Author: Lee and Tracy

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First Time Working In a Utility Co. Park – More Training and Getting Acclimated

I forgot to mention something very important in the last post.  I got to be on the radio to talk about my cookbook! I had to get up pretty early to be interviewed since there was a 3 hour time difference, but it was a ton of fun talking about our lifestyle, the website, and the cookbook to people we knew in our previous life.  Plus Danny and Luca made it very easy for me, asking all the right questions and jumping in whenever I faltered, which was super sweet.  The interview is available on podcast if you are interested (see link here) and of course my cookbook is available for purchase in ebook or paper format on Amazon.  For those who have purchased a copy I wanted to say “Thank you!”.  We seem to have settled into a pattern where we sell a book every few days and that is pretty gratifying. That shows me it isn’t just friends and family who are making the purchases.   At this pace,  the projected royalties for the year might be around $1,000 which, on our budget, would certainly be welcome.

Plus,  since we can get mail now, I received my paper copy of the book and I have to say holding it in my hands was really a special feeling.  I had been concerned about the formatting since we didn’t pay to have that professionally done, but it turned out pretty nice.  The pictures look good, the print is nice and big, and the paper stock has some substance to it.  It really was cool sitting and holding it in my hand, and if nothing else that feeling made all the hard work to get there worth it to me.  OK, back to the blog, and let me start with the disclaimer you will be seeing a lot of this summer:

The company we are working for this summer has a very specific media policy which I am adhering to.  This includes not mentioning other employees by name, so I will do the best I can to recount our experience using people’s roles or titles.  Also, because it’s not really that difficult to figure out who we are working for,  I want to be clear that I in no way speak for the company, and am only recounting our unique personal experiences.  Also, any details I get wrong (and I am sure there will be many) are due to misunderstandings on my part. When researching any job or place to stay/visit I highly recommend going to the source and starting with the company website for information. 

After two days of group training, Lee and I spent Friday and Monday on the job training with two experienced seasonal employees here.  Even though I am not currently scheduled to work in the campground office, I was trained on their computer system Reservation Friend.  I was pretty excited about that because although I have years of computer experience, I have never worked on a campground reservation system, and wanted to put it on my Work Kamper News resume.  As I have mentioned before, we are a big fan of Work Kamper News and I pay for a Gold membership to get their daily updates and keep a resume on file with them.  The resume serves the dual purpose of giving me an up to date and easily accessible couples resume (which most employers will accept although occasionally we run into an employer that needs individual resumes) and potential employers search that database looking for workers and we have been contacted several times by potential employers because that information is out there.  More and more of these jobs require experience on Campground Master or some other camping reservation website, and after receiving this training I have a better understanding as to why.  Oh, and as a complete side note, before I forget, both of the couples we are working with this summer use Working Couples.com.  I had never heard of it before, but since both work most of the time on the road like us and they both independently mentioned it, I am going to check it out.  At first glance it looks like there is a fee, but it also seems to provide a more comprehensive list of opportunities than “traditional” work kamping jobs which is of interest to us.  Don’t know anything more than that so if anyone has used it, please leave a comment and let us know how it worked. 

Anyway, back to the training.  The trainer and materials were both very good, but the system itself was more challenging than I expected.  I have years of experience working on Oracle Customer Relationship Management software and built two call centers from scratch in my career.  So I thought it would be super easy for me.  It started off pretty well as a standard reservation is pretty easy and they provide lots of ways to create that reservation depending upon your preference, which is great.  For example, you can look at the existing schedule from a grid view (think Excel spreadsheet) or from a map view.  Pretty cool.  Where it got complicated though was when multiple reservations were linked and payment for them was through one credit card.  This is a pretty common scenario for weekenders, and I just found the series of steps tough.  That would all be OK if you were able to take the reservation on paper and then add it into the computer afterword, but because the reservation system is available online to customers you can’t do that.  You need to be live on the phone with the guest while you take the information and follow the series of steps.  I am sure after some practice that will be second nature (it certainly was for our trainer), but it was a little intimidating.

Thankfully the trainer spent all day Monday working with us on the system and we got lots of hands on practice.  Not all of their camp host positions require computer work.  The National Forest sites are all on the Reserve America system, which is a third party company, but two of the campgrounds are 100% owned and operated by the utility company and are on this system.  Despite the challenge for the employees I do think it is the right way to go.  Having customers “self-serve” online has significantly decreased the workload in the office and I am sure improved customer satisfaction.  But it also (in my opinion) turns the office position into one where some level of computer experience is required.  The level of computer expertise in the camping workforce is changing as more people use smart phones and the work force is getting younger, but as I said, this program was not simple.  When we got to a point where we wanted to try working with live customers, one of my fellow trainees made the call and the customer wanted to change 5 different reservations over the phone.  The trainer and my co-worker did an awesome job working through it, but it showed the level of complexity some of these phone calls could have.  Anything easy is probably being done online so the calls that come into the office (although fewer than before online reservations) are mostly more complicated.

Aside from the computer work, which I am glad I was cross trained in but will only be using when I need to cover someone’s days off, you are probably interested in hearing about what we will be doing all day. Since I was in the office, Lee got an overview from the husband of our trainer on Friday and then we spent Saturday and Sunday getting acclimated and doing a first and second pass on our daily route.  I thought the best way to describe it was to show each site with pictures and I have to say I have the most amazing “office view” to date.  The work on most the sites is pretty basic, stock and clean toilets, pick up and empty trash, weed, etc, but there are a few extras that I will explain as we go along.  I am presenting these locations in the order they are along the river but we will be using visiting them in different orders depending on the day/need.  Three sites are upriver from us and the other three are down river and we are located right in the middle which is nice.  Since a picture really is worth 1000 words in this case, let me jump in.

We cover the three sites along the river along with the culvert and lower marina in the North Fork Reservoir and Faraday Lake. So you can see there is some distance between all these sites

Sandstone Creek Boat Launch – This is a new site for the company and is a boat launch and fishing area.  There are no toilets here as of yet, so we just check the area and pick up trash. 

These stairs are really cool. The middle rails are shorter so you can put your boat in the middle and slide it down. Lee was leaf blowing them off because they had quite a bit of forest detritus on them from the winter.

 

The boat launch/fishing area is pretty rustic but there is a pretty waterfall to the left right under the bridge.

 

Hole in the Wall Boat Access Site – This is a very popular site with rafting companies and is a day use area.  It has a pit toilet, boat launch area and 4 picnic tables.  This site will require quite a bit of weed whacking which is a high priority since a White Water event will be held in this area on May 20th and 21st.  More to come on that later. 

Four of our sites have dog baggie dispensers which we keep filled. I was happy to see them, make our life easier.

 

This site also has the cool boat launch stairs, which is probably why this is a popular site for rafters to have lunch.

 

View looking up from the bottom of the stairs

 

The river view from the launch area

Moore Creek Boat Access Site – This is our busiest rafting site as it not only has a pit toilet but two changing rooms.   The rafting companies meet their customers here, and they use the changing areas to put on wet suites.  We’ve met some of the rafting company employees and they are very nice, which is great since we will be working with them all summer.  We are giving them business cards with the campground office phone number and encouraged them to call us if they see any problems.  They informed us the common times they use the site are 9:00am -9:30am and 12:00pm -12:30pm, which was very helpful, because we will know when to schedule our cleanings.  This is an older site and doesn’t have the modern boat launch stairs yet, but instead has a cool rock path. 

The changing rooms are pretty big and have a long bench inside each to make it easier

 

The parking lot is used by rafters and by folks who are driving the road and need to use the toilet.

 

This is the rock path, although there is simpler gravel path to the left

 

View from the bottom looking up. I need to watch my step on the rocks. I think they push the boats down this path and then walk down the gravel path to the right.

 

Wild flowers are blooming along the path

 

View from the boat launch area.

 

Those three sites are upriver from us, but downriver from the campground are three other sites.  Since these are closer to town, not in the National Forest, and are used mainly by fishermen they have a totally different vibe.  They also have gates which complicates things a bit, so let me spend some time on a couple of these.

The Culvert – This is a beautiful little fishing spot that unfortunately turned into the weekend drinking spot at some point.  They have really focused on getting that under control though and there is a gate that closes at night at the location.  Folks can still park at the top and walk down, but its clear who is hanging out down there on Friday and Saturday nights.  It took us awhile to do trash pickup at this area.  Our very first volunteer gig was for a BLM day use area and the manager Stan taught us all about micro trash.  Water bottle tops, beer bottle tops, and small pieces of trash buildup over time, and can be harmful to wildlife so were a major focus of his. Taking that mentality into this particular area was a bit challenging, but I collected 2/3 of a five gallon bucket full of “micro” trash before I was done.  Hopefully this was mainly from the winter and having a clean area will encourage people to keep it clean.  We also added a second trash can down there to help encourage folks to deposit their litter, cans etc.  One good thing, at least from our perspective, is the restroom is a port-a-john which is serviced by a third party, so we just give it a quick look and then mainly focus on the trash. 

Beautiful pond. Not sure how far back it goes.  We heard some homeless people were living in this area, but again, an effort has been made by local law enforcement to stop that.  For now we will stick to the main areas.

 

No that crazy about this little tunnel with my claustrophobia

 

You walk through this to get to the larger lake area where most folks fish. I had Lee pickup the trash in there 🙂 but I did walk through to see the lake

 

The lake is really beautiful

 

All of these lakes are stocked with trout and many of the locals subsistence fish in the area. Stocking started this week, so we should see an increase in traffic in these areas. What we are hearing is the “raised” fish are much easier to catch

Next is the Lower Marina which many of the locals use to put in fishing boats.  There is also a very small beach area and lots of places to fish.  This area was in the process of being cleaned of winter river debris and since it doesn’t open until May 22nd we have spent minimal time there.  We do know there is a gate and have heard there is some boat traffic waiting in the morning.  We also know you have to wait for the parking lot to clear before you can shut the gate at night.  It has one pit toilet and 5 trashcans cans and supposedly gets quite a bit of use.  I will provide a better description and pictures once this area is open and we have a better idea of how it all works, but I did take a couple of pictures to start off with.  This doesn’t come close to capturing the area though.

