months trying, with some moderate successes, but eventually decided it was just too much of a pain. Hollandaise sauce is hard to get right, and poaching eggs is a pain, and the timing of getting a warm toasted English muffin, plus the sauce, plus Canadian bacon, plus the egg, all right at the same time — it was just too challenging. But I’d brought some gluten-free English muffins at a store in Seattle and I was… well, just wondering whether I could get it right now.

Answer: eh, not exactly. My Hollandaise was a little thick, because I didn’t have enough butter, and my eggs kept rolling off the muffins, which I think means they were not quite done enough. And I didn’t have Canadian bacon, so I used prosciutto. Also the gluten-free English muffins were terrible, so bad that I threw away the leftovers. And I dropped one egg on the floor (literally) and destroyed another one, so that it was more like an egg drop soup egg instead of a poached egg.

But! If you want an appreciative audience for non-successful cooking experiments, you should definitely find some PCT hikers. One was a vegetarian so he got spinach with his muffin and egg and hollandaise, and another was gluten-free and very tolerant about the horribleness of the English muffins. Both were perfectly happy with my rather messy Eggs Benedict.

And it was close enough to good that I’m definitely going to keep trying. The Hollandaise is a bit of a problem — how often do I really want to make something that requires an entire stick of butter? It’s not like I want to use eight tablespoons of sauce. But maybe I can figure out how to make it and freeze it.

And this has turned into a very random blog post, downright disjointed, but I am posting it anyway and then getting on with my day. I feel like I have much to do and not nearly enough hours in the day. Today’s plan includes another sous vide experiment, some room organizing, an attempt at a new screen door — possibly very simplified, because my complicated screen door plans have not been working at all, and yes, some time on Grace. Oh, and also publishing a short story. I made a cover for it yesterday and I’m posting it to Amazon today. Hmm, that’s what they call burying the lede. But yeah, I’ll write more about that when it’s actually available. 🙂

How did it get to be Wednesday already?

Bear Creek & Lake Ozette

09 Wednesday Aug 2017

Posted by wyndes in Campground, Travel

≈ 6 Comments

I feel like a lazy blogger — it’s been over a week since I posted! But I’ve only been a little bit lazy. Mostly I’ve been busy — lots of driving, lots of cooking, lots of socializing. And definitely some playing games and reading when I could have been writing, but the aforementioned driving and socializing left me tired in my quieter hours.

So last Wednesday, R and I left Whidbey Island and drove into Seattle. After a few moments of nervousness headed into the city, I actually felt pretty good about how comfortable it was to drive Serenity on crowded streets. I definitely had a few moments in roundabouts where I flinched, waiting to hear a crunch, but no crunches ever ensued. I think I drove over a curb once, but that was my only driving fail. Yay!

In Seattle, we met up with my friend P, who promptly took me off to the grocery store to buy picnic food and then to a concert: Violent Femmes and Echo and the Bunnymen, outside on the lawn at the zoo. It was perfect weather, warm but not hot, as the day moved into evening. The music was fun, but the people-watching was great. Lots of playful kids, lots of happy adults. My favorite was a woman dressed as if she’d come straight from her corporate job, who knew every word and sang along, with hand gestures where appropriate. Even a week later, thinking about her enthusiasm makes me smile. Contagious joy is the best.

The next day we set off “early” to go to the Olympic Peninsula. I defined early as 8:30 or so, not wishing to be too challenging to R and P, and only later did P say that early was usually more like 5 when she headed to the peninsula. Our day might have been easier if we’d left around then, but so it goes. It was a beautiful day and a beautiful place for a drive.

And more drive. And more drive. Still beautiful, though. Unfortunately, one campground after another was full. We finally found a spot at a Department of Natural Resources place called Bear Creek Campground, mostly because of the luck of our timing. The spot was a disabled access spot, only available to non-disabled campers at 6PM. We drove by it at 6:20 PM, read the sign, and sighed with relief as we pulled in. Fortunately, P had a Washington State Park Discover pass that allowed us to camp there, because it wasn’t the kind of place with a ranger station — only 16 sites and no amenities. But river access, trees, a picnic table, and most importantly, room! It was enough for us.

The next day we left bright and early — not pre-coffee, but pretty close — and headed back to the first campground that we’d checked out, Lake Ozette. We’d checked departure dates the previous day so knew some people were leaving. By getting there at 8, we managed to snag one of their sites. We probably would have been fine if we’d gotten there by 10, too, but I really didn’t want another day of hours of driving. The Olympic Peninsula is undeniably beautiful, but I was starting to feel much too familiar with some of its roads.

