Tag Archives: Pennsylvania

A tale of two bridges

22 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by in Randomness, Serenity, Travel

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The campground I stayed at for the past couple of days, Council Cup Campground in Wapwallopen, PA, was rich in bridges. (Is that not a great town name? I keep wanting to say it aloud, just for the fun of it. Wapwallopen.) It was an interesting place, a very strange mix of new and old, arty and… well, skeezy.

I nearly didn’t stop when I drove by because there was a trailer with a confederate flag flying, which is a pretty clear indicator of it not being my kind of place. But I’d made a reservation and the camp office looked professional, with a AAA sign and a sign for the laundry, so I gave it a try. Some of the trailers were filthy — covered in dirt, looking like they hadn’t been moved in decades, surrounded by junk. Even wire fences around them, which to me always feels like an indicator of a dangerous neighborhood. But the playgrounds were fantastic and plentiful, the people were friendly, the camp store was nice with a great selection of kids’ toys, and it was possible to walk deep into the forest, into total solitude and quiet.

And it had bridges! Lots of bridges, because a creek ran through the campground. Supposedly, there was a waterfall, too, but I never found it. The creek was just a few yards wide — nothing like a small river, like the last creek I was near at the Gettysburg Farm campground. This one was shallow, running fast, over rocks, and as soon as I saw the first bridge, I knew we were walking over it.

a bridge

It was just that sort of bridge. Made of iron, but with gaps, like a grid of metal. I was not thinking of the dogs, though, until we got a little ways onto it and B refused to move. Oh, my, I’m laughing even at the memory, even though poor B was probably not amused and poor Z was definitely not amused later. Anyway, B could see that there was nothing underneath him to hold him up. It wouldn’t have been a long fall, only a couple of feet, really, but he was not going anywhere.

At that point we were not so far across, and I should have turned back, but Z was doing okay, so I picked B up and carried him. But then Z realized that she could fall through the gaps, when she did on one leg. She was scooting along, almost on her belly, inching forward, ears back, eyes wide. I wound up carrying B out to the end of the leash, going back and picking her up, carrying her out to the end of the leash, then going back and picking B up, hip-hopping the length of the leash, all the way across… we must have looked ridiculous.

I got a little anxious that Z might hurt herself when both of her back feet went through the holes in the grid on our last section and then I was worried, too, but we made it across, both dogs totally weirded out and giving me looks. It was terrible, but also terribly funny.

Our other bridge was much safer, but even sillier to cross. I’d walked out into the woods, searching for the waterfall, and I was so deep that I felt alone in the wilderness. There were tables, lots of picnic tables, for tent camping spots, but not a single tent anywhere to be seen. It was beautiful and a little spooky. When I saw a bridge of course I crossed it, because hey, bridge. But the path started to disappear afterwards and I kept going.

Bridge2

I kept thinking about the woman found in the woods, just a mile or so away from the trail that she’d lost. Dead for months before she was found, like she sat down and waited to be rescued and waited too long. It was probably good for me to be thinking of her, because I kept glancing over my shoulder, locking landmarks into my memory for when I gave up on the waterfall and turned back the way I’d come. Which, of course, I finally did, although mostly because I stumbled upon civilization in the form of houses and knew that wherever the waterfall was, it wasn’t the way I was going.

I love the way you can feel alone in the wilderness and then, oops, houses. That’s probably my kind of wilderness, the kind where help is actually easy walking distance away. I’m really not the wilderness type — I like the illusion of it better than reality.

Other things: I’m still going to post about sheets soon, but I’m sort of annoyed with myself for already spending so much time on this blog post — I had some major digressions about how confederate flags offend me and wire fences make me uneasy, which I deleted because boring, plus posting the images took forever because slow internet, but it’s almost 11 and I only have another hour to write today before I head to New Jersey. And then tomorrow is a long driving day.

Normally that would not matter at all, but for the last couple of days — between adventures on bridges and the Wapwallopen Peach Festival, where I bought peach jalapeño jam and cranberry cherry jam — Grace has been going really well. I’m almost scared to write that for fear I might jinx it, but… yeah. It’s pretty darn exciting to be enjoying writing Grace. I hope it lasts!

The interesting stuff…

19 Friday Aug 2016

Posted by in Mom, Personal, Travel

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I walked Zelda this morning into a scene of such stunning beauty that I was glad I’d left my cell phone back in Serenity. If I’d had it with me, I would have tried to capture the moment and I would have failed, because I don’t know how to take good photos, and it would have been just another generic pretty scenery picture. But the full moon was still up, in a sky that had wisps of sunrise clouds, a very subtle pink and twilight purple, in an otherwise overcast white. Mist was rising off water that looked a deep dark rippling green and in the distance, the hills… rolled. An artist could have drawn the classic three intersecting lines that anyone would recognize as hills in the distance and it would have been those exact three hills. It wasn’t bright, it wasn’t showy, but it was so beautiful I had to hold my breath, as if breathing would shatter it.