These big logs were pulled from the river over the winter and there is another huge pile in the middle of the parking lot. As of this posting that debris has been removed so the next steps are striping the parking lot and getting it ready for opening day

 

Plus we saw this amazing Osprey nest down by the dam and fish ladders. I guess they are super active at night so can’t wait to see that in person

 

Finally we have Faraday Lake.  This is a very large area with two toilets, 7 trashcans, three picnic tables, and a lake.  Although we were told this area doesn’t see much use, both times we have gone up there lots of people were fishing it or walking their dogs, and that was before the fish were even stocked.  Thankfully the large lake area is mowed by someone else, but we do clean the restrooms, empty trash, and weed whack around the picnic tables.  By the time we got to the lake area the day I was taking these pictures it was pouring, so unfortunately don’t have pics of that either, but again promise to talk more about this area in a later post.  The good news about this area was people seem to keep it very clean, so although it is geographically our largest site it may not require a ton of time.  Will need to wait and see on this one.

So it’s multiple sites and a lot of ground to cover, but there are two of us and all of the sites don’t necessarily need checked every day.  My mind always goes towards putting together a plan, so after surveying the areas and talking to the more experienced employees who have covered these sites I put together a rough plan of attack.  I also documented the specifics of all the sites and our perceived job responsibilities, and then put all of that in a Word document and sent it off to our immediate supervisor.  The main thing we have learned in these jobs is to have clear expectations of what constitutes success from the beginning.  We like that we have flexibility in our schedules to complete the tasks, just want to be clear on the priorities.  And of course you’ll be hearing a lot more about this as the summer progresses, and hopefully about some fun stuff outside of work too, but I think this overview will help give you an idea of what I am talking about as we go through the season.

Camper Chronicles is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, a program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. We very much appreciate any purchase you make via our website links.  There is no additional cost to you and helps support our blog.  Search Amazon.com here

Or you can check out our recipe book filled with 80 real recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. The cookbook specializes in recipes that have a limited number of ingredients, without sacrificing flavor and is organized into categories that matter to full time RVers such as Happy Hours, Travel Days, and Pot Lucks   You can preview the kindle version on  Amazon or the Apple version on Itunes.    It is also available in paperback. 

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First Time Working In A Utility Co. Park – Training And Orientation

Disclaimer: Before I start, I want to mention that the company we are working for this summer has a very specific media policy. I will not be mentioning them by name, or mentioning the specific names of anyone I am working with, except for Lee.  Also, because it’s not really that difficult to figure out which company it is, I want to be clear: I in no way speak for the company, and am only recounting my personal experiences.  Also, any details I get wrong in this or any other post are due to a misunderstanding on my part.  As usual, if you want current job specifics I recommend checking out the company’s website. OK, that’s done, now on to the post!

All across the country there are campgrounds, marinas, and day use areas owned by and/or operated by local utility companies.  Sometimes maintaining locations is required by contract, other times it is done for conservancy, providing additional customer value, or sites for employee recreation.  I have had friends who have stayed in these places and even stayed in them myself a time or two, but I have seen nothing on the scale of what is happening here in Portland.  We didn’t really understand the scope of it, until we decided to take a ride up to the Timothy Lake location.  Since our campsite in our campground is a new one they are creating, we didn’t have a fire ring, and when we asked we were told there would be extras at Timothy Lake.  We could have waited for someone to bring one down to us, but since it was a nice day we decided to drive up and see it for ourselves, and save someone that trouble.  The main road to the campground still had quite a bit of snow on it, so it was recommended that we take the back road.  This was a twisty, turny road and led us through National Forest, past Lake Harriet which has a dam, a small campground and day use area.

Lake Harriet Dam

 

Eventually we made it to Timothy Lake and received a very warm welcome.  The campground is still closed and not all the camp hosts were there yet, but everyone we met was very nice and helpful.  Not only did they find us a brand new campfire ring, but they also encouraged us to look around and told me where the best campsite would be to take a picture of Mt. Hood across the lake.  This is a huge lake with multiple campgrounds around it, plus a lodge that can be rented by utility company employees.  Although this is a National Forest campground and the reservations are handled by Reserve America, because of the dam and lake it is watched over by company employees.  This is an example of a positive partnership between a business and our forest service and from everything I have seen relationships between the two entities are very strong.  The Forest Rangers here cover 1.1 million acres, and since this is a very popular campground area it is important to have people on site continuously.  Most of the camp hosts we met work out of Timothy Lake and many have returned year after year because they enjoy the beautiful setting. (Some have been coming back for 16 years or more, which in my opinion says a LOT about the company. – Lee)

 

Loved the water rushing from the dam when we arrived

 

Stunning views of Mount Hood from the Day Use area

 

The Lake reminded me of the lakes in Glacier

 

The rocks weren’t as pretty as Glacier Lakes but the water was nice and clear

 

One of the most requested campsites

 

And it’s view past the tree line

This is definitely remote camp hosting as wifi/cell coverage is limited, and none of the sites have full hookups and some don’t have any hooks ups at all. We saw hosts use a combination of solar, and generators for power, but these folks knew what they are doing.  In the last few days, we have met numerous RVers who have been full timing for many years and have worked summers for this utility company for many of those.  I am always fascinated when I meet folks who have been doing this for such a long time because it’s a rarity on my social media network, and it’s generally a good sign when we stumble across a job that has a high concentration of them.   We met several long-term  full-timer couples at the beet harvest and more while gate guarding, but this is the highest concentration we have seen.   More about that later though.  We enjoyed our visit to the lake and after discussion decided to head back down on the main road with snow because it seemed the more direct route.  The road wasn’t 100% cleared yet, and still had some heavy patches of snow, but with some careful driving we made it through and headed back down to our campsite with a bran new fire ring.

One of the many trees still in the road. They had been cleared from one lane but not removed yet.  This big one was covering the left lane completely.

 

This snow was slick and although Lee tried to stay in the previously made tracks our dually tires were sliding a bit. Doesn’t look like much, but was a bit nerve wracking since we didn’t want to end up in a ditch on a little used road with no cell coverage. By staying on the “sunny side of the road” we managed to mostly avoid the worst of it.  In retrospect though we probably should have gone back down the way we came.

 

The next day all the new employees had a training class and thankfully it was just down the road in one of the utility offices.  Some folks were at locations much farther away and if they wanted to were able to stay in one of the cabins or Yomes in Promontory Park.  Since all three couples at “Prom”, as it is called are new, we were all at the first training class and we met several new couples there as well including the new Lead Hosts out at Timothy Lake.  Our immediate supervisor and his boss did a really nice job of providing us an overview of the company, their philosophy, and hierarchy.  We also received a full certification course in CPR, Safety, and AED use.  I was particularly excited about that because I haven’t had CPR training since I was 19 years old and things have changed dramatically, plus they had lots of hands on activities and the instructor was really great. I enjoyed the class very much, Lee less so because he is not great at sitting still in one place for that long, but I was really grateful for the time they spent.  It’s unlikely we will have an incident this summer, but if we did, the fact that they went to the time and expense to prepare us goes a long way with me. Plus I thought the exercises were fun, but hey, I am a nerd like that.

Since 120 compressions per minute (2 per second) are the standard, I spent quite a bit of time figuring out what would work for my body strength.

 

They really stressed why protectors were so important and the stories of projectile vomiting into the mouths of the person attempting to do CPR really got my attention.

 

The bandaging part was cool, and although my technique wasn’t that great it will get the job done. I didn’t know that in case of eye injury you should bandage both eyes, because as the good eye moves it will also move the injured one. Lee was a pretty good sport while I practiced.

So I left class after the first day feeling really good about the training and the fact that they were investing in me as a seasonal employee.  And in case you are one of those people who are skeptical about this sort of thing (and Lee certainly is) let me contrast to it to most jobs on the road we have had where they give you minimal instructions and throw you out there into situations that could be more dangerous than this job.  But then again I come from a corporate environment and for the first time in a long time in working on the road I really felt comfortable.

The next day all of the employees participated and we filled up a large training room.  We had a series of short presentations and learned about the archaelogist they have on staff (very cool), the biologist we had on staff, and other members of the full time team.  The fact that the company has an archaeologist and biologist and specific processes to follow if you find bones, birds nest, etc impressed the heck out of me.  I, like most full-timers, love nature, and the time and trouble they have gone to to protect wildlife was impressive.  In particular, the Clackamas River is a major fish spawning area and they have spent millions over the years making sure the fish can migrate past the dams.  I hope to learn more about that as the summer progresses.

The Diversity and Inclusion section was next, and let me just say there were some strong personalities in the room.  Although I would recommend spending a little more time on this in future training they did manage to get the main points across. And the bulk of the day was spent on Verbal Judo training.  These techniques were developed for law enforcement officers and the trainer, who was a state park employee, was excellent.  We spent quite a bit of time on this and it was impactful, but since we are more educators than enforcers it would be good to have it tailored a little more to the camp host position.  Part of the problem out here is there is minimal law enforcement to cover huge tracts of land, so it is more likely we will need to deal with situations ourselves, at least initially.  Many of the campsites also have no cell coverage, so just getting someone to a place to call 911 could be challenging.  I was getting a little concerned to be honest, but when we talked to long-term hosts on the break were assured these type of incidents rarely happened.  Mostly problems are around off leash dogs and alcohol and since Promontory Park is alcohol free that should be less of a concern hopefully for us.

There was also quite a conversation around marijuana use, because it is legal in Oregon but not in the National Forest, which is public land.  Even in Oregon it’s not legal to use “in public” so it can get tricky.  Again, the conventional wisdom of long-term hosts carried some weight because their point that marijuana users rarely caused a problem was a good one. Hopefully with edibles and vaporizers it will be a non-issue because it’s not like we are going to go looking for trouble.  They seem to have struck a nice balance between having some rules and not being super militant about enforcement.  That’s a stance I personally appreciate, because there is nothing worse than an over zealous camp host making a fuss about a minor rule.  In the stories we have heard across the country it happens though, so once again I was glad they took the time to spell out their policies.

