5 Years Ago: A Thought Experiment: Full-Time Tenting

Five years ago, I contemplated a life as a full-time tenter. 

There's no downside to envisioning different futures in one's head. 

I decided not to hike down that particular trail, and in fact, I don't even have a tent at the moment, and I have a different car. My new-to-me-car is a Prius, and there are plenty of folks who trick theirs out for camping, but a Prius isn't as camper-friendly to me as my 2012 Prius V was. I'm currently playing around in my head with what kind of camping I want to do in future. 

I spent the major part of the previous two years on a Pan-American road trip, either by car or by bus. 

The most tedious part of long-term travel is the route-planning. Living as a full-time tenter means constant route-planning: Where am I going? How am I going to get there? Where will I stay on the way? How long will it take me (in actual time, not Google directions time) to get from each day's start time to my desired arrival time? Where will I stay when I get there? What necessary services are along the way, such as groceries and gas? Are there vacancies at my desired destinations or waystations? Are there floods or fires that have closed roads or that might close roads (both were a factor in fall 2024 as I headed to the west coast and northward)? Bus trips through Latin America are no different: Which bus goes to my desired destination? None? Ok, so let's figure out which zigzagging bus trips I need to take to eventually get to my desired destination. 

Yes. The thought experiment on being a full-time tenter was a good one. It helped me make a decision: That will be a road not taken. 

Monday, May 3, 2021

Rootless and Portable: A Thought Experiment: Fulltimer Tenting

 

My Oliver Lee State Park campsite, outside Alamogordo, New Mexico. September 2012.

I've flirted with the idea of becoming a full-timer for more than 10 years, always in a modest arrangement. A smallish camper or, more recently, ChezP.

In the past five years, I've gone on innumerable video tours of folks living out of their cars. I've imagined how I might make it work for me at some future point. Over time, I concluded that full-timing out of my car was not a good fit for me. Too cramped.

But in the past year, I toyed with the possibility of full-timing in a tent (with ChezP as my back-up when inclement weather dictates). 

A tent is roomier. Living in a tent also frees up one's vehicle for transportation.  

What's out there to inform full-time tentfolk on the practicalities?

The resources I seek address my specific vision of tenting full time for up to a year: 

• Relocation every three to four weeks for new scenery, geographic interests, special events, or proximity to an expensive tourist destination
• Although wifi welcome, I don't envision tenting full time as a digital nomad who requires daily, robust internet access, as this would seriously restrict my freedom of movement
  
• Mild climate is a requisite
• I don't want to tent for three or more weeks in places where fear of bears (or mountain lions!) are going to keep me awake, like here (oh my!)
  

Below are some sources that give me actionable intel on:

• Practical realities of living full-time in a tent (power, water, location, weather, food, etc.)
• Gear (tents, kitchens, power, furniture)
  
• How to stay warm or cool; how to stay dry
• How to mitigate invasions from water, insects and other small critters, and wind

 Living in a Tent Full Time? - TMWE S4E22

 

On Wikihow: How to Live in a Tent (With Pictures). There are useful relevant how-to articles on the page, as well, along with references. Simple, clear, very practical. 

From One Crazy House: 15 Tent Hacks to Make Your Tent the Comfiest Place on Earth. (Note: Manage your expectations, of course, but there are some good hacks here that were new to me.)

From Mossy Oak: Camping in the Rain: 7 Tips for Keeping Your Tent Dry

 

Source: ScoutmasterCG

 

 

2023 Summer Road Trip: Boulder City, Nevada: A Shower and a Sigh

Two owls and a clan of coyotes awakened me at 5 o'clock this morning. 

Yesterday I learned there is no place in the Lake Mead Recreation Area to take a shower. Well, at least no place for the likes of us who stay (at all but one?) the campgrounds. 

As an aside, there is no electricity in the bathroom. I'd thought perhaps the lighting was just impaired - bulbs out or the motion sensor or something - but no, I tested the outlet next to the sink - no power. 

 I learned at the visitor center that the Boulder City swimming pool allows day passes and thus shower use, so I availed myself of that facility. 

But first I visited the Boulder City Library. 

I teared up a bit when I saw this sign in the library: 

Social Justice Club at Boulder City Library, Nevada. September 2023. Credit: Mzuriana.

