Occupation of Independence

 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...