Occupation of Independence

With every passing year, I find it easier to admire people for various activities and skills, while at the same time, feeling no desire to emulate them.  Mountaineering is a good example of that.   One mountaineering writer -- perhaps it was Jon Krakauer -- was asked what he did when bad weather set in, trapping him in a tent for a couple days.  He said he picked a lot of lint out of all the velcro in his equipment and clothing. With that advice in mind, what should a camper do when it rains and he fears muddy roads ?   Step one is to move towards town, pavement, and shopping.  Step two: go to an actual laundromat and stuff your big things into one of their larger machines.  The next step is something I really went crazy with, today. Orderliness with your equipment turns into more and more entropy every day.  It adds up, over time.  What better thing is there to do on a muddy day than to go crazy on an organizational jihad? ...

 Recently I had another look at Barbara Tuchman's "March of Folly."  It was interesting, but the book was written a few decades ago and needs a Rev. 2.0 update.  The update should be called "The March of Suicide." 'Folly' is just too mild a word for what is happening these days.  Never before in my lifetime have I seen several important countries attempting suicide, at the same time.  There have been some remarkable examples of attempted and successful suicide in the past: 1. Jewish stubbornness and provocation of the Roman Empire , ending in the destruction of Jerusalem. 2. The refusal to surrender by some cities in central Asia after getting an ultimatum from Genghis Khan . 3. Napoleon's unnecessary invasion of Russia in 1812 . 4. Britain's unnecessary involvement in World War I . 5. The Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s. 6. The Ukrainian people allowing "their" (post-elected-term) government to continue a lost war agains...

 Given the forecast of more rain, it made sense to hang around in town on paved roads for another day or two.  But I ended up shopping too much, and that is nerve-wracking.  So I headed out to a favorite area in central Utah :    Maybe I would get lucky with the mud.  The sky was fairly bright, actually, so I was optimistic.  But when you see tire ruts in the dirt road ahead, you know you are in trouble. There were hardly any puddles, so the road didn't seem  that wet.  So why was I losing traction and fishtailing on a flat road?    The traction control system lit up the dashboard like a Christmas tree.  It would then shut down the throttle, which is annoying to a driver.  I did better with the damned thing turned off.  I really should have let some air out of the tires.  Trying to get the van tires over the most gravelly part of the road did more good than anything.  What an utterly perverse surface!...

As a reminder, comments are no longer moderated on this blog, so your comments will appear immediately.  We do not mention specific locations.  Once again I want to praise Pacific hurricanes to the sky.  Despite being so far inland, Central Utah felt the most recent one (Rachel) to smack southern California and northern Baja.  I got a reminder of how much care a camper needs to use to stay out of the mud.  It is ironic: when rain finally comes to this gawdforsaken wasteland, I go into a mild panic instead of enjoying it as much as it should be enjoyed. Clothing is important.  Rubberized boots certainly help.  And rainsuits (jacket and pants) with the all-important property of the pants slipping on and off over shoes.  Even something as simple as a baseball hat helps, since it keeps rain off you face and eyeglasses. It happens so rarely that I am 'out of shape' when it comes to the flexibility that rain requires.  A momentary break in the rai...

 I believe it is possible to construct a survivable and stable solution to the mess in the Persian Gulf.  Let's call it the " Greater Persian Gulf Co-Prosperity Sphere ", administered by Iran.  (No facetiousness.)  Iran would charge a hefty transit fee at the Strait of Hormuz , and some of the money would be shifted to Gulf countries that have become friendly to Iran and unfriendly to Washington DC and Israel. What is so bad about global wealth shifting toward energy and resource producers, and away from parasitic consumers? But food will cost more because of high diesel prices , you say.  What is so bad about shifting to more locally-produced food , with its lower transportation cost? When people talk about the cost of energy being a 'tax' or drag on the economy, they act as if your energy usage is absolutely fixed.  Walk into your local grocery store and look at the cars.  They aren't cars, of course, they are monstrous F-150 pickup trucks .  A...

 I am experimenting with NOT moderating comments on this blog.  Let's hope the spammers don't invade.  Last time, it was strange cows.  Now it is horses acting unusual.   Last year it was a weird bighorn ram.  This horse was too friendly.  But that's OK, he and his friends were sure pretty:        Maybe animals have been acting so strange because, in Utah, they have never seen a human being walking or riding a bike.  They have only seen humans in motorized side-by-sides.   Remember the curious ram from last year?    

