Occupation of Independence

  Perhaps my last post was less gracious than it could have been towards the state of Arizona.  Allow me to make amends. I woke up Sunday morning, still just barely in the state of Arizona, and therefore unbothered by Daily Savings Time.  The rest of the country debauches itself with Daily Savings Time, but Arizona stays with God's Time. from artpal.com Soon I crossed over into a Pacific Time Zone state, but instead of subtracting one hour, the o'clock stayed the same since that state uses Daily Savings Time, beginning today.  Then I crossed into another such state.  And then back to the first one. As I go north for many hundreds of miles, it will stay the same. (until I hit southern Idaho or extreme southeastern Oregon.)  Actually I could choose locations that get me out of a time change the entire summer.  What bliss! I give Arizona credit for this, and I am grateful.

One of the great under-rated pleasures outdoors is a broken and stormy sky.  I experienced that yesterday as I fled Arizona.  Other things worked OK:  gasoline prices weren't so bad, and  I had only two encounters with rude and reckless drivers, who love being disrespectful of winter visitors.  The spring solstice isn't even here yet.  But I have already left AZ.  (Actually I'm still in the northwestern part of the state, 15 miles from the Colorado River.)  One way to gauge your success as a camper and traveler is to see how little time you spend in Arizona.   During mid-winter we are all climate refugees.  I truly love low temperatures in the 30s F and highs around 65 F.  But once mid-winter is over, you can find adequate temperatures around the edges of AZ, and perhaps escape over-crowding, generators, motorsport yahoos, target practice litter bugs, cholla, and un-earthly rubble.

It is easy to get nervous as we near the spring solstice.  But this is the time of year when a camper has the greatest opportunity to improve their life.  Extend.  Extend the bug-free season, extend good sleeping, extend sweat-free outdoor exercise.   That is what I was thinking the other morning when I had a freshly-laundered poodle under the sleeping bag with me.  My little dog smelled like lavender-rosemary doggie shampoo.  There is a primal satisfaction to burrowing deeper and deeper underneath the sleeping bag, and seeing how few square inches of skin need to be exposed. Spring migrations are easier than autumn migrations because the sun is at your back most of the way.  I really look forward to that.  For the first time in years I will migrate through Nevada.  Let's hope I can find a grocery store or two. I have never done my spring migration by going northwest immediately and staying close to the Colorado River.  It is counter-intuitive to return that way, since I migrated d

Recently I have gotten interested in food preservation.  The higher costs of food and transportation have to be fought, somehow.  This is especially true for somebody who has to drive over miles of bumpy dirt roads to a not-so-great, high-priced, small town grocery store.  Perhaps it was the better containers available at Walmart that made me get interested in this topic.  They are rectangular boxes with O-rings in the lid, and snaps to hold the lid down tight. You Tube has a lot of videos on this topic.  Have you seen those vacuum sealers for storing food in Mason jars?  But the videos don't explain the principles of food preservation very well.  After all, it is all about water vapor, oxygen, and ethylene. You can't look into this topic very long before you get pulled off into the world of off-grid homes, preppers, Greenies, etc.  I used to have a negative stereotype of these people.  But they are a customer base for useful products. I sometimes wonder if, during my 'nex