Archive for Uncategorized
February 10, 2007 at 7:03 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
I’m still pretty much out of action with the cold so the blog may be a bit restrained for a few days. It’s particularly disappointing because we had a great day planned. We were going to do a bunch of exploring, and then meet up with fellow Airstreamers Ken & Petey Faber, and photographer Douglas Keister and his wife, for dinner. Ken can be seen in the Winter 2006 issue of Airstream Life magazine, posing with his amazing one-of-a-kind Airstream trailer, “Der Klein Prinz.”
But this morning we regretfully cancelled that plan. In the evenings the cold knocks me out. So we’ll meet up with Ken & Petey another time. Doug will be flying off to Europe and Asia, doing research for his upcoming book & photographic projects — I’ve asked him to get me some photos for upcoming articles, too.
After sitting around half the day watching movies I could stand it no longer, so we got into the car for a quick look at nearby Saguaro National Park. Saguaro is an unusual park in that it is divided into east and west portions, which are 30 miles apart and separated by Tucson. The east side is only 10 miles straight north from here.
Although I wasn’t up to hiking, there’s a nice one-way loop drive you can do. The scenery is beautiful and there are hikes to be had all around the park. It’s perfect medicine for a cold.
The older saguaro cactus have holes in them, which are used as homes by birds. We spotted an owl nesting in a saguaro, which was the first time we’ve managed to spot one. It was very exciting, so I carefully mounted up my long lens, crept out of the car, and sidled up to within about 30 feet of the cactus to get a nice close-up.
You can see his face clearly in the shot. Looks like a spotted owl (which doesn’t live in the desert) or elf owl (which does).
Great picture? Well, when we got back to the Airstream and enlarged the photos we realized it wasn’t an owl at all … but merely a bit of the internal structure of the cactus playing a trick on us. Click on the picture above for an enlargement and you’ll see. No owl at all… I had no idea those saguaro were so tricky.
February 7, 2007 at 9:00 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
This morning I happened to notice a new wi-fi signal in the park: “Odyssey”. You may have noticed a link (left column of this blog) to a blog of the same name. Could it be?
Yes! I took a look out my dinette window and there it was, 44,000 pounds of mammoth motorhome. What an opportunity! Blog meets blog. So of course I grabbed my camera and headed over to see Sean and Louise, who I had never met before.
I knocked on the door and high above my head, a window popped open and Sean’s head appeared. It was a bit like talking to the Wizard of Oz … me, standing below in the shadow of Odyssey and looking up to Sean as we chatted. Later, Louise’s head popped into the window as well.
It’s a shame we were both preparing to leave. I would have liked to have heard more about their travels in Mexico, although I’ve read the blog entries. We’ll have to try to catch up again on the west coast this spring.
We have moved to our home for the next month, about ten miles east on I-10, still in Tucson. We have never booked a full month anywhere before, so it felt rather strange to set up here knowing we’d be so permanent. A month is nothing to an apartment dweller, but to us it feels almost like a commitment. What if we don’t like the neighborhood? What if we get an itch to go somewhere else?
Fortunately, the new park is fine. It’s situated out in the desert, with absolutely no neighbors except deer and jackrabbits. We can’t hear any traffic except an occasional train a couple of miles away. There’s free wi-fi and it actually works. And our site is pleasant enough, level gravel with nice views of the surrounding mountains and the desert.
After we settled in we got a visit from Mike and Tracy, who are parked just a few miles up the road at a “55+” park. It’s a bit more stuffy over there but Mike wanted to take some lapidary classes offered in the park. Our place is more relaxed. Eleanor and Emma pulled out all their rocks and suddenly the afternoon disappeared in a haze of mineral chat, until it was time for Emma’s evening bike ride.
Don’t worry about the blog getting dull while are here. We’ve got a ton of things to do: work, hiking trails, Saguaro National Park (right up the road), real estate hunting, bicycle paths, a trip to the Florida State Rally, and family day trips to places like Mt Lemmon, Catalina State Park, the Titan Missile Museum, Bisbee, Patagonia, etc. The blog will be busy.
