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After a couple of days in the Jackson Hole area, biking and boondocking and one brutal road to a Forest Service campground with an amazing view of the Tetons, we turned north to Yellowstone. It was cold, but not nearly …
Category Archives: Recreational Vehicle Travel
I’ve always wanted to ride this four mile pass that is very steep. I shouldn’t have chosen a day with asthma, and 20 years younger. But we needed a boondock spot at the new trailhead and, well, the pass was …
The man who wrote our Declaration of Independence was a scientific thinker, and that should tell us something about how we should guide the future of the Republic.
The Overland Expo is an international gathering of people who love overland travel in its many forms. The attendees range from newbies, interested in the latest kit (gear) and guided tours, to solo women who’ve traveled the continents on a motorcycle. As bicycle tourists with 43,000 miles around the world on our tandem, we share much with the hard core, and can remember being a newbie. The range of people and their changing passions is what this six minute mini-documentary is about
We’ve hiked most of the trails in Needles during our five week volunteer stint, but still hadn’t been able to replicate the hike we did a decade ago with Northwest friends, Jack and Mary Lange. We remembered that we had started and ended in Loop A of the campground
…a motorcyclist… got in just at dark. We let him set up his tent on our plot and had an interesting visit. He has done a bit of bicycle touring. He’s also a famous person who faces many challenges, and we feel it reasonable to respect his privacy for now. Claire said, “He may be famous, but our interaction taught me that, in a National Park, all are equal, and have the opportunity for renewal.”
While camping and hiking in Needles District of Canyonlands National Park, we mentioned to a ranger that we hoped to volunteer in a national park someday. The ranger was the volunteer coordinator. Two days later, boondocked at another spectacular site new to us, Muley Point, there was a message on our phone from Dorita. The volunteer slated for the fall stint had become ill; could we fill in for as little or as long as possible? We were just a few days from Tucson to begin our “normal” winter activities, but we do tend to grab opportunities, so we said yes. We begin as soon as we gather a month’s worth of food, add some winter clothes and blankets (thrift store) and return to Needles. Read the post to see a special panorama that shows how we like to get the most out of Turtle, our motorhome.
Colorado in late September. Two best friends, a comfortable motorhome, two bicycles, mountains to pedal up and peak Colorado color. Life is good.
A young woman presses her phone to her ear, other hand covers her other ear. Tears gather, ran down her cheeks. She is a cosmetologist from the beauty parlor. My guess is she had been working in the WalMart a year before. The pad for it lays barren just in front of the new store, mute reminder to all who pass it.
lunch we made in the parking lot after buying most of the makings at the market: corn, potatoes, whole wheat bread (with Claire home made hummus) cole slaw and tomatoes. Everything from the market was so fresh it was probably picked that morning It reminded me of my Mother’s summer lunches.
After a 47 mile ride, only one section of a square with a tailwind. We decided we had earned a stop at a the Cardinal Drug soda fountain when we got back to Chanute. I got a big one, and it was a whopper. We had been disappointed earlier in the day when we discovered Erie, a small town where Claire had expected to find a new-to-us old fashioned soda fountain, had been torn down, a new building built and the fountain was now just a non-working display at the new high school. This is happening more and more often. The machinery, the marble tables, the back bars, still exist, but no longer have a purpose, and soon there will be no one alive who knows how to make a real soda or Green River. However, in Chanute, the two young girls waiting on us made excellent sodas (cherry for me, strawberry for Claire) at Cardinal Drugs, using the proper wrist action and a perfect balance of fruit, soda and whipped cream. Oh my. Nothing like it on a hot humid day. We had been there on a soda-fountain themed tour of Kansas several years, and we were happy to find this one unchanged.
In Greensburg, Kansas the city park, pool and ball fields, has several grass sites, with electricity. We enjoyed watching young baseball hopefuls practice, until darkness, thunder and lightning sent them home. They pay attention to the skies here: Greensburg was destroyed by a tornado a year after we had visited on a Zippy (our world traveling tandem) on a short soda fountain tour in 2006, another story, coming to this site soon!
