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Photo Review: 2018, Jan – June
29 Saturday Dec 2018
Posted in Photography, Travel, Vanlife
Category Archives: Travel
Looking back on 2018
23 Sunday Dec 2018
Posted in Personal, Pets, Photography, Randomness, Travel
Every day my computer chooses a different picture to put as my background picture. I’m pretty sure they’re from images that I drop into a folder labeled “Background Pictures” every now and then, which I think I set up somewhere in the settings back when I first got this computer, several years ago. But every morning, I get to be surprised by the picture that shows up. This morning’s picture is from diamond mining in Arkansas.
Yesterday’s was the black bear spotted on the day of the eclipse in Washington State. There was also an interesting bird this week, which I’m pretty sure was a picture I took in Sarasota, and a tree that I didn’t remember at all. It was a pretty tree, though.
Last year, I did an end of year double-post, with a picture for each month. (First half of the year: Second half of the year.) Not necessarily the picture that represented the month in any way, just an image that I hadn’t previously posted that struck me as a good photo. I was thinking about doing the same thing for this year, except I felt like it wasn’t such an interesting year and that I didn’t take as many photos. When I think back on the year, the first thing that I think about is Bartleby and missing him. In fact, if you asked me about 2018, I would say that it was a lot of boring doctor visits for me that turned out to be nothing, and a ton of horrible vet visits for the dogs that were never nothing.
I would be so very wrong. Well, not about the doctor visits and the vet visits, but about that being the sum total of the year. The year was also driving the Natchez Trace, snow and hot springs in Arkansas, sunshine and the costumed college graduation in Sarasota, open spaces in Ohio, blueberries, Vermont, driving through Canada, the gorgeous Prince Edward Island & Nova Scotia, friends and family in Massachusetts, and then a whole bunch of peaceful Florida time.
With the exception of Canada, though, from which I have an insane number of beautiful sunset shots over the ocean, not so many good photographs. I am still going to do a post or two of the best photos of 2018 for me, but I’m not choosing from a position of crazy abundance this year. This does, however, set me up for my very first New Year’s Resolution for 2019: take more photographs!
In 2017, I was taking a photo a day, every day, as a mindfulness exercise that reminded me to look for the beauty in wherever I was. I let go of it in 2018 (along with all my other daily tasks), because I felt like I was overwhelming myself with rules, things that I had to do all the time, and turning my life into a to-do list. But I think I want to bring at least a few of those daily tasks back into my life because it’s really much too easy to get lost in the business of living and forget to savor it as it happens.
This morning, I tried to take photos of the full moon setting over the park. None of them turned out, because I was using my phone and the camera on the phone really can’t cope with moon shots. But Z and I were walking right at dawn, the full moon was huge and white, the air was so crisp (42 degrees) that I was wearing my eggplant coat and feeling grateful for it, and some of the neighbors still had their Christmas lights on and sparkling. It was so beautiful that I started singing “Joy to the World” — and then someone else walking their dog appeared and I shut up, embarrassed to be singing. But I hope at some future day I reread this post and remember that feeling. It was a very good feeling. And I wish I had a photo that could evoke it for you!
Published
14 Friday Dec 2018
Posted in Campground, Marketing and promotion, RV, Self-publishing, Vanlife
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.
Crooked River State Park
29 Monday Oct 2018
Posted in Campground, Personal, Reviews, Travel, Writing
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!
More reading than writing
22 Monday Oct 2018
Posted in Books, Pennsylvania, Randomness, RV, Writing
I told my brother this morning that today should be the day I start south. And then, thoughtfully, that yesterday probably should have been. It is cold in Pennsylvania right now and I am so underprepared for cold weather. The van is quite cozy — its heater works beautifully — but bundling up in a multitude of layers every time I step outside is a PITA.
This is why people own winter coats.
I, however, do not own a winter coat and while I could buy one, of course, I haven’t wanted a mostly useless object cluttering up the van. I’m probably going to have to reconsider that position in the next few months, though. I’m not sure yet what this winter is going to bring — possibly a lot more driving hours than I will actually appreciate — but a winter coat might become a necessity.
Anyway, despite the cold, I’m not heading south yet. My niece is in her school play, opening night this Thursday, and I’m going to stick around long enough to see her perform. I’d be tempted to stick around for Halloween, too — she’s going to be some sort of skeleton pirate, and the preliminary make-up experiments have been impressively horrifying while also cute as anything — but it’s too cold and I have too much to do in Florida.