So I loved it and Lee was just ready to get to work, but that’s OK.  We are pretty much two ends of a common spectrum with lots of folks falling somewhere in between.  Plus it was nice to get to meet so many people and get to know our fellow camp hosts more.  For once we weren’t the youngest people in the crowd, as there were other couples our age and a few people in their 20’s and 30’s.  And again, I walked away feeling really good about working for a large company again, even in a limited capacity.  My experience in my life is small companies can often have a level of capriciousness in their rules and processes that make me uncomfortable.  I have been trying to stretch myself in that area, but it is nice to take a turn at working in a place with a solid set of policies in place.  That’s just me though, and we will see how it plays out over the summer.

Camper Chronicles is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, a program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. We very much appreciate any purchase you make via our website links.  There is no additional cost to you and helps support our blog.  Search Amazon.com here

Or you can check out our recipe book filled with 80 real recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. The cookbook specializes in recipes that have a limited number of ingredients, without sacrificing flavor and is organized into categories that matter to full time RVers such as Happy Hours, Travel Days, and Pot Lucks   You can preview the kindle version on  Amazon or the Apple version on Itunes.    It is also available in paperback. 

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In Waterfall Heaven

Many years ago I came to Portland to give a training class and we spent our one free day visiting  waterfalls in Columbia Gorge.  The combination of the falls and the amazing weather had me thinking I could live here permanently, so when the opportunity came up to take a work kamping job for the summer and check it out I couldn’t resist.  Originally we planned on spending today visiting the Japanese Tea Garden in Portland, but a Sunday with beautiful weather really brought out the crowds so instead we drove down to Historic Route 30 to see the gorge.  This area was absolutely stunning and will require several trips, but I wanted to share with you a few of the falls that we saw and say some things in life do live up to how you remember them.  This was the place that cemented my love of waterfalls and I have always wanted to share it with Lee.

We started Historic Route 30 in Troutdale. You can access some of the falls from Route 84 but we wanted to take the old path.

 

We stopped at the Chanticleer Rest Area to get our first views of the Gorge

 

This explains the event that caused the greatest concentration of waterfalls in North America.

 

You can see the Vista house in the upper right of picture. The parking spots were all full when we drove by so we will save that for a later day.

 

Our first stop was LaTourell Falls which was a beauty. Short walk to either an observation point of the base of the lower falls. We will be coming back later to hike the 1.8 miles roundtrip to the Upper Falls.

 

You can see the people at the very bottom for scale

 

The force of the water was blowing Lee’s shirt back

 

This map shows many of the main falls all along the route, although there are many others that require walking  to get to. I definitely see lots of hiking in my future!

 

Here was one of the un-named falls along the route

 

The road was very twisty and narrow (a bit like Going to the Sun road in Glacier) but really pretty

 

Plus everything was blooming

 

Even the weeds were pretty

 

Next up Shepherd’s Dell which is smaller but really pretty

 


 

Definitely walk down to the end of the path it’s super pretty

 

Don’t forget to walk across the road and see the view from the bridge

 

Next up was Bridal Veil falls and this one we decided to walk down to

 

The trail was steep coming back up but absolutely worth it

 

The creek was amazing leading up to it

 

Lots of people were in the water at the base

 

From the lookout absolutely breathtaking

 

I had to climb down and sit on the rock

 

Around this time though things were really getting crowded. All of the parking lots were full and near Multnoma Falls there was quite the traffic jam

 

We will come back on a weekday but here’s a pic I snapped from the car as a teaser

 

Since the crowds were getting worse, we decided to get off Historic Route 30 and get back on 84 and head back home.  But we passed the Bonneville Fish Hatchery and Lee really wanted to stop and see the giant sturgeon. Well OK, I liked the fish Hatcheries in Alaska so off we went.

These hatching areas inside the building were very interesting

 

Different sections had different types of fish

 

Big rainbow trout

 

The entire hatchery is totally free and I loved how many families with small kids were there

 

Lots of guys in this room talking about Herman the giant sturgeon

 

He is 70 years old and as large as a reef shark

 

That’s a full size tree down in that pond he is swimming next to

 

This gives you an idea of how big he was

 

They also had a wonderful gift store with lots of variety and very reasonable prices

 

And all the flowers were in bloom

 

So pretty

 

Then we headed back down Route 35 which is along the Hood River and saw lots of farms.  We can’t wait to go back there in July when all the farm stands are open, but we did get some amazing shots of Mount Hood on this perfectly clear day.

You are driving on a road and turn a corner and wham this is what you see. Very cool

 

Since we were both starving at this point we stopped at The Huckleberry Inn at  Government Camp and had a reasonably priced dinner.  For $13 I got a salad, mashed potatoes and gravy, broccoli, and roast beef.  Then we splurged and split an a la mode Huckleberry pie which was delicious.  We definitely need to do a better job of taking food for these long days, but since it was Huckleberries I didn’t mind so much.

The town itself was a bit disappointing, but then we are spoiled by living near all those Vermont ski towns for so many years

 

My kind of diner

 

First time having Huckleberry vinaigrette, it was pretty good. Sweet and tart.

 

Nice big servings. I got two meals out of this

 

The pie was yummy delicious!!

Terrific day despite the last minute change of plans and now we have made two big loops around the surrounding area to get the lay of the land.  Not a doubt in my mind we will have plenty to keep us busy for the 4 months we are here and look forwarding to seeing lots of waterfalls.  Lee made a video of the few we saw on this trip, which is linked below.

 

 

 

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First Time on the Oregon Coast

We decided to take Thursday off.  Well actually I decided to take Thursday off, but Lee has a hard time just sitting when we arrive at a new place.  He ended up running some errands (which included going to 4 different stores looking for split top hot dog buns…obviously he is a big fan) while I mainly sat and read my book in the sun.  It was a nice day, and although we were expecting a very strong thunderstorm around 4pm, that storm missed us and we didn’t actually get rain until almost 11pm.  It’s pretty obvious at this point rain will be a factor this summer, so we need to be smart about when we do things and what we do.  To that end Lee and I started a Word document with a list of things to do in the area, and we will add to it as the summer progresses.  We have found it’s a good way to not forget about things you see or hear in passing, plus you can mark things off as you do them.

Thankfully there are tons of things to do in this area and on Friday Lee wanted to try the Oregon coast.  It was scheduled to rain all day in our area, but the coast looked somewhat clear, plus neither one of us had ever visited the Oregon coast before.  It’s roughly a two plus hour drive to get over there, but we are fine with long days and packed a lunch and headed out.  The first place we stopped was the town of Tillamook which has my very favorite ice cream and cheese dairy.  Unfortunately, the town itself was pretty torn up with a large construction project and the visitor center for the dairy has been closed for a major upgrade and they only have a small temporary store in it’s place.   It was pretty lame, and more importantly, their prices on the products were no better than you see out in the world, although I was a fan of their cheese tasting area.  I didn’t see anyplace to tour the factory, which was also a bummer because I would have liked that.  Worst of all I was hoping for some bargains on their ends and pieces, but the selection was minor and the prices weren’t really that much discounted.    Still, I am glad I got to visit, but I would prefer coming back once the new visitors center is completed in the Spring of 2018.

I did get to sit in the cheese bus

This was the interactivity portion of the temporary exhibit…lol

The store part was well stocked

And they had other cool local products, albeit at high prices

This cheese tasting bar was really good

We did spring for this cool ice cream scoop because it was very heavy duty and neither of us had seen one like it before. Plus it says Tillamook!

After our quick tour of the facility we headed to the Three Capes Scenic Drive.  Lee read quite a bit about it and although the article said it was clearly marked we still had some trouble finding it.  Part of the problem was that the road to Cape Meares (which was the northernmost part of the road) was closed.  We ended up finding an alternative route to get there and I was glad, because this State Park ended up being the coolest thing we saw all day.  By the time we reached the park it was close to 2pm and it was raining, so we parked the car facing an overlook and ate inside the truck.

The view from the truck was pretty good

And even better once the rain let up a bit and we could snap some pics

Since it was still sprinkling a bit we layered up and walked up a .1 mile path to see the Octopus Tree.  We visit nice trees wherever we go, but this one was very unique and was very cool to see.  We even met a guy who said he has a picture of himself when he was a little boy sitting in the tree, but it’s all been blocked off now to protect the tree. They also have trimmed several of the branches, but despite all that it still ranks up there with some of the coolest trees we have seen on our travels.

Lee walking up the path

The Octopus tree with Lee for scale

The base

After seeing the tree we walked down to the lighthouse and thankfully the rain had stopped and the sun even came out for some pictures.   I don’t mind light rain, but you just can’t take as good of pictures in it (well at least I can’t) and you get something extra in color when you have good sunshine.  So when you hear me lamenting the rain it’s not because I am worried about my hair or anything (it actually holds up well in the rain lol), but the pictures I could have gotten on a sunny day.  But that’s definitely part of the deal up here and the main reason everything is so beautifully green, so we will work with it the best we can.

All kinds of birds nest along these cliffs including puffins!!

Walking to the lighthouse we could see the top of it.

And you could stand right next to it which was pretty neat. Never seen that before

It’s a very small lighthouse, but you could walk right up inside

Lots of cool picture opportunities. See Lee through the red glass on the left

Lee likes lighthouses

Rainbow prism on Lee’s hand from the sun coming through the glass

 

We took a different path on the way and saw some more beautiful views.  Lots of birds hang out on these rocks but too far away for me to get a picture of any of them

Not sure what kind of bushes these were, but there were tons of these little flowers along our path

After the lighthouse we had high hopes for the rest of the drive, but unfortunately it was a bit of a bust.  We have taken the drive along the coast in Northern California and there are many more places to stop and see the ocean.  Here, the bulk of the drive was views of trees, which were beautiful, but precious few glimpses of the ocean, at least along this route.  We did like the fact that 100% of the beaches are public owned in Oregon, but many places also have very tall houses on the ocean side of the road so all you can see is them.  Still it was a pretty day and it was nice to get out and there is so much more coast to explore.

