Lessons learned.

Taking another week here to slide back into my routine and life, and to just kind of sit with what I discovered about myself and  my expectations of or curiosities about this journey.

            This one might be my favorite photo.  From Borego Springs, CA.

Probably the two most important questions for me were:

1. Is it as "cheap" to live on the road as most of these nomads profess and COULD you live off of your social security?

2.  Are people happier on the road?" and/or "is it easier to make/have/keep friends and have community?" 

Many professed to have found both these to be true in interviews that I listened to before I left. People said "I have never had so many friends before, and they're great friends." or "it's so easy to meet people" or "you see people when you want to, then you have the option to be by yourself." "I live off of less than $1000 per month" and so on.

What did it cost me to do this for three months?

Gas: $700 (average 29 MPG lots of highway driving)
Food: $1465
Hotels: $178
Campgrounds: $100
Medical out of network: $450
Phone: $180 (unlimited text, data, phone)
Netflix: $30
                                 Etc's: $600 small cash items
Amazon stuff: dog food and things I couldn't find $400
Eating out: $85
Gym membership for one month: $10
Health care costs on Obamacare: $21 for $6000 deduct. (tears falling as will rise to over $600/mo if I lose it)
Gifts: $200
Clothes: $77
Luxury items: computer $400 and nice walking sticks $150
Vet: $60 (super cheap in FL)
Hardware: $52
Car: Oil change $60
Laundry: $150
Without the computer and walking sticks, 
(I didn't NEED either of them, those were luxury purchases) it's

$4818 for three months. So about $400 per week. This is what most people pay just in rent and utilities in CT.


I went to two movies, and ate out enough with friends. Mainly we just were hanging out in the desert or at home, where ever "home" was.

There is s lot of opportunity to explore for very little money.

So depending on what this administration decides to do with health care, yes, this is pretty do-able, and if and when you get Medicare. yes it's totally doable on modest savings and Social Security. Of course, you would factor in perhaps an addition $300-$400 car vehicle payments for an RV, van, or whatever and insurance on that per month.

Bob Wells of "CheapRVLiving.com" is a big proponant of working seasonally for Amazon and other large companies. People can work for six weeks during the holiday season and make enough to live on for the rest of the year apparently.

I know of one or two people who are poised and so READY to do this as a lifestyle that I hope to be an inspiration to them. I hear how trapped people feel, and at times I've felt the same. But the message I was hearing from Bob Wells of "CheapRVliving.com" and Randy Vining "Mobilecodgers.com" was that it takes very little money to live freely. 

Freedom ain't free as the conservatives like to say about our bloated military budget, but living as a nomad is cheaper than living bound to a mortgage and utility bills and so on. And even if you don't want to roam around, you can still live in a mobile dwelling in a permanent way. 

My friends outside of Sedona live in what is classified as a "mobile home" but really is a permanent structure and they pay $200 per year in property taxes because it's "mobile". Randy has spent time in Sedona, months on end, just moving every two weeks from the Sedona forest to the Cottonwood forest. He is currently in Yuma and has spent months there boondocking for free. 

So don't buy the whole trapped into a job you hate, or feeling like you'll never be able to retire.  If you haven't seen the movie yet, watch "Without Bound" that features both Bob and Randy, you can stream on Youtube.

Were you happier and did you make friends?

I think that many of us feel an unnatural isolation from others if we live alone. I do enjoy living by myself, but I also miss the casual way that one gets to know someone over time when you have daily contact with them as a room mate or otherwise. 

 Joan, Couchsurfing host extraordinaire in Tucson, AZ. One of the most 

giving and extraordinarily open people I've ever met.

I have to say, I probably spent more time with my "new" friends in the two, three or four weeks that I hung out with them than I have with all my friends collectively in an entire year. 

And there are advantages to this. There isn't really an agenda. We're not sizing each other up or constantly looking at our watches thinking we should be doing something else with our time.

As a matter of fact, one of the most amazing things I experienced was being with TOTALLY RELAXED PEOPLE. 

"Hey you wanna go for a walk?" "Sure!" "Hey you wanna walk down to the dumpster with me" "OK!"........... it was so unbelievable to me that we, as adults, could just say YES! I'D LIKE TO SPEND TIME HANGING OUT FOR NO PARTICULAR REASON. 

We went to the movies, went dancing, went for hikes, cooked dinner together. I got a taste of being a child again with my friends. Only we didn't have to ask any adults permission. Retirement (or retiring from the rat race) is pretty cool that way.