I’m in Frances Slocum State Park, in Pennsylvania. I came here because it was the closest camping spot to a cemetery I wanted to visit. Yeah, with the Grand Canyon and Mount Rushmore on my list of places to see, as well as the entire country of possibilities, my first destination was a graveyard. Ha.

But I’ve had my mom’s ashes sitting on my closet shelf for about four years now. She died five years ago and at the time I thought we’d get together and do some family thing with her ashes after a suitable time had passed. I don’t know what exactly — take them out to sea, maybe? On a cruise? She would have loved that, if the whole family had gotten together and gone on a cruise in celebration of her. But instead my dad remarried. There’s an interesting awkwardness to not being finished with your first wife’s business when you already have a second wife, or at least so it seemed to me, and my mom’s ashes became part of that.

Long story short, eventually they wound up with me, and I’ve let them sit, not knowing what to do with them. Her last remains. Except that they are so not her last remains. I am what remains of her. R is what remains of her. The scrapbooks she created, those are her remains. My sister, my brother, their kids, our memories… so much remains of her. And these ashes, they’re not important, not really. But I did want to dispose of them respectfully. Even, I guess, lovingly. If there is any possibility that my mom’s spirit is connected in any way to the pile of grey dust that was her body, I wanted her to be happy with what happened to that dust.

That brings me to the cemetery I was looking for. My great-grandmother is buried there, and I thought it would be nice to scatter my mom’s ashes there. She loved her grandmother and treasured her memories of visiting her grandmother’s farm when she was little. I wish I had any idea where the farm was because that would have been perfect (barring the extreme discomfort of asking someone if they’d mind if you scattered ashes on their property and/or the great likelihood that it’s some kind of housing development now…) but the cemetery was the best I could do.

It was lovely. Beautiful, green, serene. Gorgeous and old. Also surreal. I wandered through the gravestones looking for the right one — Myrtle Smith, with Paul Smith next to her — and instead finding, with vague shocks of recognition, everyone else. My grandfather’s parents. My grandfather’s sister. My other great-grandparents. My great-great grandparents. Plenty of strangers’ names, of course, but down every line, another Smith, Rozelle, Lewis, Labar, and Hahn. It was eerie and charming and sort of heart-wrenching. I looked at what I was pretty sure was my great-grandparents’ gravestone — Grover Cleveland and Jessie Labar — and knew almost nothing about them. I recognized their names but that was it.

In the end, I did find the right grave and sprinkled a handful of my mom’s ashes there. I didn’t anticipate how emotional I would feel about it, how much it would bring my grief back to me and how sharp that pain would be. The dead always outnumber the living in a cemetery, but being alone there, surrounded by my forgotten relatives, was… hard.

Afterwards, I drove into the town, West Pittston, looking for the houses where my mom had grown up. I had an idea of discreetly sprinkling more of her ashes, I think — but the streets were narrow and the idea of parking was terrifying and navigating was a challenge — Z is just not good at reading maps for me and my GPS is always a little late — so I came back to the campground and settled in.

Fortunately, the park is beautiful. The campsites are shaded by trees, with screens of trees separating one site from the next. It’s been rainy and muddy, but very peaceful. (With the minor exception of my poor neighbors not having much success handling their whiny kids. The dad’s exasperated, “What am I supposed to DO with her?” had me wincing in sympathy.)

I suspect the reason people think of the ocean when it comes to ashes is that there’s actually quite a bit of them — a handful can be scattered elegantly but dumping out the whole bag just seemed very not cool. Both not respectful and also leaving a mess for the person next mowing the lawn to be disturbed by. Maybe if you can hurl them off a mountaintop, the wind would carry them away, but my image of gently scattering dust does not match the reality of a heavy duty plastic bag with a mound of ashes in it.

Still, I’ve taken many long walks here, including one where I went fairly far off a trail into the woods and found a nice young tree that looked like it might benefit from some nutrients at its roots. I don’t know how my mom would feel about that — she wasn’t much of a nature person. She preferred her camping to include comfortable beds and flush toilets.

But I kept some of the ashes. I’m not sure why. I thought I was ready to let go, but maybe not. It’s definitely one of those times when logic is warring with intuition, though. Logic is saying “Storage! Trees, nutrients!” but my intuition is telling me that there’s something else I need to be doing. For most of my life — all of my life — logic would have won, but not today. Maybe I’ll visit my grandparents’ graves while I’m at this. Or maybe I’ll bring the ashes to the Grand Canyon with me. I wonder how many people do that? I bet lots. It seems like that kind of place. Or maybe I need to let my siblings have their own experiences with saying goodbye in that way. I’m really not sure, but what’s left of her ashes comes with me.

