Looking east at sunset

Maxfield Parrish was an early 20th century painter known for his rich colors and stylized neoclassical compositions, many of them set at “golden hour” with backgrounds of billowing cumulus clouds. I mention him because we had that type of sky yesterday evening.

We tend to watch the western sky at sunset, but sometimes the show is in the opposite direction. Life can be like that too, with our attention on one thing (often on something others say we should concentrate on) while oblivious to other possibilities.

Two curiosities

1. I discovered the paw prints of a cat on my windshield. I’m guessing it was from a neighbor’s cat or a feral one. Either way, I hope it was on rodent patrol.

2. Sedans are a dying breed as pickups, SUVs and crossovers take over the automotive market. Furthermore, sedans are even more rare out here in the rural West where trucks are king. So when I was driving Highway 180 to Flagstaff this morning I was surprised to see a cluster of seven late model sedans of various makes driving the other way. Perhaps they were the entire Arizona Sedan Owners’ Club headed to Grand Canyon.

I’m incrementally less ignorant today

I realized something today worthy of a self-administered head smack. Like most red-blooded ‘Mericans, I was raised without the metric system. I think it was because they wanted us to suffer more. Anyway, now and then I take a stab at using metric. The other day I flipped the switch on my digital thermometer so I could start making a connection between degrees Celsius and what it feels like. For example, when I started writing this it was 30°C and felt rather warm. It’s about 86°F. Okay, I’ll use that as a reference point.

Now, about that realization: As a metrically-impaired person I looked at the two scales and thought, “Fahrenheit has 180 increments between freezing and boiling but Celsius has only 100 increments, so Fahrenheit is more precise.”  

But then my thermometer changed to 28.7°C. Oh!!! (head smack) Decimals! Duh! Both the C and F scales can use them, so there’s an infinite number of increments. A little pothole of my ignorance has been filled.

Net access

A few weeks ago I wrote how delighted (and somewhat concerned) I was to not be bothered by bugs in the Pacific Northwest. But now I’m back in the high desert and so are the bugs. Flies during the day, moths and other flying annoyances at night. The most annoying insects are the tiny flies that never land anywhere for more than a sixteenth of a second. And some variety of small nocturnal pest that always wants to tickle the crook of my right arm. It’s too warm to seal up the Rolling Steel Tent, And even though I’ve had eleven years to figure out some type of convenient screen system, well, I haven’t. So the simplest thing I can do it toss netting over me.

I’m starting to yearn for the coast when I’m done here. Or is autumn high bug season there?

Rolling wood building

My friend, Tom, is an on-and-off nomad who seems to be settling into an extended off period. Maybe a permanent one. He bought a small bit of property in the high desert of Arizona and installed a prefabricated tiny house a while back. Then a couple of days ago he had a tiny barn delivered.

I had never witnessed the delivery of prefabricated buildings before. I had imagined it would be about the same as a shipping container brought to another friend’s place in Colorado: back the truck up to the designated spot, tilt the bed, slide structure off until one end hits the ground, then drive out from under it. Scrape thud scrape boom. But this was much fancier — and far more appropriate for stick-built structures rather than steel boxes.

The barn was slid off a low tilt-bed trailer by a small tractor/forklift. Then it was shoved down the driveway and nimbly maneuvered into place. Pretty slick.

Tom is pleased

As Tom explained his vision for the barn and the rest of the property I thought how different our needs, desires and goals were. He has grand plans while I was thinking if I got a piece of land (an idea that feels alien to me) the most I’d want is a sufficiently smooth access road, a patio/parking slab, and a pit toilet. A place to simply be — once in a while.

My ideals are different from Tom’s. They were different from Lou’s. And that’s okay. Universal agreement and conformity are not necessary. It’s only a problem if a person is unable to live the way that makes them happy. I’m lucky.

Mind-altering experience

Conventional vehicle-dwelling wisdom holds that it’s a lot easier staying in the boondocks than in cities. Civilization is filled with laws and folks hostile to those living in unconventional ways. Sooner or later law enforcement or irate neighbors will come a-knockin’.

Yet my friend, Scott, has spent almost a decade living in a van up and down the West Coast — all in cities. Without trying to be stealthy. And never with any encounters. I was skeptical. I thought he was just incredibly lucky.

But since I was committed to going to Vancouver Island to take Lou’s ashes out to sea, and since there was triple-digit heat inland, I decided to take the coastal route. 

I had concluded years ago there was no such thing as free camping anywhere near the ocean. Except for the driveways of good friends, it was all private property, military facilities, or paid campgrounds that required reservations months in advance. Scott and some online resources provided some location tips, and I headed out.