In these reactionary times, when noble principles that one would think are above political partisanship, such as diversity, equality, and inclusion, have been hijacked into a New Racism and an internal Isolationism -  it wears on the spirit. 

So this sign? Out in the open like this? So unabashed? Yes, it gladdened my heart.

As did this sign! 

Period supplies at Boulder City Library, Nevada. September 2023. Credit: Mzuriana.

These signs of generosity to humankind, they made me sigh. And smile.

2023 Summer Road Trip: Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, New Mexico: A Reintroduction

 

 

2012 not 2023 - My Oliver Lee Memorial State Park campsite. Near Alamogordo, New Mexico. Credit: Mzuriana.

I landed at Oliver Lee Memorial State Park the last day of July. Feeling sentimental about being here.

Twelve years ago, I lived at the campground for two weeks while waiting for the appointed date to move in to my Alamogordo apartment. 

Indeed, upon my arrival the other day, I put up the very same tent and laid out the very same tablecloth that I did in 2012. I still have the folding table and the green-lidded bin. And the coffee mug. The Playmate cooler with its handle is released somewhere in the universe. 

This go-round, I got all red and sweaty putting up my tent in the dog-day, 95-degree heat. Had to pace myself.

Before I get into some other sweaty details, I will share the glorious joy of the ever-changing drama that the park performs on its massive 360-degree living stage. 

The slide show below showcases how the light moves across the lines of the terrain, and the sunsets, the sunrises, the moonrise, the vastness of the Tularosa Basin, the folds of the mountains. 

 

It feels good to be here.

Bluewater Lake State Park, New Mexico: Vienna Sausages

 

Walmart Vienna sausages. July 2023. Credit: Mzuriana.:

Yes, processed foods are of Satan. 

Nevertheless, all because of a visit to the village store just outside the Bluewater Lake State Park entrance, where I camped last week, I embarked on a taste comparison of Vienna sausages: 

• Great Value
• Libby's
• Armour

The store played a role because its shelves included Vienna sausages and other canned meats, including canned roast beef, which I will talk about another day. 

Because the temps, day by day, had been in the 90s, taxing both my ice chest and my limited creativity in finding protein that interested me and didn't require refrigeration, I paused before these baby-food hot dogs. 

I call it baby food because I associate Vienna sausages with highchair fare, vicariously picked up by the chubby fingers of a floor-crawling lil tyke, pushed by a not-so-steady fist into her drooly mouth, which she often shapes into a heart-melting, mostly-toothless grin.

Libby's Vienna sausages. July 2023. Credit: Mzuriana.:

 

My reviews: 

• Great Value (Walmart): Silky, reminiscent of my family's culinary heritage of braunschweiger-and-Miracle Whip-on-Roman Meal-bread lunches, a veritable paté. I liked it. 
• Libby's: Inferior to Great Value - one of those taste experiences so bland, it would be better to have something that tasted bad. 
• Armour: I ate it, but the memory of the act slid right off my brain pan, it was so forgettable. 

 

Armour Vienna sausages. July 2023. Credit: Mzuriana.:

 

Bluewater Lake State Park, New Mexico: Legged Creatures

Cortizone-10 Maximum Strength Anti-Itch Liquid With Aloe, 1.25 oz. Image source: Walmart

 

 

Tuesday morning. 

I arrived at Bluewater Lake State Park yesterday, which is near Grants, New Mexico. I spent Sunday night at the Motel 6 in Grants after my week of camping near Chama. 

Cortisone-10 Maximum Strength Easy Relief Applicator. 

That's what I bought yesterday to counter-attack the itching from those tiny scourges of Satan that assaulted me at El Vado Lake State Park. I have hopes it will work.  

Last night, in my tent, I stayed up late to finish Ken Follett's book, JackDaws. Around 11 or so is when I heard the coyotes. Then some camp dogs barking. OK. I didn't know about the coyotes. Put me in mind of the coyotes near Corpus Christi, where the coyotes ran through the campground every evening and every morning. What if I heard some snuffling around my tent? Where were my car keys? 

 

Coyotes. Bernalillo, New Mexico mural. August 2013. Credit: Mzuriana.

 

This morning, as I write this, and as I relish the cool air, I look at the cloud cover - what? Am I going to have to put the rainfly on my tent? I don't want to because it restricts the airflow in my tent. The weather forecast for the next 10 days is sunny or, at worst, partly cloudy. Hmmm.

