Morning on the estuary

San Juan Creek meets the Pacific

They're like me

Each morning, as soon as the gate opens at Doheny Beach State Park (and at other state parks), folks who live in RVs and other vehicles flash their annual pass and file into the day use parking lots. Some choose the large lot by the entrance. Others choose the lot right on the beach. Some have claimed "their spot." They spend all day and then, just before the gate closes, they leave for whatever overnighting spots they've managed to find. That's no simple trick in wealthy coastal communities. They must commute to less hoity-toity cities. Here's an article about this. 

The main difference between these people and me is that they're committed to this area and I'm just passing through. They live here. I visit. So while they're considered homeless and a problem by small-minded building dwellers, I can pass as a tourist. Oh, and I pay for the campground so I can stay at night. But if I had a sure-thing, no-harassment, stealth camping spot somewhere, I would absolutely do this.

Tiny house of a different flavor

Nearly every tiny house I've seen is some variation on the classic cottage. A lot of people like that sort of thing. It's familiar, cute and creates less pushback from the big house majority.

But I'm more of a modernist. So is Jeff Wilson, Professor and Dean at Huston-Tillotson University in Austin, Texas. He's a guy who believes in hands-on research. He lived a full year in a 33 square foot dumpster in order to learn—and experience—how much space someone needs to live comfortably. To give you a sense how small 33 square feet is, the Rolling Steel Tent is 60 square feet. He turned what he learned into a sleek, sexy, airy, incredibly functional dwelling. My kind of place—if I ever wanted to live in a building again.

The bed rolls out from under the kitchen

The stairs roll out for storage

Final night here

Unless I'm with friends, I seldom stay in one spot more than a couple of days. The California coast is an exception. It's like home to me.

This is my third night at the Oceanside harbor. Tomorrow I move to Doheny State Beach for three days. Then to San Clemente State Beach for one day (because that's all that was available). After a weekend dash to the Anza-Borrego superbloom, I'll do a couple of days at South Carlsbad State Beach (again, because that's all that was available). I might return to Oceanside or head to someplace in Ventura or Santa Barbara counties. Or farther. It depends on what's available.

Hey, all you weekenders and full time RVers! Go to the desert. See the flowers! Go to Disneyland, Universal Studios, Legoland. Drive up to San Francisco and wine country. Free up a campsite for me, please.

As the world terns

I had several ideas for blog post topics, but gazing at the ocean made me forget them. Next time I'll write them down. Or I'll just post more videos of the beach.

Some surf, some paddle, some take photos

Made it

A beachfront spot was waiting for me in Oceanside. There are event tents set up farther down the beach, so I consider myself lucky to score a space at all. I had a few choices, though. I took one nearly at the end of the lot. Now to relax and bask in my good fortune.

Choices to be made

Yesterday was the hard date at one end of my schedule. I had to wait for the shoes to arrive. The hard date at the other end is a campground reservation Monday through Wednesday at Doheny State Beach. There are things to fit either between those two or after them.

One is the superbloom in the Anza-Borrego Desert. It's supposed to be the most amazing one since 1999.

Another is to complete my trek along the southern border by going all the way to International Friendship Park, where the border meets the Pacific.

A third is to camp at the marina in Oceanside.

I contemplated my options as I drove from Why to Yuma. The marina is first-come/first-served, which made getting a spot on short notice within the realm of possibility—if I got there early enough Friday to beat the weekend crowds.

The superbloom isn't in full... well... bloom yet, so that could wait. Would the end of next week be too late? And am I really the type of guy who would go out of his way and wander around in the heat to see flowers?

Friendship park is accessible on the US side only during limited hours on Saturdays and Sundays.

I stocked up in Yuma and continued west. What to do? Where to go? Oceanside to the border to Doheny Beach to Anza-Borrego made the most sense as far as being in the right place at the right time, but it meant a lot of extra driving. Oceanside was 200 miles away. A little over three hours, except I would be fighting commute traffic. I'd also be fighting the commute if I were to head out early in the morning. Should I just go to Anza-Borrego first then kill the weekend somewhere in the general area? Ergh. I couldn't decide. And I was tired of driving.

