This is a desert?

I diverged from the usual and expected routes and routines and explored a part of Yuma I had never seen: their riverside parks.

Gateway Park is next to the old Yuma Territorial Prison and under the I-8 overpass. (I’ve driven over the park many times, but never found my way down to it.) There’s a beach, pavilions, and the beginning of a bike/pedestrian path that follows the Colorado River. It looks as if some fellow vehicle dwellers like to hang out there. Train watchers, too.

Farther downstream, with the entrance at the north end of 12th Avenue, is West Wetlands Park. Boat ramp, beach, pond, elaborate playground, pavilions and the continuation of the trail that started at Gateway Park. It doesn’t feel at all like the desert. The morning of New Year’s Eve there were only a half dozen dog walkers and some maintenance people. I imagine it’s a popular place in warmer weather. I’ll certainly spend more time there during my Yuma visits.

Meanwhile at Casa Lou

It’s not much snow, but still, brrrrrr! Toasty inside, though.

Hmmmmm, I wonder what one might do with this

Is there a 5-gallon bucket handy for a test fit?

Let the weekend begin

Afternoon routine

This time of year, with shorter daylight hours and occasional overcast, is a challenge for my solar power system.

Nine months a year my 208Ah of battery and 270W of solar panel are plenty to run the fridge and lights, charge my laptop, hot spot and phone, and occasional AA and AAA batteries for various devices. The other three months I need to be more aware of available solar hours and the house batteries’ state of charge. And the state of charge of my rechargeable stuff.

From dawn to dusk I keep the solar panel aimed at the sun. Since it’s mounted to the van’s roof, that means repositioning the Rolling Steel Tent a few times a day. (That’s one reason I’m not the type who sets up an outdoor living space.)

Then each afternoon I recharge my electronics so as much of the last hours of light as possible can go to charging the house battery. That’s also a good time to recharge myself with a nap. In the sun.

Life imitates a math problem

A mile-long train is traveling from southeast to northwest at 62 miles per hour.

Some old guy is driving a van south to north at 57 miles per hour on a highway that intersects the railroad.

The van is 1.5 miles away when the middle of the train is at the crossing.

Will the train have passed the crossing by the time the van arrives, or will the van need to stop and wait? If the latter, how long?

[All the numbers above, except the van speed, are guesses, so even if you know how to structure the equation and how to solve it, you probably won’t get the actual answer. Though you could probably start with the answer and figure out what the other actual numbers could’ve been.]

The actual, real-life answer: If there hadn’t already been two vehicles waiting at the crossing, the end of the train would’ve just passed and the gate would be going up so that the van could have continued without stopping. Just barely.

If Santa were to come tonight...

...and I were sufficiently nice, maybe he’d bring me one or two of these candle lanterns/heaters, all converted to work with lamp oil (as described at the end of the video and shown in depth in this followup video). There are places I’d like to go this winter that get cold at night.

Catching a moment of non-rain

Doing what I can about SAD

Cashing in

I ended the stay-in-one-spot experiment today. I think I could have continued, but I had reached the point where I no longer enjoyed it. The test wasn’t about torturing myself. Besides, I needed to dispose of my trash.

While I was out, I took my nearly full change jar to a CoinStar machine. Clinkity plinkity plonkity. One hundred and sixteen dollars and seventy-four cents, after they took their cut. It’s not the greatest savings plan, but it’s easy. The down side is I won’t be able to scavenge the jar the next time I do laundry or wash the van.

Catching some of the last light of the shortest day

Sadness

Tomorrow is the annual Somerton Tamale Festival and I’m usually excited. I was severely disappointed when I missed it last year, and I was grateful one of my readers reminded me this time. But, in anticipation, I had a tamal the other day and… damn.

Between my messed up taste buds and low saliva production, the masa was like flavorless sawdust. And it killed whatever joy the pork filling might’ve offered.

Now there’s no point dealing with the parking and crowds. Besides, I’m in the middle of my no-driving experiment, right?