A rooster crows.

Alabama: Meaher State Park: Breaking Camp

 

Meaher State Park Campground, Alabama. View from site 7. July 2021.

 July 2021

A pink rosé sunrise clung to the cottony clouds when I arose. The temp this morning chilled my skin, almost, in contrast to the hot hot temps earlier this week.

Yesterday, when gassing up for today's departure, I had the foresight to buy an x-large cup of Texas Pecan coffee at the CEFCO, as it was only 89 cents for any size after 3 p.m. and I knew it would be great for my camp coffee this morning! As it was. 

I did not have the foresight last night to undress the picnic table before I retired to ensure that this morning, I would already have a dry tarp neatly packed in its bin. I have to wipe it down of dew before I can put it away.

The traffic I hear from I-10 across the water is never-ending. Reminds me of the I-65 traffic behind and above my Birmingham apartment. If I work very, very hard, the sound of running tires on pavement can sound like ocean waves breaking against big shore rocks, but really, the sound is just a relentless backdrop of noise. 

Last night it rained and the temp dropped. I was completely cozy in my Prius. What a game changer this is from needing a tent.

Today marks the first leg of my loop back to Missouri for a second summer visit before a turn in New Mexico. 

 

Portable: My Tent

 

My tent at Arrow Rock State Park, Missouri. May 2018.

There's nothing particularly wowza about my tent, but I'm writing about it because Sinh, my Vietnamese student who I met up with in Las Vegas in early 2020, is in the market for tents, and we talked a bit about mine and how I like it. He asked me how long I've had it, and I had to think about that. Years. Years. But how many years?

My daughter and I took a road trip to Alaska in the second half of the 90s, and I did not have the tent then. We borrowed a tent from one of my cousins. 

I did not have the tent when I decided to pass the turn of the millennium in Organ Pipe National Monument in December 1999/January 2000. That tent was a geriatric pup tent, basically. The Y2K trip was my second solo road trip.

I did have the tent on my solo trip out west in September 2007, where I camped near Sedona and at the Grand Canyon. I wrote about this trip here and here. 

My tent at Grand Canyon. September 2007.

 

So we'll go with September 2007 - I've had my tent for at least 13 years. It's a Eureka Tetragon 8.

I said there's nothing wowza about my tent, but that doesn't mean I don't love it. Here's why:

• It's easy and relatively fast for me to put up by myself.
• Roomy!!!! It's a Law of the Universe that when a manufacturer says a tent is a two-person, three-person, or whatever-person tent, you actually need to subtract at least one human from that count. Unless, of course, you love to sleep in a tent like a pup in a newborn litter, with all of your gear outside. So, I think my tent is supposed to be a four-person tent, but it is ideally built for two. 
• A lot of pockets that suspend from three walls.
• A loop at the ceiling peak from which I can hang a lantern or keys or whatever. 
• The door is off-center - toward the right- so I've got a more spacious living area in the left side of the tent.
  
• I can almost completely stand up  in my tent. 
  

Related posts on tent camping

 2018: Missouri: Arrow Rock Camping, Part 1: Cold Coffee and Some Walks 

2017: Arkansas: Lake Catherine State Park, Part 1: Nostalgia

2017: Texas: Big Bend National Park, including a video of a tarantula checking out my tent

2012: New Mexico: Oliver Lee Memorial State Park: My Temporary Home

 

Tarantula on my tent, Big Bend National Park, Texas. September 2017.

In a post about tents and camping, how can one not include something about ..... bears? 

From A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson, about that night in his tent 

From the hilarious Hairpin interview with Molly Langmuir on her solo hike in the Tetons, where every moment was consumed by the fear of bears. Below, an excerpt: 

"The ranger who gave the canister you’re supposed to keep all your food in and leave 100 yards away from your tent at night explained that even if you drink an Emercen-C in your Nalgene you should put it in your canister, and that was actually what put me over the edge. Because if bears can smell an Emercen-C in a closed Nalgene, they were clearly a sort of advanced supercreature that could definitely sniff out the crumbs I’d likely drop on myself at some point. Plus, for all I remembered the last time I had used my sleeping bag I had been binging on beef jerky right next to a barbecue smoker. Also I didn’t know how far 100 yards was."