A nap can be the highlight of a good day. Tired from exercise or chores, cool sheets, and the fuzz of a favorite stuffed bear, or two, is just the thing. No more words required. We all love a good nap.
“You don’t fu….. care about me!” It came from a young woman sitting in a car beside Turtle. “You don’t treat me like you did before. You don’t treat me the same fu….. way you did before we got married.” A young man, stood tall beside her window, hands at his sides, outer calm mirrored in his desert camouflage uniform, defending himself in an even tone. “It’s not me. It’s you,” he said.
Kluane Lake, Yukon in late August, 2010 from the window of our motorhome. In Yukon Territory, you can pretty much “camp” wherever you can find a flat spot to park. Our Winnebego View is small enough to park just about any place you could park a van, yet has the essentials of any home. We watched the view morph to mellow evening light. We followed animal tracks in the rock and sand beach, and returned “home” to stir fry vegetables and pasta and a glass of wine. Darkness came quickly and we watched night displace day with billions of stars through our skylight. Simple pleasures are best.
Recently Claire and I were lucky enough to catch a hike guided by the park paleontologist and an interpretive ranger. The short, two mile or so, hike took us away from the road and interpretive signs and into the washes and flats where dinosaurs died 225 million years ago in the late Triassic Period. We found pieces of bone and Claire even found an intact tooth. The stark landscape adds to the mystery and amazement of the realization that you are holding a thing, that was once part of a living Stagonolepis so long ago. Nothing like science to put one’s lifespan into perspective.
Mount Mazama, once over 12,000 feet in elevation, went through a half-million years of alternating eruptions and quietude. Between seven and eight thousand years ago, Mount Mazama erupted violently numerous times, covering eight states and three Canadian provinces with six inches of ash. These eruptions produced 150 times the ash as the Mount St. Helens eruption in 1980.
The Olympic Peninsula of Washington State is not a famous for sunset skies as some places, but when the sun has a little space between clouds to work with, spectacular results. Some of the best skies are late in the day in winter. It seems like winter is coming early this year (La Nina), and this evening sky gives strong hints of things to come.
Hiked a 5 mileRT/2000 ft. trail with Bob’s sister Anne Bowlds today. At the summit we watched locals float over forests and meadows and slowly guide their fascinating craft to a gentle landing far below. Looks like fun. Nice Claire photos! Tiger Mountain Washington state.
The Kettle Valley Rail Trail isn’t all remote mountain views and trestles; we rode beside grapevines and past winery doors on a section from Penticton to cute little Naramata. I liked Naramata, lovely by the lake, but also because it reminded me of Australian names, many of which end with …ata, sometimes …atta. Homesick for Australian wine country again.
We got on the, still unfinished, Kettle Valley Railway (rail trail) bypassing Kelona and on to Penticton. The Myra-Bellevue Provincial Park is the most spectacular section of the trail, with 18 trestles and two tunnels in an 8.5 kilometer section.
We missed a sow grizzly by seconds. According to volunteers, something spooked her up on to the road just before our arrival. We saw her still wet paw prints in the road after we rounded a corner. I sure am glad we weren’t there when she burst out of the brush, scared for her cubs and soon to become mad at innocent us! All we saw at the site was a few bushes rustling. All this time in the far north, and not one grizzly sighting. Maybe the wet paw prints were more exciting than seeing her from the protection of a raised viewing platform.
Claire and I looked at each other. We both had tears in our eyes. It was our twentieth anniversary, and we were witnessing the beginning of the end of a young marriage. It didn’t take words between us to know what we would do.
By noon our mountain bikes were loaded and we were off. The traffic was not bad, the hills fairly long. We saw the mountain (hooray!), two caribou, a family of ptarmigan, a snowshoe hare, and a huge set of grizzly tracks. We arrived at Sanctuary River with plenty of time to organize our camp and stow our food safe from bears, and from attracting bears. No bears.
This is a direct photo through the windshield of our motorhome, Turtle, of The Mittens in Monument Valley, Arizona. I doubt there is a very expensive RV resort, or Five Star hotel, that could offer an equal view. This was a no service parking spot on the Navajo reservation. Boondock spots (sometimes called dry camping) are free, but we paid $5 for this one. I’d say $5 is close enough to free to qualify.