Anyway, at the moment, I’m sitting in a grocery store parking lot, wishing I still had a grill. Wondering if I should buy firewood. Trying to think of some food plan for the next few days and mostly eating spice drops, currently my worst food vice. Today and tomorrow I’m floating around PA and on Monday, I’m headed into NJ for the day. Next week, NY, and the week after that, Vermont.

Practical angst

18 Thursday Aug 2016

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

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I bought my coconut milk in haste at the store the other day and it is vanilla-flavored coconut milk, instead of normal coconut milk. It is, to put it in a nutshell, disgusting. It is making me sad when I drink my coffee and I refuse to contemplate what it might be like on cereal. I ought to throw it away, find myself a new grocery store, and buy myself some new coconut milk, but the last “coconut milk” I bought was half almond milk, half coconut, and it was also disgusting. I did throw it away. Throwing away two almost full half gallons of milk-like substance feels so wasteful.

Plus, that time, the store didn’t have any regular coconut milk. I’m currently in a place that could be safely described as middle-of-nowhere, and I’m wary of heading out on a drive to a grocery store that might be half an hour away only to discover when I get there that it doesn’t have coconut milk. The obvious solutions occur to me — GPS nearby grocery stores, find their numbers, call them up and ask! — but I currently have no internet, so even that solution means packing up for a drive to find myself some connectivity.

Obviously, by the time you’re reading this, I will have done so, because ha-ha, posting to my blog also requires internet, but at the moment I’m feeling very disinclined to get on the road. It rained last night, gloriously heavy, so that the pounding of drops on the roof of Serenity was like living inside a maraca. And I totally have to google that word, because I’m not sure whether I’ve got the name right, but again… no internet.

So yeah, living inside a maraca, or if that’s not the right word, one of those instruments you play with as a kid, a gourd filled with seeds that you shake like a baby’s rattle. I wasn’t being shaken, but the sound was that fast, heavy rattle. It was lovely. But I had decided when last I looked at the sky that the overcast white wasn’t gray enough to bring real rain, so I left my chair and my towel and my purple-striped Mexican blanket outside.

They are well beyond damp.

I don’t want them inside Serenity.

Honestly, I don’t even want to touch the blanket. I put it down for the dogs because the ground here is hard gravel and dirt, with some puddles of mud, and I didn’t want them — Zelda especially — to choose the mud puddles as the comfiest place to get cozy. Zelda would. Bartleby also likes to roll in the dirt, but not with the same abandon. He’s not a huge fan of baths and he’s much more sensitive about the possibility of scolding. Z likes baths and she’s seldom been scolded so she luxuriates in the dirt, then comes in and goes straight to the tub. With no tub, I don’t know what she’d do, but tracking mud all over my bed has never bothered her, so I’m pretty sure it would involve me needing to do laundry. I guess I’m going to have to do that anyway, since the blanket might never be clean again. But at least after it dries I ought to be able to shake off some of the dirt and fold it up, so it’s out of the way until I manage to find a washer. My sheets, on the other hand… well, sheets are turning out to be a saga of their own.

Dirt in general is turning out to be an interesting aspect of living in a camper. I’m not a dirt-phobe. Good thing, because campgrounds are dirty and dogs track in dirt and living partially outside and otherwise in a very small space means that there is dirt. I was showering yesterday in my cute little bathroom and the floor was muddy. Not just from my dirty feet, but because I have to stash outside stuff on that floor when I’m on the move. The power cords and water hose lie on the ground outside while I’m parked and when I’m putting them away for a drive (“away” being defined as “on the bathroom floor”), I’m not worrying about the fact that they’ve picked up dirt and bits of leaf debris and grass. Generally speaking when I go camping and things get dirty, I think, well, I’ll get it clean when I get home. Except this is home.

I thought my solution would be to wipe them dry with a towel as I rolled them up to stow them away but at the end of that process, I have a dirty towel. And towels — well, towels are causing me almost as much angst as sheets.

Yesterday the radio hosts on a show I was listening to were debating how many times one should use a towel before washing it. There was an actual, honest-to-goodness argument for once. Dry yourself with a towel one time and then wash it. Um, no. I brought five standard towels with me and I’ve jettisoned two of them to take back the storage space they were using. I brought four or five dish towels with me, and that turns out to be not nearly enough. Drying dishes, wiping spills, cleaning hands after cooking, drying hands, wiping off dogs’ feet and bellies after coming in from a walk… at that point, the towel goes in the laundry bag and before I know it, I’m out of dish towels, and nowhere close to needing to do laundry for anything else.

Except maybe sheets. My sheets are causing me some serious angst, but I need to eat breakfast and get moving — and I can’t believe I haven’t written about the more interesting stuff that’s going on! — so more on sheets and sleeping later. And also the interesting stuff.

