 
Beans and I on the Loose

A traveler and his cat exploring the back roads of America

Book Two  
2018

A Hot Mess

By   
JOHN LEE KIRN
Copyright © 2018 by JOHN LEE KIRN

All rights reserved, including the right of

reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

As if it really matters...
"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.

"I don't much care where-" said Alice.

"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.

"-so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.

"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

_Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_

Lewis Carroll, 1865
CONTENTS

ARIZONA

NEW MEXICO

TEXAS

OKLAHOMA

TEXAS AGAIN

NEW MEXICO

COLORADO

KANSAS

NEBRASKA

SOUTH DAKOTA

NORTH DAKOTA−MINNESOTA

WISCONSIN

ILLINOIS

INDIANA

OHIO

WEST VIRGINIA

KENTUCKY

MISSOURI

KANSAS – COLORADO

NEW MEXICO

ARIZONA

Author's Note
A Hot Mess

ARIZONA

Finally!

Finally the long winter's layover in southwest Arizona came to a premature end in February. I couldn't sit still any longer. We moved on, south, to slowly begin our journey for the year. The speed at which we travel is a matter of weather. We can't (or won't) go anywhere until the rest of the country warms up. A cold front from Canada had moved down upon the U.S. so all places seemed equal and the urge to move was too great to ignore. Although the wind was fierce out of the west the drive south to just outside of Yuma went well considering broadside twenty-five mph winds all the way. We arrived at a small VFW Bureau of Land Management (otherwise known as BLM) area just outside of town. I had stayed there before and found it refreshing to see the homeless encampment in among the cottonwood trees bordering the area had been cleared out and cleaned up. The wind continued to howl; the skies were brown with dust. A man walked by wearing a dust mask. _It must be bad out there._ That night around midnight I was awoke by the loud sound of an engine. I thought of the motor used for parasailing. I then realized a low throbbing sound of a pulsejet motor. This continued on and off for an hour and there was no sleep to be had with this contraption flying low and directly overhead. I could only figure a drone being used by the Border Patrol for surveillance of illegal migration traffic. Just a wild guess.

We left before sunrise the next morning to begin a big day of food shopping and filling up fuel and water. Half the day was shot before putting Yuma in the rearview mirror. Ten miles further along lay another free camp area just south of Wellton, another place I had stayed before but Claire, my GPS lady, had other ideas and sent us on the "scenic route". This route showed our destination being over thirty miles away. I could see her tour would take us right pass where I wanted to go so I let her have her fun with me for this time. You will be hearing about more of Claire's antics throughout this book, guaranteed. This small piece of Arizona Trust Land is good for an overnight stop although there are some who obviously stay here much longer than that. It is a small, rather flat desolate looking place but that evening proved otherwise. Around nine P.M. as I lay in bed reading I could hear the approach of a helicopter. Looking out the window I saw it circling then landing off in the distance over by the interstate highway. I assumed there was a nasty accident over there and this was a Medivac chopper. But no, for it took off and then began a repeated back and forth sweep over a quarter-mile square area of farmland just north of camp. Armed with three brilliantly bright searchlights on the front he would swoop down real low to the ground−it looked as if one could jump up and touch the landing rails−then he'd pull up, turnaround and sweep back down covering the next row in his search pattern. It was entertaining to watch and thankfully not in the middle of the night as the drone from the previous night. Again I can only assume some more illegal border crossing activity was in play. After about a half hour of this they finally gave up and flew away. Who or what they were searching for must have eluded them in the rows of spinach. The next morning we moved onward to quieter surroundings.

We stayed outside of Ajo, Arizona for ten days. I had been here before also and there are lots to see and explore. The area lies right in the path of a major traffic route for drug smuggling and illegal immigration being only thirty-five to forty miles from the Mexican border at Organ Pipe National Monument. It is interesting to hike around and find cast-off pieces of clothing, food containers and water bottles by those trying to get through from Mexico undetected. As you can imagine there is daily Border Patrol vehicle activity passing by camp all the time. That aside, the Darby Wells Road is a great place to camp for free. From there we had a hundred-twenty mile drive on Highway 86 east towards Tucson. This is a narrow two lane highway that for the entire length is littered with roadside memorials erected by family members of those who have died in an automobile accident along the route. There were well over a hundred of these crosses and shrines which makes one think the locals around here are very inattentive or reckless (or both) in their driving. With great relief we reached the outskirts of Tucson not having been caught up in one of these incidents ourselves and with no one to establish a marker for Beans and I.
NEW MEXICO

A new state; now we were making progress.

We free-camped at tourist trading posts along the way and a Veterans Park in Lordsburg. Progress was slow; as slow as an algebra class. Headlong winds were once again in the twenty-five mph range. I'd drive only thirty miles or so a day. There was no need to waste fuel beating on into the wind. After a few days we arrived at Rockhound State Park outside of Deming. We were in the middle of spring break and all the schools were out. Families were vacationing. We got the last available campsite. In the wake of my good fortune I broke one of my long standing rules, never pay for more than one night at a time. I had paid for two. Late that afternoon the two-year-old next to us started in on his or her (I couldn't really tell the gender by looking at it) daily screaming, crying, wailing tantrum session. Normally I'd move but the campground was full with nowhere else to move to. In a situation like this I would leave the next morning. Ah, but I had paid for two days. We were stuck. I did move to the other side of our site and that helped as they were down the slope a bit further away now. New Mexico has great facilities, campgrounds and rest stops alike. Their campgrounds have showers, the kind of shower where you don't need a fist-full of quarters to take a three minute tepid bath. I like New Mexico.

On the third day we broke free from the family of six and their two-year-old noisemaker for Pancho Villa State Park thirty miles to the south at Columbus, on the border with Mexico. All the way the winds had their way with us again. The little town of Columbus (pop.1600 plus) lies three miles north of the U.S./Mexican Border. On March 8, 1916, Pancho Villa sent two of his officers to Columbus to scout around. He and his 485 troops were in desperate need of arms, ammunition, food and clothing to carry on in their revolutionary battle with the Mexican dictatorship in power. The officers returned reporting there were only thirty to fifty soldiers present. In reality there were three hundred fifty U.S. soldiers. Oops! Someone probably got demoted in rank (or shot) for that bad piece of intel. The Mexicans raided the town in the early morning hours of March 9. After the dust had settled ten citizens and eight soldiers had died along with seventy to seventy-five of Villa's troops lying dead in the streets. Four buildings were burned to the ground one being the mercantile store, the very place containing those much needed supplies they so desperately sought and the whole reason for the raid! These banditos weren't the smartest by any means. Soon thereafter President Woodrow Wilson ordered General John "Black Jack" Pershing and ten thousand troops to pursue and capture Villa. They trailed him some five hundred miles south into Mexico and never located the raiders. With the outbreak of the First World War and the U.S. entering into the war, President Wilson ordered Pershing and his U.S. 13th Calvary to cease the "Punitive Expedition" and return to the states. Today Pancho Villa State Park resides where the Calvary had established Camp Furlong. Here we stayed for four peaceful warm days.
TEXAS

We crossed into Texas at El Paso. Slowly we worked our way east with no real destination in mind. The further east we went the more desolation we saw. This is oilfield country. We spent a night at the city dump in Pecos. Okay, it was really a picnic rest stop. There were six graffiti covered cement picnic tables each with a shade structure and a large fifty-gallon barrel drum for trash. None of the barrels had trash in them. It is easier to just toss your rubbish on the ground. Trash was everywhere. Hundreds (not exaggerating) of beer bottles littered the ground, many of them broken. The place was a minefield of broken glass, not something I wanted Beans walking around in. The weather was nice with no wind, the birds were singing and the view was abysmal. While camped I surveyed the incessant stream of oilfield related traffic that rolled by on the highway within a stone's (or a beer bottle) throw away. About nine out of every ten vehicles that passed had to do with oil production: crew-cab pickup trucks (most were white, or were at one time), pickup trucks towing trailers, pickup trucks with dual rear wheels towing fifth wheel flatbed trailers, big rig trucks hauling drilling pipe, compressors and other implements of oil extraction and of course tanker trucks going back and forth. All this truck traffic destroyed the roads through the town of Pecos itself. The asphalt was grooved with two large furrows where the tires ran. The road heaved, buckled and was strewn with potholes for every mile of it. And there was no color. What was once a red gas station, a green grocery store, was no more. Everything in town was covered with dull dirty oil-town brown dirt: automobiles, trucks, buildings, signs, dogs and cats, all the same dirty brown color. The noise of diesel engines powering all of this traffic was mind numbing. By the fourth day of being immersed in this environment my attitude towards the trip was so low it might have struck oil had we lingered any longer. I did some research. At Midland we turned southeast. Then finally after four hundred thirty miles of driving since crossing the Texas border at El Paso there was the first green to be seen along the highway and down the center median. Once again there was happiness in The Little House on the Highway

We spent a relaxing and refreshing three days at a nice little city park along the steep banks of the Llano River in Junction, Texas. It was there I decided we would go to Padre Island National Seashore off the coast of Texas at Corpus Christi. I had watched a few YouTube videos from a couple fellow travelers I knew and although they reported it being windy and chilly I decided to be brave and go. Upon arriving the ranger at the kiosk booth advised me to go to North Beach and there we went. I drove down the last bit of pavement onto the beach sand and was astonished to see the water up so close to the dunes. I could see campers scurrying about moving their gear up toward the dune embankment. I stopped and talked with the first set of campers. In one more hour it would be official high tide and with the recent storm and we were in a full moon, "...this is a bit unusual" he said. He added a ways down there were some open spaces which implied there were a lot more people strung out here along the beach than I bargained for. I told him that I don't need this kind of adventure, thanked him and backed on out of there. _We'll go to South Beach Beans._

South Beach was no better. In fact what small bit of sand there was to drive on was wet sand! Good grief! And to think this is going to repeat itself twelve hours later at four A.M., I wanted no part of that. We went over onto the other side of the barrier island to Bird Island Basin. This camping area was a sandy gravel parking lot with thirty-four spots so close together, practically door handle to door handle parking, you could hear your neighbor snore at night. We left the next day. A couple days later another video showed up on YouTube. She showed the thick fog rolling in where she couldn't see over fifty feet away and was worried about someone driving into her. Sounds lovely.

During all of this I had a worn brake pads warning light come on. This could not be. I had new pads and rotors installed not that many miles ago. Plus I am careful when braking gearing down for every stop. I stopped at a shop on the way out and they directed me to another shop in Corpus Christi that had a lift for RVs. They got me right in, pulled all four wheels and found the pads to be just fine. I've had an issue in the past where the senor wires grounded out sending a false signal but here that was not the case. The guy did some research and learned that the emergency brake has pads which are located within the rear axle housing. Imagine that. Well there's no way I'm going to say yes to tearing down the rear end so I told him to put the wheels back on and I'll live with it. Days later the light was more than annoying so I blocked it off from view. (A few weeks later I noticed the light was off. A few weeks more and it came back on.)

After a series of truck stop, picnic area and roadside rest overnight camps we came to Lake Limestone near Jewitt, Texas. This was a lovely campground of trees and cut lawn grass, well away from any roads or towns. We stayed an entire week there and besides the occasional fisherman launching his boat we had the place all to ourselves. No other campers, picnickers, day use people...no one. Sometimes I make a good call.

One day on a little walk along the shoreline I came to the cement boat ramp, paused to look out on the water then proceeded up the ramp. Suddenly about five feet away I see this large dark grey snake lying out on the rocks to the side of the ramp. Now I like snakes. I especially like them when I see them before they see me. This encounter quite unnerved me for he gave me no warning that he was there. I could have easily walked into him. I'm from the west. There the snakes that can do you harm are rattlesnakes. Rattlesnakes are always kind enough to warn you well in advance with their rattling. This snake did nothing. Once I regained my composure, I found a stick and prodded him out from the rocks a bit more. I wanted to see the tail. No rattles. The snake was close to four feet long and as thick as my forearm. _Is this a water moccasin?_ I had never seen one before. So now I am unsettled once again thinking this water moccasin could have bit me before I knew he was there. Back at camp I got online and compared my photos. The snake turned out to be a "harmless" water snake. Well, so be it. It got **my** attention.

We continued our tour of the Hill Country of Texas and eventually had driven out of it. Still the scenery was wonderful doing short drives from here to there camps. Near Holliday (yes, it is spelt with two L's) Texas we found Stonewall Jackson Camp. The camp was one of several by that name so it seems. They were little camps and parks established for veterans of the Civil War to get together for annual reunions. For this particular camp was the fact that this was in Comanche Indian territory. Nearby was a certified Indian Marker tree. Indians would bend over and tie down a young sapling as to mark a direction of travel on a trail, a water source, a place to cross a river or stream, or any other useful piece of information. The tree would continue to grow and take on an abnormal shape horizontal to the ground. There are many misshapen trees all over that are due to natural acts such as lightning strikes, another tree falling on it during the wind storm, or snow bend from heavy drifts of snow. So a very few trees are certified as actual Indian Marker trees. I found this very interesting and would look at these malformed trees I find during my hikes in a different light from now on.
OKLAHOMA

I had planned on staying there a few days but on the second day I noticed the coach batteries were reading a low voltage. I have had these batteries for ten years, well past their normal life expectancy. But I take care of them and they've continued to take on and hold a charge through the two hundred watts solar panel system onboard. Alas, one battery finally passed on. The nearest place I could buy two new Trojan six-volt golf cart batteries was in Oklahoma City a hundred miles to the northeast. Well, our route had been decided for us. We arrived on a Monday morning. I installed the new batteries and we were on our way heading west by noon.

I aimed for a free camp at American Horse Lake some thirty-five miles northwest from Interstate 40 at Calumet. Once there we were met with a large Oklahoma Wildlife Department sign listing all the rules and regulations for hunters and fishermen using the facilities. "A hunting or fishing license or Conservation Passport is required to enter unless exempt", then a list of rules for fishing and another list for "other". There on the "other" list among hunting, boating and skiing was one reference to camping−three day limit. We ran into the very same thing at another "free" camp, Lake Burtschi, on the way to Oklahoma City. What is this _Conservation Passport_ and do I need one to camp? How and where do I even get one? I got on their wildlifedepartment.com site and looked all over finding no answer. I gave up and left. A day later brought us to our third "free" Oklahoma site, Lake Vanderwork, near Cordell. Yep, there was another one of those signs greeting us. By now I was a bit frustrated and aggravated and decide to stay. Being a nice grassy spot by the water with no one else anywhere I felt I couldn't go wrong. I took the time and did more research. Finally, this is the third of fourth attempt mind you, I found something that _implied_ that yes, I needed a passport to camp, and that it cost fifteen dollars and was good for three days. But nowhere did it say how to get one, no page to fill out a form and PayPal button to pay the fifteen to buy one, nothing! Why don't they just stick an iron pipe into the ground, provide some envelopes and you drop your money in down the slot?! _Just let someone of authority come by and ask me if I have a passport. By the time I'm done with my rant they will be sorry they stopped._ By day two the weather was deteriorating. I felt confined in the hollow of the reservoir and I decided we best move out. Plus I had discovered a National Grassland managed by the Forest Service that looked promising. I never got to confront anyone of authority.

Black Kettle Grasslands wasn't exactly what I was expecting, like the vast grasslands of Montana for example, but we weren't greeted buy any confusing signs by the Oklahoma Wildlife Department. This was Federal Forest Service land and we'll take that. The area is named for Chief Black Kettle, a leader of the Southern Cheyenne. He was known for his peacekeeping efforts with the white man. And for that, in November of 1868 he was killed by then Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer during a raid upon their winter encampment.

Our camp was at the base of Dead Indian Lake dam, a reservoir that was constructed in the 1950's on Dead Indian Creek. The creek was named by early settlers to the area since they discovered many Native American _sky burials_ along the creek. A sky burial is method of generally the Sioux and Lakota Plains Indians to honor their dead. The body is placed on a wooden scaffold for the spirit to rise. Birds, mostly vultures, deal with the remains. However you view this method of dealing with the body, I for one would want my moldy carcass done this way rather than being tossed into a hole in the ground and buried under six feet of dirt. Cremation doesn't appeal to me all that much better. But I've got off track here. Sometime around 2001a do-gooder felt the names for the creek and lake were derogatory to the Native American and petitioned for the State of Oklahoma to change it to Black Kettle Creek or Medicine Woman Creek, after Black Kettle's wife. Meanwhile there were those who wanted everything to remain named as they were. This group contacted the nearby Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes where they accumulated more than a thousand signatures to leave it Dead Indian Creek/Lake. The do-gooder had by then moved to California, where a lot of do-gooders with their misdirected ways reside, was never heard from again, and the petition was given its own sky burial.
TEXAS AGAIN

A week later a check of the weather showed the winds would be out of the east. We were running low on fuel and seventy-six miles away from the next town where I could fill up. So we took advantage of the situation, set sail, left Dead Indian Creek sooner than planned and blew back over the state line into Texas. We arrived at our next camp at Lake Meredith, north of Amarillo, not a minute too soon. The wind immediately picked up with some serious intent, rocking the RV back and forth reminding me why I could never manage being on a boat on the ocean – I get seasick. This was a nice campground run by the National Forest Service. It is free to stay for fourteen days and even had showers for the price of admission. It is very rare for that combination to occur. As nice as this camp was, including the much appreciated hot shower, the wind was a constant issue. Beans didn't like to be out in it. I didn't like to be out in it. The weather forecasted our third day there to be calm and peaceful. I was really looking forward to that and do some cooking in the Dutch oven among other outdoor activities. But the day before the wind became fierce with gusts at fifty mph. Looking ahead, after the predicted calm day we would be in for a string of four to five days or howling winds. I couldn't see being trapped inside for all that time. We left on that one calm day heading south as much as possible to get out of the wind-plagued Texas panhandle.