 Cows can act strangely around mountain bikes.  They started running along the dirt road ahead of my bike, instead of running off perpendicularly.  And they kept at it, going uphill for a couple hundred feet!  When were they going to get sensible?  I smiled thinking about the "Rollin', rollin', rollin" theme music of the old TV western, "Rawhide."   I got some better photos of my 'pet' balanced rock: The next morning a bull walked slowly down the road, bellowing loudly and repeatedly.  Then a cattle truck came and gave him an 'uber' ride down the mountain.  At the foot of the mountain, a man was riding a horse.  What a tall and proud beast!  His wife was also on a horse and had a toddler sitting on the saddle, ahead of her.  The little guy managed to drop one of his size 2 cowboy boots on the ground.  I picked it up so that the mother didn't have to dismount. I asked if the ranching business was doing well, now that beef was 6 ...

 Sing the praises of hurricanes coming in from the Pacific Ocean!  That is what it took for a couple days of rain to hit Utah.  Actually it is pretty impressive how far inland the rain can come. After a couple days of bliss, it went back to looking like Utah. People who haven't seen red rock before go absolutely crazy over it.  But that kind of infatuation is not long-lasting.  Personally I move onto shapes of various kinds.  It is strange how a guy can stay interested in shapes forever -- and maybe it is a guy thing. It is easy for a dog-lover to remain permanently in love with dog photos, of course:    How many ' balanced rocks ' are marked on map's in this world?  I shudder to think about asking AI that question.  Regardless of its answer about "America's Top Ten" balanced rocks, and regardless of the tourist industry's effort to make a minor tourist attraction out of them, most of the fun comes from discovering them for yourself su...

 Many bloggers steer clear of political topics because they can become polarizing and full of frustration or even anger.  (And therefore lose readers/viewers, the measure of 'success'.) But what is the result?  The blog becomes innocuous, insipid, and nothing more than escapist entertainment.  Another direction for the blog to go is to the mundane and humdrum: "Another Tuesday", or "I Cooked Elbow Macaroni Today". Every now and then, political developments can be surprising or even inspiring.  Usually this shows up with war outcomes.  Most recently, think of 1) Britain at Dunkirk , early in WW II , 2) Russian perserverance in 1812, after being invaded by Bonaparte , 3) Alfred the Great in his swamp while holding onto the "Last Kingdom," and for all time, 4) ancient Greece repelling the Persians . Could Americans be facing a situation like that in the upcoming election?  Do they realize that their back is against the wall, and that for their econo...

 There are times when rain on the roof of a camper can be unpleasant.  But a light rain is a great thing to wake up to.  My app said this town in central Utah got 0.02", but I think my exact location got twice that much.   The next morning the sky was clean-scrubbed.  The air felt slightly moist to the skin.  People who haven't experienced severe aridity do not understand how nice it is to finally  have double-digit relative humidities .  It is no small thing to have enough moisture to form a cloud, in these gawd-forsaken wasteland states of the West.  At this point I should have been happy to declare victory.  But I stumbled upon something that I should have noticed before in this area:  There were 20 trees in the area...trees with leaves. .. sacred oak trees .  Please don't call them ' scrub oaks .'  Hell, they were 15 feet high and their shade was opaque. It doesn't matter if I am hit by a semi-truck tomorrow....

 What makes for a perfect campsite?  This seems like an obvious question, but it really isn't.  It seems obvious that there should be a magnificent view from your front door.  That is how You Tube videos show 'breathtakingly beautiful' campsites.  But remember that those videos are selling a fantasy to armchair travelers who think like scenery tourists or vacationers.  Or they think like bougie suburbanites who want a campsite with 'high property value.' I bumbled onto such a campsite today as my little sweetheart and I biked up towards the bigger mountains in central Nevada .  And at first I considered relocating camp to this site.  But on second thought, it was not a good idea. This superficially perfect campsite was too close to the upper end of the dead-end dirt road.  So it would force me to start   out-and-back rides by going downhill.  Yuk! A particularly pretty campsite is too likely to attract 'customers', and that is t...