So I turned off I-8 and headed to one of my "homes"—the ocotillo and rock spiral thing on American Girl Mine Road. Home is good for recovering from road weariness. Home is good for thinking.

Getting it here

I have a pair of Keen Arroyo II shoes I've worn nearly every day for more than two years. Obviously, I like them. However, they're starting to wear out. I have a second pair I bought about a year ago just in case Keen were to discontinue that model. (Third General Rule of Consumer Products: Stop making whatever Al likes.) So I put the first pair aside last week and started wearing the second pair.

Gazing into the future, I thought, "They're still making the Arroyo II, but how much longer? Maybe I should get a third pair to hold in reserve."

Since I'm seldom around stores that sell Keen shoes, and since the stores that do don't always have the model I want or the size I need, I went to Zappos.com. Okay, they had them. I checked my bank account and realized I'd need to wait. Being unable to buy something at the moment (or ever) doesn't keep me from shopping around, though. That's when I saw another Keen model.

Ah-ha. Similar but a little lower in the heel, with openings in different places so I'd have a greater variety of tan spots on my feet. I decided to get those instead—when I had the money, of course.

Then, because the Interwebs know everything, I got a notice from Keen on my Facebook feed. They were having a sale. The net must've also known I'd recently received payment for an invoice. I had money and it was time to do some spending.

However, the problem was how does a guy who's seldom in one spot for more than a couple of days get the shoes into his hands and onto his feet? (Being a nomad isn't all carefree.)

Previously, I'd had packages shipped to my mail forwarder and then sent via general delivery to the post office near wherever I was willing to hang out for a few days. I've also had purchases shipped directly to friends or family with whom I was (or would be) staying. That's what I did this time. I'm hanging out with Lou at Coyote Howls East where there's an actual address I can ship to. I used some of the sale savings to pay for expedited shipping.

FedEx and UPS will deliver to some surprising places—Slab City, for example. Too bad they don't deliver straight to the Rolling Steel Tent wherever it happens to be.

"It's about two or three miles up Forest Service Road 3391, third or fourth turnout on the left. But only until nine-ish tomorrow morning. Then you can catch up with me on US89 northbound." 

No? What if I sent a signal beacon out to an Amazon delivery drone? C'mon, it's The Future®! These things are supposed to be possible.

Getting there

A rig like his is not necessary for where I go and what I do

I got a message the other day via Bob Wells' Cheap RV Living forum. The owner of a Toyota Rav4 Hybrid wrote:

The pictures you post seem to be of those picturesque spots I long to visit. Do you have a locking differential? Is it "required" for your type of travel? Could I get along with 7 inches of ground clearance and a poor AWD system?

Many people—usually those who have never experienced the world outside cities and suburbs—assume all the really cool places are hard to get to. Yes, there are some spots (and some people) that require four-wheel drive, but there's a crap ton of places that don't. The location of the photo in my masthead? Piece o' cake. You could drive a limo to that spot.

Only one place I've featured on this blog required four-wheel drive—the Jeep trip up Imogene Pass in Colorado. But I was just a passenger. Every other location was accessed via pavement or decent dirt roads. Some were kind of rough, but all I needed was the Rolling Steel Tent's two-wheel drive without a locking differential. It was just a matter of picking my line and taking it easy. I would guess about 90 percent of the places in my photos could be accessed in an ordinary small car. There are many people doing that.

Some writers for an off-road website were covering an overlander gathering near Flagstaff. A bunch of expensive, tricked-out SUVs. They came across the guy in the photo above who was living and exploring the West in his Geo Metro. He was mired in the region's awful mud and knew not to fight it. He was cool with staying put until the ground dried. The thing is, he got there, and many other places, in nothing special. In fact, he was driving what some people would consider the exact wrong vehicle. Front wheel drive? Hardly any ground clearance? Impossible!

But I see it all the time. For example, a couple of years ago I was looking for a boondocking spot down a rocky, potholed track. I was doubting the wisdom of going that way when I saw a Honda, a Buick and a Camero. Well, if they could do it...

True, I've been badly stuck twice. Once in sand that looked firmer than it turned out to be, and once in mud that was deeper and slicker than I had judged. Those were cases of wrong decisions, not wrong vehicles.

