Recently, two friends hit the road. Being new to the RV lifestyle, they asked us if we can name one practical thing that we packed, which just can’t live without. After giving it some thought, we figured it out:
Our cast iron skillets.
Back in our stick house, we had a whole collection of Griswold and Lodge Cast Iron Cookwear. But seeing as they’re kind of heavy, we decided to bring just two of our favorites. We packed our 10″ chef’s pan, and an omlette pan, in addition to one fancy Calphalon pan that we rarely use.
Cast iron is so versatile, and not very expensive. You can use these pans for stovetop cooking, baking, broiling and even over a campfire. And because you don’t need a lot of water to clean them up, they’re great for boondocking. Our Calphalon pan isn’t nearly that versatile.
At 23 years and going strong, the Alpine Cowboy Poetry Gathering is the second oldest in America, just one year behind the much larger Elko, Nevada festival. I’ve always wanted to make it to Elko, but it takes place in January, and being in an RV during Elko’s frozen winter isn’t my idea of a good time. Guess that makes me a real city slicker.
Alpine’s vaqueros though, they know when, and how, to hold a festival for wimps like me. While much smaller than Elko’s, Alpine’s is better in my book. The weather’s awesome, the overall price of attending is more affordable, the performers are accessible, and to me, the atmosphere feels a lot more authentic than Elko, which isn’t the nicest town in the world.
The only bummer is that the poetry and music sessions are held on a college campus, and we wish they would’ve had some in bars or in a campfire setting.
Jim isn’t a huge fan of cowboy poetry like I am, but he patiently endured the festival so he could get a good dinner or two out of it (and he did!).
We both fell in love with the town of Alpine itself. It’s small but not too small, real estate is affordable, and the high desert scenery can’t be beat. We plan on heading back there to look for our winter Texas property in the fall.
Texas is being good to us, and we love it here. Never in a million years did we think we would say this. As native West Coasters, we fell for the popular snotty stereotype about the Lone Star State: that it’s flat, boring, full of rednecks and the only redeeming thing about it is Austin.
Now that we’ve been to the Great State two times in the last year, we just want to say; We were wrong. Sorry Texas!
The most peaceful, relaxing drives we’ve had in the last two years have been along the back roads of West Texas. The land here is as varied and beautiful as anything we’ve seen in our travels. Nowhere else in the United States can you drive through such wide open spaces and see vistas that go on for miles, without a single inhabitant except for a herd of cows. Tall rock formations line the horizon against a deep blue sky, and even if you’ve seen “No Country for Old Men,” Hollywood still can’t come close to replicating this kind of beauty. One visit to Big Bend National Park, and you’ll see for yourself how stunning this country is:
We haven’t been to a national park since saying goodbye to Jerry in Yellowstone. Coming here felt somewhat like a betrayal to our baby, since the last time we set out to do the tourist thing was with him.
But I knew if we didn’t go to Big Bend now, years might go by before we had the opportunity to go again. Since it was “only” 240 miles out of the way from our next destination, the Texas Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Alpine, and diesel is hella cheap in Texas, we went for it.
Arriving at the park and hitting the trails without him didn’t seem right at first. But after a day of sweating in the blazing sun, and getting stabbed by cacti on the trail, I realized that Jerry probably would’ve hated this kind of terrain, which helped my pangs of guilt to subside.
Ever since we got our rig, we’ve been fortunate to have a wealth of information at our displosal. I’m not talking about the obligatory gaggle of retired full-timers who gather any time you attempt to back up your rig. I’m referring to our rig’s solar power system.
My brother in law Rich O’Connell is a brilliant electrical engineer. He has grown a successful solar business with my sister, built his own off-grid home, designed multi-gigawatt systems, and patented a solar panel washing system. He also designed the RV power system we rely on for boondocking.
Recently, I got to meet another expert; Solar Mike. He operates The Sun Works from his solar powered rigs on the slabs. Mike knows the DC side of the business and how to get the absolute most out of what you got.
That’s why I was happy to be at Slab City when we considered upgrading our system. I had access to experts from extreme ends of the solar industry. Either one of them could have easily told me I had a bad battery. Which I would have known, and could have avoided, had I been servicing my batteries as they required.
It just didn’t seem like we were getting the run time out of our batteries that we expected. Loving to boondock as much as we do, we explained our issue to Mike and asked him for an estimate for upgrading the system. He immediately discovered one of our batteries was weak, and pointed out how dry it was. Bone dry.
I might have kicked my feet and mumbled a bit, but – don’t tell Rene – I still think it was worth the $95 we spent on two new batteries to have not been pulling them out and checking them every month for the past year. Truth is, we just forgot.
Yup, our upgrade cost us less than a hundred bucks. And it was so cheap because Mike took our good battery as a trade-in. The ones he carried were a bit better, and I wanted a matching pair. Not bad since we were considering spending over a grand on couple new panels.
Had we spent the $4000+ on the original system design Rich gave us, we might have never even had this discussion. But having worked this over with Mike, I now know where in our 24′ trailer we can fit six maintenance free 6 volt batteries – much better suited for our use than the two 12 volts we have.