We stopped at Jack Sisemore's RV Museum in Amarillo, something I saw on a YouTube video and made of note of wanting to see. There are nearly two dozen vintage RVs and trailers from the 1930's through to the 70's to see. All are fully restored and accessible to walk in, look around and imagine. This was such a delight that I forgot all about the disappointment of leaving Lake Meredith sooner than planned. I met and visited with Jack, a very nice gentleman and he suggested we go to Palo Duro Canyon State Park just south of town. I have had others recommend going there so we did. When we arrived unfortunately there were no camp spots available unless I had made a reservation beforehand. Nope. We didn't even do a drive-thru. With the urgency to get out of the wind tunnel we pressed on further south.

Two days later we were in the little town of Floydada and stayed at their community run RV Park. A nice quiet little place, free for the first two days, ten dollars thereafter and complete with hook-ups and a dump station. This also is very rare to have those services in a city-run park let alone being free. I did a little drive around their downtown business district which revealed the same story as most all small towns we visit, all closed up out of business stores. The extra wide brick paved streets were void of any activity. No people, no cars, and this was at high noon on a Saturday. It had a very apocalyptic feel to it. The next day was a short drive to Crosbyton and their small RV Park. It had the same set-up as Floydada and here we stayed for two days.

These little city parks are great and I had our route planned for another in Haslett, a two-hour drive. Along the way I kept looking for a place to get propane. The propane tank was low, like on _E_ low. There was nothing to be had and Haslett being a larger town I felt for sure they would have propane. Nope. It was iffy the refrigerator would make it through the night and I certainly did not want my ice cream to melt. The park in Haslett wasn't as nice as the previous two so we continued on northward in search of propane. Finally, fifty miles later and out of the way from our direction of travel I found propane in the little town of Knox. With that done and the ice cream now safe we backtracked towards the town of Munday. Outside of town was the _Believers Chapel of the Knox Prairie_. Here we took sanctuary and stayed the night in their parking lot.

The next day and onto another city park in Throckmorton. We never made it. I stopped in the middle of nowhere alongside the road for lunch. All of three cars passed by while there. _Why go into a town when no one and no cars come by here?_ There we stayed with the flat prairie surrounding us, the birds singing and the wind keeping us comfortable in ninety degree weather. Then all hell broke loose.

I received a 'severe storm warning in your area' alert on the phone. To the south the skies were dark and lightning played about. I sat outside for forty-five minutes enjoying the show when the first raindrops were felt. I decided I would stand out in the rain as I had done before. Well that didn't last long. The wind-driven rain hurt. Before I could get inside the wind picked up in intensity and it took all I could do to shut the door to the motor home. Picture the scene in _The Wizard of Oz_ where Dorothy's family is trying to get the storm cellar door shut. Once inside the wind grew even stronger; rain sounded like pea gravel being shot against the side. The RV shook and shook like it never had before. Outside the grasses were laid down flat onto the ground. Initially quite frightening, I reasoned there wasn't a thing I could do about it so I may as well enjoy the experience. No longer frightening, the storm was now fascinating. After five or ten minutes (I had lost any sense of time) the storm was over in an instant. The rain stopped as suddenly has it had begun and soon the outside was bathed in sunshine. I stepped out, perceived no damage to The Little House on the Highway and watched the storm cell moved northward with bolts of lightning playing against a dark backdrop. I couldn't recall the sound of any thunder during the tempest. It could have been there but was drowned out by the noise of the wind and rain, I don't know. A beautiful full arc rainbow was left behind.

The planned city park stop in Throckmorton wasn't all that great. Being still early in the day we pressed on to Hubbard Creek Reservoir near Breckenridge, Texas. Upon arrival it looked promising despite all the trash lying about. Shade trees, lakeside camps and no one camping. _Yes, this will do fine for a week_. Well, that didn't last long either. Later in the day the local yahoos showed up hot-rodding their trucks around the camp roads. I had already moved once for no soon as I had finally got a somewhat level set-up some clown pulls in right down the way, leaves the doors open playing loud music while he fished and his blonde bimbo girl friend did whatever blonde bimbos so. Then there were the ski boats with their loud sound systems blasting rap-crap noise. Sounds carries wonderfully over water so a quarter of a mile away was just like them being right offshore.

The next day was a Friday, the weather was overcast and cool which kept the yahoos away. But I knew the weekend would be mayhem and so we left for Lake Daniel south of town twenty miles away. This looked better in that no ski boats, no swimming and not as inviting for idiots from town, with only about a half a dozen campsites. But every site was being used. _Now what?_ Just as I pulled out past the locked gate there was a back-in spot on the end of the road. I backed in, found it quiet and no one else in their right mind would want to be there. We stayed the weekend.

The first week of May and the weather forecast called for mid nineties weather all the next week. This was my first indication that Texas wasn't going to last much longer for us. I'd have to consider higher elevations for the summer if we were to remain in the south. Last summer we were up in Idaho and Montana which was nice. Now I needed to consider National Forest land in New Mexico and Colorado but that was three hundred miles away. What to do for the immediate? We went back to Hubbard Creek Reservoir to sit out the hot week coming.

The week went well considering the infrequent visits of the locals. I sort of planned on leaving on Friday and Thursday evening when I went out to leave some food for this orange tabby that would come to visit Beans I spotted a baby rattlesnake curled up beneath the slide-out of the RV. This was the regular path that Beans would walk and needless to say the sight of the rattler left me a bit unnerved as to what would have happened had she been out with me. Most people would have killed the snake without hesitation but I could not. This is its home; we're just visitors. I relocated the snake down by the water and decided for sure, we're leaving.

Our first night was HOT at a Walmart Travel Lodge in Snyder, Texas. That was followed by a couple real nice city traveler RV parks in Lamesa and Levelland. These were extra special in the fact that they provided electrical and water hook-ups and still all for the price of FREE. At each we were able to get some shade from the blazing Texas sun. Our next stop would be the Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge. On our way there I turned on the air conditioner and no cool air. _Are you kidding me? Now, on the hottest day you don't work?!_ Beans was none too happy about this and let me know about it. _Meow!_ The refuge turned out to be a dead dry grass field with no shade and no redeeming qualities of any type. We left for the town of Muleshoe hoping to find an auto repair shop that could deal with an air conditioner.

I had another free city run park lined up for this town and drove by a small auto shop a quarter of a mile before it. I pulled in, parked, went inside and was soon greeted by Michael. He was welcoming, had a positive attitude and I thought _he'll do just fine._ Outside he had me start the engine and said right off that the compressor was working. This was what I thought the problem was. Then he pointed out where a leak was in the condenser, the radiator looking like piece of equipment mounted in front of **the** radiator. I could see where a rock had hit it and recalled taking a hit the day before just that I knew not where. He made a call and said a new condenser would be here from Lubbock in the morning. This is what I like about small towns and small shops, no making of an appointment or "We can probably get to you later this week".

With that set we moved up to the street to Ray and Donna West RV Park. Again, free hook-ups but no shade. But you get the added pleasure of being a stone's throw from the railroad tracks where trains rolled by at all hours blasting their air horns at every street crossing which there are a dozen or so in close proximity to each other. So essentially it is one long continual horn blast. Very nice at four A.M. in the morning. My fellow resident in the park was an older, rather large woman in a Class C RV about the same size as my Winnebago View. She only came out to hook up her power cord and sewer hose. The rest of the time she was inside sewing, long into the evening with the TV playing. She had her sewing machine set up on the dining table what looked like permanently. I could see inside that a wall of little cubby hole bins and drawers were immediately behind the seats in the cab so her only way into the living space was to get out, walk around and come in through the coach door. These bins held all of her sewing supplies: thread, needles, buttons and whatever else needed for sewing. Bolts of fabric were stacked elsewhere inside. Where she and her little dog slept, I don't know. Even eating a meal must have been a cramped affair. I don't mean to mock her. I admired her passion for her hobby and making it work out living full time on the road.

The next morning I arrived at the shop. I had already removed the grill and so Michael started work with me helping out every so often. I honestly expected this to be an all day affair and staying another night at Train Horn RV Park but we were done in two hours. Sometimes things just go good. Being barely past noon we carried on like any other normal day of travel.
NEW MEXICO

We crossed over the state line into New Mexico heading for Fort Sumner. Sinbad and I had been there seven years ago to see Billy the Kid's Gravesite as here is where the Kid got gunned down by Pat Garret, or rather ambushed and shot in the back by Pat Garret. This time though we here just for the camp at Bosque Redondo Lake south of town. It proved to be a nice little spot for a couple of days used mostly by fisherman as the lake was posted NO SWIMMING _._ The weather was still warm and we really needed to get into some cooler environments.

A short drive north brought us to Santa Rosa Lake State Park. Here Claire was up to her old shenanigans trying to get me to drive onto dirt roads passing through Mr. Hoolihan's ranch. _This can't be right._ I backed on out and followed the pavement after reviewing the satellite image of the area. Here I finally had to pay for a camp – ten dollars. The showers were worth it. The neighboring campers playing their loud mariachi music was not. The next morning with the music starting up again I moved to another campsite for a quiet morning breakfast before heading out for Las Vegas...New Mexico that is. Claire started up where she left off the afternoon before. _No Claire, I am not driving off road even though you think Highway 91 is there._

We spent a night in Las Vegas to resupply at Walmart Hilton then moved on up to Taos. RV's are allowed to stay overnight in their downtown free public parking area which turned out to be okay...for one night. Otherwise the town is too touristy for me with a lot of traffic. We motored on the next day northwest to Tres Peidras. Just west of the very small town is the beginning eastern edge of the Carson National Forest. A quarter mile past the ranger station is a forest road with dispersed camping. I parked at the first spot as the road was well rutted but passable. The longer we stayed there the better we liked it so we called it home. There was zero traffic and no other campers in the area. Also there was no cell service or sometimes one bar. I figured one night here then maybe move on. Later I had the idea to try out the cell booster.

I bought a WeBoost cellular booster device a year and half ago and never used it. I've always picked up pretty good AT&T signal wherever I am. Part of the time of ownership was just in trying to get it set up correctly (no fault of the manufacturer) and then not even knowing if the thing worked or not. So here I was, I crank up the TV antennae mast which I had mounted the signal capturing antenna to, plugged in the wires inside, set my phone in the cradle and _Whoa! This thing actually works!_ I had four bars reception across the board. You can imagine the glee I felt now knowing I hadn't just wasted my money. I now set the plan to be here on through the Memorial Day weekend.

Throughout the week only one other RV came in to stay plus one car camping couple. Otherwise just a few day-use folks who came for the hiking and rock climbing of one of the three nearby rock outcroppings, thus the name Tres Piedras – three rocks. Beans liked this place too for there were an abundance of lizards about. It had been a long dry spell of lizard hunting for her all the while in Texas. If it weren't for running low on cat food I would have been content to stay even long until there was the incident.

The Missing Woman

One afternoon around three P.M. a Harley Davidson motorcycle with a man and woman riding rolled by camp on the rough old forest service dirt road. That was very unusual for a street bike to be on this road, I reasoned. The woman on the back was really pretty, simply stunning. In her twenties, dirty blonde hair in a single braid down her back and a big smile on her face. I only caught a glimpse of her so I was ready for them to come back by when they left. Around four-thirty here comes the bike. The woman is not on the back. This road only goes in a quarter of a mile and stops at a barbed-wire fence. The other side is private property. There is a walk-through gate as the land owner allows access for those who want to hike and climb the rocks. There is no other way out than the way you come in, right by our camp.

So this is really weird. I go for a walk up to the end and stop by the only other RV there to talk with the old guy. While talking here comes the guy back on his Harley. So we figure he just left her there for awhile why he did something and she communed with Nature. All good. (Or perhaps he returned to the scene of the crime?) I walked back to camp. Thirty minutes later I hear the bike coming. I'm ready to get a better look at this woman. She's not on the bike! Now this is more than weird; it's highly suspicious. The guy came back one more time. He left at seven-thirty P.M. and that was for the last time. I never saw the woman again.

This ate at me. Besides the RV guy, there was only one other camper there, a red car. I never saw the owner all week. Maybe she was with the red car and the biker was a friend who came up to visit. The next morning I walked up there and finally saw the campers with the red car. Not her. Even if they got into a fight and she stormed off, there was nowhere for her to go. Naturally she would walk out the road she came in on being that was the only route she was familiar with and would lead her down the highway a quarter of a mile to the ranger station. No other roads led in or out from the area. Trails led off in the opposite directions into wilderness forest.

I couldn't enjoy my time there any longer. I left the next day and stopped in at the New Mexico State Police in Espanola. I left them with my story plus photos of the guy on his bike. When I left I felt a sense of relief and could now continue on with a clear mind. Hopefully there was nothing to it all. The officer I talked with said he'd pass this information on to the Taos area in the case of a missing person report. I said "Don't people have to wait twenty-four (or forty-eight) hours before they can file a missing persons report? It hasn't been that long." Nope. You can't believe the stuff we see on TV or in the movies.

After I finished filing my report on the mysterious missing woman with the New Mexico State Police I got on with the really important business of the day - laundry. With that completed I drove down the street to Walmart Camper Village where we'd spend the night. (I checked online for a month afterwards and no missing woman reports in the area ever showed up)

The Thief

I usually park off to the side at Walmarts near the garden department. I pulled in near the chain link fence around the outdoor plants and sat there looking around as if there might be a better spot and what could I expect for night time noise like with big rigs parking near me leaving their engines running all night long. Ahead of me is this Mexican guy crouched down between his little Chevy car and the fencing doing something. He's undoing some wire on the fence. He sees me just sitting there thinking, stops what he's doing (he's done anyway) gets back in his car and waits. He's looking over at the staff running the garden department and back at me. Finally he gets frustrated and leaves. I decide this is a good spot and stay. I get out and walk over to the fence. There is now a gaping hole. I walk over and talk to a Walmart guy who just happens to be the Assistant Manager. We go over to the fence and I point out the hole. He thanks me and gets Joseph to fix up the hole with some more wire.

Sometime later the little Chevy guy returns, sees the hole has been patched up and takes off. I happen to see Joseph out there so I tell him the guy came back. "He's persistent" I say. Joseph tells me they don't have a night time patrol anymore, something about not renewing the contract. "I think you're going to need more wire."

Come eight-thirty in the evening while I am reading I hear this car park right next to us. There is no one else in this whole lane. _"Really?"_ The door to the RV is open to let the cool breeze blow. So I look out the back window to see who is out there. No one is in the car but the engine is running. Finally a person runs around behind the RV, opens the back door of his car and stuffs a five-foot tall tree in a pot into the back seat. It's that Chevy and that same guy again! He is climbing up onto the chain link, reaching over grabbing a twenty-nine dollar edible fruit tree in a pot. He does this four times, four trees, and then drives away.

I get the license plate number and go into the store asking for the manager. I'm steered to Customer Service and run right into my Assistant Manager friend. "He came back. Reached over the fence and took four trees." He was very grateful for me telling him plus having the plate number. "It'll show on our security video." I told him how I could have stepped out and said something but he'd come back in the middle of the night with his buddies and slash my tires. "No, you did the right thing. I wouldn't want you to get involved" he said.

Good grief! Can't I just have a nice peaceful quiet life without being witness to so much crime?

All the while this drama goes on I am trying to decide where to go next. I want to stay at altitude, preferably in a National Forest for free, and of course have some cell service. South towards Sante Fe? Too much going on there. North back to Tres Piedras? Naw, I'd sit there thinking about that woman. So northwest it is and the first place is an Army Corps of Engineers reservoir at Abiquiu. It looked good, nice country much like Moab, Utah, I can use my old peoples discount and there's SHOWERS! This place proved to be a gem and we stayed until the first where the prime view campsite we had, #19 was reserved for June 1. That was fine as we needed to move on anyway. I can't be spending too much money on camp fees you know.
COLORADO

We crossed over into Colorado and did a couple of overnighters here and there. At a small parcel of BLM land north of Walsenburg I noticed a _scenic route_ on the paper map which was the Old Santa Fe Trail. That looked good. We dropped down to Trinidad and filled up with fuel as there would be no services for nearly ninety miles on the Trail. Imagine that. Back in the day when the pioneers and immigrants took this route there were no services for a couple of thousand miles! I have followed several of the pioneer trails, The Oregon, California, Mormon, Lewis and Clark and always am impressed at the vast lands these folks undertook to cross with little or no reliable knowledge as to actually where they were going. Most information was based upon rumor and conjecture. You simply followed the tracks laid down before you by those who came through earlier hoping they knew where they were going. The Trail passed through the Comanche National Grasslands. Yeah, they had that to contend with too. Wild Indians out to rape, rob and kill. I enjoyed the nice drive. Barely any other cars or trucks were seen going either way for two hours. There was a steady tailwind too on a slight downgrade from the Rockies onto the Great Plains all of which contributed to a new record in fuel economy, an average of 28.8mpg for seventy plus miles. We spent the night outside of Lamar, Colorado at a State Wildlife Reserve. The next day we moved on due north to another State Wildlife Reserve near Flagler, Colorado. This one was especially nice...remote, quiet and no one else around. There we stayed for the rest of the week.