After a good hard bike ride up East End Road out of Homer, we decided to celebrate the rare sunshine with ice cream for a late lunch. We bought a carton at Fred Meyer’s and took it outside to their …
Turnout boondock on the Kenai near Seward, and we were settled in for the night, nice forest on one side, traffic a good distance away on the other. Alone.
A truck with a camper pulling a boat, typical Alaskan rig, swung in ahead of us and stopped abruptly. The passenger door flung open, a woman jumped out and stumbled into the woods. After a few minutes a man got out the driver’s side and stood looking at the woods, hands in pockets, looked at his feet, called out loudly to the woods. He was still for tedious time, suddenly decided, and hurried into the woods.
Some loud voices, quiet, more commotion further away, then quiet again. We moved from mild interest to slight concern and finally worry. A half-hour passed. Should I do something? What? Was this just a couple’s spat or something more serious?
He’d turned off the truck, but the headlights were still on, the driver’s door open. I hoped he’d seen us, but what if he was blinded with anger, unaware that the drama was not being played to an empty house.
I decided to make sure he knew someone was listening, aware. I walked to the truck, and yelled in the direction I’d last heard them, “Hey! You guys okay? Silence.
Then I had an idea and yelled: “Your headlights are on.” After a few seconds the man walked from the woods. “Yeah, we’re okay. Thanks.” He looked a sad tired man. “I figured you were having a bad day, and didn’t need one more thing to go tits up.” He smiled at me. “Yeah, thanks man.” His smile was soft, sincere. He went back to the woods and she came out with him soon after. He got a blanket from the back and put it gently around her shoulders, and they drove away.
Sometimes you just have to do something. Small things matter.
Just a quick touch of the salmon crazed Alaskans (legal residents) fishing with nets at the mouth of the Kenai River. It’s how they fill their freezers for the year and have a lot of fun it seems. The gulls are happy too!
We’ve a nice half day at Exit Glacier for a hike, and a sunny day to be on Prince William Sound. No time to write, but lots of photos of landscapes, glaciers and wildlife:
There is something about the light here this past week: soft and heavy and long nearly through the night; long and soft and ineffectual. I find it vaguely depressing, sometimes not so vaguely. An hour of blessed sunshine makes it worse, knowing it will go away and take the mountains and the spectral highlights, the sparkle, with it. The sun, slow to come, always going away, soon. I know I shouldn’t feel this way about the North. I feel guilty about, which doesn’t help any. All the beauty; moose, bears, lakes, mountains, and still snow patches and sometimes glaciers. But the light is just not there, just not right, yet.
There were days during the months we spent in Iceland
Not long after entering Alaska from Yukon Territory, Claire found a small lake with free camping through the Escapees listings. It was a short drive down a narrow dirt road, just small enough to keep out the big RVs. We were fairly early in the day and got the best lakeside site. We saw quite a few birds, Claire heard a loon, and I saw a pair of tundra swans patrolling the shore.
We moped through the gray afternoon, napping to the shush of the fountain and studying maps to prepare for some sunny day. Throughout the day, a lone figure moved around the park, sometimes contemplating the fountain from a lonely perch on a park bench. As others came and went, this boy stayed. I imagined that he’d planned to study in the library and was stuck waiting for a ride home once a parent got off work. He looked to be a teenager, but he wasn’t talking on a cell phone or listening to music, he was just sitting.
We expected bears or moose, but only had birds and wildflowers for company. The daylight is almost continuous now, and the light, when there is a break in the rainclouds, just fades and warms slowly toward 11pm, and it is light all night. I enjoy waking up and looking at the light at 2am or so, just as morning color begins to wash the sky.