Some views were pretty

The towns were neat clinging to the hills and on both sides of the road

And we saw the first of what I am sure will be many rainbows on the way back home

Camper Chronicles is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, a program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. We very much appreciate any purchase you make via our website links.  There is no additional cost to you and helps support our blog.  Search Amazon.com here

Or you can check out our recipe book filled with 80 real recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. The cookbook specializes in recipes that have a limited number of ingredients, without sacrificing flavor and is organized into categories that matter to full time RVers such as Happy Hours, Travel Days, and Pot Lucks   You can preview the kindle version on  Amazon or the Apple version on Itunes.    It is also available in paperback. 

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First Time Camping in Mount Hood National Forest

There are several different ways to get from Nevada to Oregon, and because we wanted to avoid the recently hiked California fuel prices and explore the road less traveled, I picked Nevada State Route 95.  As I have mentioned before, I use a large paper Atlas to keep track of the roads we have already been on, and this section of road was a new one for us.  Although it was incredibly barren, I found it quite beautiful, and the road was well maintained throughout our drive.  We also skirted Death Valley and from what little I got to see, it definitely calls for a longer visit in the future.  The rock formations were stunning, and although the desert was missing my favorite Saguaro’s it was beautiful in it’s own way.

When we travel we generally look for either free campsites on US Public Campgrounds, Passport America, or  Freecampsites.net.  All things being equal we will take a decent Passport America option because they are generally close to the roads we are traveling, and are more efficient for one night, but this area of the country has lots of free land to camp on so we got a little more creative with our choices.  Due to where the campgrounds were available we chose the amount of travel miles per day, and unfortunately it broke down to two longish days with a short day in the middle.  I would have loved to have evened that out a little, but since we were traveling in sparsely populated areas it was more difficult.

Our first stop was a great find  at Sportsman Beach which is a free BLM campground near Hawthorne, Nevada.  This campground is right on  beautiful Walker Lake and the views were stunning.  Plus we saw wild horses and burros along the lake edge and there were only a few campers there.  Sometimes you stumble across a place and wish you could stay a few more days, and this definitely would have been one of those places, but as usual we were on a schedule to reach our next work gig in time, and that was not possible for us.  Still, we were glad we stumbled across it as it was a nice end to a long driving day.

The view from our campsite on Walker Lake.  The picture doesn’t really do it justice, and yes, the water was that blue.

Next was a short day where we stopped in Winnemucca, Nevada.  This is the last town before hitting Oregon and they had a decent Passport America park called New Frontier RV Park where we got full hookups for $19 for the night.  The sites are crammed close, but all brand new and beautifully maintained.  It also had tons of little three person cabins, which turned out to be man camps for the miners who work nearby.  We saw lots of man camps up in the Dakotas, but this one was really nice and new.  I hope they manage to keep it that way, because it was a nice place to stop for the night.

 

The next day was the longest drive because we wanted to be relatively close to our summer gig in Mount Hood National Forest.  There were lots of choices of routes to take, and since we had to cross some mountain passes we ultimately ended up trusting the GPS route.  One advantage of  our Rand McNally RV GPS is that it knows the length and height of our RV, and will avoid potential hazards.  Standard maps on Lee’s phone and of course the paper map don’t really help with that much, so when in doubt we tend to trust the RV GPS.  Plus, cell coverage was pretty spotty, but the GPS works well despite that.  It doesn’t always pick the most efficient route, but it does pick the safest, and since these were all new roads for us we chose to trust it.  Even using it though we had several downgrades that were not well marked with highway signs.  We were both surprised since generally there is good signage, but there were some long steepish grades that had no signs at all other than telling trucks to chain their tires on the climb.  It’s tough driving blind in these situations and was pretty stressful for Lee, but he did a good job especially when our route to the campground took us down into a deep canyon in Terrebonne, OR.

I had found a Passport America site that was pretty far off the main road, but the price was right, and we headed that way.  Unfortunately it was the worst kind of Passport America with beat up old trailers and worse, no availability, but luckily there was a very nice Good Sam park just a mile down the road.  We were both tired and unwilling to drive up the canyon to find another place so we spent the $35 and stayed at River Rim RV Park.  Although the sites were close to each other, hardly anyone was there, and since they put us in the camp host site we had a beautiful view of the surrounding cliff walls.  Lee also discovered a little path which took us to an observation deck and the views were stunning. I probably wouldn’t want to stay here in season, but what a great choice for one night, and we enjoyed both the full hookups (we needed heat because it was cold that night) and the beautiful setting.

The view from our site

View from the observation deck

The next day we had only a few hours to drive and it was a good thing because we had to go over several mountain passes.   When we finally stopped for lunch it was at Government Camp, and I was surprised to see some people sledding in the ski area that still had snow on the ground.

We drove out of the snow pretty quickly though, and eventually made it to Promontory Park.  It’s not open for the season yet, so it required some coordination to meet someone to open the gate, find our site, and get keys, but everyone there was super nice and accommodating.  Our site isn’t finished yet, so we were given several choices and eventually ended up in the general area we will be staying for the summer.  We have 50 amp power, potable pressurized water, and they brought us a waste tank so this will work for a week or so until they have an opportunity to finish the pedestal and move the storage container out of the way. The site was a little disappointing at first, but then I saw a path and a short walk down took us to a beautiful boat ramp we can hang out this summer. Once we get all settled in it should be nice and quiet, plus since it is outside of the campground proper we won’t have folks knocking on our door at all hours.  There will be two campground hosts for the campground next door, but we will be covering the marina and a couple of offsite locations.

We needed to be close to power

The storage container that will be moved so we can move back and down a bit

We have a peekaboo view of the lake

The trail leading down to the Clackamas River

The flowers are starting to bloom

View to the left

Stunning view to the right

I sat on the dock and put my feet in the water, which is deep and pretty chilly but felt great in the sun

These Yomes are sort of like a yurt. They’re close by and their path meets ours down to the boat dock

Once we arrived and got set up we spent the rest of that day and the following getting oriented.  This part of Oregon is full of really small towns and each one has it’s own personality.  More of that in the following months, but for right now we found a Supercuts and got hair cuts, grocery shopped at a WinCo which is an employee owned grocery store with fantastic prices, and a great selection, and saw Mount Hood!! You can’t really miss the mountain, although with the very tall trees, views of it sort of spring on you and since it creates it’s own weather I am sure we will be taking lots of pictures of it.  Everything was super green and in bloom and the weather (rain aside) has been wonderful after the desert.  The contrast between the two landscapes has been striking.

One of the upriver boat launch areas with changing rooms that. This is part of what we will be covering.

This is around the corner from us and on our daily rounds! The road we live off of is an Oregon Scenic Byway

We saw numerous waterfalls including one 200 feet high!!

Big trees pulled out of the river near the marina

Hooray!  Cheap and consistent hair cuts for the summer

Part of how I judge an area is grocery stores and this was was one of the very best we have seen and the staff was super friendly

Mountain views from the highway

We drove closer to the mountain to get this pic.  The mountain has 11 glaciers on it so I am sure you will be seeing more of it!

So, first impressions are fantastic.  I traveled to Portland for work many years ago and fell in love with the area, and I was hoping it would be as I remember.  Super green, people are generally very friendly, and lots and lots of nature.  The traffic is pretty congested, but since we will be working weekends hopefully we can avoid the worst of it and unsure about the weather but yesterday was 82 degrees, very sunny, and absolutely beautiful.  Oh, and our We Boost is working so I am able to blog from the comfort of our rig.  Our booster has been hit and miss on the road to be honest, and usually it’s not worth the trouble of putting it up.  But in a situation like this, where we are in one location for a while and have a very weak signal, it works pretty well.  We barely had one bar and couldn’t do anything but text before putting it up and now we can use the internet and make phone calls.  It’s not a perfect solution, but I am really glad we have it.

Camper Chronicles is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, a program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. We very much appreciate any purchase you make via our website links.  There is no additional cost to you and helps support our blog.  Search Amazon.com here

Or you can check out our recipe book filled with 80 real recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. The cookbook specializes in recipes that have a limited number of ingredients, without sacrificing flavor and is organized into categories that matter to full time RVers such as Happy Hours, Travel Days, and Pot Lucks   You can preview the kindle version on  Amazon or the Apple version on Itunes.    It is also available in paperback. 

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April 2017 Budget

As I mentioned in previous posts the Las Vegas expenses are not included in this budget.  We spent roughly $2500 on Las Vegas specific activities, which includes a week at Circus Circus campground, food, alcohol, Uber, and tons of entertainment activities, including gambling.  Since we never would have done all that if we weren’t celebrating our daughters 21st birthday, we are looking at this week as a vacation of sorts, and took that money from savings.  I did include clothing purchases, fuel, all campgrounds aside from Circus, Circus, and gifts, because we might have spent that money either way. This was our first real time off in several months and simply put, we went a little crazy. Hopefully that will normalize out at year end, but even if it doesn’t it is what it is.  I am not going to beat myself up over it, because we knew exactly what we were doing when we did it. (Also, it was a planned event, and cost quite a but less than I thought it would. Thanks, three card poker and blackjack! – Lee)

In summary, aside from the $2500 for Vegas, we spent $4598 for the month, which is a chunk of change.  Since we only got paid  $1043 this month, we have a negative cash flow of $3223.  $2500 of that was the overage from the last year, but the remaining $723 will need to be replaced by money we make this summer.  Since we also want to accumulate some funds to cover September/October travel, our upcoming Mor-Ryde suspension upgrade, and visiting my daughter for her wedding, that’s no small thing.  It is unlikely we will be able to make enough this summer to cover all of that, but we will have some Amazon affiliate program funds on the back-end to cover some of the costs.  When it all shakes out we will probably end up in the negative, but hopefully it won’t be too big of a hit.  (I’m more optimistic, and think we will spend less this summer than she does. – Lee) Our plan for the summer is to work and enjoy ourselves and spend moderately, but I have no intention of missing out on Oregon just to cover future short falls.  As always, it is a balancing act and we will of course report back on how it all works out.  For the time being here is this month.