At Lake Ozette, we camped. We hiked. We had campfires. We toasted marshmallows. We grilled portobello mushrooms and chicken. We saw deer and snakes and bats. P got stung by something — a bee or a wasp, and was so prepared that she had sting-ease in her backpack! R slept in a hammock, slung between two trees, and I shared Serenity for four nights in a row without feeling cramped. We had no internet or cell service and nobody missed it. Well, okay, that’s not true — I’m pretty sure R was going through withdrawal. But I didn’t miss it.

Hiking at Lake Ozette

On Sunday, we went back to Whidbey Island for a night. That was a combination of factors — mostly, I think, R was ready to have a real bed again and we were worried about traffic heading into the city. But we had a lovely peaceful night there and a terrific breakfast the next morning, and then headed back into Seattle.

Yesterday was one last tourist day — we went out for pho, visited REI’s flagship store where I bought my own Discover pass and a national parks pass, too, and traipsed through a greenhouse. We were going to go to the movies (Spiderman) but I got anxious about the heat and the dogs, so instead we came back to P’s house, and I made quinoa bowls for dinner. Today, R leaves for Florida. He’ll be back at school within the week.

It’s been an incredible summer — since the Best Vacation Ever in May, I feel like I’ve been on a whirlwind of travel and visits, seeing people and doing things, and this past Washington week has been a wonderful way to cap it off. But as R goes back to school, it’s also time for me to get back to my writing. Grace has been on absolute hold for the past three weeks: I’ve opened the file once or twice, but haven’t written a word. I’m hoping the time off will prove to have been inspirational. Whether it was or wasn’t, thought, settling back into the discipline of writing every day will feel good.

Gem Mountain, Phillipsburg, Montana

30 Sunday Jul 2017

Posted by wyndes in Anxiety, Travel

≈ 2 Comments

I had such a nice morning on Friday. You saw the pictures on the last post — the sunrise that looked celestial, the granola and blueberries on the bench in the early morning sun. It felt so peaceful and pleasant, but I knew I needed to keep going.

Driving long distances is not my idea of fun. I don’t think I would make a good trucker. But there’s a point where you get into the zone and it gets easier and easier to just keep going. Suddenly two hours starts passing without notice and driving into the night is almost easier than stopping. Unfortunately, my break in Billings definitely broke me out of the zone. When I got back on the road on Thursday, I lasted barely an hour before I was thinking about stopping. And I wasn’t exactly eager to start again on Friday.

But I had a plan. Ever since Crater of Diamonds in Arkansas, I’d intended to go sapphire mining in Montana. When I googled, one of the mines was reasonably close to Highway 90. It would add maybe an hour of extra driving along a scenic highway, plus an hour at the mine, but it would be a nice break in the middle of the day and something to look forward to, helping to keep me motivated on the road. I thought I’d get there about 2, be back on the road by 3 or maybe 3:30, and then maybe make it to the Montana border before stopping for the night.

It was so nice at Spring Creek, though, that I started late. And then I took a break at a rest stop to try to get online, as well as write about the campground and answer some texts. And then there was a tiny little wrong turn that put me on the highway headed in the wrong direction… Suddenly it was 3:30 and I was pulling into Phillipsburg and realizing that I’d screwed up. My Google directions hadn’t taken me to a mine, they’d taken me to a store. A nice store, where people could rinse of jugs of gravel and hunt for sapphires, but it wasn’t what I’d been looking for. The store, however, had a sign that said, “Free camping.”

I like signs like that.

It turned out that the mine was about half an hour away, in the direction from which I’d come. Bummer. But behind the mine were campsites, first come, first served, and if there was still room, I could spend the night there. And if I got started quickly, I’d still have an hour to play at the mine.

Done.

The mine was, in fact, not much like Crater of Diamonds. Instead of sitting in the dirt and digging, you buy a bucket of gravel for $25. They give you a mesh grate, some big tweezers, and a thing like a test tube with a plastic top with a hole in it. You put some dirt in the grate, rinse it in a wooden trough of water, then dump it out on a table. Carefully, because if you’ve rinsed it right, the sapphires are sitting on top of the pile. They’re the heaviest of the rocks, so as you bounce and rock the grate in the water, they should be sinking to the bottom. One of the guys working there gave me a demo to get started and when he dumped the grate, there was a blue stone sitting right on top of the pile, exactly as advertised. It was both delightful and also sort of like winning the slot machine on your very first quarter. I did wonder whether I was going to spend the next hour feeling like a failure when I didn’t find any more.

