Occupation of Independence

At first it felt silly to include this photograph since it is similar to recent ones. But wait a minute -- why must a blogger try to be brilliantly original? Why can't he just wallow in something he loves, even at the expense of being repetitive? The sky around here takes on a strange yellow color when the wind is only moderately strong. Perhaps it is due to the large open-pit copper mine nearby. (The photo is not sauced up by any editing-software.) Something that is somewhat new is the seasonal adjustment to my camping style. There are plenty of reasons to stay out of RV parks, but one reason that can get overlooked is how much a camper gains by facing the screen door towards the right direction, depending on the season. In mid-winter the screen door needs to face south, in order to glory in that warm Arizona sun.  In summer, the door must face north or you couldn't stand to open it all day; you develop an obsessive lust for the shade; and as summer wanes in late Au

It probably helps your fuel economy some to blow into town riding a 30 mph tailwind. Thus it was the day I showed up in Arizona's megabarriopolis #2, Tucson. After camping in the desert for several weeks, will the big city be different than I remember? More entertaining or just more noisy and annoying? With the strong west wind, the big city had remarkably clear air -- almost as if a big city weren't even there. It's challenging and fun to imagine the geographical setting of a big city before the big city came to be. Imagine how pleasant the land around the Old Pueblo was: a large mountain range just to the north that provided escape from the summer heat; the lushest examples of Sonoran desert vegetation, on opposite sides of town; grasslands and chaparral in the higher elevations to the southeast.  There are probably a few people still alive who remember the Old Pueblo when it was small. I wonder what decade it was when Tucson started undergoing cancerous growth -

It seemed prudent to drive to the nearest Department of Motor Vehicles in New Mexico to update my mail forwarding  address, lest there be complications with a speeding ticket from the Tucson reconnaissance-camera reich . After several nights of noisy, parking-lot boondocking my nerves were pretty frayed. Anybody who thinks that that style of camping is a quixotic, dreamy, escapist, full of holy Simplicity, Socrates and Thoreau-approved way of life has been sold a false bill of goods. Thankfully I'm back on public lands near the Santa Rita mountains, south of Tucson. It's always a little surprising to see certain topographic features stand out so clearly, clear enough to serve as a navigational tool. In the Tucson area Baboquivari Peak serves that purpose. I like to call it "Babo".

When I got together with a Tucson friend yesterday my first question was about the photo-surveillance cameras used here; then a ticket is mailed to the citizen-criminal. I was concerned about tardy payment penalties being added to the speeding tickets of travelers who only get snail-mail forwarded every month or two. My Tucson friend has indeed gotten a camera-based ticket the past year, and his wife got three. Each was over $200. Hers were at the same intersection, but on different days, which helped her think that they were repeated notices of the same "crime". (She didn't read the dates or times apparently.) She didn't pay all three tickets and got her driver's license suspended. The good news is that the Tucson reich sends somebody to your house before raising the stakes. At another time they called on the telephone. What a relief that was. It keeps the citizen-criminal from being completely at the mercy of snail mail delivery, which alarmed me the

I've only gotten close to an owl once before today, and that was when mountain biking in a ponderosa forest. They are larger and more powerful than I expected. They seem more exotic and menacing than other raptors. So I grinned from ear to ear when a friend walked us over to an owl nest on the southwest side of Tucson. (Gee, maybe I should provide GPS coordinates so readers will have the ultimate in convenience in finding the owl. Isn't that how "RV blogs" are supposed to work?) An impudent Malevolence in the shadows...  