Also, I’ve gone over three weeks without dumping the tanks, and that’s too long. I’ll be staying inside the house for the next couple of days, partially because of the cold but mostly because I’ve hit the point where I really, truly, positively can’t use the toilet again until I dump the black tank, so it is definitely time to find myself a campground. I told my dad yesterday that the details of my future home fantasies were narrowing down to “running water.” Sure, a room with a view, nearby yoga, affordable cost-of-living, those are all nice. But running water is glorious.
Also, yesterday, I ordered a 50-pod pack of black-tank sanitizer pods from Amazon. Given that I can and often do go about two weeks without dumping the tanks, and I still have four or five pods left from the pack I’ve been using, that means I’ve got about two years worth of black-tank sanitizing ahead of me. My shopping subconscious possibly knows more about my future home plans than my conscious mind is willing to admit to.
Writing has been going horribly badly of late. I hate every word I write. Some of that is author love. I read The Spymaster’s Lady by Joanna Bourne a couple of weeks ago. Someone online said that it was their favorite book of all time, their comfort read, so I checked it out from the library. It sat on my Libby bookshelf for over two weeks, because I don’t read much historical romance and I was dubious at best. Finally, when I had only a couple of days left, I started to read. A few chapters in, I was hating it, almost on the verge of giving up, when suddenly, there was a twist. A really good, really fun, totally implausible but super cool twist. I gobbled down the rest of the book, reached the end, started over again while trying to read more slowly, reached the end, and started over again! Not often that I read a book three times in a row.
I actually still wasn’t sure how I felt about it. It definitely wouldn’t make it onto my favorite book ever list or even anywhere close, largely because the sex is… well, pre-#metoo, if that’s sufficient explanation. But the writing was still fantastic, even if the romance was a prime example of questionable consent issues. But I promptly put all the rest of her books on hold at the library. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, while I was waiting, Amazon sent me a gift card, and I didn’t hesitate. (Incidentally, The Spymaster’s Lady is $2.99 on Kindle at the moment, so if you do like historical romance, it’s a deal.) So over the course of the past ten days or so, I’ve read all of Joanna Bourne’s books.
For a little while, they sunk me into the depths of despair. She’s an incredible writer — her plots are completely fun, with levels of implausibility that you just don’t care about at all. Seriously, lost heiresses, spy schools, amnesia, they’ve got it all. But she sets them in worlds with so many vivid, concrete, sensory details that they feel real. Then she adds smart characters who actually behave like smart people (most of them anyway); language and metaphors that fit the point of view; and a sense of wry humor. They made me want to give up on being a writer entirely.
Then, fortunately, I think, I read her very first book, which was not available at my library but was available at Amazon. The most important thing to know about that book is that it was originally published in 1983. The second most important to know about it is that you really, really, really don’t want to read it as an example of her writing. Probably, you really don’t want to read it at all. I’m actually a little surprised that she let it be re-issued. But it comforted me. I will not give up on being a writer quite yet.
And that does mean I should get back to it. At about 5:30 this morning, I had an idea about where I’d gone wrong with Fen, and why I was so stuck. I knew, knew, knew that I should get up and open my computer and write it down, but it was so cozy in my nest of blankets. I promised myself I’d remember it. Ha. But maybe when I stare at the file for a while, it will come back to me.
Off I go to stare.
Moving on from MA
05 Friday Oct 2018
Posted in Photography, Randomness, Travel
I am exhausted.
I feel like I shouldn’t say that — people are working three jobs, moms with chronic illnesses are dragging themselves out of bed to get their kids to school every day, nurses are ten hours into their 12-hour shifts, 70-year-old Walmart greeters are standing on hard floors for minimum wage… lots and lots of people have more right to be exhausted than I do. But despite my sympathy for all those people, I’m still exhausted.
Fortunately, it won’t last long. I had an extremely busy, very sociable week in Massachusetts, visiting Rockport, Boston, Gloucester, Cape Cod, and Maynard. Lots of movement, lots of driving, lots of talking. My goodness, the talking. I basically went days without talking to anyone but the dog in Canada, so I made up for lost time over the past week.
But now I’m back in Pennsylvania, experimenting with staying in my brother’s guest room (technically my nephew’s room, but he’s not using it at the moment), and planning a reasonably quiet, business-intensive couple of weeks. Lots of writing, lots of file updating, maybe some researching. But probably not so much of all that today, actually. Today I think I’m going to be satisfied with going through my photos, writing this blog post, making a to-do list, and walking the dog. And maybe cooking dinner.
