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...

 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...

The older I get, the more willing I am to admire people without wishing to emulate them.  The perfect example of this is all the trekkers on the Continental Divide Trail.  Congratulations to them for finding something they really like.  But it wouldn't work for me: it is too oxen-like.  And too warm. I was surprised to see a horsewoman coming down the trail, with a packhorse behind her.  Girls will be girls, and she had a stylish blanket under her saddle.  Alongside her ran a friendly, long-legged spaniel or pointer.  The dog had spiffy hiking boots on its fore-paws.  I said, "What a team!" to her.  We spoke a little bit and then she quickly disappeared.  A horse walks faster than you think.    But that "team" really made my day.  I not only admired it, but I did wish to emulate.  But of course, I won't -- for practical reasons.  If only my camera had been handy!   Today's team was my favorite since I ran i...

Seeking new books -- or novelty in general -- is quite a vice.  One can not praise the rereading of books, enough; especially if the book 'sort of' worked for you the first time around, while many years have passed, with changes in the world or in yourself. For instance, many years ago I read " The March of Folly ", by Barbara Tuchman .  She wrote:  "To qualify as folly for this inquiry, the policy adopted must [...]  have been perceived as counterproductive in its own time, not merely by hindsight." You'd think that European statesmen bumbling into World War One would be her best example, but it was not included in this book perhaps because of her more famous book, " The Guns of August ." She made examples of the Trojans accepting the gift of a wooden horse from the Greeks; Renaissance popes provoking the secession of protestants; Britain losing its American colonies; and the American debacle in Viet Nam . If she were writing this book today...

 It is wonderful to see yourself becoming more appreciative of solid, unspectacular things.  Maybe that happens more and more the older a person gets? Look at this nice -- but ordinary -- thing at the beginning of summer.  It made a great impression at the time, but I couldn't explain why it seemed like such a big deal:  Maybe it was the context and "set up."  It was early summer and I was driving from ID to OR.  Just before leaving ID, I saw people eating outdoors and driving around with their windows down in a way that made them look like they were celebrating the onset of summer.  I was deeply offended. Then on the OR side I saw people practicing predatory parking while looking for the tiny bits of shade available at the Walmart parking lot.  This seemed funny to me.  "Hey, these Oregonians are OK," I thought. As I have done a thousand times during my RV career, I escaped the (low altitude) heat of the 'big city' early that morning, by cli...

 Maybe being a 'trail angel' is worth looking into.  I did it today, accidentally, for the first time.  It was enjoyable. It was grocery and water day, so I was driving down the forest road to the town of [redacted], Idaho.   Ahead of me was a backpacker who really looked like a strong hiker.  I was only 1/4 mile from where the Continental Divide Trail crossed the forest road.   He was off the official trail and I asked him about that.  He said he was headed down to the highway where he would hitchhike 42 miles to town in order to buy food.   "Well, hop in if you don't mind a dog licking your face," I said.  It certainly made the drive to town faster and more enjoyable to have a personable fellow along.  I never pick up hitch hikers, but he didn't really seem like a hitch hiker. In town, he treated me to a baked good and a delicious coffee at the bakery. Maybe I should try this trail angel thing on purpose, rather than jus...

 Photography used to be more fun before the smartphone era.  Yes, that sounds a bit ungrateful to all the things that camera phones do well.  One advantage that doesn't get talked about much is their lack of moving parts.   That was always my problem with compact zoom cameras, with their dust covers and telescoping zooms.  It seems like a single grain of sand could have jammed things up.  But if you want to go back to having more fun, maybe a two-year lifespan is just something that has to be tolerated. For example, when walking through a thick forest a person can slip into quite a mood.  It is hard to believe, but there was a time when I considered thick, dark forests to be undesirable.  Gloomy almost.  Today they make me think of being 5 F cooler, and what else matters? The darkness makes you think about stumbling into a bear.  Thick vegetation could turn lethal!  And then, all of a sudden, you see a bright spot where the sun...

 Recall that I am a recovering armchair general, attempting to become an armchair media critic.  It has always been surprising how much talking there is on You Tube, and yet there are hardly any maps.  I have seen talking-heads give confusing and lengthy speeches about war-front geography -- please, shut up and show me a meaningful map! The maps that are shown do not even have labels on them.  If graphs are shown, their labels and legends are illegible. Perhaps the medium is the message.  Graphs and maps do not show well on the restricted real estate of a smartphone, but talking does.  Earlier I wrote about how bad many talking-heads are, at talking.  But there are people who are good at talking.  Other people would be wise to imitate them.  So this is a shout-out to one of those good talkers: 'Mr. Global,' on You Tube.  Seriously I love the way that guy talks! 

In preparation for a colonoscopy, they put you on a special diet to empty out your intestines.   It involves a lot of Gatorade, clear broth, and laxatives. I thought I would be hungry without solid food, but the broth was surprisingly satisfying.  I had never bought broth before, at the grocery store.  Why wasn't I buying broth all the time?  On top of everything else, broth doesn't need refrigeration when unopened.  A camper should like that. Putting leftovers into broth for more nutrition and taste is so easy.  That is how our frugal (and less obese) ancestors ate.  They used leftovers from the main meal in mid-day.  Remember that they didn't have good refrigeration in those days.  There is always something that needs to be used up, soon. My new evening meal. Just think: all my life I had been cleaning out skillets and pans during the mid-day meal by washing the residue down the sink, instead of saving it for evening soup.  A...