Beans Big Catch.

Beans really enjoyed this place. I get a lot of pleasure watching her bounding through the tall prairie grass. She was so happy and having so much fun. I looked back to how she was destined to a life living inside an apartment building. Then her owners put her up for adoption, we found each other and both of our lives are so much the better. The hunting of lizards and mice was good here for her. One day we were just lounging around outside when she all of a sudden stood up and leaped into the tall grass. There were a few jumps, flips, rolling around and she soon emerged with a big rat in her mouth. She couldn't have seen it in the grass. Her acute hearing tips her off prey is near. Fortunately for Mr. Rat, Beans is well fed so she never has any intention on killing. She just wants to play with her catches. Naturally the rat isn't up for that kind of activity. This guy was so scared he was hyperventilating. Now I felt sorry for it. I gave Beans a handicap by stepping on her lead and the rat made good his escape under a nearby log. But the fool thing came back out and Beans was on it. Fine, so be it. Darwin's theory in action. Eventually she lost it in the grass and the game was over.
KANSAS

I had made arrangements for the new license plate tags for the upcoming year be mailed to the small little town of St. Francis in the far northwestern corner of Kansas. The tracking showed the package to arrive Friday. It didn't. I was facing having to sit out the weekend in town with mind-numbing temperatures in the ninety-five plus degree range. Ah but the nice post office lady told me to just knock on the door Saturday morning and she'd give it to me...assuming it arrived. In the end I spent a nice day in town walking around a motorcycle museum and their newly remodeled county historical museum. I've been in a few of these little town museums over the years and I must say this was one of the best. The museum wasn't overwhelming with way too many collectables and what they did have was nicely staged. Well done Cheyenne County. The tags arrived the following morning.
NEBRASKA

We left Kansas driving through Bird City then turned north for Nebraska. I chose a small county road and let the winds push us along up to Ogallala, Nebraska. There I filled up with fuel. It took 21.3 gallons meaning there was still five gallons in the tank. That was with five hundred-one miles of driving which worked out 23.6 miles per gallon. That is a new best and I doubt it will ever be matched again, unless I take on the Santa Fe Trail again. That brought the overall running average for the past couple of years up to 19.86 mpg. Very few if any twenty-four foot RVs can boast that. It all comes down to driving slow and smart, plus having a fuel efficient five-cylinder Mercedes diesel engine.

The small State Highway 61 route north although being very nice and scenic with lush green prairie farmlands all the way, left virtually no places to layover for the night. Out of desperation I stopped at one of those highway historical marker turnouts about fifty miles shy of the South Dakota border which was very nice. I doubt a dozen or so cars and trucks passed us by the twelve hours we were there. That is how remote Survey Valley is.
SOUTH DAKOTA

The next morning I awoke to see the propane indicator light was in the red. I learned from the last time to not procrastinate and take care of it right away. Well now that I know better only that now I am miles from anywhere where there is a propane filling station plus it is a Sunday. The planned route going north which I researched thoroughly would now be trashed. We drove two hundred miles east to Pierre, South Dakota for a Walmart Retreat night then picked up propane in the morning.

Beans Gets a Two-fer

After a couple days of long drives we both were looking forward to some peace and quiet in one spot. About thirty miles south of Pierre is the Fort Pierre National Grasslands. Down the highway then off into the prairie on eight miles of nicely graded dirt road we arrived at a small freshly mowed few acres of grassland set aside for free camping. _This will do just fine._ There were two other campers there whom I saw very little of. This place really demonstrated how the vast expanse of the Plains grasslands accentuates your sense of feeling free. I hiked a couple of miles through the knee and crotch high grasses just to get a sense of how it must have been for the pioneers of the 19th century. I couldn't walk normally. Imagine walking through deep snow. After an hour of this it got a bit tiring. Ah, but those tough immigrants to the west did this for days upon days, weeks, months.

Beans liked this placed as the mouse hunting was excellent. On her first outing she caught one which proved to be no fun at all. It simply laid down in the grass and died, most likely from fright. _Gee Dad, these South Dakota mice aren't anything like those out west and in the desert._ The next day she caught herself a two-fer...two mice in one catch. Beans had in her mouth a mother mouse with a nearly full grown youngster hanging from her teat! There were probably siblings having breakfast also but they had enough sense to let go. Like the out of control hot air balloon where the one guy holding onto the rope realizes he held on too long and cannot safely drop, this was the case for this one young mouse. It eventually shook off and fell to the grass. I noticed a bit of blood on a blade of grass. I suspect the baby bit off mom's nipple. Ouch! Meanwhile Beans is dragging me away with mom in her mouth. She dropped her and played around a few times and unlike the previous day's mouse, this one made a run for it escaping into the tall grass making good her getaway, although minus one nipple. Well she had spares.

Later in the week the weather forecast called for a ninety-nine degree day. Time to move on. That day was to be a long day of driving. There simply weren't all that many options to be had for camping in central, eastern and northern South Dakota. We drove through Huron which has _The World's Largest Pheasant,_ a forty-foot tall art piece. Pheasant hunting is a big thing there. Next on to Henry to pick up on another roadside oddity I missed years ago. Back in 2012 Sinbad and I came through this area and I had this tiny roadside chapel marked on the map to go see. But once we were in South Dakota the chapel was too far out of the way of our route so I scratched it. Now here I am six years later with Beans and I would be going right by the missed chapel. The highway had a little jog in it to continue on north. A mile later I realized I should have gone straight on for a couple of miles to see the chapel. Ah, but now I was in the land of no turn-arounds, all narrow farm roads. And so once again I didn't get to see the chapel. Oh well, I've seen others and at least the little town of Henry doesn't try to pass it off as the _World's Smallest_ like many of the others do.

Next stop was De Smet. And then there is yet again another house Laura Ingalls Wilder of _Little House on the Prairie_ fame __ supposedly lived in. I've seen about a half a dozen of these places she lived in from Kansas all the way up into Minnesota. Really, that girl got around and every town is capitalizing upon it. After seeing the second one I realized they were all just tourist clip-joints (except for the Kansas one) and I quit wasting my money. I did a drive-by and kept on going as my fears well founded from what I saw.

I had a free city run camp picked out in the town of Webster. The GPS coordinates took us to a small handicap access parking area on the north side of the park. _This can't be it._ I was tired and didn't feel like dealing with another bad unproven camp listed on Freecampsites.net. I was thinking to myself how I'd like to throttle the people who post these places. _Maybe it's on the other side of the park._ I picked my way around the neighborhood streets and found my way to the south side where the aquatic center was. _Nope, definitely not here._ I grumbled my way down the road ten miles to Waubay where they too had a city run park for free camping, the last option to be had. I pulled in off the highway down to the shoreline of Blue Dog Lake. It had nicely fresh cut lush green grass, new picnic tables and a CAMPING PROHIBITED __ sign posted by the boat ramp by the Department of Game, Fish and Parks. _Seriously?_ Well, I am not camping. I'm parking overnight. I was tired of fighting the wind and it was well past tea time. While sipping my tea I researched it more and five different online sources showed it to be a free city maintained camp area. No one ever came by.
NORTH DAKOTA−MINNESOTA

Yeah, I never knew which state we were in. We slipped across a river and were in Browns Valley which I knew was Minnesota. They had a city park camp there but it wasn't free so I just filled up with water, let Beans out for a walk and moved on. Right there somewhere, or so it showed on the map, was the North/South Continental Divide. Like the Continental Divide of the Rocky Mountains where the waters go either west or east into the Pacific or Atlantic Oceans, this divide separates the waters north to the Hudson Bay or south to the Gulf of Mexico. I thought that would be cool to see but couldn't find the exact point if there even was one. I was expecting some big monument or rock with a brass plaque embedded upon it.

I was enjoying a nice pleasant drive on a little highway heading west. A guy in a big pickup truck passed us. Not many did for traffic was nearly nonexistent. He was in no hurry and still within a hundred yards ahead of us when I saw something flip out from his truck onto the shoulder. I came upon it and to my grief saw the asshole had hit a baby deer, a fawn, spots and all. Bambi! He had made no effort to avoid it. He most likely was dicking around with his phone and didn't even see it. The poor thing was struggling with its front legs to get up but the hind legs weren't working. Without a doubt they were broke, horribly twisted as they were. Oh I agonized over this thinking how it would just lie there, slowly to die. I could pull over and put it away. How? Shoot it? Cut it's throat? Break its neck? Oh that act, the image, would be forever implanted in my memory. I did the cowardly thing and kept driving hoping someone stronger than I would come by and put the poor baby deer down.

We ended up at the Walmart Trailer Court in Wahpeton, thinking we were still in Minnesota but no, we had slipped back into North Dakota. As per usual I parked near the garden department. Not until later I realized the parking lot portion of the garden department had no chain link fencing around its pallets full of mulch, chips and fertilizer as does most Walmarts. They didn't even have any Walmart Associates out there keeping an eye on things. Customers would come by, load up what they wanted then go inside and pay for it. Or pay for it then load up. They didn't have the thievery problem here as the New Mexico Walmart did. Not only that, I then took notice how clean the parking lot was. There wasn't a scrap of litter to be seen. Inside the floors were polished to a sheen that you could almost see your reflection. Maybe even slide a donut across the floor pick it up and eat it without a care. Well, maybe not quite that clean, but you get the idea.

I reflected on a few more observations since being in the North Dakota/Minnesota area. Lawn cutting is an art form here. The lawns are massive. Everyone has riding lawn mowers. And it's usually the women doing the mowing; long straight lines cutting back at forth from home to road, around trees, shrubs and lawn ornaments. People here take pride in their grass cutting. After all, it's less than half of the year you get to partake in all of this fun. The rest of the year your lawn is covered with snow, or dead looking in dormancy. Lastly and probably the most important, I had yet heard any rap crap noise blasting from passing cars. What a great place this is to live, except for in winter.

In the morning we were treated to a rip-roaring rainstorm, thoroughly enjoyable. When I was ready to leave I saw that the refrigerator light was blinking. _Now what?_ The burner wouldn't stay lit. I've dealt with this before but surely didn't want to be doing so in the rain. I have with me a spare thermocouple which I have replaced before. Outside I decided I would first try spraying the contacts with a cleaner. That did it. The burner stayed lit. _Whew!_ We slowly motored our way north to the little town of Hendrum, who had a free city park to camp in. Out in the country, peaceful and quiet and made me feel like we were in green and lush Washington State. Ah, but by morning I was eager to leave. Something about being in forests, a closed-in feeling, just doesn't set well with me. I like the wide open spaces. And too, the batteries were not getting a full charge from the solar panels being shaded.

We did an overnight at the Walmart Campground in Crookston, Minnesota and continued on north from there to Warren to visit their Marshall County Historical Museum. The museum was another fine collection of artifacts from the area, nicely displayed and not overwhelming in abundance. But that wasn't the reason for my visit. On August 27, 1979 at one-forty in the morning an extremely bright light, otherwise referred to as a UFO, streaked directly at Val Johnson's patrol car, smashing one headlight, leaving a dimple on the hood and shattering the front windshield, winding up with bending the two whip antennas at a thirty degree angle. Johnson awakened forty minutes later, slumped in the seat, the car one-thousand feet beyond the point of impact with no memory of driving it that distance. The retinas of his eye were burnt, likened to a welder's burn and his watch and the clock in the car lost fourteen minutes in time. The car is displayed in the museum and to this date no explanation can be given for any of the facts.

After an hour or so drive to our next camp would be at the Agassiz Wildlife Refuge due east of Warren. This place had all the makings for a weeklong stay...very remote and no one else around. Birds were singing and frogs croaking. For the first time in my life I heard the call of a loon in the wild. Then in the evening the fireflies came out. I hadn't seen fireflies since I was a little kid on a vacation to Missouri. Ah but there was a problem – ticks! There were everywhere in the tall grasses and _tick-bait_ Beans would collect a few and bring them inside the RV. The flea and tick medicine I treat her with works real good. The ticks abandon cat in short order. Then they come for me! After two days of finding and removing ticks from our home I had had enough and we left. The afternoon and evening was spent at the Seven Clans Casino in Warroad along the shore of Lake of the Woods. The lake is the border of the U.S. and Canada, Manitoba and Ontario to be exact.

We moved down the highway and hour away to Frontier Landing. Here the Rainy River is the border between Canada and the U.S. for a long stretch along Ontario. This was a nice spot and would be good for a couple of days. You may wonder just how I pass the time sitting in a spot like this. Well here for example I sat on the picnic table and watched a big tractor with a large rotating reel in front cut the grass. It was kind of cute in that he had his wife or girlfriend along sitting beside him in the cab, just spending the day together cutting grass. While taking Beans for a walk I noticed these pretty pink flowers. I asked three girls what they were. "Oh, those are Lady Slippers. They are the state flower." I liked that name. I looked them up and come to find out that they are an orchid and somewhat rare in the fact they have lost a lot of the habitat they need to live in. So I felt quite fortunate in getting to see them. And then there is the great huntress, Ms. Beans. She heard something in the tall grass and leaped in. I figured another mouse that will wind up in mouse heaven. No, this time she comes out with a large grass snake in her mouth! I got her to drop it and firmly said _NO!_ several times then held her back while the snake made good its escape back into the grass. Geez, how do I teach her not to mess with snakes?! The first evening upon getting into bed I spent over an hour eliminating mosquitoes buzzing around me. Even Beans was dealing with them up front. _Okay, this isn't going to work._ We left the next day aiming to stay clear of the waters, a difficult thing to do in the state of 10,000 lakes. Mosquitoes! The only creatures on earth that can make one appreciate flies.

I wanted to see Lake Superior. It would have been nice to come up to the shoreline as far north as possible then drive south, but there were no places to stay. No places that were in my budget that is. The coast was lined with a string of high-priced RV parks probably charging more than I have ever paid in my life. So I elected to approach the lake at the bottom at Duluth, Minnesota. Duluth was a nice town from what I saw of it. I turned north and was able to see the waters – a dirty brown, like your café latte. I stopped in a small tourist information booth to get educated. It turned out they had had some heavy rains recently, six inches worth. This was run-off from the rivers. The lady said it will clear up and that the lake is really a pretty blue. "It is so clear you can see the bottom from a pretty deep depth. That is why the lake is popular with kayakers" she said. The surface temperature fluctuates but generally it is forty-five degrees – not your average swimming lake. A little online research I discovered that Lake Superior is the largest fresh water lake in the world by surface area. By volume it comes in at the third largest. It is 350 miles long and 160 miles wide at its greatest points. The average depth is 483 feet with the deepest part at 1333 feet. For the most part the waters are a constant 37 degrees well below the surface. Annual storms can whip up the water into twenty foot waves. Now that would be a sight to see. I stopped in at a welcome center across the bridge into Wisconsin for a map and the lady there related how a few weeks back the weather was eighty-nine degrees. Then the winds shifted, blowing in off of the lake. In a matter of twenty minutes the temperature dropped over forty degrees. That would be something to experience.
WISCONSIN

Wisconsin is a new state for me; I've never been in it before. They are all new states for Beans. After an overnight at a Walmart Motor Inn in Superior we headed east. It seemed the further east we go the fewer free camp places there were to be had. Wisconsin held true to this. After a long day of driving, nearly two hundred miles, we arrived at Pioneer Park in the little town of Ogema. This was a nice place and held promise for a couple day stay, especially as no bugs greeted us. Beans wanted to go for a walk and so we took off into the woods behinds us. In short order the bugs found us – mosquitoes! I grabbed Beans and ran out of there for the sanctuary of the RV. _Damn!_ And I was so looking forward to some rest days too. We chased a couple of the little buggers around inside the RV that evening which cinched my decision to leave the next day. A side note, the distant church had these beautiful sounding clarion bells. Every three hours they would play three short songs, quite lovely to listen to.