Also, though, taking advantage of real internet to be indiscriminate about the pictures that I liked from the last week.
Sun rising in Rockport
A fisherman already hard at work in Rockport
Crashing waves in Cape Cod
Cape Cod lighthouse
New River Beach, New Brunswick
24 Monday Sep 2018
Posted in Campground, Reviews, Travel, Vanlife
When I left Parrsboro, I headed south. My first stop was in Saint John, New Brunswick, for an exciting visit to a Canadian Costco. Yes, I’m such a good tourist. No museums, no art galleries, no historic sites, but Costco, definitely!
But when R and I were grocery shopping, we discovered some delicious pretend trail mix at Canadian Costco and I wanted to get more of it before returning to the US. What makes it “pretend” trail mix, you ask? Well, it’s a combo of dried fruit, nuts, and chocolate, which sounds like trail mix to me, but the chocolate in it is so good that it feels like trail mix that belongs in fancy bowls at cocktail parties instead of out in the woods. Funnily enough, the American version, as shown on Amazon, calls it “Deluxe Chocolate Trail Mix” but the Canadian version is just “Deluxe Chocolate Mix.” Maybe the Canadians don’t feel the need to pretend that mixed nuts and chocolates are health food?
Anyway, post-Costco, I’d intended to keep driving, but I was already tired and just not in the mood to be on the road. So I looked for a nearby campground and found New River Beach Provincial Park. Or Parc Provincial Plage New River, depending on where you start reading the name. (The actual paperwork reads “Parc Provincial Plage New River Beach Provincial Park” which would be the fully bilingual name.)
It was a one-night stay, arriving mid-afternoon, departing first thing in the morning, and so it could have been a totally forgettable campground for me. But, the campground was really, really nice. It made me feel so much better about being back on the road. The sites were shaded and private, the walk around the campground was lovely, there was a beautiful beach nearby, and best of all, the showers were clean, hot, and free!
And modern. One of the things that most annoys me about campground showers is that there’s rarely any place to put your shampoo and soap inside the shower except on the ground. These showers had two built-in ledges on the fiberglass walls. Just remembering it makes me sigh with pleasure. Yes, the small joys of being a full-time camper, ha.
The next day I headed to Acadia, which is where I am now. I think I’m probably not going to write a separate post about Acadia. I’m in the Schoodic Woods campground and it’s lovely — nice, modern, big sites, reasonable privacy, lots of nature around. But Zelda is resisting going for long walks and I’m not sure we’re going to see much of the park.
And it feels like my head has already moved on. I’m visiting lots of people in the next ten days, scheduling a night here and a night there, and looking forward to all my visits. But also feeling like I’m not being where I am very well right now — I’m busy thinking about all the places I’m going to be and all the things I’m going to do instead of appreciating this day that I’m in. I think I’d like to get back to appreciating the day I’m in, instead of trying to think about it to write about it. But it’s 48 degrees outside, sunny and beautiful, and I’m glad to be here, even if I do just sit in my chair and breathe for a while.
Glooscap Campground, Parrsboro, Nova Scotia
17 Monday Sep 2018
Posted in Campground, Food, Photography, Reviews, Travel
I have a zillion pictures of this campground. And I would google zillion right now, to see just how hyperbolic I’m being (pretty darn hyperbolic, I have to admit) but my internet is down to super-slow speeds so I’m not going to. I think Verizon might be hinting that it’s time to stop using the Canadian cell towers, sigh. My super-slow internet also means that I’m not going to post my zillion pictures. Instead, I’m going to have to decide on one or maybe two that I will watch upload in painfully slow motion. It’s not an easy decision, made more difficult by the fact that none of them are good enough.
None of them capture the sound of the water. It changes, and I’m not sure I’ve ever actually spent enough time sitting by a beach to realize how much the sound of the waves varies over the course of the day. Or maybe it’s just this beach. The tide goes way, way out — in the middle of the day, there’s half a desert between me and the water, but in the morning, it’s more of a wide rocky strip. Sometimes the water is very quiet, gently brushing against the shore, so still that even listening hard I can barely hear it, and then sometimes it’s lapping at the shore so loudly that I’m reminded that yes, I am sitting next to the ocean. (Sort of the ocean, anyway. I’m on the shores of the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia.)
And no photo can capture the feel of the air. The weather has been lovely — sometimes sunny enough that it actually does feel hot, although I doubt the temperature has broken 75, and sometimes foggy enough that it definitely feels chilly, but mostly hovering in the mid-60s. But it’s just not the temperature — it’s the perfect level of humidity. It feels like there’s always just a light breeze, carrying a little bit of moisture.