                                                          

 Scott and Paula on the trail in Sedona and my hosts in Cottonwood.

This was pretty amazing. To just BE with others. Just hang out. No watching the clock. That was profound. And making THAT more important than just about anything else. Imagine that!!

          Mike, "Boondocker's Welcome" host extraordinaire on Amelia Island.

     Best buds Randy and CB both hosted and helped me in Yuma and Quartzsite.

I made lifelong friendships and renewed some older ones. I really enjoyed this part of my trip, and it was very, very hard to say goodbye. At least two people I know live in Ithaca most of the year so I will see them this summer!

I would say that at times I felt more content and connected having  folks around all the time. I know that comes with it's own set of challenges, and in the short span of time of knowing a new friend for about a month, I had a fight and broke up with them! 

There is loneliness out there on the road. I've seen it in single full timers who seem kind of lost. I've experienced it a bit but not much since I was always heading somewhere else and connecting with folks. 

There are cliques and snobbery and exclusion and meanness. Just like anywhere. But by and large it is a very wide open "howdy" in most circles....... "pull up a chair and have a drink" or some food. In the very large gathering, I tended to stick with the "clan" I rode in with. I guess that's human nature also. If you're an extrovert you'll have no problem. If you're an introvert, you'll probably enjoy the option to retreat in most cases.

OTHER THOUGHTS

I wanted to find "deep" nature.

There isn't much of this left out there, where humans don't go, or at least, I'm not strong or rugged enough to find it. That's probably more likely. My friend Roxy is and regularly heads out into the wilderness alone. People tell me I'm brave for what I've done. I look at her and think SHE'S the really brave one.

Roxy Whalley, a "Nomad for Nature"

Roxy has found "deep nature" but has to hike in to find it. I'm not that rugged, yet. But here is just one of her spectacular photos. She calls herself the "Nomad for Nature" nomadfornature.wordpress.com and has committed herself to a nomadic way of life for the past 13 years, MOSTLY living in a car! She was my inspiration for just doing it in my Honda.

 Photo by Roxy Whalley 

I want to drive to that. I like having my stuff, the little of it I have with me.....with me. And the dog, her food etc.

That's kind of why I like the ocean, it's wild, it's untamed for the most part, it's dynamic and moody and exhilarating. And you get to park your car next to it. On Fernadina Beach, you get to drive your car ONTO the beach, that's crazy! 

I do love the expanse of desert also, but mostly from the aesthetic perspective. I find it hard to be intimate with the desert in a way. It's harsh and you feel very exposed. I had no privacy at all out there. I want to spend more time at both the ocean and the desert. Sedona on the other hand had a great mix of desert and green which was phenomenal.

         Another favorite photo of mine, Sedona, AZ

SO..... what are you gonna do now?

Many of my new nomadic friends want to know, "are you going 'full time?' "

I AM dedicating myself to taking some of the winter off and heading someplace less cold in Dec, Jan and Feb.  I get to skip the Christmas madness and most of the depth of the "yuck" that many of us feel in Jan and Feb darkness.

I think I can, I think I can............

        Giant whelks and mollusks on Edisto Island, SC

I don't think I'm a totally dedicated nomadic. I like having a home base. I like having people to come home to. When you're on the road all the time, it's always shifting. After awhile, however, I know people do spend months or sometimes years with certain folks traveling around. Or they meet up here and there. And that sounds appealing. But I don't think that would replace a permanent residence for me at this point.

          Covered wagon at the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous, Quartzsite, AZ

One thing that I'm still observing is that when you don't plant yourself anywhere, you can't really commit yourself to much, like being on a team, or in a choir, or taking a class, or working at a volunteer job for long stretches. Maybe some do, if they stay for months, but most people who live "free"  aren't really near a lot of cultural opportunities like this. 

I think Sedona might be one that might have those opportunities, and another place I visited is Yuma. Yuma in particular is a land of snowbirds and very tolerant of part timers.  In any case, it takes months and years to build these kinds of committed relationships to people and to projects in places. I have asked my friend Randy, the nomad for forty years what he thinks about this and he does tend to agree that most folks on the road don't seem to have the creative ambition that he does. He says he misses living in community, so I think part of him is torn in this regard.

.

Marsh on Edisto Island, SC

Biggest Pet Peeves and Hardest Part.

Rolling houses.