An experiment

I guess mainstream folks would consider my entire nomad life an experiment (if not plain insanity). If so, then I’m conducting an experiment within an experiment.

I’m going to see how many days I can stay where I am, in the desert west of Yuma, without moving the Rolling Steel Tent. I’m going to learn how long I can fight off my itch to go places. I’m going to learn whether I can enjoy it. What will happen if I don’t drive to town every couple of days just to have a change of scenery, just to be moving?

I’m 24 hours into the test. I’ll see how the next 24 go. And the 24 after that. And so on.

Met along the way

Sometimes I don’t know why I make the choices I do. Sometimes I don’t know I going to be making a choice until the instant I do. And sometimes innocuous choices leave me thinking, “Hmmmmm…”

The other day the choice was Highway 111 down the east side of the Salton Sea or Highway 86 down the west side. The roads cross each other near Mecca and rejoin at Brawley. Highway 111 is about two miles longer. A tossup.

The light at the junction was red as I approached, and I was in the left lane, so, what the hell, I turned left onto 111.

The town of Bombay Beach is on 111. It presented another choice: stop by or keep going? I’ve featured Bombay Beach on the blog before, and I did a video. Would there be any reason to go again? I wouldn’t know unless I looked.

I decided to stop. And that’s how I met fellow wanderer D. A. Pirate and his canine companion Sam.

Interesting guy. Veteran, lives and travels in a Mini, well-read, student of Aztec culture, mystic, thinks Sam might be the reincarnation of a pianist…

He wanted my opinions on various art pieces along the beach. “See that big eye down there? What do you think it means?”

“Oh, the all-seeing eye of God? The eye of enlightenment? The inner eye of the soul? Government surveillance?”

 “See that tower? What does it remind you of?”

“I don’t know why, but I’m thinking of the Manhattan Project’s first test, how they put the bomb in a tower.”

“Yeah, man, Trinity! Fat Man! And the black stones at the bottom are the destroyed Earth.”

Since my hearing isn’t very good, I had to ask Pirate several times to repeat himself. He replied, “Sorry, my voice is weak because I had throat cancer.”

“Me too.”

“No!”

“Yeah!”

If I were inclined toward a mystical view of life, I might conclude there was some type of behind-the-scenes force directing my choices so that I’d end up by the sea with a fellow throat cancer survivor, talking art, reincarnation, Aztec warriors, tattoos, compasses, and the Bomb. Anyway, it’s not the day I set out to have. It was better.

There and back

I drove from Yuma to Quartzsite today with the intent of meeting some new people. Sort of like self-prescribed therapy for the socially awkward. The general idea was to stay at least until Christmas.

However, one of the new people I met and had a nice conversation with mentioned that it had been near freezing last night and was forecast for below freezing tonight. It had clouded over, the wind was becoming more insistent, and the temperature was already dropping. “Why did you leave Yuma? It’s warmer there.” Good question.

The answer was to pack up and return south, and to a lower elevation. I had to hustle in order to make it to my preferred boondocking site before sunset. I don’t have those super bright off-road lights, so it’s tricky seeing the turn from the highway and not ending up stuck in a wash.

I made it just before the sun dropped behind the mountains. Moments later the clouds lit up as if to say, “Welcome back.”

This is what eBay can lead to

Fred Garvitz was poking around eBay one day when he saw a collection of banana memorabilia for sale. He thought it was fun, so he bought it. That impulse purchase has grown into the International Banana Museum in Mecca, California, on the eastern shore of the Salton Sea.

I had driven past the museum several times, not knowing it was there. From the outside, it looks like one of several closed and abandoned buildings in the area, victims of a recreation and tourism boom that never happened. I wouldn’t have stopped this time if I hadn’t finally noticed the big yellow sculpture by the road. “Hey, it’s a robot. A robot that looks like… a menacing banana?” I pulled in.

That’s when I noticed the pooping banana mural.

The museum is only open on weekends, and it was Tuesday. But thanks to this video we can see the inside of the forlorn building is a mass of happy, goofy, tropical yellowness. Who knew this much banana stuff existed?