Campground Fees – We went over in campground fees by $78 mainly because we stayed in really nice (but not cheap) state parks in Arizona.  We were also somewhat limited in boondocking options because our furnace is still not fixed.  For the year, however, we are still doing great in this category.

Groceries – Overall we were $40 to the good, which is great because we were with friends and always spend more on food and alcohol when we’re with people.  Eating out of course helps with this category, and we totally blew that one. 

Eating out – We went crazy in this category spending an extra $232 in eating out.  Since quite a bit of it was also an experience it is what it is, and not eating out hardly at all while gate guarding really led to me going a little crazy in this category.  After the excess of Vegas though, I think I can get this back under control.

Entertainment –  We actually got a little bit of the eating out money back by saving $49 in entertainment.  I thought this was great considering all the things we did, because most of them were free.  We did go over in the membership category because we had to renew our Costco membership and replace our lost America the Beautiful pass, but that’s a different category.  Vegas entertainment of course was not included in this.  The bulk of the $2500 spent on that trip was entertainment related. Despite having a wonderful time in Vegas I still received more pure joy out of all the free stuff we did prior to that, which bodes well for our future in this lifestyle 🙂

Internet –  This is a very exciting category as our monthly bill was only $80! We switched to the AT&T unlimited plan (which has been absolutely fantastic by the way) and I won’t know for sure what the true monthly costs are until next month.  We overpaid the previous month so this month is a little low.  That being said it couldn’t come at at a better time.  I’ll take it!

Clothing – We spent $347 in this category.  The wedding dress and shoes were around $70, which was a bargain, and I also bought three pairs of jeans which I really needed.  The rest was us going a little T-Shirt crazy, but since we hadn’t spent money in this category for some time I am hoping it will normalize annually.  We have a $1200 budget for the year, so if we don’t splurge like this again we should be OK. 

Home Repair – We bought parts for the furnace and some other miscellaneous items and I bought some magnets, but we still ended up about $50 to the good. It’s a shame about the money on the furnace parts since that didn’t solve the core problem, but it should help us long-term.

So, not a total disaster, but of course not our best month.  Still, we had loads of fun this month.  By the way, I am typing this in the last campground before we get to our summer job and scheduling it for publication on May 4th (cool feature that.)  Still not sure what the internet situation will be, so there might be a delay in getting the next post out.

Camper Chronicles is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, a program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. We very much appreciate any purchase you make via our website links.  There is no additional cost to you and helps support our blog.  Search Amazon.com here

Or you can check out our recipe book filled with 80 real recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. The cookbook specializes in recipes that have a limited number of ingredients, without sacrificing flavor and is organized into categories that matter to full time RVers such as Happy Hours, Travel Days, and Pot Lucks   You can preview the kindle version on  Amazon or the Apple version on Itunes.    It is also available in paperback.

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Las Vegas Vacation Overview

I wasn’t going to write about this week at all, but after experiencing it I thought there were a few subjects I should touch on. I don’t think I could have planned a week more different from our day to day life as this one was, and since the contrast was so stark it really provided a good opportunity to look at our mobile life versus our old life, and contrast and compare.  Since the analyst in me can rarely pass up this kind of opportunity I am going to take a crack at summing my thoughts up.

First, and most importantly, Lee and I were separated for almost all of the week.  He spent the week with our youngest daughter Kay and several good friends from his former professional life, and I spent the week with my Mom in her time share at Polo Towers. We haven’t been apart since January 2015 when I stayed in Quartzsite and he went to work for a week in Phoenix, and overall I think the break was good for both of us.  RV living provides few opportunities for alone time, and although we love each other and enjoy being together, some outside socialization is not a bad thing.  My Mom and I really enjoy each others company and vacation well together, so our time together was very special to me.  Similarly, Lee has a great relationship with Kay and has really missed her these last couple of years, so spending one-on-one time together (especially since she is being deployed overseas in August) was a really good thing.  He also got to spend time with some really good work friends and Nick, who we have known since he was 15 years old flew in to hang out with them for the week as well. (Nick is also a friend, but he’s in a class all by himself. He’s practically a son. – Lee)   We try to see people from our past lives as much as we can, but with our travel/work schedule that is getting harder and harder.  Bringing people together in a central location was a wonderful way to reconnect, and since the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) trade show was this week, they all could combine seeing each other with a work related activity.  Win- Win. (Yeah. Work. That’s what it is. – Lee) 

The second biggest change was the constant going out to eat. It’s been a looong time since we ate that many meals out and although Mom paid for several of them I was still pretty conscious of money spent versus relative value. The meals that were part meals, part experience were generally good, but the few times we ate out because we had to were not so great.  Lee had one meal that ended up getting comped because the service was so bad, and almost everything was way overpriced.  Still, it was fun to not have to worry about menu planning, but after months and months of austerity in this area it was pretty weird.  Basically, I don’t miss it, and can definitely say that cooking at home is the better choice with the exception being special experience meals.

The third and last change was not having to worry about every single purchase.  All in we spent about $2500 in one week and with that kind of budget (along with the extra things my Mom bought for me) you can pretty much do anything you want.  It was nice being able to have all the activities without worrying so much about cost, but again experience versus value was always in play.  In my mind none of the things we did were better than most National Parks and given a straight up choice I still think I would choose the “nature” option. (My apologies. Trace is a little dehydrated and talking crazy. I’m a fan of National Parks and all, but given the choice, and not having to worry about the budget, I would choose Vegas most of the time. There are hardly any bears there, and I’ve never met an animal that can deal blackjack properly. Nor has any scantily clad animal ever offered me a cocktail while on a hike. Not even Deb. – Lee)

Lee and Kay did 1-2 things every day. His favorite, as always, was seeing David Copperfield, and they all got pulled onstage for one of the illusions. (I can’t help it, I’m a sucker for Copperfield, have been since the first time I saw him on TV when I was a little kid. And I’ve been up on stage with him three times. I never get tired of it. – Lee) Mom and I did at least one thing most nights as well (My favorite was a Round The World Food tour at Fleur a Hubert Keller restaurant!)  Mom and I also spent a ton of time shopping, because I was looking for a dress for my oldest daughters upcoming wedding.  Walking the shops in Vegas is actually pretty fun because they have lots of high end stores you never see anywhere else.  So it’s pretty ironic that after trying on numerous dresses I ended up with a fantastic dress from Ross Dress for Less that cost $16.99.  Score!!  The main reason I bought it, it fit and looked good, I was pretty surprised when I looked at the price tag. I have never shopped there before but now I am a huge fan.  I saved so much on the dress I splurged on three pairs of jeans and a light jacket and I still spent less than $75.

In a nutshell, it was a wonderful week, and I am especially grateful I got to spend time with my mom, but I am not looking to quit the lifestyle in order to have more of that in my life.  The simplicity of how we live does have its own challenges but compared to that excess, I’ll take what I have!  Here’s the pictures though, and as you can see we had a really good time.  I intentionally left my camera in the rig so these are taken from my Iphone 4 and the quality is pretty terrible, but you’ll get the gist.

(For those who are interested, here’s ALL the stuff we did….Greg and Cori stuck around in town for an extra day and got to meet Kay, and we all had a wonderful dinner at an off strip resort. We went to an Asian market where Kay showed off her Korean skills for us, and we had lunch at Tracy’s favorite Vietnamese place, and we had a great group dinner with everyone except for Nick who hadn’t arrived yet. In addition to seeing Copperfield, Kay and I also went horseback riding at Wild West Horseback, which was a lot of fun, and I highly recommend, even though my horse tried to kill me. We shot a variety of firearms, including some fully automatic, at Machine Guns Vegas, which I also highly recommend. We saw Beatles LOVE, of course, which I cannot recommend highly enough, even though they’ve made some changes to the show which I do not approve of. If you see it, see the 7pm show, then go out to the portico to watch the volcano. It’s cheesy and getting old, but hey, FIRE! We also did the Fremont Street Experience and the Zoomline, neither of which is for the faint of heart. The Zoomline is a blast, I felt like a chubby James Bond flying over all those people. We also did the Baja chase at Sunbuggy, which I really enjoyed the last time I went, but I no longer recommend it. The company has really gone downhill, and the experience was not even close to what it should have been. It didn’t feel nearly as safe, and we didn’t get nearly the 60 minutes of ride time we paid for. If you do decide to go, do yourself a favor and refuse to start the chase until you are 100% comfortable with your harness and the operation of the buggy. This is an extremely intense experience, and if you’re not comfortable, then you should ride instead of drive. It’s a pretty expensive thing to not enjoy.- Lee

I also went to see Tape Face, which was incredibly fun and fresh and clever.  As far as gambling goes, while I normally play nothing but blackjack, we did play a little craps (horrible game, not good for stupid and/or drunk people) a little roulette (might as well just give them your money and go see a show) and slots (boring) so Kay could have a little taste of why it’s a bad idea to gamble for money instead of entertainment. Then she suggested we try three card poker, which I really enjoyed, and quadrupled my money in an hour or so of play. So thanks for that, Pooh! We eventually played a little blackjack as well, but her assessment overall on most of the gambling was “It’s not much fun when all you do is lose.”  I also learned how to use Uber, and saved a fortune getting around town, plus avoided having to pay for parking at the casinos. Did I mention that most of the casinos charge you for self parking now? I’d like to have a meeting with whatever moron came up with this idea and smack him or her right in the head. And as an added bonus, since I tend to accept cocktails when they are offered to me (my mother taught me to be polite) I also didn’t get a DUI driving around Vegas three sheets to the wind. So Uber is cool. As always, I see the fountains at Bellagio as much as I can. I can watch those things for hours. I was there in the middle of the night many years ago when they were programming them before they started, and spent the whole night just chatting with the programmers and watching them. Big fan. And while I enjoy wandering through all of the casinos, Bally’s is my true home. Trust me, just try it. IMO it’s the best choice on the strip, most bang for your buck, best overall vibe, and a truly fantastic location right smack in the middle of everything. Ask for an upgrade to a Jacuzzi suite, and if you don’t get it, pay for one anyway. The price is actually pretty reasonable for what you get, and there’s nothing like stretching out in a full size sunken Jacuzzi (not just a tub with jets) and soaking away the end of a hard day in Vegas. And somewhere in all that we spent some time wandering the vendor exhibits at the NAB show, where as usual I found someone who had something I wanted but wasn’t available yet, and I gave them a hard time for teasing me with the exact thing I wanted, and offered to buy the prototype, and as usual, was turned down. It was all a lot of fun, and I while I doubt I will be able to do it every year any more, maybe we’ll get back from time to time for a reunion tour or something. Sorry there’s not a lot more pictures of us, but Kay isn’t wild about having her picture taken, and we were too busy having fun for me to push the issue. I have the pictures in my head. – Lee)

The free Solarium at Bellagio is always a treat

This was the oddest salad I have ever had in my life. It was pretty but  difficult to eat

We saw the fountains at Bellagio several times

Only in Vegas and no I didn’t get one!