And for some reason, none of my photos are getting the colors right. There’s an incredible number of wildflowers blooming right now. I’m looking outside the van window as I write at an expanse of yellow-gold and green, but the pictures capture the blue of the ocean behind the gold and turn the gold into a dull yellow that doesn’t come anywhere close to looking right.
Not the right gold at all, but this is the view from Serenity’s door. The flowers are so much brighter than they look here.
And, of course, it’s impossible to take a photo of the moon and the stars, but I’ve watching them every night from my window as I go to sleep. Here’s a thing that made me feel stupid: over two years of living in the van, and I never realized that the tinted windows were distorting the brightness level of the stars. I’ve been sleeping with the window open and they’re so much more beautiful that way.
It would be nice to see the stars without the screens, too, but that’s never going to happen because the one thing about Nova Scotia that is really not working for me are the voracious mosquitoes. They’re not as bad as they were at the farm on Prince Edward Island, but I keep needing to tell myself that to tolerate them. Almost every walk on the beach ends when the mosquitoes find me and I wind up needing to escape from the ones that are dive-bombing my face. Still, they’re not constant — they’re worst at dusk and dawn, and in the middle of the day, I’ve been sitting outside perfectly happily. So excuse the whining!
I do really love this campground, love that is definitely helped by the fact that I have a perfect site. I started out last week at a pull-through spot, sort of in the middle of the campground, and it was still nice. I had a good view of the ocean, although a better view of my neighbors’ campers, and the beach was still a very easy walk away. The campground’s not too big, with both seasonal and tent spots, and it’s not too busy either, this time of year. They have a “stay three, get one free” deal, so I was going to stay four nights.
But after two nights, a spot opened up right next to the cliff that overlooks that water and I thought, “hmm…” so I wandered back up to the office and asked if I could have it. Yep. I paid for another three (four) nights after that, so when I leave here on Wednesday, I will have been here for eight nights! Eight! It’s close to my longest stay at any campground, and if I didn’t have reservations and plans for later in the month, I think I’d probably be aiming to stay even longer.
Another view from the door.
Yesterday, I ate blueberry pancakes with tiny wild Canadian blueberries and Vermont maple syrup, plus Berkshire bacon from the organic farm, while sitting at a picnic table watching horseback riders on the beach. I wondered whose life was more perfect at that moment, the horseback riders splashing through the water or me, and concluded that I won because my pancakes were crazily delicious (gluten-free) and they were probably surrounded by mosquitoes. But it did feel unreal in a most lovely sort of way.
Hideaway Campground & Oyster Market, Dingwall, NS
11 Tuesday Sep 2018
Posted in Anxiety, Campground, Reviews, Travel
When I last wrote, I was in a state of indecision: whether to stay or whether to go? I suspect that the people who know me well never shared my doubt. My answer always seems to be Go. It’s true that sometimes what’s around the bend is not as nice as what you’re leaving behind, but curiosity is either my besetting sin or my defining virtue. Maybe both!
So I left.
My state of indecision continued and continued and continued, though. I was going to stop in New Glasgow, because of the name, but I drove straight through, almost without realizing. I’d never changed the time on the van dashboard, so I was there sooner than I expected to be. Since I’d already passed it, I decided to keep going and stop at a campground called Whycocomagh, because that name was even better. I did stop there, but the self-registration process was completely frustrating and I finally gave up. It was still early enough in the day that I could go farther. I decided on another place, then changed my mind, then another and did the same, then finally, exasperated, called the place that I was really aiming for but didn’t think I could get to in a single day, and asked if I could arrive late. I could, so I did.
It was a long day.
But the drive was pretty spectacular. Cape Breton National Park reminded me enormously of a prettier, greener Northern California. No offense to Northern California, which is a remarkably beautiful place, and I’m sure has better weather, but Cape Breton is stunning. The road curves and winds, one side dropping off cliffs into the ocean, the other side hills, covered with trees, mostly a mix of pine and birch. I bet in another month, when the birch leaves are changing color, it’s even more beautiful.
And the Hideaway Campground is lovely. Small and hilly, with a mix of sites, some set into the trees, some lined up facing the ocean. At the front, there’s a little restaurant where you can get a lobster dinner or oysters. As far as I can tell, that’s the complete menu, but who would want anything more? The paid showers look reasonably nice, there’s a beach about a kilometer and a half away, and a dirt trail that leads into the woods. And a fantastic view of the ocean, the kind of view that is so big that it’s impossible to do it justice with a cell phone camera.