In no great hurry we left Ogema the following morning eastward to the highest point in Wisconsin, Timms Hill, something I noticed on the map only twenty miles away. At 1951.5 feet to me the hill was just that, a hill. At the "summit" after a three hundred yard "climb" there was an observation tower you could climb up into. I wondered if the tower was more than forty-eight and a half feet tall meaning at the top I was now a whole two thousand feet above sea level? Whoop-de-doo! I stopped in the town of Tomahawk and found a little _Second Time Around_ used clothing store. There I picked up a pair of pants just like I was wearing, only two inches larger in the waist. I'm getting fat! Too much inactivity on the road. Not enough hiking and walking. I needed more than Timms Hills in my daily routine.
ILLINOIS

Continuing on eastward places to stay were becoming fewer and fewer. At Green Bay, Wisconsin we turned southward driving along the eastern side of Lake Winnebago. This was a lovely drive, slow and relaxing with no cars pressing from behind. Crossing the Wisconsin/Illinois border I jogged eastward to the shore of Lake Michigan at the North Dunes Nature Preserve. It was nice there; nice enough to take a refreshing dip in the waters. I saw a little worm-like creature struggling in the ebb tide. I was able to scoop him up in my hand, some sort of blood-sucking leach or eel that quickly attached itself to my fingertip. _Well, that's really nice to be swimming with._ Afterwards I drove ten miles south to my old Naval base at Great Lakes. I thought it would be nice to see it fifty-one years later. The site was disappointing. Nothing outside the base was as it used to be. It just goes to show you never can go back. All you have are your memories. Don't lose them. I continued on sifting through those memories not really planning ahead our route pass the Chicago area. Soon enough we were in the thick of it – bumper to bumper constipated traffic crawling along. _Oh this will clear up soon Beans._ It never did until almost to the Indiana border. I looked at the tall skyscrapers, the tall congested condominiums and apartment complexes, the commuter train stations with people sitting, waiting, staring down at their smart phones, ear buds in place blocking out the sounds of the world around them, what a miserable existence to have to endure thinking this is life. Once into Indiana we pulled into a Cabellas for the evening. The weather outlook called for some heat for the next two days. It would be best to find a place to lay low and stay cool.
INDIANA

The Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore was nearby. It seemed like it would be a good place to sit by the waters with a cool breeze blowing in off of the lake, and maybe even some shade too. Ha! Funny me. Parking was at a premium, suitable for only cars and the place was packed with beach goers. And I thought it would be like the Nature Preserve from the day before. During the search we passed a picnic area inland along highway. I went back to that. There was shade, somewhat of a breeze, traffic noise...this will do fine for the day. Once settled I went about trying to find some cooler area to head to the next day. Everything was in the nineties. I pulled up a map of the country. The entire eastern part of the US from the Rockies to the Atlantic seaboard ALL was in the nineties! Good grief! _Just deal with it kids._

The next afternoon we spent at church. Rolling Prairie Methodist church had a nice parking lot with big shade trees. _Sanctuary!_ As the sun went down we moved on to Elkhart, Indiana and the RV/Motor Home Hall of Fame Museum which allowed visitors (us) to stay the night in their parking lot. The next day I toured the museum of old trailers, campers and motor homes much like Jack Sizemore's collection we saw in Amarillo, Texas. The most notable RV in there was a 1977 GMC coach. The couple who owned it found it in a field overgrown with weeds and housing a collection of critters inside. Rather than restoring it they decided to modernize it. All high end quality appliances, décor (custom leather seat coverings), bath fancier than most homes have, flat screen TV, and of course a wine bar with a twelve bottle wine cooler. The engine was replaced, the entire suspension was redone and upgraded and lots of custom bodywork was done to the exterior so much so it hardly resembled its former self. They estimated $500,000 was invested in the rebuild with the high gloss black paint job alone running $100,000. Obviously money was not an issue. Finally their creation was complete and ready to take out on our nation's highways. They didn't like how the RV rode on the highway and wound up donating it to the museum! When I read that part of the story, my knees got weak and I got a bit nauseated. I see these old GMC's out on the road every once in awhile. Their owners love them and they are using them with all of the original motors and suspension components that came from the factory. _Didn't like how it rode..._ give me a break!
OHIO

Our next destination was another Great Lake. On the way we went through a country intersection where there had just been a non-injury head-on crash. The Sheriffs were there taking statements while waiting for the wrecker to arrive to separate the two cars. Westbound traffic was backed up. We were going east and crawled by the wreckage. One of the cars was a hearse! Now it isn't everyday you see a hearse in an automobile accident. I was unable to notice if there was anyone in the back of the hearse. We spent the day in Port Clinton by the shore of Lake Erie. The Lake Erie water was even warmer than Lake Michigan, nearly like bath water so not quite as refreshing, but in this heat I'll take it. The other feature was that I walked out nearly a hundred yards and the water was only at my waist. Yep, Lake Michigan was more fun. **After** my swim I walked over by the jetty near the marina I see this sign informing you that 'sewage overflow may run into these waters'. _Well that's just lovely!_ A little online research revealed that Lake Erie has some other issues going on with it over the years. That evening, one o'clock in the morning and there isn't a baby's breath of a breeze. The air is as thick and sticky as high fructose corn syrup. The Walmart Park we were at in Port Clinton was one of the better ones and I felt comfortable leaving the door open all night.

With no points of interest on the horizon and nowhere especially to go we moseyed on southward trying to keep the driving under a hundred miles per day. That is easy to do but this means less air conditioning time. We spent another afternoon in a small little park in Ashland, Ohio which had just enough shade to cover the motor home. If there was just a breeze it would have been so much the better. I kept telling myself that if my grandparents and everyone before them could travel and camp without air conditioning then I can too. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I learned something too that day in that park. When you try to swing on the swing set and get nauseated, you're old.
WEST VIRGINIA

The Fourth of July. Not a good day. Another fitful night's sleep. Soon after getting up my gut is bothering me. Nauseous. E. Coli from the romaine lettuce salad I had for dinner? Mercury poisoning from the sardines I added to the salad? And there is this annoying little headache I can't get rid of. It is hot and sticky already. Is it that and my body's had enough already? Maybe if we get rolling and get the air conditioner going I'll feel better. No such luck. I pull off into a high school service road under the shade. I lie down and sleep away an hour. I feel a bit better. Maybe I'm just tired. Back on the road the waves of nausea return. And there's that headache. Dehydrated? I try to get some fluids in me. I persisted for another steamy hour. We pass through Amish country. Buggies on the sides of the two-lane highway. Share the road. Rest stop up ahead. I pull in and get the only shade covered spot. Another hour lying in back. Things still aren't right. We hang around in the shade for another hour. Why can't there be any breeze? Twenty three miles further another rest stop. Another lie down. Still the same. I press on to our destination – Cabelas in Tridelphia, West Virginia. The unmerciful broiling sun is hidden by towering storm clouds. Nice. The temperature is down nearly twenty degrees. Very nice. Then it rains. I stand out in the rain and feel better than I have all day even though the rain pelted me like buckshot. Inside I dry off and sit enjoying the stiff breeze coming in through the window. Then just like that it stops. It gets hot and stagnant again. The nausea and headache returns. _That must be it_ I think to myself. I watch a few fireworks through the overly bright parking lot lights of Strip Mall Hell, but I feel better lying down. This is the third night I sleep with the door open. If someone wants to come in and kill me they'd be doing me a favor.

The next day I felt better or did until around noon. But I'd take that as an improvement. Tridelphia seemed our best option for less misery so we stayed a second night in the Cabela's parking lot. When we left the following day I felt I just might live to see a few more days. We leisurely worked our way south following the Ohio River. I had seen a couple of river barges while driving and desperately wanted to find a nice place to park, relax and watch the water flow with maybe a barge or two. I found a Nature Preserve, the Ohio Islands National Preserve at St. Marys, West Virginia. I parked in the shade and realized I was tired so I laid down in back, fell asleep and missed two barge boats go by! Grrr... We hung around for another two hours and growing late I gave up and headed for our next overnight spot. On the way out I was able to see my barge boat. Five barges deep, three wide all being pushed by what I learned is called a tow boat. It is incredible the power these boats must have to push all that mass not to mention _how on earth do they maneuver them around all the twists and turns of the river?_ Fascinating.

There was a roadside park in the town of St. Albans, West Virginia that was free and had four spots along the Kanawha River. Ah, but as I drove by I saw all four spots were occupied by large coaches and a fifth wheel. I pulled into the park anyway just to walk and enjoy. Before leaving I decided to walk through the camp area. Ha! There at the end was a turn-around loop spot beneath a huge shade tree. No hook-ups but we don't need no stinkin' hook-ups. I went back to the RV. _We've got ourselves a sweet spot Beans!_ We stayed for the two-day limit enjoying watching the locals boat and jet ski on the river, and the occasional river barge that cruised by. Across the river in what was Nitro, West Virginia were some nice homes with river front access. One was for sale. Four bedrooms, four-point-five bathes, on three-quarters of an acre, all brick with a three car garage and private dock. A couple walked by who used to live here but now reside in Florida. We got to talking and I asked what a house like that would go for. "Oh, around $400,000" the lady said. I about fell out of my chair! Back in Sonoma, California 400K might get you a two bedroom clapboard house squeezed in between more clapboard houses. Then I asked about the two small paddle wheel boats docked nearby. "Are those house boats and people live in on the river?" That would be so cool. Just imagine the possibilities. The Kanawha empties into the Ohio which flows into the Mississippi and you could go upstream to the Missouri... "No, you can't live on the river" she said. Seems a couple years back a house boat was wiped out by a barge in dense fog. People died and so a law was made. She didn't know about the rest of the river system but at least in West Virginia, no house boats. I also learned the river isn't all that deep, maybe twenty feet of so at the most and at times it does ice over but the barges can break through leaving a pathway down the middle.
KENTUCKY

We entered Kentucky facing what might be a string of Walmart overnighters as boondocking opportunities were limited. The first night was the Walmart Resort in Morehead. This was a good spot backed up to a cliff in the mountain they had gouged a hole from to build the store. I've seen this a lot. Just take a big chunk out of a hillside, level it off and plop down a Walmart Supercenter. I laid down in back for a little nap propping open the rear window for some breeze. When I woke up an hour later, stupid me forgot about the window. Little Miss Houdini walked on out onto the spare tire and down to do a little exploring on her own. Several minutes later while reading at the table I turned around to see what she was doing on the bed. No Beans! No! NO!! **NO!!!** I went outside calling for her trying to detect her in the tall grasses. No response. PANIC! I'm not going to try to detail how upset and distraught I was. How far had she gone? I tried to reassure myself she'll return if scared or hungry, but that was no consolation. Then finally I saw her at the base of the rocky cliff. She hadn't gone all that far from the back of the RV. I called to her; she meowed and proceeded to climb up the rocks. Good god no! She stopped half way and settled in the shade of an overhang, allowing me to come to her all while talking to her sweetly. I scooped her up, and held her tightly in my arms so relived having her safely with me when I thought the worse would happen – lost forever. Climbing back down was not as easy as going up especially holding a cat tightly in my arms but I didn't really care if I scraped myself up sliding to the bottom. I made it down and back inside the RV so very thankful having my sweet Beans with me again. Needless to say I was a wreck for the rest of the evening and the next morning. I just wanted to get away from Morehead.

While driving I kept thinking of the stupidity on my part, the fact that I can no longer trust myself to remember anything, and what to do to guarantee the safety for Beans. _I just won't ever open that window again_. But then at times the wind comes from behind and the breeze is so nice. _I need a screen mesh._ Our next overnighter was in Richmond and next door was a Lowes. The following morning, thinking a bit more clearly and over the trauma of the _Great Escape_ I walked around in Lowes looking for ideas. I found it in the roof gutter section, three-foot long wire screen mesh sections to cover rain gutters in keeping the leaves out. They had a bent lip to them too. I bought three, cut them to the right length and stacked them with the bottom edge of each upper section nestling into the lip. With two metal screws in each section I was able to slide the entire assembly up within the window frame and still have access to the levers and open the window. _This will work fine._ Later Beans inspected it and I didn't have to worry again about her slipping out the back window.

The Richmond Dumpster Divers

It is two o'clock in the morning and I have to get up and do what most of us do at that hour of the night. As normal, I can't get back to sleep so I get back up and sit at the table eating some grapes. A car zooms into the parking lot, does a complete circle around then parks by the dumpsters. Earlier in the day when Beans and I were walking around this dumpster it had all of the appearances of one of the stores being cleaned out for some new tenants. One was full of big black trash bags and two rolls of carpeting and carpet padding. A man and woman get out of the car; the guy climbs in the dumpster and starts rooting around with a flashlight in his mouth. He tosses out a couple of the trash bags and the woman picks them up and tosses them into the other dumpster which is empty. _What is he looking for? A marked bag full of drugs? This was the drop-off point?_ Finally a roll of carpeting is ejected from the dumpster _._ The woman picks it up, goes around to the back of the car, pops the trunk lid, folds the roll in half and stuffs it inside of the trunk! _Oh, they are after the carpeting. Their trailer must need new carpet. Hey hon, it's two A.M., let's go get that carpet._ The guy is struggling to get the other roll of carpet and padding out but finally succeeds. The woman hefts it around to the back, folds it in half and starts stuffing. Ever try to fold in half a roll of carpet? No easy task. Then the rear door of the car pops open and out steps Mom, probably the woman's mother. With a cigarette dangling from her mouth she helps with getting the second carpet inside the trunk. It ain't going. So the old lady climbs in on top of everything and starts jumping up and down on it then pushing her shoulder into it like a lineman on a football team! Boy, don't mess with women from Kentucky! The two women finally get it in far enough that they can close the trunk lid after a dozen slam attempts. Just in time too because a cop rolls up. Busted! While the cop is taking notes and checking ID's back-up arrives. Meanwhile Mom is in the back seat and none of the cops ever knew. In fact they never even had them open the trunk! After some talking the cops leave and the dumpster divers start up the car with no left rear tail light or brake light working and drive off for home. Tomorrow the trailer gets new, to it, carpeting installed.

Just by chance I noticed on my paper map we would be passing through the area that was Abraham Lincoln's birthplace and his boyhood home. That would be cool to see. We went to the boyhood home site first as we were traveling south. It is located about ten miles north of Hodgenville which is where Lincoln was born. The farm of his birthplace that Abe's father Thomas bought for two hundred dollars had some title dispute which the Lincolns lost in a court case. So they moved north to land that ultimately proved to be more fertile. That is the boyhood home site at Knob Creek which was nice. Of course there was a recreated log cabin in place and who's to say it is even in the correct spot? But at least the broad cleared field still exists and it is easy to imagine Thomas Lincoln and family working the land to grow corn, pumpkins and vegetables to live on. While there I learned one day Knob Creek was flooding and young Abe was swept into the waters. His friend Austin Gollaher held onto a tree, stuck out a branch and pulled Abe to safety. It could be said Austin Gollaher had just changed the course of our history.

We drove south to his birthplace site and I was not prepared for what I was to see – a huge granite building with columns much like the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC itself. Fifty six steps – one for each year of his life – led you to the door where inside was another log cabin. This memorial was created in 1909-13 and I'm sure they meant well back then but I'd much rather see things as they were, even if recreated. And there is a story behind the cabin being "preserved" inside that granite shrine. At the time they believed it to be **the** cabin Abe was born in. When the land was obtained the cabin was dismantled and shipped across country to various fairs and expositions for show along with another log cabin of distinction, that of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. In the process of this travelling log cabin show the logs got mixed up with all the assembly and disassembly going on. When the Lincoln cabin came home it wasn't even clear if all the logs were the correct ones or not. Some of Jeff Davis' logs could be in there. Oh the irony! Modern dating methods in 2004 showed the logs to be thirty-nine years too young to be from the original cabin of Lincoln's birth in 1809. But the cabin remains as a "symbolic representation" even if it is smaller than what they believe the true cabin was.

Temperatures were on the rise again for the upcoming weekend. Our only hope was to find shade, wish for a steady breeze and lay low. I've had enough of this humidity. Even talking with some locals my belief that one over time acclimates to it was discounted. They don't like it either and reassured me "Ya never get use to it." I had been giving it some thought as to returning to the high elevation mountains of Colorado. No humidity and for every thousand feet in elevation you gain three-point-five degrees of coolness. Ten thousand feet and it is sixty degrees while ninety-five degrees in Kansas. In fact that is the big obstacle. We have to pass through Kansas and it is the hot spot of the country, or at least the mid-west. We left the Richmond Walmart Bed and Breakfast for a long shot camp called Butler County Park near Morgantown at Woodbury. Only forty miles away I was prepared for more driving when this spot revealed itself to be a dud. I was pleasantly surprised. Remote, in the country, lots of big sycamore shade trees, and along the dirty green Green River. It seemed to be a newly established park only a year old. The shiny new trash cans ($21.76 – they were that new they still had the price tags on them) were overflowing with trash. Animals had climbed in and scattered much of the trash about. It's a shame for if the county would come and collect the garbage, the place would be very nice. Nevertheless it proved to be a good spot to weather out the hot humid weekend.
MISSOURI

I found a disused Forest Service campground at Pinewoods Lake near Elsinore, Missouri. There were designated numbered camp sites so at one time fees were collected, but not anymore. I was fine with that. We found a nice shady spot near the lake and I was pleased to discover no mosquitoes even though being prime habitat for the pests. Better still was that it seemed cooler with much less humidity, and with only one other camper. _Well we can rest here for quite some time._ Then the late afternoon arrived. The temperature climbed, the humidity level increased and we were both dying. There was not even a hint of a breeze. I had three fans going. Beans was panting. I was dripping from every pore like a leaky radiator. This was beyond awful, bordering on inhumane.