February 6, 2007 at 10:27 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
The real trick to this mode of travel is the fact that I have to keep working … and not just at an ordinary job, but a startup business that demands my attention at least six days a week. Often retired folks will say, “You’re so lucky to be doing this at your age!” and that’s true, but I envy the retired folks who don’t have to report in to a job every day, and who don’t have to worry about whether they can be reached by phone or get online.
So today was another day at the office. This morning I had a couple of calls to make early, so there I was again, wandering around outside and jabbering into my cell phone. I usually go outside so I can pace while I talk, but also so I can avoid waking Emma.
The difference today was that Mike Young, our Airstream neighbor, was out with his Nikon D70 and a very fast & massive 200mm VR (vibration reduction) lens. He spotted me and took these spy photos above of me talking to one of the magazine’s contributors.
In a campground in Idaho last summer, I was doing this same routine every day, sometimes in my pajamas. A neighbor spotted me and said, “You must not be a very good businessman!” I asked him why he thought that, and he said, “You spend too much time on the phone. You ought to be able to enjoy your vacation!”
Well, obviously this is not vacation. But I do hope to take one next month when we go to Mexico. Our ability to connect via phone and Internet will be limited. I could get a “North American” phone plan from Verizon and have some cell phone service, and I could seek out wi-fi campgrounds and cyber cafes, but instead I think I’ll take a real vacation.
So I’ve been working for months to get the business ready for me to be completely out of touch for two weeks. That might seem easy but it’s really not. After three years of being dependent on my daily involvement, the business needs time to separate from me. But the exercise of getting the business running more independently is healthy. Eventually it will need to stand on its own.
I mention this because those of you who are considering going on the road with their businesses or vocations need to appreciate that in most cases you can’t just flip a switch and go on the road. It takes time to get everything lined up. It took me months to get ready to go mobile, and it has taken months to get ready to go offline. But the effort is ultimately worth the investment.
February 5, 2007 at 7:19 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
We are already right at home here in Tucson. We’re learning our way around town, getting to know the local events, attractions, traffic patterns, stores, etc. And it would be impossible not to like this weather: sunny, crystal clear, 70s, and dry.
This morning a blog reader dropped by: Mike Young. Mike has been following our blog for a long time, and commenting too, so it was fun to finally meet him in person. He and Rosemary will be here at the park through Wednesday, so we’ll get together for something fun tomorrow.
But our visit was shortened by the fact that today was a work day. Other than Mike’s visit, our adventures have been limited to a bike ride around the park after work. Emma is still reveling in her ability to ride a bicycle, and after a day at the computer a bike ride is just the thing to relax.
I don’t mind working all day when the sun is shining in the open windows and the warm breeze is blowing. You’d think a beautiful day would be enticement to go outside and play — and it is — but sometimes it’s also just as nice to put on some music, work at the table and look out at the mountains. Eleanor made another batch of lemonade from the fallen lemons of our tree, and suddenly it felt like summer.
An Airstream can be marvellously relaxing even on a work day. There’s something about the interior curves of the space that makes it feel like a cozy secret getaway. My secret vice is to wait until Eleanor and Emma are out on errands, and sneak a nap in the afternoon between tasks. Sleeping in the Airstream on a warm sunny afternoon is as relaxing as a massage. For the record, I didn’t do that today, but …. I would have liked to.
February 4, 2007 at 7:00 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
One nice thing about this place is that there are fruit trees all around: lemon, orange, or lime. Every time we’ve been here, the lemons have been ripe and we manage to collect enough drops to make tangy lemonade.
Finally — beautiful weather. 70s and clear sunshine is predicted for several days. We took the opportunity to check out some local real estate. (The Catalina Foothills area is beautiful, but we also saw some nice in-town bungalows from the 1940s.)
Emma only cared about one thing, getting out on her bicycle. The roads in the park are pretty quiet, so it was a nice safe place for her to take me for a cruise. I think she’s ready to step up to a real bike path now, and there are several good bike paths around Tucson to try.