In Tucson yesterday I noticed a sign alerting drivers of photo-enforcement of the rules of the road. As a bicyclist I should probably approve, but I don't have the guts or the foolishness to ride my bicycle on these busy highways anyway, despite all their efforts at putting in shoulders for bicyclists. What happens to a traveler who is caught by one of the surveillance cameras going ten miles per hour over the speed limit? Is a $350 ticket mailed to his mail box in South Dakota or Livingston, TX? There must be a time limit for paying the ticket. What if the traveler only requests his junk mail be forwarded every month or two. Has the speeding ticket now become a $1000 ticket? Does he need to appear in court because the ticket is unpaid? Will he need to hire an attorney? At the end of the year, I wonder how the traveler would categorize that expense? I would put it in the "transportation" category or whatever you call the cost of being mobile. Now please don&#

There are readers of a mild and sanguine disposition who probably think the opinions on this blog are excessively cynical and critical of contemporary American culture. Oh very well, live in your rose-colored dream world, if you must. But let's put your happy-spin to an empirical test: consider this year's winner of the Westminster Dog Show, and tell me that our society hasn't already gone past the tipping point. Photo by Seth Wenig. Of all the weird looking dogs to choose from, did they have to pick one that looks like a rap star?

The skies have been weird around here lately. Blame most of it on stormy skies, especially in the mornings. Later in the day the Fly Boys strafe my trailer. They go over at 12 o'clock high, maybe 500 feet above my roof. (It's hard to judge heights like that.) Maybe I should complain that such low flights interfere with my Fox News TV reception. (satiric grin.) You'd think they would have an adequate playground over the Goldwater Bombing Range, which is bigger than some states in the northeast. But no, they need to fly over an American citizen legally camped on public land. Why don't they at least fly over and intimidate illegal immigrants in the desert? I wonder how many (borrowed) dollar bills per hour squirt out the ass-end of these Air Force Warthogs. Wikipedia says the rotating 30 mm cannon (visible in my photo, taken looking up from my RV) fires 4000 rounds per minute -- what a fine addition this is to the Killing Machine that our country has become.

Soon after most people become acquainted with the RV travel blogosphere, they start to see patterns, enough so that they might classify them like this: RV 101 blogs. How to. Chock full of useful information for newbies. They work pretty hard for their nickels and dimes of Google ad income. Too bad there are so many minute details, which are intended to be practical but really aren't, since the reader's circumstances are different than the blogger's. Readers can feel insulted when such blogs appear to offer friendly advice to a "fellow" RVer, but then the reader learns he is just a chump being hit with a thinly-disguised ad. (The Linkbait Syndrome; it gets 'em every time.) Ah dear, the sordid topic of coin... RV travelogues. Where are Fred and Mildred today ? Aimed at armchair travelers and RV wannabees, these blogs offer pleasant entertainment as long as you live life purely through your eyeballs; mentally you will leave the blog completely starved. Final

Once again it's time for the annual Valentine's Day peroration. Hopefully this version won't make me as unpopular as the last one . It would be nice to have the advantage of my boondocking neighbor: she nonchalantly dismisses RV wives as "all needing mansions on wheels" or being afraid to dry camp and preferring to stay in RV parks with hookups. Nobody is offended when she says it. I should be so lucky. I probably wouldn't be writing any of this if an ad during the Super Bowl hadn't outraged me. Yes, outraged -- somebody who isn't a part of TV culture can retain the ability to be outraged at cultural depravity. The ad featured a half-nude "ho" giving a pitch for some kind of Valentine's Day goodie that men were supposed to remember to buy for their honeys. Her punchline went something like, "It's simple, guys. Give and ye shall receive. (wink, wink.)" Try to imagine the male analogue of that trashy ad. I can't come

Small flowers are popping up everywhere right now in the Sonoran Desert, courtesy of the rain last November and December, presumably. Nothing seemed extreme when I took this photograph, but now I have to wonder whether the camera was malfunctioning, perhaps because I was aiming too close to the sun. No, the camera seems OK. The backlighting is bringing out the yellow in the desert flower that ordinarily is not noticeable. It's strange that our notion about "color" in nature is usually aimed at reflective colors rather than transmitted colors. We hardly ever think about it. This suggests some idea of wider applicability. But what is it?