Walmart Equipment Rentals

As it grew near time to do an oil change in the RV I agonized for a thousand miles as how to go about this. I don't trust those Quik-Lube places. In fact I don't trust anyone. Even my longtime Mercedes shop back home overfilled the oil on one of the changes. I'd rather do it myself knowing it would be done right. I figured my best option would be is to have some place drain the oil then I take it from there. Really though, I just didn't want to deal with the people in arranging this. Then it came to me about buying a container pan to drain the oil into like the one I had back home. The next time at a Walmart I looked and they had oil drain containers and the smaller one was ten quart. The engine holds nine and a half quarts. Less than ten dollars. Great! I bought it and found I could store it up underneath between the chassis frame rails held in place with bungee cords. Out of the way storage until I needed it. This is ideal.

At the lake it was time to do the deed. I had a nice level asphalt pad to work on. I planned ahead to do a clean job, got ready and still made a mess. I finished draining the oil, cleaned things up the best I could (including myself), spread some dirt over the spill and topped it off with leaves for camouflage. _Sorry._ I wiped down the container, cleaned up the outside and discovered that the vent cap would not stay snapped shut because of oil on it. Also the cap on the drain spout would not seal tight. Oil dribbled out. _Wonderful._ I finished with the oil change, burned up all the oily shop paper towels in the fire pit leaving no trace. I then double-bagged the oil container and stood it upright in the door well for the fifty mile trip to the nearest Walmart to return the defective container. They were even so kind as to dump the used oil in their auto shop.

As I was driving along trying to get over my everything-that-could-go-wrong-did oil change I figured I'll just have to try to find a quality made container somewhere for the next oil change. Then I remembered an eBook I recently read, _Road Dogs by Julia Lupine._ She was going on how Walmart is an equipment rental place. Anything you want to return they take back, no questions asked. So in her case where she and this guy hitchhikes from Utah to Tennessee and back, things like tent, sleeping bag, camp stove, back pack, she returned to Walmart when through and got a refund. I don't condone what she did yet this got me to thinking; when it is time to do an oil change I will just go buy one of these leakers they sell, and then return it afterwards since it leaks. I'd be returning defective merchandise. That way I won't be carrying this container around for ten-thousand miles bungeed up underneath the RV all the time. Walmart Equipment Rentals. Since the undercarriage carry spot worked so well, I bought a plastic container with a lid and stored all my oil changing gear, spare filters and other items in it which are all now out of my way in the RV.
KANSAS – COLORADO

We made it to Nevada, Missouri for an overnight and prepared for the banzai run across the blazing hot Great Plains to the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. It would be long days of driving but it would also be our best option in keeping comfortable. The air conditioner would do the job while driving; much better than sitting around suffering. We jumped on U.S. Highway 50 which was a straight shot west. I've been on Highway 50 through Utah and Nevada (The Loneliest Highway in America) and California, so now I could add this stretch to my map as "travelled".

Kansas was cookin'. Every town across the state was pushing a hundred degrees. Passing through Kinsley, Kansas I caught a glimpse of a sign designating it as the midway point between New York City and San Francisco – 1561 miles. I had to get a picture of that. I don't know how many laws I broke doing a U-turn on 50 through a construction zone full of pylons and barriers but I did it. I took the photo and saw there was a museum and sod house replica to see. I peeked inside. Oh this I could see was another gem of a museum. The lady was happy to see me as she hadn't a visitor in two days. It tore me up but I would have to pass. I couldn't leave Beans out in the motor home in this heat and feel right about it. The lady said I could bring her inside which was nice of her. But I just didn't think that would work out. I wouldn't be able to enjoy seeing the collection dragging a cat or wondering what Beans was getting into all the time. I told her I'd return someday "in the spring or fall, NOT summer!" She agreed that the humidity was bad. I walked outside and thought _this isn't humid._ To me it felt just plain hot but nothing like what we had left behind on the other side of the Mississippi River. If she thought this was humid here in Kinsley then I was pretty proud of myself feeling I indeed had acclimated somewhat to humidity hell.

I had a lot of time to think as the miles slowly ground away for hour upon hour. I reflected back about how this trip had gone so horribly wrong with the inferno heat and humidity we suffered with. _Why this time?_ Then finally, slowly, it dawned upon me as I drove past a sun scorched wheat field in the middle of Kansas, I had never seen in the Midwest or Mideast in the summer months before! In years past when Sinbad and I traveled back east, all through the South, or along the Atlantic coast we had done so in the spring or fall months. We always returned home for the summer months when schools were out and families were vacationing. Now here I was with Beans, living on the road full time and I had never given it a thought as to the repercussions of traveling in the eastern half of the country in the summer. The previous year during summer Beans and I were up in the northwest – Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana. This time I had chose to travel east and focus on small towns America for the season's travels. This had proved to be a big mistake with a big lesson learned. After this great revelation I felt somewhat better with what had happened to us and continued on filled with optimism for better times ahead.

After a four-hundred mile day we stopped in Garden City, Kansas for an overnight at Home Depot feeling good about the progress made. That evening I heard a cat howling. I found this scrawny old black and white Tom around the stacked empty pallets. Of course he wouldn't let me get near. I left a can of Bean's rejected canned food out for him and was pleased to see it empty the next morning. I hope he ate it and not some varmint. Cow, chicken, fish is fine but Beans does not like turkey for some reason.

We crossed over into Colorado yet still had half of that state to cross before reaching the mountains. Colorado did not disappoint. It too was broiling. In Lamar the outside temperature peaked at hundred-fifteen degrees. _Really?_ And too I had to deal with Claire trying to send us on county dirt roads to our destination rather than just sticking to Highway 50 through town. Sometimes I wish I could wring her neck. _What have you been smokin' Claire?"_ Well it is Colorado after all.

This next part I should be ashamed of (well, I am) but stupid shit I do needs to be included in this book. We spent the night at the Walmart Camperland in Salida, Colorado. Let me say Salida was wonderful. Comfortable temperature and DRY! No more nasty humid stickiness! We made it to high altitude and were extremely happy. The next morning I hit the store for a few items, did laundry, stopped at the car wash to clean a carpet, filled up with fuel then headed for nearby Poncha Springs BLM land, a dispersed camping area. My good fellow nomad friend Amanda had been there recently and she loved the area so there we too would go. Well it seemed that all the fairly level spots were taken that's if there were any fairly level spots to begin with. The entire area was on a slope of the mountain. Nevertheless I found two sites which really looked promising but try as I might I just could not get the RV level enough to be tolerable. Even using the leveling blocks I couldn't make the RV level enough that my eggs wouldn't flow over to the side of the pan. _Surely there must be some place half- way level._ I took a branching road hoping to find something there. Nope. While the road itself was not that rough it falsely led me to believe the trail was well used and there must be something up ahead. If not it will eventually hook on around and meet up with the main track or so I thought. It did not. The forest of mountain juniper gradually closed in. We rubbed a few branches. I pressed on and finally found myself into a spot that I could not back out of. I had to go forward. The mirrors got pushed back. There was sickening scraping and branches breaking. It then opened up to a barbed wire fence – PRIVATE PROPERTY. There was no reconnecting to the main road. I had to return the way I came. More terrible sounds outside from tree branches vs. RV. I feared the damage done. This was indeed THE stupidest thing I had ever done to The Little House on the Highway in all my years of ownership. Finally I reached the main dirt road and stopped. I braved myself and climbed out to survey all the damage. Incredibly everything on top – sky light, solar panels, cell booster antenna, vent covers, ladder, all escaped unharmed. Only the awning on the slide-out suffered. It had a foot long tear. Thankfully the main awning on the other side was not damaged. Both sides were heavily scarred from branches. I really expected to see dents or a tear in the sides. I taped up the awning and drove out of there immensely grateful I got off so easily from what could have been disastrous. I drove back into Salida to that car wash. I took the soap brush to the sides which helped the appearance a lot. Then I high pressured washed the sides. This helped even more. I felt better and vowed to work at it some more. _I can fix this._ I found a nice spot north of town to camp for the weekend. The next morning I tried this Mr. Clean Eraser Pad I had bought long ago for the inside but didn't like what it did to the wood. But outside on the white sides and those scrape marks it really did the job. Using it and some vinegar/water solution I climbed on top and scrubbed, along the sides I scraped and in the end was pleased with the results. _I can live with this._ The Little House on the Highway lives on in spite of it's idiot owner/operator.

After a weekend of rest we continued on to Gunnison and a free site there which turned out to be a desolate windblown small piece of scrubland. One would have to be desperate to stay there. Back down the road to a nice little wayside park we spent the remainder of the day in the shade then over-nighted at the Walmart Vista Estates that evening. The next day was a three hour drive south on Highway 149 that was designated as a Scenic Byway, and scenic it proved to be. I enjoyed being able to drive slowly and take in the views without being pressured from behind by impatient traffic up my butt. The goal was Park Creek in the Rio Grande National Forest. Although supposedly to have cell service it did not. Perhaps I didn't go far enough in but I didn't feel like driving further into the unknown on that washboard road. I turned back and we stayed the night at the ATV load up area then the next morning drove nine miles further to Pass Creek. There was good cell, a lot fewer ATVs and we secured a nice spot all to ourselves on a little cul-de-sac of dirt. There we spent the remainder of the week enjoying a brief thunderstorm every afternoon. Beans really enjoyed this camp spot. The grass was lush and green, nearly a foot tall. She loved bounding through it even if never coming across more than a grasshopper for prey. Even the little foot-wide streams of water fascinated her as she would get right down but on quite into them. Each day I did a little more "detailing" of the RV. I had picked up two more heavy duty Eraser Pads and was getting into the "restoration" of the motor home. It really was looking much better and so, as with a lot of things in my life, when shit happens I try to see the good in it. That dumbass excursion through the juniper trees led me into cleaning the outside and making The Little House on the Highway much more respectable looking.

After the weekend we moved on westward. The route went over Wolf Creek Pass at 10,850 feet, then all downhill on a seven-percent grade for nine miles. All kinds of warning signs were present especially for the big rigs limiting them to twenty-five mph with a designated twenty-five mph lane far to the right. I dropped in that lane, down-shifted to first gear and let gravity do the rest. The Little House on the Highway crawled along at twenty-five mph with the engine pegged at four-thousand rpm and I never had to touch the brakes once. The drive on towards Mancos was nice where we stopped at a free site along the way for a night. The next morning at Mancos I picked up a package at the post office. Part of the package was a magnetic sign I ordered online which read _This Vehicle Slows Down At All Railroad Crossings_ (I already have a _Slow Moving Vehicle_ sign in the back) I have to take it easy going across railroad tracks as they really jolt the RV and I need to give fair warning to those drivers riding my butt. Mancos had a nice little city park and there I spent some time making up a metal plate for my new sign. Being the body of the motor home is fiberglass the sign needs some metal to stick to. That metal plate is adhered to the surface with 3M VHB, very high bond tape. With that little project completed I went to a free camp site. Unfortunately the site turned out to be another small patch of windswept desolation by a well on a dusty natural gas access road. I went back up the road to a nice little park by the Mancos River where we relaxed for the afternoon. Come evening I drove the short distance onward to Cortez and did an overnight Walmart Hostel stay. I was thinking of maybe going northward in Colorado to Rabbit Valley where we had stayed before or perhaps over into Utah around Moab. A check of the weather revealed that both places were a string of hundred degree days. Oh my! What to do? I drove back the hundred-fifty miles to Pass Creek and found our spot we had a couple days earlier was vacant much to our happiness. _It was meant to be Beans._

In the Rio Grande National Forest we had fourteen-day limit stay, the same as with most all the National Forests. I decided we couldn't do any better and would stay for the full time. Daily temperatures were always in the seventies with the added bonus of late afternoon thunder storm entertainment. No one ever came by as we were on this dead end loop. And other than the sound of cars and trucks working their way up and down Wolf Creek Pass across the canyon, camp was very peaceful. We've been doing too much driving the last few months and the monthly budget of expenses was nearly two hundred dollars more than the average of just under eight hundred dollars a month. So we needed to stay put and quit moving around so much. It's not like that I can't afford the added costs but it is more like a challenge to see how cheaply we can live on the road not to mention all that travelling does get tiresome.

One evening I had just fallen asleep when I was awoken by all this commotion going on. Turning on the light I saw Beans chasing a mouse back and forth in the RV. _Get it! Get the mouse Beans!_ She had it cornered a couple of times but amazingly the mouse scooted by her and into a spot up front that she could not access. I gave up and went back to sleep while she sat there waiting. The next day there was no mouse body anywhere. Hopefully it left by whatever route it used to get in. I was amazed that the mouse got away from her and I think she was disappointed in herself. Two days later she redeemed herself by catching one outside. The next day she caught another one. I think the Serial Mouse Killer had decided to wreak havoc on the mouse population around camp after that one humiliating defeat inside the RV. The only other issue with this spot was the free range cattle in the area. They are pests. I don't want them pooping and pissing in camp or rubbing up against our home. So if they become a nuisance they get a BB in the butt. You'd think they'd learn but I have come to learn that cattle are about the dumbest creatures on earth. They really have no reason to be here but the BLM ( _Bureau of Livestock and Mining_ , not _Bureau of Land Management_ as far as I'm concerned) allows grazing rights to ranchers. Cattle do untold damage to the land. Whereas the indigenous animals such as deer, antelope and bison are gentle grazers just nibbling off the tops of the grasses, cattle rip grass out by the roots. And too there is the fouling of creeks, rivers and ponds done by cattle. The native wildlife knows better than to shit and piss in their drinking water. As the lazy days progressed flies became bothersome also. Ah, another direct result of cattle grazing.

At the end of our two week stay supplies were getting low. We were down to our last can of cat food so the situation was serious and the time came to move on. I keep a logbook of everywhere we stay including some notes about a particular campsite. Of all the places only a handful earn a five star rating and get highlighted in the logbook as a place I would definitely return to without hesitation. Roaming cattle and pesky flies aside Pass Creek earned five stars.

Here are my requirements for a perfect camp and they are somewhat in order of importance.

1.Good cell service. If there is no cell service I won't even go any further than the turn-off from the main road. I need the service to post on the blog, receive the few emails I do get, and check on the news briefly to see if we are at war with anyone or not. Also, weather updates which are important to have access to. I don't watch TV, Netflix or watch movies. But I do watch a few YouTube videos of those like-minded nomads that I follow. That is my only source of entertainment which I usually watch while having a meal. They are short little ten to fifteen minute videos, about the extent of my attention span. One night though without cell service is okay and I've done that before many times and still survived.

2. FREE. Not that I am not willing to pay for a camp but to stay for ten to fourteen days will set you back well over a hundred dollars, and to do that all year long well you can see how this would adversely affect the budget in short order. And too, with pay-to-camp places they have designated spots for you to camp in which precludes items three and six below. But some do have showers so that's a big plus and worth the sacrifice of three and six.

3. No one within sight or sound. This one isn't crucial but does have a bearing on to how long I will stay. Beans, as did Sinbad, prefer that no one is around.

4. Fairly level. This is obvious for a number of reasons living in a motor home. In addition would be open space so the solar panels can get sun at least part of the day to keep the batteries charged. Full on shade spots in the woods won't do.

5. No bugs, especially mosquitoes. I'll tolerate most bug conditions but if there are mosquitoes I won't even bother staying.

6. Peaceful and quiet. Most places are so this one isn't really a factor. Probably the most pressing noise issue would be road noise which is dependent upon how close the camp area is to the highway. Take being at Pass Creek for instance. That site was probably a mile across the canyon to the highway but being in a canyon and the steep grade the traffic is dealing with there was road noise. For the most part road noise does not bother me as much as it does others. ATVs buzzing around back and forth, that is a whole other kettle of fish and may cause me to vacate sooner than planned.

7. Nice temperatures. Seventies and eighties are ideal and this one isn't really a factor either for I wouldn't be in the area in the first place if the temperature was crap. This is why people choose this lifestyle. They follow the perfect weather around the country.

8. A nice view. Well when you are out in Nature it is most always a nice view. What makes it even better for me is if it is a wide open view where I can see for miles and miles. This is one of the reasons I love being in the desert.

9. Access. A good camp area scores bonus points if access to the location is via a good road. I don't mind driving several miles on a dirt road but if it is washboard then I can only tolerate about two miles of that. Any more it's not worth it. Naturally rough roads and those requiring high clearance are not a consideration.

10. Litter and trash. If the place has been ruined by those who have strewn litter and trash all about then it doesn't rate as a favorite spot to come back to. I've been to really nice places that meet all of the above requirements only to be demoted due to the trash blowing about. I don't want to be looking at rubbish every day. In most instances this is the fault of locals so the close proximity of the free camp area to the nearest town has a bearing on this.
NEW MEXICO

After loading up on cat food and other essentials in Pagosa Springs, Colorado we continued on south crossing the border into New Mexico. Our destination was one of those five-star rated camp sites of mine – Tres Piedras. You may recall this was the scene of the woman seemingly missing when we were here the first part of June. The first night was interrupted by another mouse chase inside the RV at one A.M. "Get the mouse Beans, get it!" I don't what it is but outside the mice are caught very quickly and paraded around in mouth. In the RV she makes little or no attempt to catch it. Instead it is just a lot of running back and forth. The mouse hid in a place that I was able to prod it out with a stick for the chase to continue. It went back into the same hidey-hole and I prodded some more hoping to put an end to this nonsense so I could go back to bed. The mouse refused to come out. So I grabbed its tail with some pliers, pulled it out and discovered it had died. Either of heart failure or from my prodding the mouse ceased moving. I dropped it out the window and went back to bed. The next morning the mouse was still there, dead. I suspected it was the same mouse as before but as the days continued at this site Beans, humiliated at her failure inside, caught several mice outdoors so it may have come in while at this camp.