The Polo Towers where we stayed had a rooftop pool which was awesome

Loved hanging out in the hot tub with the city noise and lights around

My $16.99 special. I like it because it helps hide all my problem areas 🙂

Mom treated me to the Wynn Buffet which was pretty good. Loved the decorations

This was my desert selection lol. Who says you can’t get your money’s worth on a buffet

Love my Mom

We saw the Backstreet Boys in concert and it was really good

The girls were all going crazy. Great energy in the room

Lee and Kay

Lee zip lining over Freemont Street. He loved this

Mom treated me to a spa day at Cosmopolitan which was amazing

The Turkish Bath was separated by male/female and clothing was optional (I wore my suit) This huge hot tub had a rain shower in the back and the eucalyptus steam room was awesome.

Lee can’t do Vegas without taking the girls to shoot guns

That’s my girl

 

We all met up for Beatles Love and Mom treated everyone to a Brazillan Steakhouse something I have always wanted to try. Kay and Nick getting some meat from a skewer

I had to try the Brazillan Rum Punch. It was really good

Lee calls Kay Pooh Bear and found this drink for her

From left: Me, Mom. Kay, Nick, and Lee

Kay in front of the Beatles Love sign

Mom (who has always been a huge Beatles fan and loved their retooled show) in the phone booth

And we topped it off with watching the Volcano at Mirage

Lee’s favorite show was seeing Tapeface who we loved on America’s Got Talent.

Fleur was really cool on the inside

The Round the World menu was phenomenal. $150 total for two people; alcohol was extra.  I just had a glass of wine since a drink per course would have put me under the table

The scallops were my favorite course.  Pretty and delicious.

But these garlic french fries were amazing and fun to have in the middle of a fancy 5 course meal.  The french newspaper was a nice touch.

I should also mention that at Fleur I had the best service of my entire life.  They replaced the dishes and the silverware after every course and as soon as I was finished eating the food was gone.  I don’t like sitting at a table with food in front of me when I am done eating and that was really enjoyable in and of itself.  Plus once again I want to thank my Mom for her extreme generosity this week.  I would have been fine hanging out and having pizza, but I certainly appreciate all the fun things we were able to do.  It was a very special week and I am glad we got to spend it together.  I love you.

Lee and I were also very grateful to be with Brian, Nick, Mark, Ernie, and Dave.  Thanks for hanging out with us and Ernie thanks for reading the blog!  Kay, sweetie, we love you. So glad you had a good time in Vegas!

Back to regular life now and we need to drive straight to our summer job in Oregon.  Originally we had an extra 5 days, but they spilled Lee’s urine sample (I know crazy right after all the trouble we went to to get that done) and at this point they recommended getting it done at their testing facility in Oregon.  Since we didn’t want to mess with our time in Vegas, we agreed so we will be arriving May 2nd for a May 3rd test and then have some time off until our start date on May 10th.  Fair warning, we are hearing there may be no cell coverage in our site and we might have to drive a couple of miles to get a signal.  Not sure how that is going to work with the blog yet because there is no off line option for making blog posts with Word press that I am aware of.  Anyways, don’t be surprised if you don’t hear from me for a few days until I get it worked out.

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One Year with No Corporate Money

If you have been reading from the beginning, you know I had serious doubts about whether this lifestyle was financially viable for us.  Pretty early on I saw lots of examples of people who live full-time on very limited incomes. In fact, I just met a guy last week who lives on $2500 a month and boondocks 90% of the time. I was pretty honest about what our requirements and goals were, and I just wasn’t sure it was viable.  One year ago I received my last corporate check and I am pleased, and a little surprised, to report that we lived on what we made, and actually had $2500 to spare. Not bad.

And that year was full of travel.  We saw amazing things in Canada and Alaska, and our last few weeks have been full of adventures in the Arizona area.  The year was also full of work to keep things going and it was often strenuous work.  We worked 40 days at the Beet Harvest with just a couple of days off.  We worked 6 weeks straight selling Christmas trees with only Thanksgiving and Christmas days off, and 79 days straight gate guarding.  Not only did we work numerous days we also worked long shifts.  Twelve hour days at beets, 10-12 hours at Trees, and 24/7 during gate guarding.  The jobs were often physically demanding, and almost always outside in the weather, but they also had an element of challenge to them, and mostly I was rarely bored.  That’s no small thing. But as you have seen, those jobs were pretty much all encompassing (camp hosting aside) and allowed little time or energy for anything else.  That would be OK if we made enough at the jobs to cover our costs for some free time before and after, but most of our free time was spent primarily getting to the next job.  Not that there weren’t things to see along the way, but there is a big difference between taking your time getting to an area and driving relatively long hours every day because of the schedule.

This five weeks is the longest break we have had in a year, and despite efforts to keep costs down, money is flying out the window.  When you work this much it’s tempting to go a little crazy on your off time, and that time starts to feel more like a traditional vacation, albeit a pretty long one.  So basically the last year has not looked much like our original goal of work a little, play a little.  Not that it has been bad by any means, but there has been much more work and much less play.  It still holds up favorably to our life prior to going on the road though.  There is less financial pressure, generally less work stress, and a certain level of relaxation and freedom that we did not experience before. (My view is that we worked for a year, and got a five week vacation. Most people don’t get five weeks of vacation in a year. – Lee) 

All that being said, the question of whether this is sustainable long term for us is still open.  We have absolutely proven to ourselves that we can earn enough to live on the road indefinitely, but there isn’t enough extra money to cover capital expenses.  If we need a major repair, want to take a vacation, give money to our kids, or take extensive time off, that is coming out of our savings.  And although we are proud of the fact we haven’t dipped into savings as of yet, this week in Vegas, our upcoming Mor-Ryde upgrade, and a trip we are planning for Lee’s birthday will all come from there.  We have $40K in money set aside for both shortfalls in our annual budgets and capital expenditures and at this rate we can make that money last a very long time, but it is incredibly unlikely we can make it stretch for 17 years until I am eligible for social security.

So where does that leave us?  We have two major options.  One is that we can significantly change the way we live to reduce costs even further. Some people purchase property to have a “home base” of sorts to sit in once in a while to keep costs down.  Others have found jobs that work for them and return to the same places year after year.  Still others boondock the majority of the time and live as financially austere a life as they can manage.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of those choices, and we have watched with great interest as friends have explored those choices.  It also really makes sense for people who are close to retirement age and just need to bridge a couple of years until their retirement funds are available.  For us, at 48 and 50, I tend to take a longer view.  Since I can’t even imagine transitioning back into a sticks and bricks life at this point, we need to find a way to earn enough income long-term and because the number one thing I like about this lifestyle is the travel, we need to find a way to support that.

Luckily both of us bring pretty varied skill sets to the equation.  We both spent many years becoming educated in our particular fields and those skills don’t just go away.  Yes, there is a concern that allowing too much time to pass without using those skills with cause some atrophy, but hopefully to a certain extent it will be like riding a bike.  The larger concern for both of us is how quickly technology and techniques change.  It’s important to “keep a hand in” and stay up to date on what is happening in our fields, so those options always remain open for us.   I guess my point here is if you are younger and plan on doing this, as tempting as it is to want to completely walk away from your former profession, I wouldn’t recommend it.  You never know when you might need a chunk of cash and workamping jobs are not really a sure fire way to get there.  Part of the problem is many of them are 1099 jobs, so a higher tax burden is called for.  Others have variable seasons and most importantly the overtime (where the real money is) can vary from year to year.

A great example of that is what is happening at Amazon.  Last year the supply of workampers was so high that overtime was significantly reduced from previous seasons.  This year they have eliminated the Texas location altogether, so many folks who relied on that infusion of cash need to find alternative work.  Gate guarding prices dropped from $300 a day a few years ago to $125 a day when oil prices went down and the beet harvest varies every single year based on weather and the amount of crop. (Gate guarding rates are definitely going back up as oil prices rise, however. I see postings for immediate positions every day that pay $200-250 per day. – Lee)   None of these relatively high paying workamper jobs are a sure thing, which works fine if you are simply looking to supplement outside income, but not so great if that makes up a significant portion of your income each year.  There are other choices of course, and we will continue exploring them, but I think it’s fair to say that no workamping job is going to come close to what we can make in our previous professions.

So the question is for everyone, what do you want? And it’s a great question to be able to have some choice in answering.  Most of us in our old lives rarely got to decide what we wanted because our sticks and bricks lifestyle was driven by necessity more than choice. It’s wonderful having so many choices, it really is, and it makes the idea on reentering the professional work force much more palatable.  Because we have proven to ourselves we can live this way, now it is a matter of what do we want.  It’s still complicated of course.  Logistics, timing, Lee’s priorities versus mine, all come into play, but we can take our time and modify how we are living in a way that makes sense for us.  Nothing is an emergency, and that is a really, really good feeling. In a nutshell, this last year has honestly gone better than I ever imagined it would.  I am calmer, more centered, and way more comfortable with our ability to support ourselves in this lifestyle.  Working all these unusual jobs has proven what I am capable of in a completely different way than my career progression did. And it’s a good thing. I don’t regret one single minute of it, not even the Christmas trees, because I learned so much about myself.  With that foundation I am ready to make my next set of choices and I really hope that journey continues to be of interest to everyone.