I remember solo camping at Padre Island National Seashore over the Christmas-New Year week one year, where I'd looked forward to actually camping on the beach .... until the campground host told me of the recent camper whose tent had been invaded by the local coyotes one night while he slept! That asshole. By whom, I mean, the campground host. 

Although I pitched my tent next to a group of young, robust Russian men, working in Dallas, I slept that night with a knife in my hand, hyper-alert at every tiny snap of my tent wall from a breeze, thinking of those coyotes. 

 

Back to Texas: COVID-19 Unfolding, Part 888: My Site Mates

 

 

 Notwithstanding COVID, I was not alone in my campsite. Strangers pushed into my corona bubble. 

The night before my departure from Lake Livingston State Park, as I sat outside in the gloaming, I felt-heard a small rustling beneath my chair. Discounted it. Then I heard it again. Pulled out my phone and hit the flashlight feature. Who - what - goes there? I panned the leafy floor. 

A frog. 

 

 

The next morning, as I broke camp, other site mates revealed themselves. 

Tucked into the space between my tent roof and the rain fly, a walking stick.  

Gripping the side of my colorful tablecloth - a sentimental artifact from the road trip my daughter and I took to Alaska when she was 16 - a green lizard. 

 

Neither the walking stick nor the lizard gave me any mind. 

 

Rootless: A New Vehicular Mate, Part 6: Toilet

The Toilet Paper Incident, circa 1981.

I created a bedroom in my Prius.


But I didn't want just any old bedroom. I wanted an en suite bedroom.

Toilet instructions in Thai restaurant in Tbilisi, Caucasus Georgia. August 2011.

Enter the Luggable Loo.

The Luggable Loo is a toilet seat and lid that you snap onto a five-gallon bucket. You can buy the items separately or you can buy the seat/lid/bucket package. It is less expensive to buy the items separately.

Luggable Loo. Photo source: Disaster Supply Center

Except for extraordinary circumstances, I plan to use my car loo only for urination. And furthermore, in most cases, only at night.

Toilet in Vakhtangisi, on Georgian-Ajerbaijan border. March 2012.

Obviously, I don't need a five-gallon container to collect my urine for an overnight. I am not a horse.

Typical toilet in Dubai, UAE. January 2012.

To manage the urine collection more elegantly than a splash waterfall into a cavernous bucket, I inserted a funnel-and-laundry detergent bottle catchment system into the bucket, an idea I learned from a vandweller named Crysal Vanner, as you can see in the video below:

I tested it in my bathroom at home, numerous times. Perfect!

• Both the bucket and the catchment system are stable, i.e. no dangers of tipping over or sliding out of place
• The catchment system is easy to pull out and it's easy to pour the contents into a real toilet
• The laundry bottle is large enough to accommodate even the most prolific nights, unlike that coffee can I used in the tent that one time in Cave Springs Campground in Arizona a long time ago, about which I had felt darn smug before I realized just how much liquid one can produce in one night, not to mention what happens when the can tips over

I placed my toilet on the floor behind the driver's seat. When just driving around, it fits just fine there. However, to use the toilet en suite, I need to pull the driver's seat forward quite a bit, then tilt the seat forward, as well. These actions give me the space I need to actually sit on the toilet.

I'm not enthusiastic about having to move the driver's seat forward so much at night. Although I can - barely - get into the front seat at that position, I don't think it's possible to drive in that position, which means that if I need to make a fast exit, I lose time in repositioning the driver's seat. (Of course, that is probably a moot point, as it takes rather more time to extricate myself from my bed and then make my way to the driver's seat. By the time I get to the point of having to adjust my seat position, any bears or zombies will have likely already delivered a mortal swipe.)

I'm on the look out for a 3.5-gallon bucket that I hear is also workable with the Luggable Loo seat, but I've not yet found one. In theory, this will give me more wiggle room in the "bathroom," which will reduce the front seat adjustment and will also free up some valuable real estate in the floor space behind the front seat.

But other than that - Chez Prius is almost ready for an inaugural road trip!

"Almost" because I've still got some window curtaining details to iron out.


Related posts: 

A New Vehicular Mate, Part 1
A New Vehicular Mate, Part 2
A New Vehicular Mate, Part 3
A New Vehicular Mate, Part 4
A New Vehicular Mate, Part 5: Bed


And following this Part 6 of the New Vehicular Mate series, I'll rename the series Chez Prius.