For some time I had been agonizing on the need to get a new battery for the Motoped bike, buy a brake bleed kit so I can bleed the rear hydraulic brake line and I may as well get a new cover for the one now as multiple white duct tape repairs to it. Ordering things online leaves me with trying to plan ahead as to where we will be and have the shipment go there. I had seen YouTubers use the Amazon locker system and wondered if that would be a viable option. Some research showed the nearest locker box to where we were was in Albuquerque. I wasn't all that keen on going into that city. A day or so later I discovered the little town (such as it is) of Tres Piedras had a Post Office. _Hmm..._ The next day I walked into town to check things out. Every building looked run down and abandoned but the Post Office was doing well and had window service. That was good enough for me. Back at camp I placed my order throwing in a new pair of hiking socks in the deal. By the end of the week all four items arrived in three separate shipments. Good deal! The new bike cover is supposed to be UV resistant so hopefully it will stand the harsh desert sun much better. I can tell already it is better made than the previous one even if it cost twice as much. You get what you pay for. With the new battery installed I would now disconnect the negative terminal every time it is on the rack and hopefully that will increase the battery's lifespan. The brake bleed job will wait until I was ready to be frustrated. On one of our walks Beans found me a wood spoon lying in the pine needle covered forest floor. On the walk into town I had passed a ponderosa pine that appeared to have been hit by lightning since we were here last. The tree exploded in half with bits of wood shrapnel lying about. _Fresh wood. This will work well if I want to try my hand at carving a spoon._ One cannot have too many hobbies and projects while living on the road.

Bandelier National Monument

We stayed ten days at Tres Piedras and although the weather was ideal in the seventies with almost daily thunderstorms rolling through it began to get a bit boring. I'd seen it all before, nothing much had changed and I couldn't help but feel sorry for Beans. She so much enjoyed romping through the high grass at Pass Creek and here there was nothing but barren forest floor littered with pine needles. Climbing trees were about her only source of entertainment. Hunting was poor. Also, for some reason the cell service had seemed the same but the WeBoost cellular antenna would not work with the iPad. I was using the iPhone has a hotspot for the iPad and evidently doing this burned through the data twice as fast being that both devices were eating up data. I was down to twenty-five percent left with fifteen days to go so I had to throttle back. After nine days we left for Espanola, New Mexico. In Espanola I locked into Lowes Wi-Fi and binged the afternoon on YouTube video, web surfing and posting on the blog. I had been undecided on going to nearby Bandelier National Monument I saw on my paper map. It appeared to be a steep twisty climb and not sure if anything was there that would be interesting. There was a campground and although I could get half off camping in addition to free admission with my Senior Pass card what are the chances of getting a spot to camp in summer time? We were in the week preceding Labor Day no less. Additionally there were notifications that access to the visitor center and ruins sites was by shuttle bus only. None of this seemed enticing. When I awoke the next morning at the Lowes parking lot I decided to go for it. _What else do we have to do Beans?_ Being only thirty miles away didn't involve going out of way all that much. Well the road was nothing at all. In fact the drive was pleasant and the campground amazingly had only one RV and three tenters. I was glad to have made the effort.

Bandelier grew on me each day we were there. Visiting with the camp host lady I learned the campground of three loops totaling fifty-seven sites never fills up. "Even during the Fourth of July weekend there were still spots available" she said. To go to the visitor center and then see the ruins of the Pueblo Indian residents of five-hundred years ago and beyond one could catch the free shuttle at camp. "Or you can hike the two mile Frey Trail" she pointed out on the map she provided for me. "Oh, I'd much rather do that" I told her. "Then you can catch the shuttle back up to the campground" she added.

The next morning after taking Beans out for here obligatory morning walk I took off on my hike. At the nearby trailhead the sign showed 1.5 MILES TO VISITOR CENTER _. Cool, that's a half a mile already done._ I was really enjoying the walk on the high mesa imagining the life for the Pueblo Indians living here. Too soon I reached the lip of the plateau and Frijoles Canyon floor came into view. I could see some of the ruins far below. A half mile long switchback trail led to the valley floor and there, after two miles of hiking the trail ended at the junction of the cliff dwelling trail from the visitor center. I turned left towards the center which was in fact following the numbered self-guided dwelling trail backwards. Thus, I was going against the flow of the tourists. I began exploring some of the dugout caves the Indians called home. As with most places such as this I go in with high expectations and am met with less than desirable experience. The pathway was paved with cement; the few "cliff homes" you could climb a wood ladder to enter too had a paved floor of cement. I really would like to have seen it all natural but that's just how things must be in these days. Safety issues must be addressed for the visitor and my goodness, we don't want visitors to soil their clothing crawling around on a dirt floor. In all fairness if the floors were left to the barren compressed volcanic rock over time the wear and tear would rapidly erode the soft sandstone-like material. I should have been here fifty years ago.

I learned the Pueblo Indians which include Hopi, Zuni and other tribes who lived in cliff face dwellings were commonly referred to as the _Anasazi_. I was taught this in school and lived all my life with this understanding. Well the term _Anasazi_ is of Navajo origin and is loosely translated to mean "ancient enemies". This naturally is considered derogatory and disrespectful to the Pueblo Native Americans and I can hardly blame them any for feeling that way. Now they are referred to as _Ancestral Puebloan Indians_.

I skipped viewing a couple more accessible cliff dwellings and moved on to the visitor center, bought a bookmark (I'm running out of wall space in the RV so mementos have been reduced down to bookmarks from postcards) and took the camp host's advice catching the shuttle back up the mesa to the campground. Later that day I had a crazy woman move in near us playing her music outside (plus her yappy dogs) which drove us away to the next loop over. Good grief! Fifty-seven campsites to choose from and she had to park next to us. And so it is, the first time in nearly four months we've paid to stay in an organized campground and then had to move. Something we rarely encounter in free dispersed camp places. In the past I've been trapped in my already paid for spot but at least here with this nearly vacant campground there were numerous sites to escape to. And this is why I make it a policy of buying only one night at a time in pay-to-camp campgrounds.

The next day I hiked the Tyuonyi Overlook Trail. This trail, also originating at the campground was a short one-point-one mile hike to the lip of the canyon but had no access to the valley floor. It just looped back on around to the campground. On the way I passed some ruins which amounted only to the foundations of walls that used to be standing there. The sign showed that the collection of homes were about ten times larger than the small plot of excavated rooms I was standing in front of. They dated back to the 1200's and due to the very small amount of artifacts found archeologists suspect the site wasn't inhabited very long before being abandoned. The general feeling was that the mud walls required constant maintenance from the rains and snow that it just wasn't worth the effort. I walked around the entire area and could see no signs anywhere of more rooms. They must be buried beneath layers of dirt from the past nine-hundred years. The view of Frijoles Canyon was just as impressive as from Frey Trail. It really made me appreciate how fortunate I am to be able to come see places like this and am very grateful for that.

I was enjoying Bandelier more and more as each day passed. I pretty much had the campground, or at least my loop, all to myself. Being at altitude (6600') the temperatures were ideal, a cool breeze every day and even a thunderstorm one night. I then had the idea _Why not ride the trolley down to the visitor center and then hike up out of the canyon?_ I wanted to test myself and see if the old man still had it in him to hike up out of a canyon. The next morning I caught the first bus and this would prove to be a fortuitous decision. There were a half a dozen people on the bus already when it picked me up. When we arrived at the visitor center a park volunteer was standing outside the door ready to accost us as we stepped off. "Could you all please gather around for an orientation to the Park." I side-stepped the man saying I had already done the orientation (I hadn't) walked into the visitor center, went out the back door and onto the trail leading to the dwellings. Only then I realized **I had the whole valley all to myself!** No one else was there. Well yeah, being the first bus of the day...I hadn't thought. Soon I saw a young couple up by the cliffs. They were from Germany and had driven in before the road would be shut for the day. The three of us enjoyed ourselves with no one else around. I started at the junction of Frey Trail to walk the latter half of the self-guided trail I had missed previously. Without a bunch of people around talking, yakking and in the way I was able to focus and see much more than I would have being annoyed. This section of the trail contained a number of petroglyphs etched into the cliff faces. The three of us were having fun finding these art pieces that I know I would have missed with a bunch of tourists around. I took a picture of the couple with their camera for them and said goodbye as I back-tracked to Frey Trail and began my climb out from the canyon. There was nothing to it. The old man still had it in him.

On the subject of petroglyphs I have seen a lot and over vast areas of the country. I think we are reading a lot into them that simply isn't the case. The ancestral people were preserving memories. No different than how we take photographs today, or we how drew or painted images before the advent of the camera, all for preserving memories. And this is what the ancients were doing. Some petroglyphs look no different than if you were to take a piece of paper and a pencil sit down and start doodling. They were doodling on the rocks. Maybe the artist was successful in shooting a deer with an arrow nearby. That would have been a great moment for him. So he sat down and created an image of him shooting an arrow at a deer. He now could look back on the event years from now, preserved in the rock. _Yes, I remember that day. That was a good day._

We ended up staying at Bandelier five nights. That is the longest I have stayed at a pay-to-camp campground for probably forty years dating back to family vacations in Yosemite. I really hated to leave but cell service wasn't strong enough to post on the blog plus the power supply to the lap top quit supplying power and I had that to deal with. We took the scenic route, Highway 4, through Valle Caldera, Jemez Pueblo and down into Bernallilo where the temperature stood at ninety degrees and not so pleasant. I parked out in front of Home Depot, set up a week's worth of posts for the blog and then spent the night at Walmart Road House. The next day I was able to get a new power supply at Best Buy in Albuquerque. _That went well._ The goal was a camp in the Cibloa Nat. Forest near Tajique, southeast of Albuquerque, something I seen on someone's YouTube video. The place proved to be not worth the effort. It appeared to be more of a picnic area, all not level and with a very sketchy crossing of a cattle guard to get to it. Plus there was no cell service. We stayed the night a hundred yards up the road beneath some crab apple trees and left the next morning.

The Native American Arts and Crafts Show

We were now traveling west from Albuquerque on old Route 66 which parallels Interstate 40 most of the time. It is a nice way to travel. No traffic and I could go slow enjoying the scenery. At Casa Blanca we came upon the Dancing Eagle Casino in the Laguna Indian Reservation. Indian casinos are nice places to stay (free) so I decided to do just that. On their flashing LED billboard was a notice for a Native American Arts and Crafts show the next day. That sounded like something fun to see.

Late that morning I walked into the foul smelling cigarette smoke filled casino and on back to their events center room. Inside there were a dozen or so tables set up lining the walls of the room and it was deathly quiet, as if I had walked into a funeral parlor. I was the only visitor to the arts and crafts show. I felt all eyes would fall upon me as I walked in but no, the sellers were focused on their smart phones. Most of the tables were laden with Indian style silver and turquoise jewelry. One table was devoted to beaded crafts such as key fobs and neck pouches. And then there was the old man who had these hideous looking psychedelic colored fuzzy blankets that looked as if you held a match to them they would go up in flames like a cheap polyester suit. If they were supposed to be "authentic" Indian blankets they were like no other I had ever seen before. Ah, but off in the corner was the reason I came. A gentleman had Indian pottery. I was interested in the artwork that adorned the pots.

Thomas was very pleasant to talk with. He looked to be in his fifties but it's always hard to tell with Native Americans. He had a Vietnam Veteran cap sitting beside him so if that was the case he was much older, as ancient as myself. He told me how his mother had sat him down to teach him the art of decorating pottery. It captured his interest enough to go to art school. Mom had also taught him the ways to create the colors using natural pigments in the traditional way "...but I have forgotten. I cheat. I buy my paints at the art supply store." She showed him how to take the thorn point from a yucca plant, pull it out with the plant fibers still attached and use it for the fine pin-striping of lines by dragging the paint soaked fibers across the surface of the pottery. I was aware of this trick with the yucca plant that served as a needle and thread for the Native Americans but did not know they also used it in painting their pottery. Thomas said that no paintbrush he has found can do a better job with the lines and so he uses the traditional method taught to him by his mother.

As I left the event center I thought how it is going to be a very long day for these artisans if I was to be "it" for visitors. I certainly could not see the gamblers giving up their precious slot machines to go see a Native American Arts and Crafts show. On the subject of Native American craft jewelry, souvenir stores gift shops, trading posts and roadside stands of Native American handicrafts abound in the southwest. The numbers of turquoise necklaces, rings and pins to choose from is astounding. Little stands at roadside rests alone can have hundreds of necklaces alone spread out on tables to choose from. Trading posts undoubtedly have thousands considering those back in the storeroom not out on display. The quantity of "Native American made" jewelry available leads me to believe it is massed produced in the Far East. They must order turquoise necklaces in boxes of five thousand each from Indonesia. I cannot imagine these people sitting around in their homes making jewelry in these numbers. To further attest to my belief, I have never seen one seller sitting there at their table working on a new piece of jewelry while waiting for the next potential customer to walk by. Not one, ever. They are sitting there playing with their smart phones.
ARIZONA

Crossing over into Arizona the first point of interest to the traveler heading west is the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Park. It had been around forty years since I had last toured the park, why not stop by and see if anything had changed in that time. Well as always, when at this stage in one's life, going back to revisit places you had been to a long time ago, it is as if you are visiting it for the first time. I took my time traveling south through the park planning to stop at all twelve points of interest. When I reached number eight I was done for the day. Ten miles further just outside the southern entrance to the park was Crystal Museum and Gift Shop that provided free camping. _Sweet!_ This was nice in that the park offers no camping facilities and the traveler can use Crystal as a base camp for up to four days. The campground was very peaceful and quiet and that first night we were the only ones camping. The next morning I went back into the park and caught the final four stops hiking the trails at each.

The Petrified Forest was amazing and impressive, not at all what I was expecting. I guess I was able to appreciate it more now not having two little kids underfoot to worry and care about. The forest these trees existed in was at the end of the Triassic Period, 208-220 million years ago. The trees would grow old, die, get blown or flooded over and quickly become buried under layers of silt and soil. One area was called the _log jam_ due to the large amount of petrified trees present. It is presumed the trees flowed down the swift moving river nearby at the time and a log jam is what occurred at this point. The trees would soon be covered with silt which sealed them off from oxygen and thus prevented decay. Mineral-laden water filled the absorbent dead wood. The silica crystals bonded with the cells of the tree replicating the organic material in perfect detail. Different minerals were of different colors and today the petrified trees are thought as a _rainbow forest._ Ah, but the most interesting thing I learned was that at this period in time the U.S was along the western edge of the super continent Pangaea. The present day desert southwest was near the equator right about where Costa Rica is today. And just like Costa Rica, Arizona was a lush tropical jungle. That river scene described above was very much like the Amazon River of today.

There are a bazillion pieces of petrified wood lying about ranging from the easy-to-collect pebble size pieces to huge one hundred foot-long trunks. The Park Service makes it clear that disturbing, moving or collecting any petrified wood is forbidden. With the way people are you know they are pocketing pieces of rock everyday. Go to gift shops outside the park. Some shops give away free pieces of petrified wood. I found bits mixed in with the gravel where were camped in the gift shop camp area. In spite of my belief of the ongoing pilfering of Petrified National Park it remained to my eye the best cared for and pristine National Park I had ever been in. I found not one piece of litter or vandalism anywhere – okay, there was a bit of etching along the border of one information sign.

I wanted to continue to stay at altitude and enjoy the seventy degree weather there. We moved on west to Walnut Canyon National Monument just outside of Flagstaff, Arizona. And like the Petrified Forest there was free camping just outside of the entrance in the Coconino National Forest. People were camping already at the few spots along the dirt forest road which forced us further on than I would have liked. I found a spot nestled between some juniper trees and thought this would do nicely. Not much later I heard it – train horns blasting at a road crossing just over the hill. I looked at a Google satellite image which revealed we were within a mile of Interstate 40 and the Santa Fe railroad. That first night seemed like a constant stream of trains were passing through, each and every one blasting their horn at a road crossing hidden from view. The noise was maddening and I logged in very little sleep. The next day there was nowhere else to go so I tried to ignore it. As the weekend began the train traffic seemed to have lessened and I felt we cuold endure it until Monday, then leave and go visit the monument.