 Does anyone in the world actually sympathize with Saudi Arabia?  I wonder if it is the third most despised regime on the planet.  (You can easily guess who #1 and #2 are.) It is hard to imagine the regime changing in Saudi Arabia.  What would it change to? I was watching the movie, "Michael Collins" last night and somebody said something quite striking.  He said that Collins was the leader that the times demanded.   The times certainly demands such a leader now, but it is hard to imagine that happening in the US, Europe, or southwest Asia.  Yes, the Democrats will do well in the mid-term elections.  But that party is not capable of coming up with anybody of use.  Europe has no hope whatsoever.  The only believable thing I can imagine happening is a sudden health problem for the American president.  Let him go the way of Lindsay Graham. 

 How can Iran and Yemen's Ansar Allah have such great success against the American Empire despite their tiny budgets?  Will the wastefulness of the US military-industrial complex even get mentioned in the upcoming elections? My instant reaction to the astonishing success of Ansar Allah (and comrades in Iraq, apparently) was pure schadenfreude for the Trump-anyahu regime.  Most people on planet Earth must have had the same reaction.  The town of Mocha had its 15 minutes of fame in the headlines.  It was fun to read about the history of the coffee trade when Mocha was the center of it.  It made sense to celebrate the humiliation of Trumpanyahu by going to a coffee shop and buying a 'mocha.'  I've never had one before. from old.goodreads.com  But then I talked myself out of it:  it would be expensive and instead of adding real chocolate, they would probably use some weird syrup with no chemical relationship to real chocolate. 

 What is the best pleasure of autumn?  If your answer is "fall colors", you probably shouldn't become a full-time RVer.  The  greatest pleasure is sleeping in a cool bed.  Number 2 might be wearing shoes instead of sandals.  I actually had to pull out the winter sleeping bag for a couple nights.  I love burrowing underneath it.   It put me in such a good mood that I even willingly camped in a place where there would be neighbors.  Without any facetiousness, I even smiled at 430 am when my neighbors started making the usual noises about waking up.  Isn't that strange? They weren't normal campers.  They had an activity that thoroughly engrossed them.  They were hunting bears (or maybe cats) with these hounds.     Hounds are not the breed I would choose as pets, but there is no doubt that hunters and their hounds love the skill and training needed for a successful bear hunt.  Such persistence and enthusias...

 How does the old joke go?  A man is making an indecent proposal to a woman.  She cries out, " What do you think I am?"  The man says, "Madam, we both know what you are.   We were discussing the price." That is the best context for Trump-anyahu's proposal to give everyone $5,000 if the Republicans win in the mid-term election.  Really, Mr. Trumpanyahu, $5,000?!  That would be eaten up at the grocery store and gas pump over the first year or two.  Let's be reasonable and offer $50,000. But his bribe is satisfying to me as an armchair political analyst.  During the Covid era I predicted that cash grants would become the new form of political competition. (Remember the stimmie checks?)  The leader of the Democratic should immediately come up with the counter-offer of $10,000 if the Democrats take control of Congress.  Then Trump can come up with a counter-counter-offer...  _____________________________________  It has not be...

 Soon I will cross into Nevada , a state worth enjoying since it hasn't become overpopulated with retirement McMansions, a la St. George UT .  In the spring I migrated north through Nevada's sagebrush flats and recurring north/south mountain ranges.  Spring probably is the prettiest season because of the snow on these mountain ranges. One town grabbed me.  [Redacted] was not a mountain boutique town , with overpriced coffee shops and art galleries, and due for real estate development.  It was humble, moderately prosperous, and useful.  Yes, agriculturally useful.  It also had the last real grocery store for a couple hundred miles.  What a pleasant surprise this was! One particular view grabbed me.  Perhaps I have not shown this photo before:  It is not an award-winning postcard.  The mountain range is too distant because I was using a smartphone, rather than a real camera .  And speaking of real cameras I am still watching Y...

 Did Mother Nature throw a switch?  Summer was over, just like that.  The inland northwest has even had a couple days of rain, back to back!  Let's hope that means the end of the wildfires. It has become so frustrating to use eBay that I abandoned town while still waiting for a couple of their packages.  In all the years I've been in the travel/camping racket, this is the first time I have just said, "To hell with it."  And left. The difficulty comes from 1) the eBay seller saying they will ship via the US Postal Service, 2) me supplying a General Delivery address at some post office, and 3) the seller mistakenly using UPS or Fedex, which can't deliver to a post office. So I will go back to using Amazon when they have a pickup location or locker in my area.  Another thing that might help is to use one of the smaller online retailers who might charge for shipping, but allow the customer to choose the shipping service since the customer is paying for i...