A fun example of the cultural mixing here was the jig contest. Now, I’ve always thought of the jig, danced to a fast fiddle, as an Anglo-Saxon tradition: Irish, Scottish, French, but here it’s a local tradition, with most of the dancers of First Nations descent, with plenty of mixed and white faces giving it a go. Oh, by the way, the really really excellent fiddler seemed to be from the orient. Go figure.
t becomes almost difficult to sleep as we near the Yukon, the days are so long, the nights so short. We close all the blinds in Turtle, and it still is late before we can sleep. Light usually wakes me at 3:30am, but I’m a good sleeper, and Claire’s warmth makes it easy to wait for full sun to warm us through the windshield sometime around 6:30. At that 3:30 awakening, I open the blinds and curtain between our living area and the cab to welcome the sun. A warm house makes it easier to get out of bed at a reasonable hour.
This was taken after 10pm through the window of Turtle at a boondock on the Alaska Highway, or as the Canadians have signed it, the Great Northern. I prefer Great Northern; more romantic than the Alaska Highway.
Long days of slantlong light, and the landscape rolling off to infinity, makes for a magical sense of otherness, of strange timelessness. We love the road, and this one is special.
We boondocked with this van in the Bellingham Wal*Mart. It was festooned with sculptures of eagles. An older couple (like 80’s) were not shy about being noticed! Car after car drove up, rolled down their windows, and took a photo with cameras or phones. One woman left her car running in the middle of the busy lane and made a slow walk-around video.
I skied to a nearby ridge with friends the first February following the eruption. We snow camped with fantastic views of the still actively growing central plug. It glowed in the dark, and the splintered trees surrounding us stood out in stark gray strangeness to the white snow. During the first night we all felt an earthquake, but nobody mentioned it until late the next morning; never speak the name of Evil. It was just too scary an idea that there might be a new big eruption while we were exposed. There were constant belches of steam and ash from the crater. We were reluctant to leave. I never went back. I wanted to remember her that way, and a ski trip was an excellent way to say goodbye.
Emerson, near Monmouth, Oregon, not far from Salem in the Wilmette Valley. They are on the Harvest Home program, and we were offered a parking place with spectacular views of their 25 acres of grapes and beautiful mature oak forest. We were also treated to a tasting like I remember from so many years ago, attentive and informative with no pressure to buy.
The Longsword Winery in the Applegate Valley of Southern Oregon, was the first winery that hosted us for a night under the Harvest Hosts program. For a $20 membership you receive access to a growing number of wineries and farms who will allow you to park your RV overnight without a fee.
The Wal*Mart parking spot is in the top ten at least. We heard lots of bird calls and not much else. There was little traffic in the parking lot, and we were not disturbed either of the two nights we boonocked there. We shopped at two businesses in town. We felt welcomed.
Android ap for uploading directly from the phone to WordPress, had a glitch and the media (photo) wouldn’t load. They put in a fix and it works as of today. For you semi-geeks out there, it means I can take a photo, or hopefully a video, add the text and upload directly to newbohemians.net without having to have the computer on the Internet. Anywhere there is a cell signal, we can post. So if you see a photo of a huge set of grizzly teeth about to chomp my head, you’ll know what happened in real time, almost.
we had a nasty note about overnight parking the next morning. That usually means the local RV parks have pushed through an ordinance aimed directly at RVs and Wal*Mart. We were careful not to spend any money in Chico. Too bad, otherwise it’s a nice town. Using the law to promote specific businesses, and target other businesses (Wal*Mart) is not good business in the long run.
Tomorrow we begin six months of travel in our motorhome, Turtle. We begin again another volume of the Turtle Chronicles; motorhome travel and the discoveries it brings. This is not the full on adventure our bicycle tour In Search of Shangri-la, but a mellow exploration from Tucson to Alaska and back, the crooked long slow way, with lots side trips by bicycle, hikes to discover new sights, and as always, making new friends. Join us, and look for my essay in Escapees Magazine. I’ll give you a heads up and a link.
This is one of my favorite times of the year in the desert, flowing water, many colored blossoms, green foliage, cactus looking fat and happy, beginning to bud, and the Arizona sycamores and cottonwoods Shadow and boots, seven fallsbursting with green.