The eye of the beholder

15 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by in Depression, Personal, Randomness, Travel

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fungus

I suffer from the relatively common ailment of mean brain. Not mean to other people, but mean to myself. It’s something I’ve worked on for a long time, but I still have flare-ups. Maybe it’s like an allergic reaction? My hyperactive immune system thinks that half the common substances on the planet are dire threats and stimulates misery in response. When my mean brain gets triggered, it stimulates misery, too. Maybe it’s some kind of protective mechanism, but it’s not a very good one.

Sunday morning, it started whispering. I’ll spare myself writing out the details — it’s not like it’s going to be good for me to spend more time in those thoughts — but the words “homeless” and “failure” were pretty loud. Fortunately, I was in a really good place to see those thoughts for what they were, just words. Just labels.

Earlier I had been sitting in my chair, watching the water and the trees and a chirpy little sparrow. The sparrow was adorable, totally charming in that tiny bird way. It kept a fearless eye on the dogs, but it was much more interested in whatever it was finding in the dirt. It flew away and I thought, “What a miracle birds are.” Flight is so amazing. It’s incredible that they can just lift off and soar through the air. It’s not a new thought, I’ve had it many times before, often when seeing birds take off around the pond where I used to walk the dogs. And then one of the nasty biting bugs landed on my leg and I thought, “Hmm, I don’t think I ever think about bugs being a miracle. But they can fly, too.”

I waved the bug off and moved on, heading inside to figure out what I could eat for breakfast. The campground I was in was a first-come, first-served campground, and I was reluctant to pack up to make another grocery store run while weekend people were coming in. My spot was lovely, a mix of sun and shade, looking right out on the water, with a pretty view of an open field on the other side. It was also nice and flat with no major ruts or big muddy spots, easy to get to, and reasonably simple to access. In other words, I was afraid to leave it for fear I’d lose it. But food supplies were running low. Still, I made myself breakfast from the dregs of the fridge. And when it was ready, I took a picture of it, because it was very pretty.

salad photo

As I sat down to eat, I was thinking about reality and how we shape it with our words. Here’s a reality: my nectarine was bruised. I had to cut out the bruised bits. My cucumber was a tasteless grocery store purchase, no flavor at all. The radishes, from the farmer’s market two weekends ago, never tasted very good and were getting squishy. I threw the rest of them away when I was done with my salad. The carrots are the kind that seemed old the instant I opened the bag, slightly bitter and drying out. The salad greens are still remarkably nice given that they’re a week old, but they’re heavy on some grassy thing which I’m not nuts about. One of my three remaining eggs was cracked, so I had to throw it away. As a result, I only had one egg on my salad, so I could save the second one for later when I would be hungry again.

Here’s another reality: the egg was perfectly cooked and delicious. Still warm, it peeled easily and the yolk was exactly right. (Go, insta-pot!) I made a dressing to go on the salad that was fantastic — mayo that is gluten-free, soy-free, egg-free, and dairy-free (aka, miracle mayo), plus olive oil, lemon juice and powdered ginger. It made the cucumbers delicious, the carrots tolerable, couldn’t help the radishes, was interesting on the nectarine, and was amazing on the egg and the greens. I didn’t quite lick the plate, but I ate every last bite of the whole salad, even the grassy stuff.

And maybe those thoughts about reality and how we shape it were the trigger for me being mean to myself, but before I could do more than take two or three nasty swipes at my choices and my character, I caught sight of the image at the top of this post. Such a bright color, almost like a California poppy. And the curves of the stalks are like petals on a flower.

But it’s a fungus. A fungus growing out of the picnic table where I was eating. Ick. Gross. And yet… it really was beautiful in the sunlight.

When my mean brain triggers, my eyes stop seeing the beauty around me. And in me, too. They start labeling: bugs, fungus, homeless.

It is a reality that I have moments when I feel homeless, not adventurous. Three weeks ago, I had a perfect last day in my house, and the memory is bittersweet right now. I miss my pool. I miss my shower. I desperately miss my high-speed, always-on Internet connection! And it’s painful to be homesick for a home that you never get to go back to.

But my mean brain is not running this show. It’s also a reality that I feel incredibly lucky. My salad was no different, no better than any salad I could have had a month ago at any time… but I appreciated it more. A shift of the kaleidoscope wheel and the pieces are the same but the picture is changed.

Spicy sweet potato hash

12 Friday Aug 2016

Posted by in Food, Randomness, Spicy

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Spicy sweet potato hash

The dogs couldn’t believe I didn’t share. I always share sweet potatoes with them. But it was so good, I just kept eating and then… it was gone.

So, in the insta-pot (surprise!), cook one chopped up sweet potato on a rack with a cup of water at high pressure for 2 minutes. When it chimes, use the quick release to let the steam out.

Take the sweet potato out and dump the water, then turn the insta-pot to saute. When the screen says Hot, saute some chopped up bacon and 1/2 cup of onion until they’re cooked to your liking. I like my bacon crispy and my onions carmelized, but you could stop when the onions were translucent if you like them better that way.