 No matter how many times you go through the transition from summer to autumn, it still seems too good to be true, for the good sleeping weather on top of everything else.     Looking back on summer, let's pat ourselves on the back for doing some things right, such as getting better at using wet washcloths or spray to keep oneself and the dog cooler in the worst part of summer.   Another great help has been accepting that the western states have two summers: early summer and late summer, and that these two seasons are very different from each other.  Therefore you must arrive in the inland northwest in late April rather than early June. Early summer above the Salmon River trench.  A bit of rain, greenery, and cool weather.  Thirdly, mediocre altitudes can seem discouraging in the inland northwest.  But if you camp in shade thicker than ponderosa forests,  you can cool you off by 5 degrees Fahrenheit.  I used to under-value this...

 I would turn myself over to a qualified therapist if I knew the right specialty for somebody who has become too easy to please, and too appreciative of humble pleasures.  I have even become too easily amused, by bovine-Americans of all things! The forest was 8000 feet in altitude and had 100 yard wide firebreaks on the side of the dirt roads.  That means no trees, but good grasses and flowers for grazing.  This guy was quite a looker, and he had an appreciative harem:    The cow in front had a cowbell on that made me think of a late RV blogger whose German surname meant cowbell. ( treichel )  Fortunately the cow gave me something more cheerful to think about.  She had such a bossy, busybody-ish attitude.  She kept staring at me and demanding that I get permission from her for everything.  She was amusing. Cows do not always act 'dumber than a bag of rocks.'  Mother cows sometimes act surprisingly protective around their offsprin...

Does the hegemony of You Tube in "information space" almost make you think the written word is obsolete?  I have mixed feelings about that.  Maybe I would mourn for the written word if writers weren't so long-winded.  And spelling was phonetic .  Hell, if they even began making it phonetic, starting with the letter c. But what about still photography ?  (What a sad term!)  Everything has to be video these days, even when there are only talking heads in the video.  Even when there is motion, it is usually rather uninteresting.  Think of all the travel videos shot through the windshield of a car.  Is that supposed to be exciting?  Or the hikers plodding and trodding down a trail. The truth is that most videos are just 'chewing gum for the eyes.'  But photographs are something that I will miss.  It is one of my stump speeches on this blog to praise photographs as visual metaphors , while mocking postcards . And yet, stopping to ...

I was looking to cut my drive in half today.  So I found a shaded side road, and was careful not to pull the trailer further into this unknown road, since I wasn't certain about turning around. Surprisingly a sign said this was the official Lewis and Clark Trail.  My maps didn't even say that there was one.  Nearby, a nice (walkable) bridge crossed a tributary stream.  And there was another official sign.   In grade school, everybody heard about the Lewis and Clark Voyage of Discovery.  I don't remember it seeming very interesting.  But it should have been.  Think how little support and infrastructure they had to lean on!  It isn't surprising that a school kid couldn't put himself in Lewis and Clark's shoes. Along the dirt road, there was a cluster of gigantic trees, over 2 feet in diameter, with remarkable bark.  These were the best trees of the summer, for me.  How old is a tree of this diameter?  Was it alive 220 years ago,...

 We haven't seen the last hot day in 2026 but, still, it seems like we've 'broken the back' of this summer.  A camper has a right to celebrate that.  I am even happy about a smoky sky (from the forest fires) because it takes the edge off the hot sun.  Smoke bothers some people but I can even stand bicycling in it.  So off we went, onto a new road and perhaps a scenic view from the continental divide .  The trees were thick and unburned, so the shade was nice.  But the viewscape was pretty closed in.  After a while, it seemed like something was about to change. The dirt road got closer to an almost cliff-like mountain edge, so the view opened up, with each curve seeming to hang further and further out into space; swelling into a type of crescendo. By sheer dumb luck, I had happened to watch this video on You Tube the previous day, and the music was still stuck in my head:  It was the " Love Death " from the climax to Wagner's "Tristan and Iso...