Rootless: A New Vehicular Mate, Part 5: Bed

Prius car camping. October 2019.

After months of youtube watching to see how car-campers did the:

• Bed
• Window covering

....  I was ready for and executed my maiden camp voyage.


It was only for one night, and there were a couple of minor glitches (as was to be expected), but overall, it was a successful mission.
 

Bed

I bought a 3-inch foam pad for about $25 at Home Depot. Measurements = 72" x 24." This was a perfect fit both length- and width-wise for my 2012 Prius V. 

I wrapped the pad in a twin-size mattress cover, using three sheet-grippers on the flip side to keep it tidily in place.

Atop the  mattress cover, I placed an old sleeping bag, in which I cocooned a twin-size flat sheet, folded lengthwise, meaning that my body lay between the two folded halves of the sheet. I only zipped the foot of the sleeping bag, leaving the rest unzipped. In this way, I could easily fold both top layers off of me to get in and out of bed or to regulate my comfort level if things got too warm or too chilly.

Prius car camping. October 2019.

The head of my bed sat atop a folded blanket + two plastic storage bins, as you can see below:

Prius car camping. October 2019.

You'll notice that the bins and blanket support the head of the 'bed.' To get the bins and the full length of the foam pad into its slot, I had to pull the front passenger seat all the way forward.

The Sterilite bin dimensions are:

Because I'm relatively short, I may be able to fit comfortably below the top of the folded-down back seat. (Note that I removed the head-rests.) I'll check this out in the future.

So how comfortable was the bed on my first night?

I'd give it a 90% thumbs-up. I felt the glimmerings of a dull backache in the early hours of the pre-dawn, but that's not enough to go on yet.


Window covering

I don't plan to stealth camp, so I'm not concerned about making it appear that my car is unoccupied while I'm inside sleeping.

After a lot of over-thinking, a little experimenting, and many hours of watching youtubers share their schemes, I'm pretty happy with using a mix of strategies.

In the photo below, you can see examples of four methods I used:

Prius car camping. October 2019.

1. I cut out a panel from a roll of Reflectix that I bought at a Lowe's or Home Depot
2. I bought a pair of window "socks" via Amazon (more on these later in this post)
3. I bought some magnets - small round disks + some smallish rectangles - and draped a shawl over the front driver side window. The window frame on the inside is metal, and I placed several magnets under the top edge and one or two on the side edges. 
4. On my car, the passenger side design is such that I could loop one end of a bungee cord to the front windowshade, run it through the front-seat and back-seat ceiling-edge hand grips, and hook the other end to the infant-seat buckle ledge that is along the ceiling edge behind the rear passenger seat. Using clothespins, I hung another shawl so that it ran from the front window to the end of the back window. Or, I should say, I could have done that, but I chose to leave the back passenger window with just the window screen sock so I could have a cross breeze between the two back passenger windows. 

Prius car camping. October 2019.

Above you can see I used the Reflectix for the rear window, as I did the triangular windows in the back bay area of the car.

Prius car camping. October 2019.

And although the photo immediately above is a repeat of the long-view bed shot I posted earlier, now that we're talking window coverings, take note of the bungee cord and clothespin set-up on the right.

Also note that I stretched a bungee cord in the front seat area across the width of the car. It was as good a place as any to experiment with an internal clothesline, and in this case, a towel holder. It had the additional benefit of offering a second line of privacy behind the windshield AND obscuring the blinking security dash light. In the windshield, I had placed my usual sun shade disks.

None of the window coverings required permanent changes to the Prius. Nor did they require any handywoman skills, other than the cutting out of the Reflectix. 

The window screen socks were fine for me camping, however, if I'd had a light on inside the Prius, they would have offered no privacy. Which is why I wanted the second-line option of the shawl clothespinned from the bungee cord on one side of the car.

I liked that I could see out of the car through the window screen socks much better than someone could see in. In fact, without lights on inside, someone would have had to press up hard against the window to see much of anything through the window screen sock.

On the other hand, the screen sock not only keeps out flying little biters and ear buzzers, it stops some of the breeze, too. I didn't have my windows rolled down all the way with the screens on, so I'll try that out next time. Also, I'll likely invest in a small usb fan to push some air flow across my head.