Return the sweet potato to the pot, and add some chopped up fresh cilantro, and something to make it deliciously spicy. I used about a teaspoon of a spice mix from Trader Joe’s called Pilpelchuma, a blend of chili, garlic, cayenne pepper, paprika, cumin, and caraway. I considered using chili garlic sauce, but you could also use a jalapeño pepper or some sriracha, whatever suits your spiciness needs.

Mix the ingredients together and make a little nest in the pile. Carefully crack two eggs into the nest. Turn the insta-pot back on high-pressure and set the time for 1 minute. It will take a lot more than a minute for the insta-pot to reach the pressure level because there’s not a lot of water in there to create the steam, but eventually it will chime. Use the quick release button to let the steam out and then carefully lift it out, trying not to break the eggs.

Say yum.

Don’t share with your dogs, even if they give you pleading looks. Although come to think of it, if you made more, you might have leftovers and they’d be good, too. Honestly, if I had another sweet potato, I might make myself some more right now. It was that good.

It’s been incredibly hot. I don’t mind so much, but it’s impossible to go anywhere, because I’m not willing to leave the dogs alone in the van. Plugged in, with the AC on, we’re fine, but if I was relying on the generator… well, I’m just not that confident. I bought an alert system to let me know when the temp in the van gets too high, but I’m not so convinced of its reliability that I want to test it out in life-or-death weather. So we’re hanging out at the campground, I’m fiddling with Grace, and listening to a lot of country music. Life is good. And so is spicy sweet potato hash with poached eggs!

Small adventures

11 Thursday Aug 2016

Posted by in Personal, Serenity, Travel

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I had an adventure yesterday. I went to the grocery store.

Yes, that makes me laugh, too. But it sure felt like an adventure. Strange roads, following my GPS, managing the parking lot and running the generator and air-conditioner for the dogs, roaming the aisles of an unfamiliar store. I actually also stopped at a farm stand, run by a woman in Amish clothing, where I bought shallots and a squash and a cantaloupe.

I thought about going to a museum. According to Roadtrippers, the Agricultural and Industrial Museum was right down the road from the grocery store. (My Internet is so slow that I’m having trouble testing my links: apologies if those don’t work the way they should.) It felt like it would be virtuous to go to the museum, like it was something I should do.

But while I waited for my GPS to give me directions, I remembered two things. First, I’m not a tourist. My goal with living in Serenity is to have a simpler, more flexible life, not fill up my brain with factoids and miscellaneous places. I’m sure it’s a cool museum, but there’s no inherent virtue in adding another random place to my collection of inaccessible memories. Second, “should” is not the same as “want to.” When I took that mental step back, I realized that I’d really rather go back to the campground and sit under my awning and knit and think about Grace.

So I did.

Alas, nasty little stinging flies were chewing on my legs, so I didn’t last outside all that long. It lacks romance to admit that I retreated inside and hung out in the air-conditioned van for the rest of the day, but I did my Insta-Pot experimenting, some knitting, texted with friends, wrote a little and thought about resistance a lot.

If I was camping — say, on my one-week summer vacation from an office job, due back at work on Monday — I’d feel guilty for my wasted day. I could have been outside. I could have been kayaking. I could have been exploring the battlefields of Gettysburg, soaking in the history and tragedy of my location. But living in a camper is not the same as camping, and it wasn’t a wasted day.

In fact, today I think I will do pretty much the same thing. At the moment I’m sitting outside, listening to the noise of the bugs — so incredibly loud, beyond chorus levels and into rock symphonies — and watching the occasional wildlife. I’ve seen a chipmunk, so cute, squirrels and birds. I heard a big splash in the water, which gave me an instant surge of adrenaline before I remembered that murky water + splash doesn’t equal alligator in Pennsylvania. No idea what the splash was, but probably fish of some sort, since I didn’t see a bird. The flies are biting but not as badly as they were yesterday when it was hotter and I was sweatier.

My big adventure for today might be walking the dogs up to the field with the animals and seeing whether the brown creature I caught a glimpse of yesterday when I was driving in really is a baby alpaca.

Yesterday, I was joking with my friend Tim about facing the challenge of the grocery store. The thing is, going to the grocery store did feel like a challenge. I had to pack up Serenity for driving, unhook her from the electric and water, dump her tanks at the “sanitation station”, navigate unfamiliar roads, start the generator to run the AC to keep the dogs cool, check on my alert system for a temperature reading inside the van, park more carefully than I did… (I really need to remember that Serenity is tall — I again scraped her roof along trees, alas.) But it was exciting. And it was fun.

And I realized that I’m accomplishing (almost) exactly what I was vaguely, incoherently, hoping to accomplish. I’ve turned my life into an adventure, where even the small challenges, like going to the grocery store, require an eyes-wide-open approach, an appreciation of where I am and exactly what I am doing. My heart is beating. It’s a wonderful feeling.