I'm kind of amazed at these enormous RV's that roll around dragging everything in their house and all their toys with them. I wonder if and when gas prices become nuts again that this is all going to come crashing down. I love zipping around in my little Honda, I really do.  I don't love how crazy it can make me at times living in such a small space, but I love it's nimbleness and it's gas efficiency. I went sailing over rocky dirt roads while my friend had to crawl her rattletrap van at 5 MPH.

The bathroom thing. That was just......... hard. 

Peeing (etc) in the car.

One of the more embarrassing things to have to discuss is how do you go to the bathroom when you're in a car. Well, you find places that let you use their bathrooms like casinos and Walmart and so on. But us boondockers are not shy about talking about pee and poop and what to do with it. As a matter of fact, one of my new friends opened up our relationship with asking "where do you pee?" This is not a sacred topic. So in addition to sleeping in a parking lot as being a scary thing to do, going to the bathroom in your car was probably even scarier. And one of the most scary things to think about is NOT GETTING RIGHT. Which one night actually happened. I peed on my sleeping bag. I almost died, but then I sobbed. But somehow with great foresight, had brought two sleeping bags, so that one got rolled up and stuffed as far away as possible (like a whole two feet) from me and then I had a good laugh about it with my friend the next day. A trip to a laundromat was the remedy. And making sure I have a "double container" situation. But it still makes me nervous and I hate it.

Auto flush toilets

These are the stupidest inventions ever. I don't actually understand the concept or reason, are we really that unable to flush our own toilet? Plus they flush when you are still using them and that's nasty. I try, when I'm using a public restroom that's shared by others, to not make it terribly obvious that I'm boondocking so I wash my face, brush my teeth etc in the bathroom stall. The toilet doesn't understand this and keeps flushing.  And this is in the desert. HUH?

Pollution

Air and light pollution was almost non existent in many of these far flung places. It has been shocking to come back to all of that environmental noise. There is a distinct calmness and serenity about these places. There are only four "dark skies" communities in the entire world (or maybe the US) and I was in two of them! They keep night light pollution to a minimum so you an see the night skies.

The horrifying delineation of pollution in FL skies......this was the saddest moment of my trip besides hearing that my cousin had passed away and two dear friends were facing cancer treatments, seeing the clear blue sky give way to a brown haze.

I've never seen anything like this before, the actual "line" of pollution in an entire area and it getting worse as you move. This was along Route 10 in FL.

Biggest Surprise.

There is more organic food out there than you might imagine

Walmart has organic food which blew my mind. There are big signs up in Fry's and Stop and Shop in what I would consider not terribly organic friendly parts of the country that are advertising "Thousands of Natural and Organic Products."
Walmart consistently has an organic produce section and other products. Many grocery stores have "mini" health food stores inside of them that carry all kinds of things. I think I even found komucha in Fry's at one point which was a shocker. I took WAY WAY WAY too much food with me thinking I wouldn't be able to find it. I ended up giving a lot of it away.

Feeling good about the whole consumer thing.

Amazing how little water and electricity I used and didn't miss.......

Back to the whole bathroom thing, I think flushing toilets is going to have to become something we do less of as water becomes an "issue." It's incredible how much water that wastes. And it's incredible how little water I used  even to wash up the dishes. Washing clothes used a lot of water. Showers were the next. Car washes seemed incredibly opulent and wasteful and I did that only a couple of times.

And how great public places can be for allowing us to plug in. Can you imagine anyone proposing the concept of public libraries in today's political climate?  Borrego Springs, CA get the award for outlets outside the library. But without electric lights, a huge fridge, and all of that, I survived happily on a fraction of what I normally consume.

Borrego Springs, CA

Hangin' in the "Red States"

Our country has been so divided by the media, once you get out there, you barely remember you're in a "red state". And most every state other than CA I visited or stayed were red. I saw relatively FEW pro-Trump bumper stickers or signs. Much less than I expected. I didn't bring up politics, but most of the folks I hung with were progressives.  You will meet all kinds on the road. Retired professionals, or professional nomads, they come in both blue and red.

But people do carry guns. I have gotten used to the idea that when I walk into a Walmart in some of these places, a lot of people are probably "packin'.

This was the meanest bumper sticker I saw other than "Hilary for Prision 2016" 

Solar is cool.

I love the fact that most of the people I tried to emulate live exclusively on solar power. They power everything with it, fridges, TV's, computers, and so on.