Walnut Canyon was another place I had visited some forty years earlier and so again it pretty much was like all new to me. The Native Americans built cliff dwellings on the steep canyon walls around 1100 to 1250 AD. Several hundred of these dwellings can be found throughout the area. A mile long walk takes the visitor pass a dozen of these rock homes. It is uncertain why they abandoned the canyon but most likely due to depletion of resources, draught or simply too difficult to survive. It is generally believed they assimilated into the Hopi culture. From there we moved on south of Flagstaff to Marshall Lake. There is no lake today. It became a swamp, then a marsh and now has dried up to become a meadow. Maybe winter snow and rains makes it a lake for a short time. This was again free dispersed camping in the Coconino National Forest and best of all, pleasantly quiet. No trains or Interstate noise. There we stayed for the week and then Friday arrived. Just as it grew dark and I was lying in bed reading a car pulled in near us, like one hundred feet away near us. Two couples, young guys and girls. They left the doors of the car open, music playing while they set up camp in the light of the headlamps of the car. I had planned on staying through the weekend but now this was not going to be possible. I tried to get back to my book but could only think of the morning's evacuation plan. I don't like to be on the move over a weekend. The weekenders were all out creating mischief and mayhem taking up all available camp sites. We left early before sunrise and as I slowly drove the one mile dirt road out from Marshall Lake I was surprised to see every possible camp site occupied. There wasn't anyone anywhere along the road when we came in the first of the week! Back into Flagstaff to pick up a few grocery items, go to McDonalds to get online and upload a couple posts for the blog, then over to the Safeway gas station to top off the fuel tank. With trepidation I continued on the fifteen miles to our next planned dispersed site, just across the highway from Sunset Crater National Monument. _Cross your paws Beans and hope we can find a spot._ We were in luck. Places were to be had in the first half mile of dirt road. _Whew!_

We waited out the weekend then left Monday morning crossing over Highway 89 then a few miles further on to Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument Visitor Center. It didn't amount to much and as for hiking up the cinder cone to view the crater they put an end to that decades ago. Too many people wore in the trail which scarred the slope and led to unchecked erosion. I hadn't had my heart set on climbing it anyway; I was here to see Wupatki National Monument and the pueblo ruins to the north. The road looped up through lava fields for twenty or so miles before reaching the first of the ruins, Wukoki, at one time a three-story high dwelling perched upon a rock outcropping. I could see it off in the distance a couple miles away. I found it impressive but I learned from reading the sign that it had all been reconstructed. After seeing other reconstructions I have become somewhat put off by them as for the most part it is done so on speculation of what it may have looked like and the Park Service admittedly gets it wrong. I've seen this at Bandelier, Petrified Forest, and Walnut Canyon – gee, that's every one without exception.

Next was the visitor center where just outside the back door was the largest of the ruins, Wupatki itself. I was given a guide book for the self-guided trail and took off. The park maintenance people were in the process of doing something that required bringing in small loads of cement. The cement was hauled in on an ungodly noisy little tractor machine that just fit inside on the narrow dirt trail, pulverizing the dirt into a fine red powder. Workers were stationed at various points along the trail for what seemed like no other reason than to warn visitors the tractor was coming – as if we were stone deaf and had no clue. I reached sign post #3 on the trail at which you next walked down a set of steps to #4. A worker stood up and blocked my way. "I take it I can't get to #4 this way?" He half-heartedly replied that I should be able to get to it continuing on the trail to my left. Okay. This I discovered was the end of the self-guided trail for the first numbered rock I came to was #18. I'd be doing the rest of the tour backwards. Wupatki like Wukoki had been reconstructed so I was somewhat disinterested in what I was looking at. In fact I spent half of my time looking for the numbered rocks hidden in among all the other rocks. Several times I found I had missed a number and had to go back looking for it. This was in conjunction of avoiding being run over by that irritating piece of machinery. I finally reached #4, took a picture then looked up that set of stairs I was forbidden to walk down. The guy was sitting down and a couple was walking down the stairs. Why in God's name did he make me go all the way around backwards? Whatever they were cementing was nowhere near #4 and instead he put me in the path of getting run over. Anyway, I was done with the tour and here comes that tractor one more time as I made my way back to the visitor center. I heard the tractor shut down, turned and overheard the operator say to stairway blocker "That was the last load. We're done with the cement." All was peace and quiet just as I had finished my self-guided tour. I walked in the back door and there on the door was a sign FEELING CRANKY? It outlined the symptoms of heat exhaustion from not drinking enough water. Yeah, I was feeling cranky! And the lack of water had nothing to do with it! Inside the small visitor center I returned my guide book and discovered a new ranger had come on duty. This guy was loud talker. Very loud. His personal volume knob was turned all the way up to ten. There was no escaping his booming voice in that small enclosed center. I felt bad for his fellow workers who had to work alongside him. In fact a ranger lady had just excused herself to go take her break. At any rate it was next to impossible for me to read any of the information in the center with loud talker in there so I left.

A few more miles down the road was the next pueblo, the Citadel, another building perched high on a rock. The "experts" speculated as to why the pueblo people chose to build on high points of the landscape as they did. Was it for a better defensive position from enemies? Or take advantage of the cooling breeze? The reason most likely was a combination of those factors plus the fabulous view. I read the sign at the Citadel and discovered this one had NOT been reconstructed. Oh joy! As I approached it I could see how a wall had fallen into a pile of rubble. Around the side as I climbed the trail another heap of rocks lay at the base of another wall, the upper portion that had fallen away. Once on top the walls that remained stood only a few feet high with no discerning features. Slowly the reality of it all set in with me. These pueblos in the southwest were eight-hundred or more years old and bore the effects of wind, rain and snow for all that time. If it were not for reconstructing the buildings all the sights the visitor would see would at what one time were grand villages of the Ancestral Puebloan people would be for the most part just piles of rock. I needed to realign my thinking on the subject of reconstruction.

A short ways further down the road were the final two pueblos, the Box Canyon dwellings and Lomaki Pueblo. These were my favorite. Again a sign noted that no reconstruction were done, only stabilization of the structures. Both of these pueblos were small and built right on the edge of a steep walled narrow canyon a hundred feet deep. One structure had a two-foot wide ledge around it and amazingly there were no signs posted as to _keep off, walking on the edge could result in your immediate death from falling off_. So I went for it. Ooo boy. I just don't' seem to have the bravado (or stupidity) I once had when much younger. It thought it okay to walk out upon if I didn't look down but of course I did look. I just felt this irresistible force trying to suck me off that ledge. Whew! On my way back to the parking lot a guy around my age stopped and asked "Are you the guy with the cat?" Uh...yeah. It seems that while I am away Beans likes to go from window to window to watch people walk by. Little Miss Show-off. If you ever wish to visit Wupatki National Monument which I highly recommend, come in at the north entrance off of Highway 89. Everything worth seeing is from there on to the visitor center.

***

We headed north to a fee camp area near Grey Mountain which turned out to be barren windswept dry flat land beneath towering EMP emitting power lines. I felt we could do better a few more miles up the road at the truck stop rest area in Cameron, Arizona. Our destination was west to Grand Canyon National park. Nothing will make you feel you and your problems are so insignificant as peering down into the Grand Canyon. I have been there several times and every time I am awestruck. Yet at the same time I come away a bit more disappointed with each visit. Not in the Canyon, but in all the development. Along with Yellowstone and Yosemite, the Grand Canyon is one of the most heavily visited of our National Parks. You can hardly blame them; the Canyon is a natural wonder that can only be fully appreciated viewed in person. I had recently discovered that there is free camping available in the Kaibab National Forest just outside the park boundary. I was going to investigate that.

Just after passing the east entrance station the first point of interest, the Watchtower is right off to the right. I pulled in. After I took Beans for her mandatory investigative walk of a new stop I then went off on my own. I immediately saw this young tour lady lead a dozen people in from the parking lot and stop them. There they assembled in line, covering their eyes in some fashion, and then placing a hand on the person in front of them she slowly she led them off towards the Canyon. I quickly realized this was a first time for these people and she wanted them to experience it with a sudden unveiling rather than slowly as you walked nearer and nearer. _What a great idea._ So I followed along as I wanted to witness their awe upon seeing the Canyon. She led them all at a decent viewing point, lined them up facing the Canyon and then said "On three...one, two, three." Barely a whisper was heard. _Well, that was anticlimactic!_ I went off by myself and gazed out over the Canyon impressed as always, for it is massive and you just cannot help to be impressed no matter how many times you have seen it...unless you are old, with a tour group and being led down to the edge for the first time, blindfolded.

Being the middle of September and school was back in session there weren't that many families with kids present running around. There were a lot of foreign languages to be heard. And as usual there were a lot of Asian folk, some wearing masks. This always seems to unnerve me. I feel they are carriers of some apocalyptic plague and only a thin piece of cotton is between me and a doomsday virus. I lingered around for awhile and when I overheard this guy tell his wife and friends that the birds flying overhead were condors (they were ravens) it was time for me to go. I needed to go find this mythical free camp area just outside of the park boundary. And I was a bit nervous too for if this place exists, would there be a place left to camp? Would there even be any cell service? As we were approaching the Grandview Point scenic view there was a turnoff to the Grandview lookout tower. Within a quarter of a mile we passed over a cattle guard and were now officially outside the park boundary and in the Kaibab National Forest. I had no idea this was here and so close to all the sights and wonders of the Grand Canyon. I slowly motored on and saw a possible camp spot, then another, and another and then...there was no one here. _How can this be?_ I pulled in to a nice flat area within a forest of Ponderosa Pines and turned off the engine. I checked the phone. Four bars solid of 3G! I hadn't had that good of a cell signal in months! _This is amazing!_ I looked all around and saw a building and chain link fence off in the distance through the trees. I looked harder. A cell tower! The damn thing was within a quarter mile from us, here, at the Grand Canyon of all places. I could not believe my good fortune.

We spent the next six days right around camp waiting for the weekend to pass before venturing on to see some of the sights. I had always wanted to hike the Bright Angel Trail. It is a steep dirt trail descending 4380 feet into the canyon ending just short of ten miles in length at Phantom Ranch on the Colorado River. In previous visits to the Grand Canyon a shortage of time always was in the way for my hiking the trail. Now here I was with all the time in the world, why not? I accepted the fact that at this stage of my life I no longer had the stamina and endurance I once had thirty or forty years ago. I accept that but there was no reason I couldn't at least hike a few miles down the trail. Yes, this is what I would do. I got an early start leaving camp stopping along the way at Grand Canyon Village to go to the store for some milk. This was a good call as the crowds hadn't yet stirred this early in the morning. Here the roads became confusing as to which way to go. I also began seeing signs here and there NO VEHICLES OVER 21 FEET. This did not bode well. I came upon Mather Campground and outside the entrance to the full campground was the dump station. _Well, I may as well fill up water while here._ This later proved to be a good call also for when I returned later a line of RVs had formed to dump their tanks. Somehow I got on the correct road, a one-way loop affair that went by the Bright Angel Trailhead. Nothing was I remembered it from decades past and just like that, before I knew it, I was leaving the area. There was no place for RV parking and all the parking slots there were occupied with passenger cars. It just wasn't to be for me to hike the Bright Angel Trail. I will admit there are places to RV park and in this case it would be parking lot D (wherever that is) and I could use the free shuttle service back to the trailhead. I just didn't have it in me to deal with that and the crowds involved. I somehow ended up back at the campground entrance. There also was the laundromat and showers. Well I did have some laundry to do and why not do it here in these great surroundings rather than in mini mall hell in the city. So this all turned out nice as I did my laundry I was entertained by the elk hanging out in the parking lot. One cow was so bold as to be standing there at the side of the RV drinking the water flowing out the overflow of the RV when I came back. "What are you doing?" and she took off. With laundry done I continued on stopping off at the visitor center to take in the view there at Mather Point enduring the ever increasing crowd as best as I could. If I looked at them for the entertainment factor it isn't as bad that is until the Asian tour buses arrived. I'm not racist but there is no denying the fact Asians are loud, obnoxious, push and shove and prone to littering. It was time for this boy to go home. I made one last stop at Grandview Point to take in the _grand view._ It started to rain. We could see it coming off in the distance directly over Mather Point. I smiled thinking of the crowd there scattering back to their tour busses. Back in the RV I ate a quick lunch then returned to the point now that the rain had stopped and fewer people were there. Going down the steps I slipped on the slick rock and went down...hard. I watched my iPhone going sailing on down the steps and then the horror on a lady's face as she looked down at me. "My, those rocks are slippery when wet." That's all I could think of after providing a grand view to everyone around. A speechless gentleman handed me my phone which endured the whole incident a lot better than I. I tried to look at the view but could only think of getting out from there and restore my dignity. Back at the RV I checked myself over and just my forearm was the only injured body part. A large muscle contusion the size of a pregnant mouse had formed. And so I was duly paid back for those unkind thoughts I had while being around the Asian tourists. Karma at work.

The next day, without any other parts of my body showing up sore or bruised, I went for a hike. I thought it would be nice to hike out to some remote spot along the rim of the Canyon, some place where no one else had been. Looking at a Google Earth image, if I were to hike due north from camp two or so miles through the forest, I would run out of real estate and be standing at the abyss. I prepared to go, took Beans out for her morning walk, fed her again and took off. My direction of travel was pretty straight forward and on level ground for the most part. Wandering off into the wilderness wasn't that much on a concern. I had my compass. I had my iPhone which provided a satellite image marking my exact location so I knew how much further I had to hike and if I was on track. And I had my little hand held GPS which marked the route I had taken making it easy to retrace my steps to get back home. The forest wasn't all that dense and although the idea of seeing a bear or mountain lion was in my thoughts (there were a fair amount of bleached bones lying about) I only came across one large bull elk. What magnificent beasts they are. I could tell from a bull feeding while at the laundromat that they seem nearly as tall at the shoulder as I am overall. This one in the forest wasn't as use to people as laundromat bull was and he took off, pausing at what he felt a safe distance to look back at me. It's a wonder they can run through the trees as they do with that large rack of antlers. On a side note here the full moon occurred and I forced myself out of bed in the middle of the night to try and get a photo of the moonlit forest. Once outside I could hear this unworldly sound in the woods. Later after some online research I learned it was the sound of elk calves calling for their mothers. The sounds the calves make are very similar to the sing-song sounds made by whales in the ocean, quite hauntingly beautiful. In about an hour of walking I could see through the trees the view opening up and there I was, on the rim of the Grand Canyon, all by myself. When I go to places like this, be it in the desert or wherever and can't help but to think _I could be the first human ever to stand on this very spot._ There were a couple of places, points or projections from the cliff's edge I dearly wanted to walk (or crawl) out upon but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I feel this invisible force wanting to pull me off into the void. I'd walk along the rim a bit further then looked back at this point only then being able to see how the cliff face is deeply undercut beneath the point! _My god! What's keeping that from falling off?_ And to think I wanted to go out onto it! I enjoyed my private view for awhile and before turning back for home, I built a small little rock cairn. Next time I come to the Grand Canyon I'll hike back out to My Viewpoint and see if the cairn still stands.

After two weeks at the Grand Canyon our situation became serious. We were down to our last can of cat food. We said goodbye to our camp at Grandview and headed north to Page, Arizona near the Glen Canyon Dam that blocks the upper Colorado River flow drowning another grand canyon, Glen Canyon, thus creating Lake Powell. The lake is named after Civil War veteran John Wesley Powell who first navigated these waters back in 1869. It is doubtless that Major Powell would no way want his name associated to such an abortion of these magnificent canyon lands as the damming of the river did. Major Powell was also responsible for naming the canyon as he was impressed with the numerous 'glens' along the valley floor. Today, we can only imagine. But we were here to resupply and move on elsewhere to take shelter from some unfavorable weather rolling in. We over-nighted at the Walmart RV Park there in Page which probably held more RV travelers than I had ever seen at a Walmart. Well over a dozen and probably more than twenty as some were far off on the other side of the parking lot. I slept well that night and the next morning went back into the store to fill my water bottles. When I returned two women were standing by the RV, one coming over holding a young black and white tuxedo cat. They knew I had a cat and thought this sweet little full grown kitten was mine; that maybe Beans had got out. Now this is exactly what I had hoped for that winter traveling alone after Sinbad passed away. I dreamed of finding a cat somewhere while traveling, and give it a home but it didn't happen. Oh I was so tempted but I just couldn't take this cat. How would Beans react? She'd probably love a playmate. How could I take two cats out for walks at the same time? I made sure I didn't touch it, or worse still hold it. If I did I'd be hooked for sure. The lady who found it couldn't keep it. She was visiting from Australia. The other lady already had two cats traveling with her. The Aussie said she would take the kitty to the shelter there in Page. After doing a few more errands, updating the blog the rains came and I didn't relish driving in them so we returned to the Walmart Park for another night while I tried to clear my mind of the black and white kitty.

The next day we traveled only a half and hour south, across the Navajo Bridge onto what is essentially the northern side of the Colorado River gorge. The only other crossing of the river is 396 miles to the west at the Hoover Dam near Las Vegas. That is the impact upon travel the Grand Canyon presents. We camped at Lees Ferry Crossing campground, a pay-to-camp site of ten dollars, senior rate. I planned on visiting the North Rim of the Canyon and stay at a few sites outside the park boundary as we did on the South Rim. Some research that afternoon revealed that temperatures would never out of the fifties. Being at 9000 feet in altitude made a world of difference from the 7500 feet on the South. This won't do and I needed to come up with an alternate plan. That plan essentially would be to return to the South Rim and try out some free sites outside the south entrance. I went to bed confident with our new approach. That evening I was treated to an intense electrical show in the sky south of us – non-stop lightning. We only experienced some brief hard raindrops and a few gusty winds.