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We very much appreciate your support of our blog.

  • As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.  Search Amazon Here
  • You can purchase the ebook telling the story of how we became full-time RVers.
  • You can purchase our recipe book filled with 80 recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. You can purchase the kindle or paperback version on Amazon or buy the Apple version on Itunes.

 

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First Time at Walnut Canyon, Sunset Crater, Wupatki, and Grand Falls

If you have ever hung out with Lee you know he has boundless energy, but today was packed full even for us. Flagstaff has three National Monuments in close proximity to each other, plus in his research he found a special surprise for me, but I’ll tell you about that later.  This is a picture-heavy post, so let me jump right in.  First up was Walnut Canyon and based on pictures I had seen I really didn’t have high hopes.  It just goes to show you that you should never assume, because this place and specifically the Island hike option are one of my favorite things we have done in the lifestyle to date! About 1,000 years ago a volcano exploded in the area, and the native people were forced to migrate.  Most moved north and built the pueblos we will see later, but some moved to this canyon and built houses right into the cliffs.  The Island hike is 1 mile, 240 steps, and looks way worse than it is.  Seriously, the stairs are built well and even though it was a good work out, my knees didn’t bother me at all.  Probably because the trail is down into the canyon and walks around the main island they lived on. I was so fascinated by what we saw I didn’t even care we were walking.  Absolutely, positively amazing and so worth the effort.  The entrance fee was $8 and totally worth it, or free with the America the Beautiful Pass.

The Walnut Canyon Visitors Center

There is a wheelchair accessible area where you can view the canyon, as well a rim tour that is accessible.

The view when you walk outside. Stunning

The surrounding cliffs have rooms built into them

Most of the homes were on the island though, and that’s where the walk takes you. See the path to the left of the big circle rock.

The path goes right to the ruins

And you can walk inside them

The path continues around the Island. The sunny side of the Island has completely different  vegetation than the shady side

I loved all the plants along the walk and signs saying what the natives did with them.

At the base you can see the visitors center way at the top

240 stairs, but there were benches strategically placed to encourage breaks, and they really weren’t that bad

After Walnut Canyon we went into Flagstaff and ate at a Chinese Buffet we had found.  The price was reasonable, but the food was only so-so, but we were carbed up for our next monument visit.  Sunset Crater Volcano was next, and of the three things we saw that day the most disappointing.  The price at $20 would have been way too high, but that price also included the Wupatki area which I loved.  We went ahead and bought an America the Beautiful pass to replace the one we lost, so it was “free” for us.

The first trail was the A’a Trail on the lava flow. It was marked as “Easy”, and only .2 miles,  but I found it harder than the Island trail because the path was so rough. Make sure you wear good shoes and watch your footing, because the surrounding Volcanic rocks are very sharp

Walking out was black sand which reminded me of the beaches in Hawaii

There were three other trails, but in the end we only did the Bonito Vista trail because it was paved and walked through the lava field.  The others were around the base of the volcano and just weren’t that appealing to me.  The volcano itself was kind of a bummer, because you couldn’t see down inside it so it only looked like a hill.  The lava flows and the cinder hills around it were kind of neat though, and it was interesting how little had been reclaimed in the 1,000 years since the eruption.

Sunset Crater

I liked the foothills though

The Bonito Vista Trail

Hard to capture how big the lava fields were

Cinder Hills

 

This shows a lava hot spot

Next up was the Wupatki ruins where most of the people migrated after the volcano eruption.  There are four major sets of ruins, and each one has it’s own trail.  We didn’t choose to walk every trail in its entirety, but we got up close and personal with Wukoki ruins which was our favorite.

The Wukoki site. Staff was working on the path but we were able to walk around

I loved the architecture

The doorways were very small

 

See how they built the walls using existing rocks so cool

Loved it!!

They also had a nice visitors center, with very helpful staff,  and I finally found a new hat.  I have been looking for a hiking hat for weeks, and couldn’t find anything that didn’t give me a headache or I thought would work with our lifestyle.  Lee found me the perfect one and although it was pricey at $52 I thought it was worth it because it has a chin strap, adjustable sizing band, is collapsible, but the brim has structure.  I know, pretty picky, but an annoying hat can ruin a hike.

 

I liked this display of Hopi dolls. The ones with legs are the more modern ones created for tourists

The rounded bottom ones are the more traditional design which I actually preferred

Lee found out at the visitors center that these holes that we see all over the desert are started by one small rock chip and the wind and rain over time widens the hole. They are really neat and each one is its own artwork.

 

Super happy in my new hat and since the money went to the National Park Service I felt better about the purchase.

The walk behind the visitors center was the Wupatki Pueblo Trail. It was a 1/2 mile long but had a fair amount of descent, which needs to be an ascent on the return,  and we decided just to look from the top of the trail. We already did our 248 step climb for the day.

I loved the round ball courts

Next up was the Citadel and Nalakihu Pueblo Trail

Loved the colors on this ruin

The Box Canyon ruins were great also and no one else was there

We could have spent more time, but there was one thing left that Lee wanted to see. The Visitors center had maps to Grand Falls on the Navajo Reservation and there was an easier but longer route on main roads or a back roads way to go.  Usually back roads have been friends to us but in this case I definitely do NOT recommend it.  None of the “roads” were marked and it was only Lee’s outstanding sense of direction that kept us on track.  Even so we passed three other vehicles and every time we stopped them to ask if we were going the right way.  It was that confusing.  Eventually though we made it to the main road of 70 and right past the cattleguard there is an unmarked left onto the Navajo reservation.  There was a Grand Falls Church sign on that corner, but no indication of the falls themselves.  We then went 9 miles on a well kept reservation dirt road and landed at the site.  It had restrooms, a pavillion, and a few viewing areas but nothing else you would expect to find for a natural landmark of this significance.  Don’t take my word for it though, here’s what we saw.

The pavillon

The view!! To give you an idea of the scale, it’s 185 feet tall, which is taller than Niagara. The main part of this picture shows only the first drop.

The falls were made when a lava flow changed the direction of the Colorado river and it’s tough to even tell you the scope of it.  I tried to capture it in pictures from the various locations, but it was huge.  Easily bigger than any falls we’ve ever seen.  There wasn’t a ton of water because we were at the end of spring, but Lee saw pictures where the water was full and I can’t wait to try and go back either earlier in the spring or in the summer monsoon season when more water is flowing.  The canyon itself was stunning though and even without the falls would have been worth the drive.  Both together were spectacular. 

 

To give you a feeling of scale, the pyramid shaped boulder in the lower right corner was at least 3 stories high

 

 

 

 

One of the best things we saw was a school bus driving along the top of the waterfall cliff.  For a moment it looked like it was going to go right over, but the road went down and crossed at the top of the falls.  Not sure what they do when the rains are higher, but we were nervous about taking our truck on that road, let alone a school bus.

The school bus top left

Here’s where it crossed the road at the top of the falls. During monsoon season this is not passable.

Lee’s panoramic

It was amazing, and I am so glad he found it, and like I said would love to go back again when there is more water.  It was a long day though, and we headed back, because we were pulling up stakes and heading back and meeting Cori and Greg at the Las Vegas RV Resort for a couple of days.  I highly recommend this campground if you are staying in town, but unfortunately we were only there a couple of days and then moving to Circus, Circus.  This is definitely not my favorite RV park in Vegas, but Lee was finally getting to spend his week with our youngest daughter and wanted to be located on the strip.

Before we ever went on the road, Lee and I talked about how we would make this week work.  He took our other two daughters to Las Vegas for a week after they turned 21, and we wanted to make sure our youngest would get a similar experience.  We set aside savings money to pay for it and my original plan was to hang out in the rig and largely let them do their own thing.  Thankfully, my mom has a time share in Vegas and when she heard we were coming here she booked it so I can spend the week with her in the time share, and Lee and Kay can have one-on-one Dad/Daughter time.  These weeks are really important to him and in my mind it is on a par with throwing a wedding. I am really glad I can spend time with Mom, and they can do all the fun stuff they have planned.  Since we are going to be separate this week, I decided to not even try to write the blog, so I will be taking a short hiatus.  It’s the first writing break I have taken since we have been on the road, and as much as I enjoy chronicling our adventures, I am also excited about having a week off.  Directly after my Mom and Kay leave we are pulling up stakes again and heading towards Oregon for our summer camp hosting gig.  I’ll catch up with you guys then, and thanks for understanding!


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First Time Boondocking in Flagstaff

Monday Lee went out to get some drone footage of the ruins at Two Guns and the Canyon Diablo train bridge from the other day, and I spent the morning relaxing and taking bird pictures.  Being near a lake this time of year is great, and the marshy area near our site was full of birds in full color.  I got some new birds, and better pictures of some I already had, so thought I would share a few with you.

Killdeer a first for me

Yellow-headed Blackbird another first

Brown-Headed Cowbird

Yellow-rumped Warbler

Lee’s pic of a Red-Winged Blackbird

Lee’s pic of a Great Blue Heron

As a bird lover it was so much fun, and Lee was very happy with the drone footage he got.  I really recommend McHood park for free camping, especially if you can get a spot right near the water.  The people were nice, and there were trash receptacles and toilets onsite. But time to move on to our next spot in Coconino National Forest.  Because we don’t have a separate vehicle, it’s tough to scout out spots, but I read about this one from our friends Jim and Barn’s blog and since they have a rig our size we knew we could fit.  (35°10’52.78″N, 111°29’42.78″W) It was another short travel day even with a stop at the nearby Flying J/Pilot to dump our tanks, which was only $5 with our Pilot fuel card, and take on water, which was free.  There were several sites available when we got there, and I ended up picking one on a large loop with the mountains in the background and a really beautiful tree in front of us.