Nope.

By the time I finished, I’d found 41 tiny sapphires. I did not once dump the dirt without finding a sapphire in it. One time I picked one out of the dirt without even rinsing it and another time I picked one out of the dirt as I was rinsing it. I’m not even sure I found all of them, because I was one of the last people there, so I was trying to hurry by the end of my bucket. Results aren’t guaranteed, of course, but they do say every bucket has some sapphires in it. Most of them aren’t worth processing (heat-treating and faceting), but people do sometimes find larger sapphires, 3 carats or more, that after processing can be worth hundreds of dollars. So there is still that element of playing the lottery, but one where you’re guaranteed to win something.

Plus, free camping!

Gem Mountain camping

Unfortunately, my anxiety level on Friday evening was limiting-ly high. I wanted to take a long walk with Zelda — we haven’t been getting nearly enough exercise — and I just couldn’t. Bears, rattlesnakes, strangers… I was totally scolding myself, but I was also not leaving the van. Just not.

The best I could do was about five minutes where I took the above picture. It was a beautiful moonrise, an incredible setting, and I took a minute to enjoy the crystal clear and cold air — and then the smoke from my neighbor’s campfire started me worrying about forest fires. Despite being seriously annoyed with myself, I couldn’t sleep until I had the van entirely packed up and ready to go, in case we needed to run away from fire in the middle of the night.

Sometimes I hate my brain.

On Saturday morning, though, I forced myself to walk Zelda down the road toward the mine. I wasn’t going to try to do anything challenging — no wandering into the forest or off on any trails — but I thought I’d walk along the road out to the main road and maybe along it for a while. I’d started to relax and enjoy the beautifully chilly morning when we rounded a curve in the road and a big brown thing lifted its head and looked at us.

Total jump.

Not a bear.

And then a relieved laugh.

I’ve always wondered what Zelda would do if faced with a bear and I think the moose gave me my answer: she would take her cue from me and back cautiously away. She definitely saw it and she was definitely interested, head tilted, ears up, but when she saw that I wasn’t going any closer, she followed me away from it without any protest.

I also saw a green hummingbird, a chipmunk, and a pretty little dark brown squirrel. No bears and no rattlesnakes, much to my relief.

I didn’t linger, though. By about 8:30, I was on the road, not exactly making up for lost time, but definitely making progress toward my goal. It was a long day of driving, through smoky hills in Montana, into and beyond Idaho. I stopped at a scenic overlook in Washington, admired the Columbia River, and enjoyed one of my favorite parts of #vanlife — I cooked and ate sockeye salmon with basil and garlic over brown rice, with a side salad of mixed greens, radishes and avocado, with balsamic vinegar. Road food is really different when your kitchen travels with you.

I then spent the night at a Flying J, and now I’m sitting in a Safeway parking lot, drinking my morning coffee, and getting ready to get on the road. A few more hours of driving and I’ll be saying hi to R!

Spring Creek Campground, Big Timber, Montana

29 Saturday Jul 2017

Posted by wyndes in Campground, Reviews, Travel

≈ 3 Comments

I’m not sure what impulse drove me to stop on Thursday. I needed to get gas, that was definitely part of it. And I really wanted a shower. Mostly, though, I think I just saw the signs for Spring Creek Campground at exactly the right moments.

Whatever drove the impulse, it was a great one. Although I don’t think I’d like the campground as much when it’s crowded — the sites are really close together — it wasn’t crowded, so it was perfect. I could hear the river from inside the camper, and it was so still and peaceful at night that I didn’t bother closing the blinds or putting up the window covers. I just appreciated the darkness and the sounds of nature.

I feel like there’s so much more I want to say about it, but all my words feel like babble. If a picture is worth a thousand words, what are several pictures worth?

The front of the campsite. I was parked facing the water, which was the Boulder River.

The campsite viewed from a distance. A pond on one side, a river on the other. So peaceful!

Sunrise while I was walking Zelda.

Breakfast on the bench.

I Heart Montana

29 Saturday Jul 2017

Posted by wyndes in Travel

≈ Comments Off on I Heart Montana

I wish I knew how to do an emoji in a post, because I’d make that word in the title an emoji if I could.

First Montana rest stop

When I decided to do my epic cross-country run to play with people in Seattle, I planned a couple days in South Dakota — the halfway point of the long drive — but anticipated the rest of the trip going by in a blur of highways. No real stops in Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin or Minnesota (although I did spend the night in Indiana and Minnesota), and no real stops on the other side of South Dakota, either — Wyoming, Montana, Washington. I was just going to drive until I got to my destination. I knew I’d need to overnight on the road, but I figured I’d make it most of the way through Montana first, probably stopping in Missoula, and then reach Seattle the next day.