We stopped off at the river's edge on the way out and marveled at the muddy brown waters of the Paria River flowing into the blue-green water of the Colorado with both currents running side by side not mixing together. Once back on Highway 89 heading south it wasn't too far I came upon a flashing Arizona Department of Transportation sign warning of flood damage to the highway at milepost 461, detour onto Highway 160. _Where is milepost 461?_ I looked at the map while driving and found Highway 160 heading east to Tuba City. This was just north of our turnoff to the Grand Canyon. _This doesn't look good._ I stopped in Gap for breakfast, got online and discovered Highway 89 had washed out over the night causing one fatal accident. Southbound traffic was detoured at the 160 junction. _I guess we're not going to the Grand Canyon Beans._ This turned out to be a hundred ninety mile long detour from the normal Flagstaff to Page route. Those heading north from Flagstaff had to drive east on the Interstate for fifty miles to Winslow before they began going north through Navajo/Hope Reservation Land. At Highway 160 I turned and looked forward to seeing new country and make the best out of the situation. Meanwhile, all the other drivers seemed to be pissed off and filled with rage for the inconvenience. We were on a shoulder-less two lane desert highway and people were driving incensed with madness taking undue risks passing each other over double yellow line sections with the oncoming traffic filled with even more crazed drivers. The bulk of the idiots sported California license plates. By noon when we reached Second Mesa, Arizona and the Hopi Cultural Center, I pulled in as I had had enough of the madness out on the highway. Later I updated the blog and made a post as to what I just wrote adding that it would be a miracle if no one dies out there today. Two hours later three police cars took off out from town with sirens wailing. Thirty minutes later an ambulance screamed back in from the west. I can only hope the idiot just took himself out and not some innocent traveler coming from the opposite direction. We got an early seven A.M. start the next day and no idiots were on the road for the remainder of our journey south to Winslow, an hour and a half away. Just outside of town was a free campground, McHood Clear Creek Reservoir Park. This was just what we needed for the weekend called for a twenty-degree drop in daytime temperature to the mid-fifties and with a big rain in the forecast.

There I met Lana.

***

I set up camp, which doesn't amount to much, then took Beans out for her mandatory exploratory walk of a new location. I noticed the RV behind us and the one next to it appeared to be lifeless. All the windows in both were blocked off. Seeing RVs like this always leads me to believe the occupants could have died inside. Who'd know? After lunch I went back outside and sat on the picnic table soaking in the warm rays of the sun. About twenty minutes later I heard a sound behind me and a door slam. A woman had stepped out from the RV directly behind us. I gave her a wave of the hand and she immediately came directly over to me. She was a petite lady around my age, short wavy salt and pepper hair with bangs, brown eyes with that narrow-eyed Jennifer Aniston look which I find attractive in women. We got to talking and I told her how I get this feeling that someone had died in their RV when I see no life so was pleased to see her come outside. She laughed and told me how she stays up late at night, like past midnight late. I revealed how most of the time I'm in bed before seven reading.

"What do you do to stay up so late? I wish I could."

"Oh, I play solitaire. Maybe watch a movie."

"I read mostly. Makes me tired I guess. You read books?" I asked thinking about the stack of books I have to give away. I could give them to her.

"I'll read finance or health books." Those must be real page-turners I thought.

"I don't really like to read" she added. Well, so much for my offering her my books on adventure travel.

She asked if I had walked around the small lake yet. I said I planned on going for a hike tomorrow and explore the area.

"Oh you just have to go over there by the big rocks" and she pointed to them across the pond by the shore. "They are so big when standing next to them." I said I would do that and then she added "I'll go with you." She paused catching herself and said "Oh, I just kind of invited myself just then." I reassured her that was fine and it would be fun to hike there together.

As we talked she casually mentioned as to how she gets kind of lonely traveling alone. By now I had learned how she was kind of spunky with a little bit of rebel in her and not afraid to take on a task that most women would shy away from such as changing her own oil and transmission fluid in her vehicle. I had told her that I admire that in women and thought _she could be someone I would enjoy traveling with_. As I briefly mentioned where I had travelled all across America several times she confessed as to not ever having been east of the Continental Divide. She had no interest or desire to see any of the country east of the Rocky Mountains. _Well, this travelling together isn't going to happen_ and we took off on another subject. After talking, laughing and enjoying each other's company for nearly three hours there at the picnic table it was approaching tea time for me and we broke off our visiting for the afternoon.

The next morning I took Beans out for a walk and she drug me over by Lana's RV. I noticed a yellow sticky note on her door. I crept closer. _Hey Jack, go ahead and do your hike without me_ and so I did. I figured she didn't want to keep me waiting a half a day. Just before taking off on my walk I found another sticky note on my picnic table, same message. I went for the walk and half way around was stopped by a chain link fence with a sign reading RESTRICTED AREA KEEP OUT. _The little rebel probably just walked on in._ I didn't. Back at camp she eventually emerged from her RV a little earlier than the previous day. I greeted her and apologized for being like a chatty Cathy yesterday. "I haven't really talked with anyone at length for the last few weeks. Sorry if I wore you out."

"Oh no, I enjoyed talking with you. I like you." She asked if I saw her notes and then how my walk went. I was teasing her about the sign and how she must have gone right on in but she didn't seem to remember any sign nor a fence. "I just walked along the beach."

We hung out and visited some more and she then wondered if I wanted to hike around again to the rocks she wanted me to see so bad, "Oh but you may not want to do it again today". I said I was okay with going but didn't want to make the complete loop as it was over two miles. She was surprised not thinking it was that far. Now ready, we met outside and took off. Right away I see she is still wearing her flip-flops for this hike. I didn't ask but she clues me in to the fact that she had got her tennis shoes full of stickers here and threw them away. "I meant to buy another pair at Wal-Mart but forgot." I'm thinking _this is a tough little woman._

As we walked she told me about her recent knee surgery seven weeks previously and that the doctor said 'give it eight weeks before doing anything strenuous' I was wondering if she should be taking on this hike...wearing flip-flops. She told me about the quack doctors she had to deal with and how one said he wouldn't do the surgery on her due to the risk of infection.

"Good grief, it's a hospital. Don't they sterilize their instruments? The he tells me he would do the operation on his mother, but not her."

I said, "Well that was nice. He obviously cared about your well being more so than his own mother."

She looked at me sideways not getting the joke. "He would risk infection to his mother but not you..." She smiled, getting where I was going then out of nowhere interjected "You seem healthy. I'm glad you don't smoke."

Once we get around to the other side she is amazed at all the cattails and rushes growing along the shoreline. "Well, I was wondering how you walked along the 'beach' when there isn't any beach I saw." It was then she told me it was six years ago when she was here last! No wonder she didn't know about the fence and sign. We eventually reached the end of that fence line, went around it, stood on top of her big rocks but couldn't find a way down. We retraced our steps back to camp and she asked how far we had walked. I checked and it was just shy of a mile. We had a good time, joking and laughing, her playfully punching me in the arm when I'd say something silly.

The next day I saw her walking by with some plastic bags wadded up in her hand. I hollered out the window a good morning to her and asked what she was up to. "Oh, I'm going to pick up trash."

"You want some company?"

"Sure!"

I went outside and said "Let me get my grabber tongs" and pulled them out from the storage bin.

"Oh, I have some like that only they fold in half. Those are nice."

"Harbor Freight, one dollar.

Off we started walking where finally I had to ask "Where are we going?"

"Out on the highway."

"I thought we were collecting trash in the campground. Had I known the highway I would have packed a lunch." She laughed and I received another playful punch in the shoulder. "Plus, I didn't lock the RV."

"I didn't lock mine. Nobody will bother it."

"Yeah, probably not but I'll worry about Beans. I don't care about anything else in there but I don't want anything to happen with Beans." She understood and waited while I jogged back, picked up my water bottle, a few snacks and my chapstick not know how long this excursion was going to be.

We reached the highway and began collecting trash, me with my grabber tongs and her bending over picking up yucky things with her bare hands.

"Don't you have any gloves?"

"No, I don't have any."

"Geez Lana. Okay, we're going to have to get you some gloves along with new tennis shoes" and she laughs at me while bending over to pick up a nasty cigarette butt.

"Oh god Lana. Let me get those with the tongs."

"Oh, okay."

Then I get to thinking. "You have gloves for when you dump your tanks at the RV dumps, right?"

"No."

This stopped me in my tracks and I looked at her. No doubt the shock on my face was obvious.

"I wash my hands afterwards."

I didn't chastise her, put her down or make her feel bad. I just said how I don't even fill my water tank with water if the source is anywhere near the dump station. "I have seen things, unholy things done by people at dump stations."

I told Lana my story about getting sick ten years ago. Very sick. I went to the emergency room twice. The second time being wheeled in by wheelchair. It was then I was diagnosed with pneumonia. How my mother and grandmother had died from pneumonia.

"That experience scared the pee-waddle out of me. Now I am so aware of anything that I come in contact with. Guess I've become a borderline germaphobe. I have these weird and quirky habits now. If people knew, they would rightly think _this guy doesn't have all his groceries packed in the same bag._ "

She went on to say how she has a long life pattern in her family where several individuals had lived to be over a hundred years old. I told her how I thought that was great and said I had only one person in my family reach a hundred and we continued on picking up trashing and talking about something else while I thought to myself _I'll not be eating any tacos or burritos that she may make for me._

Later in the day while visiting some more she told me about her winter home near Yuma, Arizona and the five-acre property she had bought up in the mountains over along the New Mexico border. She showed me a picture of her place near Yuma which was a nice looking double-wide trailer in a retirement community. She had a '51 Ford truck sitting out front which had been redone with a modern engine and transmission but she hadn't driven it in five years. She invited me to visit during the winter. "You can help me get it running again."

That first day when we were getting to know each other I recalled how I had a couple come in for a tour of The Little House on the Highway. It is when you invite someone inside your RV you get to looking around yourself and realize _I'm living like a slob._ I tidied up the RV some for if and when I gave her the tour; while at the same time I would tell that story about the couple coming in. I am so glad she invited me in her RV first.

She wanted to show me on the map where her property was situated. I stepped inside and the place was absolute chaos. I immediately thought _hoarder,_ but as I looked around it was just simply disorderly clutter. There were stacks and piles of papers all about. She cleared a spot for me to sit at the dinette. By the door was a swivel chair which served as a depository of more papers, not newspapers (well, maybe there were, how could I tell) magazines, owner's manuals, probably important papers, this year's income tax papers. Maybe this was her "filing cabinet" with a used kitchen faucet assembly balanced on top. How on earth does this stack stay in place while driving? She earlier had told me she owned the RV for thirty-one years. It looked it. Everything was well worn and showed the signs of overuse. The floor, bare of any carpet or linoleum, was lined with bottles of water and cans of food. A few dishes lay on the counter top. The sink was clear, I think. I didn't look. The bathroom from what I could see where I sat looked a bit more organized, not so much as a collection station for all the this and thats. I didn't look in the overhead where I assume she slept. There were things I didn't want to know. In fact, I just tried not to look at anymore than I initially saw when I stepped in and sat down. I focused on Lana and her Rand McNally map book. I was so grateful I hadn't invited her into my RV first and told the story as to how I felt like a slob when I had that couple in for a tour. It may have made her feel bad having me inside her RV. She made no apologies as to how her home looked. In spite of how she lived and her less than stellar sanitary habits, I still liked Lana. She was fun to be around and we got along great.

That night the weather changed. It got cold, it rained and the following morning the wind just cut through me. I was wearing sweat pants underneath my long pants, had three layers on my upper body with my knit cap topping it off. Lana came out wearing long pants, a nylon shell on top and her flip-flops. I sniveled and complained about the cold. She agreed. Then she suggested we go for a walk and check out the spillway to see if the rains were enough to cause the water to flow over.

"It's too cold. Look at those dark clouds rolling in Lana, it's gonna rain. No thanks, I'll pass."

"Oh come on. You're not serious are you?"

"Yeah, I'm a wuss when it comes to cold." She seemed a little taken back by this and then we got to talking about the bathrooms. I told her how I finally went over and checked out the non-operational shower. She said the women's shower doesn't even have a shower head and that she tried to put in a quarter but it wouldn't go. I couldn't tell for sure if the men's had a shower head as it was so dark in there and that part of that timer looked missing. I suggested we go over and do an inspection of both facilities and off we went. So there we are walking back and forth, in and out of the men's and women's bathrooms making comparisons. She mentioned how one toilet was all discolored and I said I noticed that in the men's. "I think there is a high mineral content in the water and it has stained the bowls." As I said this she reaches down and lifts up the toilet seat. "Oh geez Lana, don't touch that..." Too late.

We walked on, out from the restrooms and I saw that Larry the campground host was back. "I want to ask Larry a couple of train questions. He retired from the railroad." She didn't know he was a railroad worker. We visited with Larry for awhile, joking around and carrying on like we had been for the last few days. As we were going back to our RVs under darkening skies I noticed a YouTube lady I knew was out from her van. I had previously told Lana about her and the group she was with when they pulled in the day before. "I guess I ought to go over there and say hi to her."

"Okay".

"Catch you later" I said as it was growing late in the day.

The visit lasted a few minutes, the sky opened up and I was pretty wet running back to the RV. _She'll get a laugh out of the fact that I eventually got wet after all._ The short shower stopped as suddenly as it began. About a half an hour later I see out the front window someone walking in the distance down the slope of the hill to the water. I took out my binoculars and yep, it was Lana off to see if the water was going over the spillway. The cold wind was still blowing with some serious intent. _I gotta hand it to that woman._

I woke up at the crack of dawn as usual the next morning, lying in bed hoping for a nicer day. Finally I decided to crawl out of my warm sleeping bag and removed the cover from the rear window at the head of my bed. I looked out to check the skies. Lana's RV was gone! I couldn't believe it. The spot was empty. I thought maybe she went to go dump her tanks at the Flying J. Or maybe she went to Walmart in town to get some shoes and other supplies. _Well, she sleeps in...she must have left in the dead of night and will be back today. Sticky note. There's probably a sticky note on the door._ I went outside...no note. I looked over on the picnic table...no note. This was the strangest thing to me. I couldn't figure it out. She had said how she planned on being here the full fourteen days. She never mentioned anything about going shopping. She just left without saying a word.

I meet a lot of people traveling around. Sometimes just talking to a neighbor for ten or fifteen minutes alone gets a "So long, nice meeting you, maybe we'll meet up again someday, happy trails" good-bye send-off. With Lana it was nothing. I didn't feel hurt, rejected or any sense of loss. I only felt bewilderment. I am the kind of person that likes to understand things or at least try to come up with some theories. I was at a total absolute loss on this one.

The day looked like it would be a nice day with clearing skies, some sunshine but I held little hope for it to warm up much. I had been checking the weather here and where we had previously been plus where our eventual destination for the winter, Quartzite, Arizona. In Quartzite the temperatures were thirty degrees warmer in the mid-eighties. Should we stay or should we go? The more I thought about it the more it sat in with me, the only reason I was really here putting up with the less than desirable weather was for Lana. Now that she was gone I had no purpose staying any longer. I broke camp and we were on our way by nine A.M. It really goes without saying that my thoughts for the long drive to Phoenix were mostly on Lana's disappearance. Not the loss of her friendship but just trying to make sense of what would make a person do such a thing. It was consuming my thoughts and I needed to stop.

We spent the night at the Walmart Travelers Rest in Surprise, Arizona. A couple weeks earlier I had received a text that my friend Johanna whom I met last year who was already at Quartzite. Although I hadn't planned on arriving until the first of November, the lack of global warming effects everywhere else led me to our winter home three weeks earlier than planned. After doing a major shopping event trying to stock up on hard to get supplies in the Quartzite area that would carry me over for a few months at least, we took off. We arrived around one in the afternoon and Johanna was standing outside her little trailer flagging me down. My spirits rose seeing her again after a year apart. Bean's remembered her walking right up to her then wanted to go inside her little tear drop trailer like she always did. I stood outside in the warm sunshine, looked all around. It was good to be back "home"...finally.
Author's Note

If you are reading this, thank you for coming this far.

The eBooks preceding _Beans and I on the Loose –_ _A Hot Mess_ are:

_Sinbad and I on the Loose_ − a collection of stories, over twelve years of travels with my first travel cat Sinbad. This also includes a bonus book _Lonely, Oh So Lonely_ which __ is as the title implies the story of a short winter trip where I didn't have my faithful furry Sinbad with me for the journey.

At the time of this writing there are two more books of the Beans and I series published:

Book One (2017) – _Getting to Know You_

Book Three (2019) – _Seven Months of Summer_

Each book of the Beans and I series covers a year of traveling, people we meet and a few misadventures along the way.

I welcome you to download all my eBooks and follow along on our adventures exploring America.

As always, all my eBooks are free to download.

Thank you from Beans and I
