Bug

For two days I’ve been suffering intestinal distress. Lying down made it worse. Can you imagine what it’s like to be sick but be unable to go to bed?

One advantage of living in such a small space is that everything is only a few steps away. One disadvantage is that so is your sleeping spouse. Dave says I didn’t wake him EVERY time I got up.

I actually saw the sunrise this morning. I’d spent the last hour or so reading in the bathroom because I didn’t want my light to bother Dave and our RV only has two rooms with the bathroom being one of them.

Today we needed to replenish our supplies. Since our car is also our house we set off to town with me still in my pajamas. I never went outside but it still felt weird to be in the grocery store parking lot in my pajamas.  So on one of our stops I got dressed.

 Steve and Carol have been in camp two days now and I’ve yet to say hello to them.  If we lived in a house no one would think a thing of that but with the campfire only a few feet from my window I sit in here and wave at people out there which is very awkward.

I’m feeling better now than I have since this thing struck.  Maybe it’s a 48 hour bug and my time is almost up.  Maybe I’ll be able to go to dinner with the group tonight.  If so, maybe we’ll take our house with us just in case.

TTYL,

Linda

Hijacked!

As you all know by now, we are camped near Quartzsite, Arizona, on Bureau of Land Management property with the Escapees Class of ’08. The area is huge! There are many hundreds of groups parked here using many different methods of finding one another. Our class chose four methods: 1. tie blue and brown ribbons on our RVs, 2. post pictures of the access roads on the class website, 3. put up signs showing the class logo at the turnoff from the main road and the one to our site, and 4. post the GPS coordinates of our campsite on our website. So it’s fairly easy to find us.

Yesterday Steve and Carol were scheduled to join us in their Allegro Bus about noon. They didn’t come and didn’t come. Now, we all write our plans in chalk but I knew if there was a major change, they would call. They have my cell phone number and, I think, the numbers of others in our group.

They finally pulled in about 3:30 and announced they had been hijacked! It seems they were stopped by the side of the road in Quartzsite with their blue and brown ribbons flying from their antenna when a guy in a pickup truck drove up, welcomed them, and suggested they follow him to where the group was camped. So they did. But, when the got out of Bessy Bus they didn’t recognize anyone from the class even though they had met several of us. Then they recognized the RVs parked nearby. It seems they guy who welcomed them was from a group of Allegro Bus owners who just assumed Steve and Carol were here to join their group.

So, they met some good folks, said their goodbyes to them, and came to find us. We are glad they are here.

TTYL,

Linda

The Desert Bar

It has become a tradition among those of us camped near Quartzsite, Arizona, with the Escapees Class of ’08 for Mike & Julie to go out exploring then come back with the name and location of a restaurant we should all go to. This time the place is called the Desert Bar. It is literally out in the desert north of Parker, Arizona. The site used to be a mine and the current owner is building a major complex there all off the grid. So far it’s a bar and grill all powered by solar panels with water from his own well. Come along as we go out for lunch.

You start by traveling four miles of road clearly labeled “primitive”. Our group went in three trucks. Other went by other modes of travel.

  

In the parking lot you have the opportunity to go to church. Since the bar is only open Saturdays and Sundays, some people may use this church to ease their consciences. We went on Saturday but these four members of our group checked out the church on their way in.

This covered bridge is the access to the bar itself. Those towers in the background are the cooling system. Wetting the tops cools the air passing through them down into the rooms below. The weather the day we were there was perfect–needing neither heating nor cooling. 

Nearly everything on the premises is built from scavenged materials and those that aren’t are picked to blend in with those that are. Check out the faucet on this sink in the ladies room. The stalls are made of recycled hammered metal.

Here’s our group ready to tackle that four mile primitive road back out again.

The Desert Bar is a place you go for the atmosphere and the experience. Anyone passing this way should go there at least once. But take a truck not an RV.