It’ll be even better when I’m also writing again regularly. And that is going to happen. Maybe even today.

Insta-pot debate

10 Wednesday Aug 2016

Posted by in Chicken, Food, Personal

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I bought an Insta-Pot during the Amazon Prime summer sale days. It seemed like a good idea — I’d wanted one for a while and I figured it could replace my slow cooker and give me some additional functionality for life on the road. But when it came and I tried to fit it into Serenity, it started looking like an expensive mistake.

Not my first — I bought an Amazon Tap on impulse when I meant to buy a Dot and purchased a very expensive tire-pressure monitoring system before reading the manual and discovering that tire-pressure monitoring was built-in to the Dodge system. Oops.

Fortunately, those were easily returned, but the insta-pot decision wasn’t so clear. After all, I had wanted one and I do feel like I need a slow cooker. But it’s big. Really big. It doesn’t fit in the over-cab space (not that I would put something that potentially dangerous there anyway – death by Insta-Pot during a fast stop is not how I want to go.) It doesn’t fit in any of the cabinets or in the limited under-the-bed space. In fact, the only place I can store it is inside the wardrobe. Apart from that, it would have to sit out on the floor and that’s sort of the same problem as the overhead space — leaving heavy objects out to fly around the van while you’re driving is not the greatest idea. It probably wouldn’t kill me from the floor, but in a 50mph collision with B and the Insta-Pot, B would lose. Squashed dog would be heartbreaking.

So the question was: do I want to give up my precious wardrobe space to a pressure cooker? I decided to answer by trying the insta-pot out as quickly as possible.

The first thing I made was a lemon chicken recipe using chicken thighs. It was… eh. Acceptable, but I could bake chicken thighs in the convection oven just as easily and they would taste just as good, maybe better because they get crispy. Admittedly, they would take a lot longer and heat up the van a lot more, but still, the chicken thighs were not a selling point.

Next I tried hard-boiled eggs. Wow. It is incredibly easy to make absolutely perfect hard-boiled eggs using an Insta-Pot. Five minutes, no mess, no heating a pan over the propane stove, and the eggs were truly perfect, exactly the way I like them.

However, have I mentioned the preciousness of my wardrobe space? I need shoes, ones with toes, and a winter coat, and maybe some rain gear. All of those things, once I get them, are going to need to be stored somewhere. I’d like to try going to the occasional writer’s conference: that would require professional(-ish) attire, which again, would have to be stored somewhere. Cleaning supplies, the screen door for the back, towels, the shower curtain, dog food, tools… there is a lot of stuff competing for that precious, precious storage space. Perfect hard-boiled eggs are not good enough to warrant giving it up to a pot. A big pot.

Today, I decided to try again. I bought two bone-in chicken breasts at the store, figuring I could cook them, then use the bones to make a small amount of stock. But when I tried to find a recipe that made sense, I failed. I should have looked for the recipe before going to the store instead of after. Alas. But I’m used to having a lot of staple ingredients, including a fully stocked spice cabinet, on hand.

Of course, not having a recipe never deters me. I decided to improvise. I did wonder, while I was mixing up a marinade of Marie Sharp’s Exotic Sauce (which I brought from the house and need to use up), balsamic vinegar, a generous handful of cilantro, and several chopped shallots, whether I was setting up the Insta-Pot to fail. Talk about a random marinade! But I marinated the chicken in the above for an hour, then sautéed it for a few minutes on the saute setting, then added a little bit of chicken broth, probably 1/4 cup, and used the poultry setting to cook it. When it was done, I took it out, measured the liquid — about a cup — and cooked a cup of jasmine rice in a 1:1 ratio with the liquid.

But I couldn’t wait for the rice. The chicken smelled so good! I kept stealing tiny bites of it, trying to figure out why/how it was so delicious. Was it the exotic sauce? The cilantro? The chicken wasn’t overwhelmed by the marinade, but it was infused with the flavors of the other ingredients. I could taste them — a little bit of a tang, that green bitterness of cilantro, the subtle kick of shallots — in each bite of moist, falling apart, yet fully-cooked chicken. It was ridiculously good.

When the rice finished, I added some dried cranberries — which probably would have been even better if I’d added them during the cooking — and a sprinkle of salt and ate. And ate. And ate. I had to force myself to stop when I was past full because I kept wanting just one more bite. I can’t remember the last time I over-ate. Which is not a particularly good selling point in the insta-pot’s favor, really, but I don’t suppose I should blame it too much for that.