If you want to experience the mountains, the prairies, the forests, the deserts, the beaches, the beauty and amazing vistas of North America, you can do plenty of it in whatever vehicle you have. Just don't be stupid about it.

Settling in for a few days with the settler

While I was wandering to Texas and back, Lou was setting himself up at Coyote Howls East campground in Why AZ. He has a far greater anchoring instinct than I do. Well, I have zero anchoring instinct, so...

Whereas Coyote Howls West is set up like a standard RV park, the eastern part is sort of a hybrid of dispersed camping and RV park. In a way, it's like a cleaner, less freaky Slab City. With toilets and showers. And shuffleboard.

Many of the sites are occupied by people who pay for the entire year, every year. They bring in storage sheds, build patios, and landscape the hell out of their spots. Lou snagged a nicely landscaped site and decided to call it his own. He has expanded on the previous lessee's decorating, a shed is on its way, and he's going to retrieve his utility trailer of shop tools from his friend's place in Oregon. He has also found some friends with common interests.

I'm not surprised Lou is doing this. He went looking for a house the last time we were in the area. He talked about finding a place in Ridgway when we were there. He has that yearning.

Lou will hit the road, though, when it gets too hot here in Why. He might want a place to call home, but he's not insane. It just means we'll meet up on the road less often.

Seen

This dwelling is on a city lot in Ajo, Arizona. It takes the Quonset hut concept full circle. Pun intended.

If you're in a mood to give up the nomadic life, but you think other forms of alternative construction are passé (shipping containers are so five minutes ago) then this might be the thing for you. Sure beats pounding dirt into piles of old tires.

Following my bliss

As I rose to consciousness this morning I realized I felt wonderful. The temperature was perfect. The bed was perfect. I was 100% comfortable. In fact, I felt almost weightless. Mmmmmmmm yessssss. Once again I was thankful I had no schedules, no commitments, no reason to get out of bed. So I just floated there, drifting in and out of sleep, for another hour or so, feeling lucky.

Catching up on posts: Space Murals Museum

What do you do if you're the owner of the local water company, with a 1.2 million gallon water tank, in a region that tends to decorate its water tanks? If you're also Lou Gariano, you commission a mural commemorating the American space program. And you create the Space Murals Museum.

It was like revisiting my childhood when everyone was glued to black & white TVs to watch every moment of every flight. Alan Shepard's brief up and down flight. John Glenn's orbit. The Gemini missions. The Apollo missions' fly-bys of the moon and, finally, Apollo 11's moon landing. It was an exciting, amazing time.

Scale model of the Challenger built in Lou's shop

I had become jaded by the time of the Space Shuttle, but I watched the first mission because I had a hard time believing such an ungainly thing could get off the ground. I wasn't watching during the Challenger disaster because the Space Shuttle was old news by then (and because I was in a studio directing the photography of some computers). And when news broke that Columbia was doomed, I didn't want to watch.

The museum is a hodgepodge of donated and salvaged items. The chronology jumps around a bit, with things added where they fit in the room. But it's impressive for a small, low-budget museum. So if you're ever driving on US70 between Las Cruces and White Sands, stop by and bring back some memories—or create new ones.

Catching up on posts: Sparky's

Twenty years ago, Josie and Teako Nunn opened a burger and barbecue joint in the self-proclaimed Chile Capitol of the World, Hatch, New Mexico. They named it Sparky's in honor of a robot Josie had welded together out of junk.

Though their focus was food, they also understood the value of promotion. Ya gotta draw people in. One day, while Teako was searching eBay for interesting things with which to decorate the restaurant, he discovered a giant Uncle Sam statue for sale. Well, hell yeah!

But it didn't end there. If one big statue would draw attention, then more of them would draw even more attention. The math of advertising. And of obsession.

Evidently, the baby gets only a plate

Meanwhile, across the street, in their parking lot...

Being the skeptical type, I had to see if the colossal figures were promoting something colossally good. Or was I about to be a victim of hype. I ordered their World Famous Green Chile Cheeseburger. (It was named World Famous before any customers had tasted it. Again, the promotion thing.) It was delicious! No wonder the place was jumping.

Other businesses in Hatch have gotten on the big statue bandwagon, either for the fun of it or because they think the key to success is copying successful people. If the later, what they should be copying are exceptional products and services.