Glitches

Ceiling lights. The default setting for my ceiling lights is to go on when I open my doors. Not good in a campsite scenario, at least not for me. My fix: Slide the ceiling light buttons over to the "off" position so they don't power on when I open the doors.

Beeping. Because I had my key with me and because I was in a car, I defaulted to locking the car while I was inside and ready to sleep. But the Prius door (at least not the back door) doesn't automatically release when you pull the inside door handle. This means you have to press the unlock button on the keyfob, which means, yes, there's the double beeping sound when you unlock it. Which is not being a good neighbor to folks in nearby campsites.

It's not like I was ever able to lock my tent, so I will just not lock my car when I bed down for the night in the future.

Heating/air conditioning. One of the Prius superpowers is to be able to manage one's little habitat climate so it's cozy inside when outside it is too hot or too cold. Although the car powers on silently when engaging only the battery, it does emit some sound when it periodically switches on the engine to recharge the battery. A number of parks, like Organ Pipe National Monument, where I tried out my camp bed the first time, are very very very quiet parks. And if one is in a generator-ok site, the generator use is restricted to two hours in the late afternoon-early evening and two hours in fairly early morning. So ..... what does that mean for running my Prius when it's too hot or too cold? I don't know yet.

Conclusions

• It was a wonder to be able to break camp so quickly the next morning!
• Looking forward to my next outing.

Related posts: 

My New Vehicular Mate, Part 1
My New Vehicular Mate, Part 2
My New Vehicular Mate, Part 3
My New Vehicular Mate, Part 4

Missouri: Arrow Rock Camping, Part 2: Additions to the Carcass Gallery

I experienced a moral dilemma about my photo of this racoon, freshly killed on the road. The original photo was very, very graphic, and it prompted me to think what I wanted to achieve by sharing it or even keeping it at all.

Because I'm not entirely sure why I collect this gallery of animal carcasses to begin with, I didn't have a clear answer to the question of why I would censor one of the photos.

I do know that one reason I capture these pictures is because it is an act of seeing an individual that used to be alive, but which is now dead. So the way I edited the racoon picture is in that spirit.  I can look at that small hand, for instance, and touch the leathery palm, in a way. I can see the animal as a whole and not get lost in its entrails. 

Dead racoon, Arrow Rock State Park, Missouri. May 2018.

There is something odd about a carrion eater like this vulture being dead. Do vultures eat dead vultures?

Dead vulture, Arrow Rock State Park, Missouri. May 2018.

Dead vulture, Arrow Rock State Park, Missouri. May 2018.

My cumulative carcass collection below:

Missouri: Arrow Rock Camping, Part 1: Cold Coffee and Some Walks

Arrow Rock State Park, Missouri. May 2018.

I'm a bit of a camping Goldilocks, perhaps, in that I don't want to camp when it's too cold and I don't want to camp when it's too hot.

The first weekend in May was a splendiferous time for my first Missouri camping foray this year.

I chose Arrow Rock State Park.  I've been there before. I like that the state park is tucked up against the village of Arrow Rock, and it's pleasant to poke around town.

Cold coffee fixings, Arrow Rock State Park, Missouri. May 2018.

To keep things super easy for me, I decided not to cook a damn thing. Not even coffee. Whoa, wait a minute! Not that I'd do without coffee, for God's sake! Nope, I'd bring my favorite instant coffee, some sweetener, a flavored creamer, and shake it all up in cold water each morning. Damn good stuff.

Arrow Rock State Park, Missouri. May 2018.

When I arrived at the campground, I nabbed the second to the last available campsite. Hoo-wee, that was lucky! The Audubon Society was hosting a weekend birding event, so I got there in the nick of time. I saw a lot of big-rig camera gear. Impressive.

I took several walks over the weekend.

Arrow Rock State Park, Missouri. May 2018.

One of the coolest things I saw was this tree being consumed by beaver bites.

Beaver teeth markings, Arrow Rock State Park, Missouri. May 2018.

Beaver teeth markings, Arrow Rock State Park, Missouri. May 2018.

Beaver teeth markings, Arrow Rock State Park, Missouri. May 2018.

Beaver teeth markings, Arrow Rock State Park, Missouri. May 2018.

I had the thought to record morning birdsong at my campsite and see about adding that to a slide show for my youtube channel. Below is my result:

Arkansas: Lake Catherine State Park, Part 6: Coda

Lake Catherine State Park, Arkansas. October 2017.