And having done it a couple times now, I know it’s not such a big deal to pull our batteries and check on them. We even carry some distilled water now so we have it when needed.
I also know now that an MPPT charge controller is where we’ll invest our dollars the next time we complain about our system. That’s one thing Rich and Mike both agreed on – that any Maximum Point Power Tracking charge controller will boost performance performance of our PV array. Then we can start talking about boosting the battery bank and adding panels again.
When we will make that investment is the $3000 question. But that all depends on where we’re going to be purchasing property come Spring, and whether we will need to upgrade what we have or build a larger off-grid system in a shed or trailer. And we’re not even sure where we’ll be next month.
Our friend Dave Berman recently called us “Advocacy Journalists” when describing what we’re doing to raise awareness about canine cancer with our three legged dog movies.
I consider this an honor since Dave taught me the term and was the first advocacy journalist I ever met … until that is, we caught up with Flux Rostrum and Skinny Chef in the Mobile Broadcast News bus.
It was a treat to see these two real videographers in action at Slab City. Partying with them and golfing at Gopher Flats was pretty fun too!
But for those of you who don’t necessarily tune into our video channel on a regular basis, here’s our take on the Slabs.
I wouldn’t necessarily call it journalism, but the playlist below does include five videos documenting slab City culture – from a drive by and a fly over to the Niland Tomato Festival parade, art cars and Salvation Mountain. Enjoy!
Paying it forward …
Our generous friends CoffeeSister and RhodesTer will be happy to know the Verizon wireless PC card they insisted we take has found a good home. We donated it to the Mobile Broadcast News crew to support their efforts of raising awareness and hell online through indie media. We were unable, however, to get a receipt from them for the tax deduction. I guess the good karma will have to suffice.
One of the great things about meeting people online is you tend to immediately share something in common. Friendships are started based on a shared interest, whether it’s dogs, RVing, or whatever.
We met Joel and Ross online in 2006, when Jerry was diagnosed with cancer. Their Great Dane Moose was on the same path, and throughout the next two years, we became friends. Joel and Ross sounded like such nice people, and gave us an open invitation to stop by and visit them in Paso Robles, near San Luis Obispo, CA. “Be careful what you ask for,” we warned them, and showed up after leaving L.A.
What a fun surprise it was to learn we had other things in common besides our heroic dogs. Joel and Ross live on five rural acres, in a solar-powered house, and even drive an electric car. They have many animals, and a great little garden too. Their compound resembles what Jim and I envision for ourselves someday. Here’s a clip of Joel giving a tour of his gopher-proof greenhouse:
There’s something about dry camping in the desert for a few weeks that really makes one appreciate the lesser things in life … like soaking in a big muddy spring with naked strangers, sharing some hooch under the stars, or showering in a culvert.
It also makes one realize how we take for granted what most consider the the basic necessities of life … plumbing – and hot water, at that – electricity, refrigeration, shelter and transportation.
One look around the slabs and it’s obvious that many come to Slab City because they want to, while others end up here because they must.
Perhaps there is no where else to go for the scruffy genius. Are the weary travelers here in a tent with their three legged dog for fun? Does the young graduate couple camp here with theirs because it’s free?
That’s one good reason we spent nearly three weeks at Slab City. Same goes for a good number of Canadians, Fokkers, full-time RVers, weekenders, and resident transients who call Niland, CA home for at least a while. There’s no amenities, no facilities, and there’s not much of anything in town, unless you’re looking for a vast selection of fortified wines.
But what does one really need to maintain his or her standard of living? That all depends on where your comfort level lies in relationship to your surroundings.
To some, Slab City has it all: hot springs, live music, good people and a community shower. To others it’s a great place to visit – decent weather and social clubs, with fuel, a laundromat and store nearby.
To those who might disagree, I suggest you at least give it a try. After all its perfectly safe, with 24-hour security from the border patrol, a U.S. Navy bombing range to the east and Calipatria State Prison to the west. And you can’t beat the price!
I give credit to anyone makes a go of it on the slabs. First impressions can be deceiving. If you give it time, Slab City might just grow on you. Just not literally, one hopes.
There are two kinds of fulltime RVer couples on the road. There are couples where both partners really love the lifestyle, and can’t think of living any other way. Then, there are couples where one partner loves it, and the other was dragged on the bus kicking and screaming. Some couples’ personalities fit perfectly into fulltime RVing, while others try it, then put their RV on the market before summer’s end.
If you happen to be the reluctant RVer, Doreen Orion’s book – Queen of the Road – is perfect for you.
If you’re a blogger, each time you finish writing a post and are about to Publish, you might think to yourself “is anyone actually reading this? Does anyone really care about what I might have to say?”
For more than 18 months Jim and I have used this blog to document and share our crazy full-time RVing sabbatical adventure. We are faithful about checking our visitor statistics and click-thru commissions, but we never felt like we had a good handle on you—our visitors: why you come here, and what you like or don’t like about what we publish.