Loved this tree

Lots of ready to go fire rings that showed signs of recent use

We walked back a little bit to get this view of the San Francisco Peaks which are actually part of one large dormant volcano

 

Setting up when boondocking is much faster, so we were settled in by 11:30am and Lee took a little walk to explore the area.  After I was done with the inside he wanted to go exploring a bit so we took a scenic drive, partly on Historic Route 66 and partly on 180.  I was reading the description of the scenic drive on his phone and saw there was a lava tube nearby.  That sounded cool, so we turned off on Forest road 245 and headed that way.  There is no sign (other than a small one for the road itself) on 180, but once we got on the forest road itself we did see signs.  Eventually we found a parking area with several cars, and then again with a little difficulty found the path.  I didn’t understand why they made this place so hard to find, but once we were there it made more sense.

Path to the Lava River Cave.  See the sign way down at the end

This is what you see on the surface

And this sign shows it is a 1-1/2 mile tube

When we got to the entrance we were lucky enough to meet a local who was waiting for her family to return.  I say lucky because this cave is not something that should be attempted lightly, and we were completely unprepared.  You need at least two lights, water, a jacket, and really good shoes.  It’s very dark even getting down into the cave and thankfully she warned us about the black ice in between the rocks, because it was very slippery.  With some effort we managed to get down into the mouth of the cave and she was nice enough to take a picture, but that was enough for me.  Claustrophobia set in almost immediately and when Lee wanted to go farther I said I absolutely can’t do that.  It’s a shame because it is something I would have liked to have done if able.  We talked about Lee going back later, better prepared, but I was worried about him doing it alone. Seriously, this cave is no joke, and the lava rock is sharp.  I slipped a little getting down to the entrance and the point of a rock drew some blood and gave me a bruise.  So if you want to try it please be careful, but I would love to see the pictures of inside.

You can see the lady we met sitting at the entrance

As soon as you walked down to where Lee was a cold blast of air hit us. Warm clothing definitely called for

This is with the night setting on the camera. Much darker where the ice was

Low ceilings are also a danger. We could see blood where someone had hit their head

Made it this far. The entrance is behind the ice to the left and it was a ice slide to get down

You can see by the look on my face I was done

Whew out. Just typing this makes my chest constrict lol

After the cave, we continued driving up 180 and found a little church that was not on Roadside America.  It caught my eye and we stopped to take a picture and I realized it was open to the public.  What an amazing find, and I submitted it to the app developers for future people to see.  The Church of the Holy Dove was built by a local Doctor and is now open to the public.  Many people hold weddings there, but the only way to show how special it is is through pictures.

Me in the pic for scale.  The front door was unlocked so I opened it and wow!

The front doow is tiny but it opens to this amazing two story  view of the mountains

Inside facing the door.  Would have to be a small wedding, but what a great place to have the ceremony.

After driving the rest of the loop we headed back and had some dinner. We had lots of things on our list for the next day, but I am going to put all of that in the next post.  To finish this one up though I want to leave you with some of my current thoughts on boondocking. The morning I started this post, I woke up with lots of thoughts in my head about boondocking, and wanted to get them down while they were still fresh, so I will leave you with one last pic of the area, and then jump in.  If you just like the pretty pictures, I would recommend stopping here 🙂

We really like boondocking in wilderness areas.  It’s quiet, the views are amazing, and you can get close to nature.  Plus of course it is cheap. But it’s not totally free, as some people might think.  You will need to pay for dumping, unless you want to use an app to find a free dump location, which can be few and far between. Plus you will be using propane for your fridge and water heater, and anything else you might normally run on electricity. It’s definitely still cheaper than most campgrounds you could find with similar circumstances.   But there are some downsides, at least for me.  So in the interest of full disclosure, a couple of incidents happened during the 2-1/2 days we were here and I thought I should mention them, mainly because we know people like to get as many details as possible, so they are better prepared.

I have a general level of unease when we are this far removed from other campers.  Part of that I know is because we are still pretty new at boondocking, but it’s also based on factors that make sense to me.  First are the wild animals.  We have found animal carcasses and/or old bones every time we have boondocked.  That makes sense because we are in the wilderness, but it also indicates that there are probably large predators around.  I know intellectually that they will generally avoid people, because there is easier prey, but it still makes me more cautious.  My solution to this by the way is to keep a bear horn handy.  We are living on their land, so if an animal came along my desire would be to frighten it off not hurt it and hopefully the bear horn would do the trick. (It would not. It’s not so much a bear deterrent as it is a “call to dinner”. – Lee)

Secondly, despite the remoteness there are signs of people.  These spots are generally well known, or we wouldn’t find them, and there are people in the general area either camping or making day use of the area.  Sometimes that makes me feel less isolated, but other times, depending on the type of trash we find, it adds to the unease.  Shell casings, which we see frequently, mean people come to the area to shoot and of course beer cans and smashed liquor bottles mean they come to drink. The combination of both paints an unattractive picture in my mind, and although we have never personally seen this kind of rowdy behavior it is in the back of my head. Trash tells its own story.

If we stayed near the RV all day I would probably be less worried, but part of the reason we do this is to explore, so we generally leave the rig unattended for large stretches of time.  As a general rule folks like to spread out from each other as much as possible, especially in dispersed camping areas, but there is nothing to stop someone from parking right next to you.  This happened on our second night here.  We went out for the scenic drive and we got back around 3:30pm there was a white Toyota Prius parked in a spot behind us, about 30 yards away, with the driver just sitting in it. And it was parked in such a way that the driver was looking out his front windshield at our rig. At first I thought the person was just hanging out and would move on,  but as the evening wore on it became clear they weren’t leaving.  They didn’t pitch a tent, we actually didn’t see them outside of the car at all, and ultimately it was clear they were going to sleep in their car overnight.

Don’t get me wrong, we have run into lots of people who travel and sleep in their cars  and a White Prius is not exactly a scary vehicle, but since the driver’s window was looking right at us,  it made me uncomfortable, and ultimately drove me inside for the evening.  The person left around 5am (they must have been freezing sleeping in their car) which was good, but I just couldn’t relax while they were there.  I’m not saying they didn’t have as much right to be here as we did, and maybe they chose to stay near us for concerns about safety, but for me it was definitely not optimal. I understand many people wouldn’t think twice about it, but at this point I am not one of them.  Again, maybe with more experience that might change. There are lots of folks out there who are living off the grid and traveling with non traditional setups. We’ve met several people in this category throughout our travels, and they do have different motivations.  Some people are just taking some time off “regular life” and are on an adventure, others are reclusive and simply want to be left alone, some people are convinced we are all headed towards a catastrophic event and are preparing for that eventuality, and others are just living close to the edge, being forced into “camping” by circumstance rather than choice. I have rewrote this paragraph about 5 times now and would just delete it, but it seems important to talk about, so I’ll just do the best I can here and quit pussyfooting around.  When we run across an unusual camping setup, it’s not easy to tell which of the above applies. When it happens in a surrounding that includes other campers and or some sort of authority there is at least the illusion of safety.  Meet in a remote area, with no one else around and less so.  Here’s an example.  Ever see someone in a dark alley?  95% chance the person is a fine, upstanding citizen, but your senses are heightened and you are probably extra cautious.  That’s what remote boondocking can feel like to me.  I am not saying I am right about it, just saying that is how it is, for me, in this moment.

My other concerns are more mundane.  We are early risers and as nice as it would be to change our schedules to accommodate the sun (and the electrcity it brings via our solar setup) that doesn’t seem easy for either of us.  Nothing quite like getting up in the total dark and hanging out until the sun comes up.  We could use the generator of course, because there are no quiet hours in the forest, but that costs money, so we tend to not do that.  Even when the furnace is working, Lee likes to avoid using it so he often gets up and starts a fire.  There’s not much to do in the cold and quiet early morning hours so he uses his phone and just hangs out.  We also like coffee, but for some reason he hates percolated coffee so has gone to pretty extreme (in my mind) measures to simulate drip brewed coffee.  He heats the water in the percolator pot, and then uses the filter and carafe from the regular coffee maker to make the coffee and then reheats it on the stove.  This all takes awhile and is quite a bit different from the 2 minute Bunn coffee experience when we have on electric, but it matters to him so it’s OK.  When he gets up first its all fine for me.  The fire is going, the coffee is made, and things are starting to warm up, but unfortunately I am frequently awakened in the middle of the night and if I can’t go back to sleep I just lay there.

One of the things that wakes me up is the beeping on the refrigerator when we are out of propane.  We have four 20# tanks and Lee likes to have only one of them open at a time to keep track of how much we’re using. Murphy’s law says the tank will empty in the middle of the night, and the refrigerator will start beeping. It happened more times than I can count in Quartzsite and happened again our last night here and my choices are to go outside in the pitch black and open a tank,  or just turn the fridge off and go back to bed. I chose the latter this morning because the prospect of dealing with the dark, the cold, and the long coffee process was just too much for me to handle that early in the morning.    I know I should be hardier, but you try dealing with all that when it’s 40 degrees.  I’ll pass.  It’s just another example of what the beautiful pictures don’t show and since I am as guilty as anyone else of forgetting about the less pleasant aspects of boondocking I thought I would mention them while it was all fresh in my mind.

Some people love all of that and I admire them for it.  But we were never campers before we became full time RVers and there was a reason for that.  Living like this requires compromises and it’s up to the individual person to decide whether those compromises are worth the remoteness and the quiet.  In this spot we have had beautiful weather (cold mornings aside), plenty of sunlight for solar power,and a strong internet connection which is great, but those other things can also be a factor.  And despite all of these we will continue boondocking, because the benefits do outweigh the negatives.  But it’s not without it’s challenges and we absolutely need to get the furnace fixed!

(I think she’s a big cry baby and a wimp, and Laura Ingalls would laugh at her and eat a moose or something. – Lee)

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