This doesn’t even come close to capturing the view. The colors are more intense, the expanse much deeper and richer… but it’s the best I’ve got!
Unfortunately, the Hideaway has two problems for me. The first is that it’s still quite busy. I had one night in my site and then had to move to a different site. Today I’ll have to move again. There’s an open site that I could take, but a big German Shepard right behind that spot lunged and barked at us when we were out walking. For obvious reasons, I don’t feel like I would be comfortable there. I’m trying to avoid developing a total dog phobia, but I don’t want to exist in a level of constant tension, waiting for an aggressive dog to appear.
The other problem is that I am so incredibly allergic that it’s ridiculous. Obviously, that’s not the Hideaway’s fault. I think my allergies got kickstarted with the Queen Anne’s lace at the farm a few days ago, but I woke up yesterday in a state of misery and can’t kick it. If this was a house, I would be sealing the windows, vacuuming everything, changing the air filters, and staying absolutely inside, but that’s pretty hard to do in a van. I’m hoping that if I get out of the forest, I can escape from whatever it is that I’m reacting to. I haven’t even owned an inhaler since I left California, but I was wishing for one last night. Alas.
So today I’m heading on. Unfortunately, there’s a severe weather alert on for Nova Scotia today — rain from Gordon hitting the area — so I have no idea how far I’ll get, but I’ll be moving inland, out of the storm’s way, I hope. But definitely not headed south, because I’d like to stay out of Florence’s way, too. Speaking of which, I hope those of you in Florence’s way have your emergency kits ready. More bottled water never hurts!
Harvest Hosts
07 Friday Sep 2018
I heard roosters crowing when I took Zelda for her morning walk, and saw cows in a distant field, plus lots of forest, and a beautiful red dirt road. Also a patch of sunflowers and a lovely expanse of Queen Anne’s lace, which I am sadly quite allergic to. I’ve retreated inside the van with my congestion and itchy eyes, but it’s another beautiful day on Prince Edward Island. Tons of mosquitoes, though — I hope my immunity to them kicks in again soon, because they’re ferocious here.
Yesterday I took the van to an RV service place in Charlottetown and got the leaking toilet fixed. Yay! The guy doing the job grumbled about the last repair — I think the guy in Montana didn’t fix the leak, just put a clamp over it — but my plastic parts have now been replaced with brass parts and so that should hold me for a while. I hope, anyway. Today I’m headed off to get the oil changed, the brake fluid levels checked (the light has flickered on a couple of times), and the tires rotated. Yes, dealing with the practicalities of van life!
The farm — and I can’t remember whether we’re allowed to be specific when it’s a Harvest Hosts spot, but if you’re a Harvest Hosts member, you’ll know which farm it is, because it’s the only one on Prince Edward Island — doesn’t have a store, so I handed S., the farmer, some money and said, “Feed me.” LOL. More or less, anyway. He gave me bacon, eggs, potatoes, tomatoes, beans, and a zucchini and I really feel like I should pull out the frying pan and do a giant UK-style fry-up. (Harvest Hosts, for those who don’t know it, is an annual membership service that connects users with farms, wineries, museums, and an assortment of other places where you can park for free for the night. The expectation is that you pay by shopping in their stores.)
We had a great conversation about cooking, too. S teaches cooking classes, specifically (today at least) slow cooker classes where you prep the food ahead of time for a week’s worth of meals. It made me want to cook some complicated things in my slow-cooker, instead of just a week’s worth of quinoa. But the weather is supposed to be colder for the next couple of days, so I’m hoping to grab the opportunity to use my oven a few times: roasted vegetables, granola, etc.
Hmm, this is turning out to be a food-driven post, which is probably because I haven’t eaten breakfast yet. I should get on that! I was going to write about writing — or not writing, as the case has been for a couple of days — but I’ll hold that thought until later.
But in a comment on another blog, I described myself as “flailing.” I worked on Grace for such a long time that I sort of feel like Sisyphus, having reached the top of the hill and having the boulder NOT roll back down again. I’ve been appreciating life without the boulder, but every time I start writing, I start to fall into the trap of treating the words like a boulder instead of the beach ball they ought to be. And that’s a metaphor that might not make sense to anyone but me, but I’m leaving it because it’s a perfect reminder to me of what I’m striving for. Words like beach balls, light and bouncy and playful!