The debate’s not over for me: my fridge is not big enough to store lots of leftovers and I can’t freeze extra ingredients. I may eventually decide that a diet of mostly salads and cold foods just makes the most sense for life in a van. But oh, I do regret the time I spent wondering if an Insta-Pot was really worth $120. If you have the room to store it, the answer is yes, yes, yes. And if you follow that link above, the price (at the time I write this, anyway) is only $70. Totally worth it! (It’s not an affiliate link — I don’t get any money if you buy it — so if you know anyone who uses affiliate links on their site, go visit their site, find an Amazon link, follow the link and then search on Insta-Pot, so they’ll get a few dollars from the sale. Yes, I have been learning about affiliate links recently!)

In other news, I’m hanging out in Gettysburg. I failed to go to a museum of agriculture and industry today. I felt like I should, since I was close and I’m traveling and museums are worthwhile… and then I remembered that my goal with this life is not to be a tourist, but to live simply. And to write. So far the writing is not going well, but maybe being very well-fed will be inspirational. 🙂

Gettysburg Farm RV Resort

08 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by in Bartleby, Pets, Randomness, Zelda

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I can tell already that the campgrounds are going to blend together. Less than two weeks and I was struggling this morning to remember which one had the concrete pads, cracked and broken, with grass springing up in the ridges, and which one was like parking in a field. A nice field. With a lovely walk for the dogs. (Ans: St. John’s RV in St. Augustine for the first; Bass Lake in Dillon, North Carolina for the second.)

I don’t think I’ll forget today’s campground soon, though. There are goats! Lots and lots of baby goats, wandering around the driveway like they own the place. As, in fact, they might do. It’s a first-come, first-served campground, so after I picked my site, I wandered back up to the front to turn in a card with my site number on it. I brought the dogs, both because they needed the walk and because, like apparently a lot of campgrounds, one is not supposed to leave pets unattended. (I suspect I’m going to have to break that rule upon occasion, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.) We were headed back when we startled a little white and brown goat that had been browsing in the bushes by the mini-golf course. It bounced away like a Superball, surprising both dogs. Z looked mystified, but B was all set to charge after it.

B has been seriously rambunctious lately. It’s quite a surprise. I expected him to tolerate traveling while Z would like it, but Z’s been anxious while B’s energy level has skyrocketed. At my brother’s house, he was playing, chewing on a blanket that wasn’t his, mouthing my hands… not at all the “hide in closets” puppy that he used to be. Serenity has a screen door that I suspected would be no deterrent to Zelda if she saw a squirrel, but Bartleby was actually the one who barreled right through it — and for no other reason than that he thought it was time to be outside! He wasn’t chasing anything and he didn’t need to be walked, he just didn’t feel like being in the van so shoved his way out the door.

Or maybe he wanted to check out the campsite. I chose a spot that looks onto the water, and instead of pulling in or backing in, I parallel parked Serenity, so that she’s alongside the water. Well, I didn’t literally parallel-park. There was plenty of room, so I just pulled in as if I was parallel-parking. You can see the view from my window on instagram (because I am having trouble uploading files to wordpress.) Having trouble taking photos, too — my phone stopped letting me save photos, which is possibly the universe telling me that I shouldn’t bother? But it’s hard to resist the temptation.

So I’m going to be here for a week. It’s my first test of real life in Serenity. I’ve been living in her for two weeks already, but it doesn’t feel like it at all. It’s been two weeks of driving and learning and visiting family. I’ve felt busy and on the go. This is my chance to slow down, take some deep breaths, and get back to work. I wish I could say that the weeks in which I’ve not been writing have been inspiring me, the words piling up like water behind a log jam, but alas, such is not the case. I suspect I’m going to be off to a slow start. Still, better slow than not at all.

Walking in a cloud

01 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by in Randomness, RV, Serenity, Travel, Zelda

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Sitting in a parking lot outside the vets. Both dogs are inside, getting looked at. Poor Z was pretty frantic about being left, but B, it turns out, had a goopy ear, which inspired me to ask to have Z’s ears checked, too. And of course they’ll give her an exam, so if her stomach stuff is anything feverish, we’ll find out about it. (Given the circumstances, I’m really not worried that it’s anything more serious. Well, that’s not true. I’m worried, but only in the way that I know it’s probably not a bomb, despite my predilection for worrying about such things.)

This morning’s walk took place in something between a mist and a drizzle. I could hear the rain in the trees, but it felt like a cool damp breeze on my skin. Pretty much like walking in a cloud, I suppose, but a cloud at a temperature that felt lovely, not too warm, not too cold. I walked both dogs around the “block”, so to speak. Is it a loop in a campground? But when we got back to Serenity, Z didn’t want to go inside, so I left B and took her on something more like a hike. We walked up the road and up some more, past campers and trailers and sites more like summer homes than temporary habitations, up and up, and then found a trail through the woods that led back to the front of the campground.

It was exactly like my daydream of a week ago. Except for the bugs and the sticks that kept getting in my shoes and the drizzle. But the joy and the sense of freedom and adventure, those were exactly right.