Preparation: cook yam covered with some water in microwave 2/3 done, let sit to finish. Fry salmon in lots of extra virgin olive oil with garlic powder and tarragon, remove and cover to stay warm. Add broccoli to salmon juices and olive oil on medium high and brown, add 21 Salute, chicken broth and finish covered. Serve on 8″ plate and a glass of wine.
Ingredients: leftover vegetables and chicken saute (two days old, max) extra virgin olive oil, 1/3 cup coconut milk, 1/2 orange, 1 tbsp fish oil, 1 tbsp red curry paste, 1/4 cup dry whole grain basmati rice, cashews.
Pour the cook a glass of wine.
Preparation: cook rice 35 minutes in salted water, drain and cover to finish; stir fry rice in olive oil, curry paste and fish oil; add leftovers to mix with coconut milk and heat; squeeze 1/4 orange into wok and stir.
Serve on 8″ plates with 1/4 orange and chopsticks.
Preparation: Claire bakes her no kneed many grained bread; I can’t be more specific because she makes it differently each time, which is part of the adventure! Steam the asparagus while frying the salmon in olive oil, sprinkled with tarragon and fresh pressed garlic. Make dipping oil/vinegar mix adding Trader Joe’s 21 Salute and pepper. Arrange on an 8″ plate, sprinkle asparagus with sea salt and serve with wine.
Dice vegetables in large pieces, cube cooked chicken breasts; fry vegetables in lots of olive oil, adding pressed garlic, spices and cubed chicken near the end.Cook pasta al dente, drain but reserve 1 cup, add 3 tbsp of pasta water to bowl, one egg, 1/4 cup grated cheese and stir until a sauce. Reduce over heat if necessary. (Claire’s sauce) Mix pasta back into sauce. Place vegetable chicken mixture and pasta on 8″ plate, cover with sauce, sprinkle nuts and add pepper or salt if you like. Have with wine and your sweetie.
Fry patties in lots of olive oil, in a medium hot iron skillet, uncovered. Sprinkle with Old Bay seasoning, or other spice that goes with something a little sweet. TAKE CARE, the natural sugar in the yam tends to make the patties go from brown to burnt very quickly!
The Wave permit area on Bureau of Land Management Coyote Buttes wilderness area in Northern Arizona. I would like to have had a person in the photo for scale, but the sides were way too steep, including the place where I was standing.
Cook and drain rice, set aside. Chop nuts (suggestion: walnuts and almonds), chop and caramelize onions and mushrooms in extra virgin olive oil and several cloves of pressed garlic. Remove from pan, add to rice and cover in bowl. Brown chicken breasts in olive oil on hot, both sides: sprinkle with spices of your choice. Remove from pan and put on top of covered pilaf to finish (microwave off is a good place). Saute vegetables in olive oil, add a small amount of chicken or vegetable broth and rice wine to finish.
Preparation: Pour the cook a glass of wine.
Chop onion and stems of greens, saute in LOTS of extra virgin olive oil, add chopped leafy collards, red peppers, curry paste and chicken broth, summer until done to taste.
Microwave yam, turning often until done. Let sit in microwave covered. Remove collard mixture to bowl, cover and add to microwave to stay warm and finish.
Cook and main squeeze have a glass of wine together. This is, after all Valentine’s Day. You should have done two other healthy activities with your main squeeze this day: exercise and sex. Dinner is the fianalle.
Coat fish with seasoning and fry in LOTS of extra virgin olive oil. Put on plate with greens, yam and serve with another glass of wine.
Leave the dishes for tomorrow and go to bed early.
Caramelize cubed onion, fry chicken breast, both in LOTS of olive oil, and put both aside. Cook pasta al dente while you saute the zucchini with 5-10 cloves pressed garlic, in LOTS of olive oil. When pasta is al dente, drain and cover. Add onions, cubed chicken and sun dried tomatoes to pan and finish with LOTS of olive oil.
Put pasta on 8″ plate, add pan contents, grate sheep’s cheese on top, add pepitas.
Lots more life than expected. The gypsum holds water and the plants are able to get water even when it hasn’t rained in months. All they have to worry about are rockets falling from the sky from the White Sands Missile Range.