We’ve often wondered what site features or blog topics we should put more time and effort into, and considered what might we scrap altogether.
To put aside any doubts we had about our work, we published our Reader Survey back in November. We used a WordPress plug-in called CForms II. Many thanks to everyone who submitted a survey.
We were intrigued with what we discovered. Among many of the findings, we learned new things like:
Discovery #1: More people read our blog on a weekly basis than daily.
The Conclusion:Many of you are busy and choose to catch up with our posts all at once, perhaps skipping through them until you find a topic that interests you. Perhaps we should also post no more than say, three posts a week so you don’t feel overwhelmed when you do visit.
Discovery #2: You’re into the way we live.
The top 3 blog categories people like to read about on our site are: “Fulltiming,” “Simple Living” and “RV Technology”
The Conclusion:Our core readers are interested in what it’s like to live a simple life in an RV on a fulltime basis while remaining connected. We are happy knowing that we’ve been writing for the things you want to know more about.
Discovery #3: If you subscribe, you don’t visit often. And vice versa.
Instead of subscribing to our blog in an RSS Reader, and perusing posts directly within that – a Reader is like an electronic newspaper of your own, which gathers up all of the latest work by the blogs and websites that you’ve told it to monitor – most of our audience physically comes back to our site each time they want to read it.
The Conclusion: Wow, we get bookmarked and people actually remember to visit at least once a week. This is a huge compliment. Also, while we didn’t ask your ages, this leads us to believe that the majority of our readers might not have the desire or time to get comfortable with how to use RSS feeds. If this is the case, and you want a quick tutorial on how to use a Reader, let us know and we’ll write about it.
Side Note: Of those readers who replied to our survey, that is! Feedburner stats indicate we have had on average 113 subscribers over the past 30 days. Thirty four readers completed our survey.
Discovery #4: You don’t Digg us.
Based on your feedback, social networking isn’t something you’re doing. Most of you don’t Twitter, and you definitely don’t spend a lot of time using the social bookmarking toolbars at the conclusion of each of our blog posts either. (In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and share with specified people or groups inside certain online “networks.”)
Discovery #5: Most readers find our monthly expense reports to be useful.
The Conclusion: Our readers are curious about what it costs to live the way we do, and are perhaps comparing our spending against theirs. For the foreseeable future, I guess I’m stuck playing beancounter at the end of each month.
The Conclusion:Again, we think that this is a reflection of our readers’ age bracket. It was good to learn this about them, because as more social networking plug-ins become available for us to add to our site, we know that this probably isn’t something we should spend a lot of time implementing.
FYI: The “share” links now include a “print” and “email to a friend” buttons.
Discovery #6: Our closest friends and family don’t care.
Almost none of our friends and family filled out the survey. Some readers who comment frequently opted out as well. The most enthusiastic respondents who enjoy our site, are total strangers who never comment.
The Conclusion: Our friends and family know how boring we really are and don’t buy into that road tripping, freewheelin’ hippie image we have on the web.
Overall …
It seems that you are here for the blog itself, not really for the rest of the website, which includes a storefront and a road trip soundtrack page, if you didn’t already know. The number one reason you tune in is to read about what life on the road is really like, and where the best places in this country are for people with like-minded ways of thinking.
Thanks to the generous readers who gave their time to fill out the survey, we are now confident that for the most part, our writing is on the right track. While some things can be omitted or cleaned up (like not talking about politics, according to a few respondents), you have affirmed that our approach is working well.
And if we are way off base or totally full of crap with this analysis, please let us know with a comment below.
On the road again . . . like a band of gypsies we go down the highway.
Ok, I know it’s cliche, but it had to be done.
Just over a month after arriving in L.A., we said tearful goodbyes to the family yesterday, then headed up to Paso Robles to meet Moose’s family, our heroes who showed us that dogs can live great lives on three legs. We wouldn’t be the wandering hoboes we are if it wasn’t for this incredible pack. We had a great visit. More on that later.
Meanwhile, we’re boondocking on classic desert BLM land near Red Rocks State Park. This place is filled with OHVers on weekends, but weekdays are relatively quiet. Friday, we’ll head to Palm Springs to catch Willie Nelson live!
We are huge Willie fans, and have been trying to get to one of his shows for years, but never made it. Finally, our universes will collide this Friday night. I can’t tell you how excited we are about it.
Till then, we’re gonna get re-acclimated with life on the road. We’ll soak up the sun, go on hikes, watch sunsets, and write our guts out here in the desert. I just hope we can view the Inauguration tomorrow morning on the web without getting FAP’d by our satellite provider.
Recently, two friends hit the road. Being new to the RV lifestyle, they asked us if we can name one practical thing that we packed, which just can’t live without. After giving it some thought, we figured it out:
Yup, our upgrade cost us less than a hundred bucks. And it was so cheap because Mike took our good battery as a trade-in. The ones he carried were a bit better, and I wanted a matching pair. Not bad since we were considering spending over a grand on couple new panels.
Entries (RSS)