For heat, they use propane heaters that are incredibly efficient. I used my solar panel suitcase but not that often. I basically just plugged into friend's system when I needed to charge up my computer or camera or something. Or I just ran a inverter off my car battery when I drove and a USB charger which worked great. And that's exciting too, that I can harness the energy of my car to  charge my devices as I drive.

I did enjoy having two "house batteries" (large AGM's about the size of a car battery I kept in the front passenger seat well) that I could rely on that were supplying about 75 watts of power when fully charged and did get a thrill out of charging them with my solar panel. AND until I got smart about draining my car battery, I used them about four or five times to give my car a jump start. That was very nice.

Winter car camping is good.

The BEST time to car camp is in the winter in the desert. 

The nights are cool and even when it drops to freezing, you can still be warm and cozy inside your little car. 'I have two sleeping bags that I double bag and it's great. It only got hot trying to sleep once on this trip in Louisiana and that was when the temps were around 70 degrees and muggy. And that's hard when you're sleeping in a parking lot or other public place, because you don't want to open the windows and be vulnerable that way.

The other nice thing about the car is that it's it's own generator and you can fire up the battery and heater with a turn of the key. Which in the morning I did to take the chill off.

Free Walmart and BLM parking.

What can I say, get it while you can.

Sleep.

I've learned that early to bed is a very nice way to live. I would regularly climb into my sleeping bag before 9 pm. That all of the electronic distractions we engage in are very enervating. I remember this from the last time I was out twenty-five years ago. You went to bed at night when it got dark cause there wasn't anything to distract you. This time I would rise before dawn and put in three hours of music practice first thing in the morning.

Serendipity.

I loved Cumberland Island in GA and Edisto Island in SC but I had never given Amelia Island in FL much thought and probably wouldn't have even gone there if I hadn't seen a listing on "Boondockers Welcome" for someone's offer to let RVer's stay in their driveway. So I called and found a great host and a great place. So we don't always know where we're going or why. I get asked "What's next?" a lot, and I always gleefully reply "I don't know!"

Purpose and Meaning.

I was around a lot of retirees and others who don't have a regular schedule or work life. I think one of my biggest concerns would be for me is feeling sort of useless after awhile. And I think I could only take just so much of focusing on pleasing myself before that got pretty dull. So the next trip I take I think will be more focused on staying for a week, two or three in one place and doing "Workaways" as a volunteer. Making friends on the road was one of the great joys of this trip. But that takes time and some kind of common ground. If you want to know more about "Workaways" go to www.workaway.info and you'll be so amazed how many opportunities there are to volunteer all over the world.

Being somewhere beautiful is nice, being there with people you like is great.

If my dog's happy, I'm happy.

While I love the desert, there are a lot of treacherous things out there especially for dogs. Coyotes, snakes, scorpions, birds of prey not to mention barbs that get into feet and get infected, cactus spines that poke out eyes. And other people's dogs can be very aggressive. So there wasn't a lot of running free out there. Which is fine, but not full time. The beach is really the place where I feel the most comfortable letting Choochi run free. Who can complain about that? And being with a dog is just the best thing ever on a long trip. Everyone talks to HER (and then to me).

Wish list.

A twelve volt cooler so I don't have to buy ice for the ice chest, a solar panel on the roof of the car, a way to charge my house batteries from the car alternator when I drive, some way to create a privacy space that doesn't involve a tent (I'm thinking tarp draped on the car with the doors open somehow), a bed that is less bulky and can fold up when not in use, a solid chest that's easy to access for the cargo carrier and a way to use that as a countertop for making food. 

All in all, I didn't do too badly preparing for this trip, and these are the tweaks. 

I got rid of a ton of stuff in Florida before I crossed the country - a big tent, heaters, and other items got sent home with my friend Jed for which I am very grateful. I go back and forth on thinking I might want a bigger car, a van, whatever. Most times I love the smallness of my footprint and the gas I'm saving just doing the car thing.

Drinks in St. Augstine, FL at Dave and Jed's.

And finally.........

Make sure your windows roll up before you enter the car wash. This is self evident until it isn't. Seriously, make sure all your windows work before you start rolling in.

 Choochi and me survive the great car wash debacle.

And thank you to all my other friends and traveling companions along the way. You made the experience rich and rewarding.

And THANK YOU to all my readers, you made it FUN to do this travel journal!

Bye for now!
Happy Spring!!!!