TTYL,

Linda

Self-sufficiency

Self-sufficiency. What does that term mean to you? I’ve decided its meaning changes as you live your life. As toddlers learning to feed ourselves and learning to walk we were taking steps to self-sufficiency but for most of us the first time we thought of ourselves as being self-sufficient was when we moved out of our parents’ homes and began paying our own bills.

The most recent update of my own sense of self-sufficiency is when we learned we could live in our motorhome without being plugged into a park’s utility systems. As long as we start with enough food and water and fuel on board we can now live “off the grid” for five days at a time. Then we need to go to town to restock.

Our daughter, however, has spent much of her life learning true self-sufficiency. She once lived in a house with a windmill and enough solar panels to be able to sell electricity to the local co-op. She learned enough blacksmithing to be able to make basic tools. She learned that if you hang laundry outside in the wintertime it stays hard until all the water evaporates from it. She learned to harvest wool and hair from living animals and spin it into yarn to make clothes. She learned how to sew using a treadle sewing machine. She learned to plant a garden that provides food and how to cook that food. Next month she is going to learn to butcher a rabbit and a chicken and to tan a deer hide. She already knows how to shoot a gun. If our world really does go to hell in a hand basket, she will be more prepared than most of us to survive. Is that what self-sufficiency really means?

TTYL,

Linda

Hitches

Today we traveled east on I-10 between Quartzsite and Phoenix, Arizona.  For some reason I was aware of vehicles with trailer hitches on this route.

Several years ago someone passed a law that allowed semi tractors to pull a second trailer if the first one used a 5th wheel type hitch. That apparently has been expanded to other types of hitches. I’m not sure they realized all the implications of doing that. Today we saw a motorhome pulling a car that was pulling a flatbed trailer holding an ATV. As far as I know, there is no special driver’s license required to do that as long as the combination does not weigh more than 26,000 pounds. Most RVers never give a thought to weight limits so I wonder how many of these double tows are over the limit for their driver’s license and/or their tow vehicle rating. And how do they park anywhere?

I saw the left half of a double wide mobile home being towed down the highway so I was watching for the right half when a second left half went by. So I started speculating. Maybe they put a hitch on opposite ends of the two halves so the roof lines would clear curved underpasses. But most mobile homes get backed into the parking sites. How would they place one with the hitch on the wrong end? Then the two right halves went by. Oh, well. That’s not nearly as much fun.

Then we saw a sailboat on a flat bed semi trailer. It was longer than the trailer. Dave estimated the length of the boat at 60 feet.

Then we saw a trailer that was a combination RV and horse trailer with several stalls for the horses. I wonder if the trainer lives in the RV and takes the horses from race track to race track? Maybe they were headed to Santa Anita on Route 66.

Then we saw a big pickup truck pulling a small travel trailer.

Then what looked like a small pickup truck about to be devoured by the big fifth wheel chasing it. Probably the second pickup was as big as the first one but it was dwarfed by the tall bedroom hanging over the truck’s bed.

We also saw a vehicle with it’s tow bar folded up in front of it looking like a gun sight.  

And we saw some semi-trailers parked by the side of the road being used as billboards.

And a semi tractor pulling an empty flatbed which made us want to warn him he’d lost his load.

And a green tractor pulling a red container which made me think of Christmas.

We saw a car pulling a small U-Haul trailer, then a pickup pulling a small flat bed trailer of household goods, then a pickup with it’s tailgate down to make room for the couch it carried, then a full-sized moving van. Lot’s of people moving in the middle of the month.

Some semi-trailers advertised companies, some advertised products, and some traveled anonymously down the road.

We saw a semi tractor with no tailer, his hitch exposed for all to see.

We saw an RV pulling a U-Haul car dolly with no car on it. It was wagging down the road like a puppy’s tail. I hope the car is parked someplace safe and not also wagging down the road with no driver.

We saw a truck hauling another truck on it’s flatbed.

All those hitches and not a picture of one of them. Sorry, Robert, you’ll have to pretend this is radio instead of TV and see them all in your mind.

TTYL,

Linda