October 2017
On the way to Missouri
Lake Catherine State Park


After the rain

I survived the previous evening's rain issues just fine, and got up early to watch the sun rise. Another camper was up even earlier, and he'd set up his chair at the end of the pier to watch the dawning of this good day.


The fellow nomad

On my Monday afternoon guided hike, I met another nomad of a certain age. I'll call her Susan. From a lifetime up in Maine or some other ungodly cold place, Susan retired two years ago. After a year or so of meeting friends frequently for coffee mid-day, she wondered, "Is this what the rest of my life is going to be? Meeting for coffee every day?"  And (I'm paraphrasing here): "It's fucking cold in Maine. I don't want to be cold anymore."

There came a time when Susan hatched a plan, and she delved into research about living and moving about in an RV. Friends of hers had bought a new Class B Pleasure-Way van. Eventually, she decided on the same.

When I met Susan at Lake Catherine State Park, she was slowly wending her way to a warm wintering place. California, perhaps.

Susan graciously allowed me to visit her van so she could give me a home tour. We'd noticed that my next door neighbors (who'd lent me the shovel the evening before) also had a Pleasure-Way, so we ambled over there to see if we could invite ourselves for a tour of their van.

My neighbors' van was a vintage one, I don't remember from what decade, but at least 20 years old. Although I'm not a fan of house tours, I do like to poke around RVs because ... you never know, I may end up in a tiny home space, whether on wheels or not.

It's fun to look at which amenities people choose, the utility of the various layouts, and imagine which amenities I'd choose and which layout I'd like.

My neighbors were delighted to give us a tour.

Susan is barely in her first year as a nomad. How long will she do this? Who knows? I hope she has a grand experience.


Neighbor exchange

When I walked over to return my neighbors' shovel, they said, "No, no! Keep it, please! We bought it awhile back and we've never used it!"

What a kindness.

I realized I might be able to reciprocate: I'd been lugging around two canisters of propane for a camp stove or lantern, and hadn't used them in ages. I asked if they might have a use for them, and if so, they'd be doing me a favor to take them. This is because I worried slightly about the safety of carrying around the canisters in a car in variable temperatures and in the enclosed space of my camp box.

They said, yes, the could use them.

Win-win.

A slide show of my stay at Lake Catherine State Park below:

.... back on the road to Missouri.

Arkansas: Lake Catherine State Park, Part 5: Engineering

Lake Catherine State Park, Arkansas. October 2017.

October 2017
On the way to Missouri
Lake Catherine State Park


Tuesday evening brought a couple of challenges to my little campsite kingdom.

First there was the rain.

I'd chosen a level site for my tent construction.

What I discovered, however, was the lack of drainage for when the rain fell, and fell, and fell.

I found myself digging storm trenches around and away from my tent.

Water diversion, Lake Catherine State Park, Arkansas. October 2017.

On one hand, this exercise caused no little consternation. Sleeping in a sodden tent is no fun, even though, fortunately, I could sleep off the floor, atop the springy cot my nonagenarian aunt gave me a few years ago. Because I would be leaving the next morning, it probably meant I'd have to pack a muddy, damp tent.

On the other hand, there was something satisfying about having to eyeball a problem, analyze how to fix it, and then execute on the plan, with adjustments on the fly. It reminds me of what an algebra-loving acquaintance told me once: "Every day is solving for x."

To divert the water from the tent, I had to dig trenches and clear debris from the corners of the railroad-tie-built platform so the water had a place to drain into, down, and away from the platform altogether.

Not having a shovel, I used the sturdy cap/cup to my large coffee thermos for the digging, and a knife and stick for the debris removal.

My next door neighbors, RVing it in a vintage Class B Pleasure Way, brought over a camp shovel for me to use in my excavations! They'd bought it awhile back and never used it. This helped a lot.

Water diversion, Lake Catherine State Park, Arkansas. October 2017.

 Second, the uninvited guest. 

A goddamn wood roach or some such invaded my tent right before I went to bed. I tried to trap it so I could, if possible, scoot it out of my tent, and if not possible, kill it, but the damn thing eluded me. I do not like unpredictable strangers crawling about in my bedroom at night.

Eventually, I just had to live with the situation and hope it didn't surprise me by flying into my face or ear or start crawling up my arm or something while I slept. **Shudders.**

It didn't.