The temperatures in South Dakota changed the first half of that plan and the plumbing problems changed the second half. I wound up spending Wednesday night in Billings. On Thursday, I was waiting to see if Merta RV could squeeze me in. It was the fourth place I’d called. The first, Pierce RV, wanted a $150 priority charge — money for nothing except moving me to the front of their queue — plus $175 an hour after that. The second wouldn’t have been able to take a look until August 1. The third could see me on August 9th, but gave me some other names to call. Marta said that they were really busy but would see what they could do and call me back, and when they called back, said I could come by at 3 on Thursday and they’d try to squeeze me in.

So there I was in Billings, waiting for a 3PM appointment. What to do? On the spur of the moment, I decided to try to take care of the other things Serenity needed or would need in the near future: an oil change, her tires rotated, her 20K mile inspection. I stopped by the Dodge dealer to see if they could fit me in. They could, they did. They let me bring the dogs inside and every single person I spoke to was so nice and so friendly. I probably chatted to five people along the way and everyone was welcoming and cheerful.

They were finished by 11:30 or so. On my way out, I spotted CostCo. Living without water makes washing dishes difficult and I’d been wanting more road-friendly snack food. My preference is definitely to cook delicious meals, but not when I don’t have electricity, or water to wash dishes with. So I swung into CostCo and bought some snack-type foods, plus bear spray. Yep, I’m finally ready to go hiking in the western woods. The bear spray seemed expensive (and I really hope that I don’t wind up spraying myself with it someday) but I looked it up on Amazon and it was actually a good deal, $40 for two cans. While I was standing in line, the guy behind told me it was both a good deal and even better, a long expiration date. Apparently he has a closet full of expired bear spray at home.

Done at CostCo, I decided I might as well go wait in the parking lot at Merta and do some email, maybe even write. The writing didn’t happen, because I’d barely been there twenty minutes when the service guy came and took the van away. He very nicely let the dogs stay in the van. I closed the bathroom doors so he could work on the bathroom while they stayed in the interior, but it felt like such a luxury to be able to leave them in a safe place. And in no time, he was back, handing me the keys and telling me I was done. Again, everyone I spoke with — probably six or seven people along the way — was friendly, cheerful, warm and helpful.

By 2PM I was on the road, debating what came next. Four nights in parking lots (the Billings parking lot was at a Cabela’s and lovely), plus some stress, had left me pretty tired. Did I want to push into the driving zone, knock another five hours off the trip? Maybe more? Or did I want to find a place to relax, maybe take a shower, eat a good dinner?

And I am out of time. Must get moving! So… to be continued.

Year Two Begins With a Splash

27 Thursday Jul 2017

Posted by wyndes in Serenity, Travel, Vanlife

≈ 5 Comments

Yesterday, July 25th, was the one-year anniversary of the day I said good-bye to my house and hello to life on the road. It started auspiciously enough in a Walmart parking lot in Minnesota.

Yep, my first Walmart parking lot. It was fine. Better than fine, really. The night before I’d spent in a Flying J parking lot in Indiana, and although I hadn’t slept as horribly as on my very first parking lot night, it wasn’t exactly relaxing, either. At the Walmart, I was out of the way, in a quiet corner, facing a field. I put the window covers up and slept as well as I ever do. Maybe it was Minnesota, too. While I’m sure Minnesota has its problems, the Walmart was the kind of place that had a trash can at every single cart rack and no trash visible outside the cans. Go, Minnesota.

Although I’d decided I was going to try to get to Mount Rushmore, when I looked at the map I realized that if I did, I’d miss the Badlands entirely. My plan had been to dry camp, aka boondock, in a primitive campground in the Badlands for a couple of days but I hadn’t realized how far west Mount Rushmore was. But, I figured, no problem — Mount Rushmore had been waiting for a year, it could wait a couple of days more.

I started off on a relaxed drive out of Minnesota and across South Dakota. I had plenty of time, so I took it slow, pausing at rest stops, reading, writing, checking email. Unfortunately, it just kept getting hotter and hotter and hotter. At one point, my outside temperature gauge read 103, and even with the air-conditioning running full blast, my temperature monitor was sending me alerts that it was over 80 in the van. Both dogs huddled under the AC vents.