At the entrance to the campground, we found the enclosed dog park with agility equipment inside. I took Z in and tried to get her to play on the agility equipment, the tunnel, the low fence for jumping, the ramp and slide. I always kind of thought she might love agility games. Ha. She did not understand why I would want her to take the indirect routes and wouldn’t go on a single one of the objects. I’m sure I could get her to do it if I kept her on a leash and gave her treats, but letting her run around off-leash and sniff all the corners made her happy, so I didn’t bother. Maybe later.

Family time and campground days

31 Sunday Jul 2016

Posted by in Bartleby, Personal, Pets, Randomness, RV, Serenity, Travel, Zelda

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My Saturday night was an exercise in contrasts.

It started out great. I’d had a really nice day, filled with family time. Hanging out with my niece, working on a jigsaw puzzle from my childhood. Video games with my nephew, including introducing him to World of Warcraft. Running errands with my brother. The farmer’s market, where I bought fresh kombucha and spicy radishes.

We even watched some bike racing at the Velodrome. (I mostly felt sorry for the bicyclists — it was a hot day to be dressed like they were, even without the biking really fast in circles in the sun part. bike race . )

After dinner, the whole family watched Guardians of the Galaxy. And at 10:30, my niece, sister-in-law, and I headed to Barnes & Noble for the big Harry Potter release. My niece, M, was probably one of the youngest kids there, but stayed resolutely awake. I got to sit and color with her at the Ravenclaw table while her mom waited in line.

Such a nice day.

But when I went to bed, Serenity… well, smelled. Bad. Like something had gone wrong with the black tank, where the sewage accumulates. I tossed and turned, worrying and sleepless, making plans. I’d get up, take her to a dump station. Or no, maybe a full hook-up campground would be better. I hadn’t dumped the tanks before, so I wouldn’t want to be figuring it out and maybe messing it up if I had to hurry. Still, how could it have gotten so bad, so fast? Maybe a week in the heat of summer was too much to let accumulate? But (if you’ll excuse the TMI), there wasn’t a lot in the tanks to cause a problem — I’d mostly been using the bathrooms at rest stops and campgrounds and my brother’s house. However, clearly it was enough to get bad because it was bad.

But it shouldn’t be. But it was. So was something wrong? Toss, turn, toss, turn, worry, hold my breath, try to sleep, toss, turn, worry, repeat endlessly. At 4AM, B wanted to go out. Sometime after that, maybe 5ish?, Z wanted the same. I think I finally fell asleep for a while after the sun came up, which meant I missed my chance to go to a coin show with my brother, much to my annoyance when I finally got up around 9.

And, of course, when I did get up, I discovered that the black tank was fine. One of the dogs — or maybe both of them? — had had diarrhea under the bed while I was out. Ugh. So not nice to wake up to. And made even worse by worrying about them, of course. B has been scratching himself into a scabby hairless mess and Z has been refusing to eat her kibble. I honestly think that both of them are going to love this lifestyle eventually, but at the moment, they’re both really stressed out by the change and uncertainty.

My big plan for tomorrow — one week after the house closing, the first of August, the day I had determined was going to involve lots and lots and lots of writing words — is to find a Banfield and take B to the vet. I would take Z, too, but based on my past experience with Z having digestive troubles, they’d want to keep her for observation and right now, I feel like that would be a truly terrible idea. If she’s stressed, the cure is not going to be to make her more stressed. (The first time I took her to the vet for digestive stuff — years ago, now — the vet wanted to keep her until she was eating and going normally again. After two days, they finally said, “We don’t think she’s going to eat while she’s away from you.”) So as long as she’s still enthusiastic about walking (she is!) and giving me happy smiles, I’m going to give her a few days to mellow out. The long car days weren’t good for her but the campground days are.

So yes, campground days! I stuck to my campground plan, in part to empty the tanks and in part because the house electricity in my brother’s driveway was just about enough to run the AC consistently, but not if I did anything else that took power. And it only worked if I was parked in his driveway, close enough to the house for a single cord to reach Serenity, but on a fairly steep slope. The extension cords weren’t capable of handling the load if Serenity was in the street. (I’m learning more about electricity than I ever needed to know before, including that long extension cords are not good.)

Anyway, I’m now parked in a KOA campground about twenty minutes from his house. It’s expensive, but very nice. Lots of families here — there’s mini golf and a swimming pool and a nice playground, plenty of grass and trees. The spot I’m in is huge for Serenity, with a picnic table and fire pit and big tree. We’ve gone for a couple walks, chatted with some of our neighbors, and I ate my dinner — an antipasto plate, basically, with olives, dates, prosciutto, cheese, crackers — outside at the picnic table. The best part, I think, is that Serenity is backed up to a stream. Zelda saw the stream and immediately waded right in. B saw the stream and immediately sat down and refused to move any further. So typical!