Catching up

(As always, click on any of the small pictures here to see a full-sized view.)

It's been almost six months since I updated this site. Many kindhearted people have written to ask whether I'm OK, or just to find out how things are going. Things are going wonderfully—in fact, I've been having such a good time that I've been too busy to write much! I still hope and intend to update the site with detailed accounts of my adventures...but in the meantime, I owe you at least a summary of where I've been and what I've done since my summer in Maine.

From Ocean Wood Campground I headed back down to my home turf in New Jersey, and spent several weeks camped in various friends' driveways, enjoying their company once again. I spent a week at the eastern Pennsylvania retirement home of my friend Gretchen, working on her video documentary about the less well-known cities of Asia that she's visited. No, we didn't get it done, but we made a good start!

Then I did something that really went against my grain: I drove hell-for-leather across most of the US, not stopping to see the sights or smell the roses. My excuse was that I wanted to be in Colorado to see it at its fall best...and after that, I had a free ticket to the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, thanks to my friend Sarah Blackwood, who was unable to attend because of a family emergency.

True, large parts of the midwest are not that exciting to look at, at least if you drive through on the interstates...but I knew I was missing all kinds of great places like the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices. I hated driving hundreds of miles a day and skipping the serendipitous sights and experiences that make RVing fun. I felt I was cheating myself. Still...the rewards awaiting me were great.

I spent a week in Colorado with my friend Jan, a skilled nature photographer who took me to some of her favorite haunts. I had a lot of fun and snagged some pretty good animal photos...like this bugling elk, shot from about fifteen feet away. In fact, in one day in Rocky Mountain National Park I probably got more good animal photos than in any whole year.

The animals at RMNP let you get really close—I was only inches away from this Clarke's Nutcracker! Rabbits and squirrels were equally cooperative. I had a ball!

From Denver I headed south to Albuquerque for the ten-day International Balloon Fiesta. What a blast! I parked with a dozen or more other Lazy Dazes, many of whose owners became good friends in the course of the festival. Every morning 700-odd balloons would take off at dawn, and on most days the wind would carry them right over our heads. Sometimes a balloon would land right in our midst! The pilots were amazingly skilled. In the evenings we'd sit in front of our rigs and enjoy a potluck supper, then watch the fireworks. I'm definitely going back next year!

From Albuquerque I drove a grueling 508 miles in one day to Tempe, AZ (a Phoenix suburb), where I had an appointment with a highly recommended RV technician to install four new high-powered AGM batteries in Gertie. Once again I bypassed many things I would have liked to see, such as Meteor Crater. But the tech I was to meet, Ron Walter, was on a very tight schedule, and I badly needed the extra power the new batteries would deliver. So I spent three days baking in a cheesy urban trailer park while Ron did a superb installation. It was definitely worth it.

The minute the job was finished, though, I fled the ugly urban sprawl of Phoenix and headed south to Picacho Peak State Park, a beautifully scenic area. There I was able to relax and just watch the weather sweep across the big sky. Gertie's panoramic view was ideal, and when I saw a photogenic scene out the window, I'd just step outside and shoot a few frames.

I caught spectacular sunrises as well as sunsets, and a couple of rare desert rainstorms...one of which ended in a double rainbow. I even created an ersatz postcard for the place.

Then I headed down to Patagonia—not the one in Argentina, but a tiny (pop. 880) artists' community in southern Arizona where my friend Bill Haas lives. Gertie suffered a breakdown on the way—a broken fan belt that led to a lot of other problems—but Bill rescued me, and generously let me live in his Lazy Daze (he has a small house) for a week while Gertie was in the shop.

Then the two of us caravanned to various wilderness sites—Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management areas where you can stay for free for a couple of weeks. No hookups or facilities, of course, but the scenery was wonderful and our rigs are very self-sufficient. I really enjoyed this wilderness camping—I liked being away from other RVs, families, kids, dogs and so on.

My only problem was with electricity. My 20" iMac computer, while it suits my needs perfectly, uses far more juice than my PowerBook laptop did, so I found myself constantly running short of power. Over the next two months I added four more solar panels to Gertie, filling up just about every available square foot on her roof. (I even sawed off the TV antenna to make room for another panel!) In the process, I tripled my solar generating capacity from 204 to 589 watts...which, as it turns out, is almost enough!

I spent about a month and a half with Bill in the Patagonia area, and we really enjoyed each other's company. We made lots of improvements to our rigs, and our teamwork produced better results than either of us alone could have achieved.

One of our most ambitious projects was sawing Bill's curbside couch in half to make room for a wonderfully comfortable glider rocker he'd purchased. It turned out very well, looking as if the factory had built it that way. We also added a pantry closet similar to the one I'd built in Gertie a couple of years ago.

While we were camped out in the boonies, I had an appendicitis scare that sent me to the emergency room with abdominal pains...but although the pains were in the right place for appendicitis, all the tests came out normal, and they sent me home. The doctors and I never did figure out what was going on, but the pains went away after a week or so and have not returned.

This affair did have one good result: it prodded me to make an appointment with a GI specialist in Tucson and get a long-postponed colonoscopy. The guy was very good, and with a bare minimum of sedation the procedure went smoothly. I came out with a clean bill of health..."Off the hook for another ten years," as the doctor put it. (No pictures of the procedure on this website, you'll be relieved to hear.)