It’s a measure of how much I don’t care about football that I wasn’t wasn’t even aware it was Superbowl Sunday until someone mentioned it this morning. But back in the RV Resort, everyone seemed to be geared up for super-TV-watching.
A lot of Class A motorhomes are built with big outdoor TVs mounted on roll-out trays in the lower section. These always struck me as sort of ridiculous, but to each their own. Tonight several motorhome owners are sitting outside watching the Superbowl, despite the evening chill. I guess if you have an outdoor TV you need to use it for an event like the Superbowl, even if it would be much more comfortable watching the indoor TV.
February 2, 2007 at 6:30 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Eleanor and Emma got out for a little more rock hunting this morning before we packed it up and headed west. Even with the cold wind, Rockhound is a fun place with just awesome, ever-changing views.
The sign at the dump station made me pause …
Sign of the week
How exactly do you “dump slowly”? Not to get into too much detail, but opening the black tank valve less than fully is not a good idea. I’ll leave it at that.
We pulled the Airstream along I-10 to Benson, AZ today. There’s not a lot along the way, except for three more tourist traps run by the same organization. This time I was granted permission to skip them.
We have at last gotten into the gorgeous scenery that I have come to associate with southern Arizona. In the afternoon the sun lights the desert floor and the craggy mountains all around, and the skies become so blue it doesn’t seem real. I can see my camera will be getting a workout in the next few weeks, although it will have to go in for service at the “camera doctor” in Tucson soon.
Our friend Joe recommended this RV park. It has the unique distinction of having a good-sized telescope on site in a real observatory, and nightly viewings with an astronomer. Tonight the show starts at 7 pm, so we’ll be there. The skies are marvelously clear out here in Arizona, and the viewing should be spectacular.
Our Google Earth location.
January 29, 2007 at 9:15 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Three faithful blog readers have emailed me to say I talk too much about food. (You know who you are.) So today I’ll talk about water for moment. Specifically, how to deal with drinking water while we are in Mexico in March.
The big advice you get from people about traveling in Mexico is “don’t drink the water!” Montezuma’s Revenge, a.ka. “traveler’s diarrhea” is the big fear. In most cases, it comes from drinking local water that has normal bacteria that our delicate US-based systems aren’t accustomed to. It can also result from critters in the water (worms, parasites).
So the first line of defense for an RV traveler is to make sure the water in your fresh water tank is safe, for showering, brushing teeth, etc.
We’ve got a couple of methods to assure the water in our tank is safe. We can fill it with known good water (bulk bottled water sold in grocery stores), or we can pre-filter it with a charcoal filter to remove excess organic materials and then chlorinate the water each time we fill the tank.
Chlorination is pretty simple: you just add a measured amount of bleach to the water, and let it sit a prescribed time before using it. We’ll use a second charcoal filter at the kitchen sink to help remove some of the bleach taste (which is already built into our Moen faucet) and also let the water sit before bottling it for the refrigerator.
Another good tip I got for masking the bleach taste is to add Kool-Aid, iced tea mix, Gatorade powder, or lemon/lime flavorings to the water. But most likely we’ll just use the tank water for showering and stick to bottled water for brushing teeth, cooking, and drinking.
Beyond that, we’ll follow the advice I got from my friendly Airstream M.D.: be careful about eating local fare or questionable grocery items, peel all fruit and avoid ice or open drinks. If we were going to stay for a long time and eat out a lot, we might consider Hepatitis A vaccination as well, but that seems to be overkill for a one or two week visit where we’ll mostly be eating our own food.
Today’s outing was to Living Desert State Park, up in Carlsbad. It’s really more of a zoological park, featuring landscapes, animals and birds native to New Mexico. It’s a nice spot on a sunny day, since the bulk of the exhibits are outdoors. For $5 (kids under 7 free), it’s a cheap half-day out, and very educational. As with any zoo, a long lens is essential to getting good animal photos.
We would have gone to the caves, but weather suggested otherwise. It was a sunny and dry day today, perfect for walking around the park, whereas tomorrow we’ve got a chance of rain — or even snow. I doubt that will really happen, but in any case tomorrow seems the right day to explore the caverns. Then, we’ll head southwest.
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