My first shock was Huntington Beach. I had lived there back in the 90s. How could I get away with overnighting on one of its streets? Perfectly well, it turns out. It was just a matter of finding the right type of place. In this case it was a divided boulevard between upscale residential developments. There were tennis courts on one side and a berm on the other that blocked the view of the homes and the homeowners’ view of the various live-aboard rigs parked on the street. Police and private security vehicles passed now and then, never stopping. Well I’ll be.

Encouraged by my experience in Huntington Beach, I continued northward. And everything was fine. I used what I had learned from the tips to scope out my own locations. Up through California, Oregon and Washington to British Columbia and back. The “worst” thing was that a couple of the spots had noisy traffic late into the night and/or early in the morning. Yeah, well, civilization.

These are the places I streetdocked. It doesn’t include places I boondocked, a hotel stay, a free campground, and friends’ places.

As I said earlier, I had assumed urban areas (especially the wealthy ones) were hostile to vehicle dwellers, while rural areas were more commodious. So when I left the Coast to go to Flagstaff I expected no trouble when I parked between a church and playing field in Tehachapi. But two hours later there was The Knock. The officer informed me sleeping in vehicles was prohibited. As he checked my ID another officer arrived. Then another. Were they expecting trouble? Were they going to start some? Did they simply have nothing else to do?

After determining I had no outstanding warrants and that I was just a harmless old man passing through, they told me it was okay to sleep at the truck stop just outside the city limits. 

So as I dozed off to the sounds of idling semis and passing trains I thought about the irony of it all. And I thought about returning to the coast after I finish helping my Flagstaff friend.

Drive on!

Eleven years ago, on the first day of van life, I drove from Lexington, South Carolina to a campground near Cincinnati. Six-hundred and something miles fueled by excitement and a deep desire to get back to my true home in the West. 

The next day I logged 730 miles, ending up in Minnesota at the junction of I-35 and I-90. Part of that was through fog so thick all I could do was follow the big rig lights ahead of me and pray they didn’t lead me into the ditch.

The third day was a “short” 500 miles to Rapid City, South Dakota. While waiting for my South Dakota residency stuff I wandered to Devil’s Tower, the Badlands, Wounded Knee, Mount Rushmore, and the Crazy Horse memorial. Drive drive drive drive… 

Then off to Boise to see friends. Then onward to the Oregon Coast.

I don’t drive like that anymore. I have no desire to. And I physically and mentally can’t. I’m an old man now.

But there I was a couple of days ago, wanting to get from the Coast to Flagstaff. That meant crossing the triple-digit heat of the Central Valley and the Mojave Desert, with long empty stretches that make the trip feel even longer.

I considered various routes, including one that followed the coastline all the way to San Diego. I finally settled on starting in the late afternoon, when things should begin cooling down a little, then taking 166 east from Santa Maria, over some low mountains to the bottom of the Central Valley, passing just south of Bakersfield, then up into the hills/mountains that separate the valley from the desert. I could stop in Tehachapi, at about 4,000 feet, where it wouldn’t be as hot. Then I’d leave as soon as the sky started to lighten and blast the 300 miles across the desert to Kingman before maximum heat of the day.

I do something that makes summer driving, oh, less pleasant. I avoid using air conditioning in order to save gas. Also, I just prefer driving with the windows open when the weather allows. The wind and the connection to the outside make me more alert and refreshed. But as I was approaching Needles it got to the point where being sealed in the cooler confines of the van would not only be nicer but also kind of necessary.

There are many of us who avoid driving on holiday weekends. Argh, vacationers clogging up the roads, many of them with large, slow rigs. However, there were far fewer of them than I had feared and for more big rigs than I think I’ve ever encountered. Half of them were driving at speeds that made the other half want to pass them. You know how that goes.

So when I got to Kingman I chose to get off I-40 and it’s long slow-truck-clogged climb up to Flagstaff and take Route 66 through Peach Springs. It’s longer, and the speed limit is lower, but it was a pleasant, stress-free drive. Too bad it only gets you halfway to Flagstaff before being swallowed by I-40. But I had gotten my second or third wind and made the final 50-mile push to Flagstaff.

The Coconino forest around Flagstaff was filled with weekenders and summer-ers, but I found a decent site and collapsed. I woke up after a couple of hours and took some nourishment before going back to sleep. A day behind the wheel had wiped me out.

This morning I contacted my friend and got directions to his homestead. Then I took another nap. But I won’t be doing much driving for a while. I’ll be wearing out my old man body in other ways.