After that we drove to Quartzsite, a town of 5,000 people that expands to 500,000 each January as the hugely popular rockhound and RV shows take place there. My intent was to see the place before it turned into a zoo, and that worked out well. You've never seen a town so full of RV-related vendors! It was loads of fun.

The only sour note was that I bought a small 1,000 W Honda generator from a friend, hoping to eliminate the last of my power problems...only to have it stolen six hours later, while it was cable-locked to my rig and I was inside Bill's rig only fifteen feet away! That was a shocker, needless to say—$650 down the drain. Theft at campsites is actually very rare, but Quartzsite's free campsites are unpatrolled and there are lots of transients. I should have used a heavy chain and stowed the generator inside the rig when not in use. I may buy another one...haven't decided yet. I'm doing reasonably well with my upgraded solar panels, plus running Gertie's engine for awhile in the morning and evening for supplemental electric power.

Just before Christmas I drove to Death Valley, where a group of Lazy Daze owners known as the "Death Valley Desperadoes" meets between Christmas and New Year's each year. Meanwhile, Bill headed back to Patagonia to work on "Moonscapes," his book of gorgeous black-and-white photos (Ansel Adams-quality work!) taken by moonlight. He's printing it himself, and has already sold a couple of hundred copies. I bought two—one for myself, and one to show my friends!

Fifty Lazy Dazes showed up at Death Valley, and soon I was beginning to feel overwhelmed by the number of people. All my life I've been shy and something of a loner...in fact, I used to say to my friends that my worst nightmare would be to become famous. And now, because of the internet, Gertie and I are known to thousands of people—members of the Yahoo LD discussion group that I moderate, and those of you who've read this "Travels with Gertie" website.

This isn't a bad thing by any means, and I'm not complaining. In fact, it's brought me together with many wonderful people, some of whom I already know will be friends for life. But it can be a little awkward when someone who's familiar with this website feels that they know me well...while I'm still struggling to remember their name. (I have an uncanny ability to forget a name five seconds after I've been introduced. It's very embarrassing!) All the Lazy Dazers at Death Valley were doing their best to make me welcome, and it wasn't their fault that I was starting to feel as if I'd like to crawl back into my shell for awhile...it was just a minor shyness attack.

However, the day after I arrived—Christmas night, to be exact—I came down with the flu. Yuck! It wasn't the worst flu I've ever had, but it kept me good and miserable for a week and a half...I only started to feel better after the new year. Meanwhile, the social activities swirled around Gertie, right outside my windows, but I couldn't participate—besides feeling lousy, I didn't want to pass on my disease. In a sense, my wish had been granted and I was left to hide in my shell...but I felt cheated at the same time.

By the time I was fully recovered, all but a dozen of the fifty LDs had left...and those who remained were all friends of mine from the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta in September, so it was much more comfortable. Besides, by that time I was tired of being cooped up and ready for some socializing! We had enjoyable times at the nightly potluck dinners, and I even got to see a few of the Death Valley sights, such as Artist's Palette. (Our own Sunset Campground itself was spectacularly boring: literally a huge parking lot with 1,000 spaces marked out, and no scenery except the distant mountains.)

After three weeks at Death Valley it was time to move on, and several of my friends and I headed west to Joshua Tree National Park in southern California. We found adjacent campsites in Jumbo Rocks, one of the nine campgrounds in this park and by far the most spectacular.

The landscape here is alien; the weirdly shaped rocks look as if they'd been melted. In fact, they were—at one time they were molten granite, then were covered by softer rock and finally exposed by weathering. Although this is technically part of the Mojave Desert, there's a profusion of plant life...many more kinds than I expected. It's far richer than the saguaro-and-sagebrush landscape that an easterner like me thinks of as "desert."

A high point of my stay here was the arrival of old friends from New Jersey, Gary and Linda Oliaro, who were in the area visiting Linda's mother. They came out to Jumbo Rocks one afternoon to visit and we hiked to Skull Rock, where Gary took a great picture of me. At sunset we drove to Key's Point to watch the sun set over the distant Salton Sea.

That night we had an excellent Mexican meal at Edchadas in Yucca Valley and did a little shopping in the local discount stores. Gary and Linda dropped me off at the campground and went back to their hotel, but returned the next morning and spent a few hours chatting in Gertie. (In anticipation of their visit I'd bought a very compact folding chair at Walmart for $9.99, so I'd have seating for three.) I was sorry to see them go.

Jumbo Rocks is a photographer's dream come true. Staying here for a couple of weeks gave me plenty of opportunities to photograph the bizarrely beautiful landscape in all different lights and under all different skies.

Unfortunately, my permitted two weeks here are nearly up—tomorrow I have to leave. I'll be heading over to Victorville, about 70 miles away—not that there is anything much worth seeing there, but I need to have my battery charger repaired, and the company that can do it is there. And from there I plan to visit the Lazy Daze factory in Montclair—another hour's drive—and meet the stubborn old gents who build these rigs to last forever!

After that, I don't know where I'm going to go. Maybe back to southern Arizona, maybe to Texas. I have Lazy Daze friends pretty much everywhere, and really my main problem at this point is finding a place where nobody has heard of me, so I can hunker down and get some work done—like properly updating this website! But tonight I'm enjoying the starry skies and the joshua trees one last time...