When we got to the Badlands, I paid the $20 to enter — my first national park, yay! — and drove slowly through. I’d given up on the idea of boondocking at the cool primitive (i.e., no electricity) campground. Space was probably available, but we would have been miserable. And when I drove past the campground with electricity, I gave up on it, too. It was reasonably crowded so there might not have been space, but even if there was, it was in unrelenting sun.

But it wasn’t just the sun — it was windy, with that kind of dry wind that pounds at your ears and makes you immediately want to lick your lips again and again and again. If I had been a pioneer woman in South Dakota, I would have been one of the ones driven crazy by the isolation and the wind. I would have been hallucinating monsters and terrified to leave the house in no time.

So I kept driving. I’d been reading signs for Wall Drugs all the way across South Dakota — either billboards are cheap in SD or Wall Drugs has a lot of money to spend on them. Maybe both. Anyway, it sounded fun in a seriously kitschy kind of way so instead of the Badlands, I figured I’d find a place to stay in Wall and explore the town. Except when we got there, late afternoon, it was still so hot that I would never have been willing to leave the dogs alone in the van.

New plan: back to the old plan.

Mount Rushmore!

I checked online and Mount Rushmore is open until 11, so I headed that way. Between stops to feed and walk the dogs and dinner for me, it was after 8 when I got there. It was… interesting. Smaller than I thought it would be, but also more impressive in a way. From a distance, the faces are very high up on the mountain.

Look close. The gray hills in the distance have the faces of the presidents on them.

I thought it would be good to see it in the evening, less populated, and that it would make me feel patriotic on some level. Instead it felt a lot like I had secretly drifted into a universe where Disney had taken over America. There’s a ton of stuff around Mount Rushmore, all aimed at tourists. I could see having fun there, if I had lots of money to spend on silly things, a kid to enjoy looking at random stuff with, and didn’t have to worry about dogs/heat. As it was, though, I decided against spending $10 to park, and did a literal drive-by.

I then went back the way I came, driving about another 45 minutes, until I reached the highway and a Flying J truck-stop that I’d passed earlier. My third night in a row in a parking lot! But it was by far the worst — busy, crowded, with a casino nearby and a ton of trucks. People wandered by the van until late at night, and I was awake until after midnight, then up at 5:30.

When I woke up, I just got behind the wheel and started driving, thinking that we’d do the morning routine — clean clothes, coffee, dog walks, food — at the first rest stop. Reasonable plan, except somehow — sleepiness, I assume — I missed the first rest stop and it wasn’t until after 8 that we finally reached one. Poor Z had been staring at me earnestly, the way she tells me that it’s time to go for a walk, for about forty minutes by then.

And the bathroom floor was sopping wet. I had a fleeting second of wondering if a dog had given up on me but it was clean water. Clean water, unfortunately, coming from behind the toilet. Yeah, a pipe broke. I then spent all day — the first day of Year Two — trying to deal with it.

If it wasn’t so damn hot and if I hadn’t been driving all day and into the night for the past couple of days and if I hadn’t slept in parking lots for three nights in a row, I think I’d be dealing with it a lot worse than I am. I think I’d have the energy to be really pissed off about how many things have gone wrong with this tiny house on wheels and how Winnebago’s approved repair place wants $150 just for agreeing to see it, plus $175/hour to work on it. I feel like fury and frustration are reasonable responses, but I’m just not feeling them. It’s tedious, but it is what it is.

On the other hand, if I weren’t so tired, maybe I’d be making better choices for how to deal with it, too. But it definitely feels like Year Two has started with a whimper, not a bang. Or maybe that should be a splash and a sinking feeling? At any rate, before I discovered the water, I drove out of South Dakota, through a tiny (beautiful!) corner of Wyoming, and into Montana, so I am now hanging out in yet another parking lot, this one in Billings, Montana, hoping to fix some broken plumbing before moving on, and wishing T-Mobile had coverage in Montana, which apparently it does not.

Updated: no internet, so couldn’t post, and it is now Thursday morning. I’m still feeling fine about the plumbing problem, maybe better than fine. It’s annoying, but it is what it is. I found a place in Billings able to take a look at it this afternoon, so it might be resolved soon, and if not, I’ll use bottled water. The lovely Facebook Travato Owners group has given me lots of advice and help about trying to fix it myself, but it feels ambitious to try to remove the toilet on my own. In 90+ degree heat. In a random parking lot. Yeah, not optimistic about that. But hey, at least the leak sprays water into a room with a drain in the floor. And a plastic floor, too. It could be worse!

Wynded Words

~ Home of author Sarah Wynde

Category Archives: Travel