a tour of my tiny home...

On a whim, I decided to give you a look inside my tiny house.  I didn’t cover everything in the van but this video will give you a pretty good idea of how I’m organized and what it’s like to be in the van on a daily basis…

End of January...

Well, I said I was going to try to update the blog more often, so here it is,  short and sweet…

I’m still in the American Girl Mine Road camping area in Ogilby, CA, and I’m still not sure if I’m going to stay here or not.  I have hit my 14 day limit, which under normal circumstances would mean that I have to move, but with the government shutdown there won’t be anyone to patrol the area so I might stay for a while.  The weather here has been great, hitting the upper 70s some days with mid to lower 50s at night.  I’ve had a couple of really windy days, like 25 mph sustained winds with 35 mph + gusts, which keeps me inside most of the time but there’s always something to do.  Right now it’s a bit cooler, mid 60s and lower 40s at night, but it should only last for a few days or so and then back to warmer temps…

Not much to report, but if I do move the next blog entry should have new information and pictures.  I’m kind of anxious to try out some different camping spots in this area.   There are a couple of ones in particular.  One being an area next to an abandoned mining town, which has been restored and another one which has an old ghost town nearby.  If they’re anything at all, I would love to spend some time photographing the areas, so we’ll see…

Where I’m camping now I had this area outside my side doors which has fine gravel and reminded me of a untouched zen garden.  So, just for fun, I found some stones that I could use to stack, and I searched around for something I could use as a zen rake, or something I could make one out of.  I chose this well-formed (for my purposes) white acacia limb that with minimal modification worked very well.  So, I created my stone rock pillars and then began to play with my new rake and as you can see below, I now have a zen garden, and it’s a lot of fun to just grab the rake and form new designs in the soft rock…

 

I used my solar cooker this week to cook up some white rice and cornbread.  (I found a picture I took of the solar cooker so I thought I would throw that in…) Rice is so easy to make in the cooker, and it turns out great every time.  I have used the rice for several meals, one was rice with bell pepper slices and tuna fish, which I ate that night and used the leftovers the next day to make a fried tortilla stuffed with the mixture and some cheese to bind it all together.  I still had a good serving of rice left so I added it to a can of Thai Coconut soup and it was delicious…

I kinda messed up a bit on the cornbread though, I added too much butter to the pan before pouring in the batter, and too much moisture delays the browning process, but it still came out good just not browned.  I ate two wedges, with lots of butter, right as it came out of the cooker and I have used it for a breakfast omelet, added it to hot chili beans, and of course, breaking it up in a glass of milk, yum…

Sorry, I didn’t take pics of the meals, I ate them… lol

I removed the headlights from the van, they were terribly foggy with UV damage, sanded them down with several different grades of wet/dry sandpaper, cleaned them up and coated them with spray clear coat paint.  They look great, now I can see when I’m driving at night…

And of course here area a couple of sunset pics…  (you knew these were coming right?)

I’m trying to wean myself off of taking so many pics of the sunsets and sunrises, but it’s not easy.  I tell myself it’s okay not to take pics and then…  well…  I grab my camera and tripod and take more pics…

One last thing…

Because this camping area is just outside the perimeter of the American Girl Mine, the road into the mine is pretty well maintained.  During the week when there are semi-trucks using the road to haul out the mined rocks, they use an earth-mover type construction vehicle fitted with a large water tank to spray down the road in order to keep the dust down for the truck drivers and for the campers.  I just thought it was interesting so I’m including a couple of pictures I took of the vehicle and the water flow out the back when he’s racing down the road at about 50mph.  I try to time my trips out of the camping area after he has stopped spraying the road.  I don’t relish the thought of looking up and seeing this behemoth barreling down the road headed straight towards me…  lol

I do think I kinda freaked the driver out when I snapped the close up photo of the truck.  I had my telephoto lens on the camera and was standing kind of behind a large tree to block the sun from the lens when he saw me.  I guess it looked pretty suspicious.  When he saw me he suddenly slowed down and seemed very curious about the whole thing…

Early January updates...

Hello all…

I guess if you saw my last video post you know that I left Quartzite AZ and I’m now in Ogilby CA, so here’s a little information to fill in the gaps…

When I got back from my ‘visit to the city’ on Sunday the 7th, my previous camping location in the Plumosa BLM camping area was taken.  So, I cruised around the area that evening for a while searching for another spot, but the camping area had filled up a lot more than it was when I left.  There were many high-end motor homes, usually several grouped together, with quite a few OHVs.  I prefer to be alone and away from people in general, in a quiet, undisturbed location whenever I can.  It was getting late and I was tired from driving so I decided to try the BLM Roadrunner campground south of Quartzite.  I had cruised through that area before and i remembered thinking that it looked like a good option if I needed a place to stay.  So, I pulled in but I didn’t check in with the host to register because they were closed already and I really wasn’t sure if I wanted to stay there or not. I found a good spot pretty quickly, away from the masses and not too close to the highway, and settled in for the night. 

Sunday I got a few pictures of my camping spot, and I also took a few shots of the surrounding plant life and landscapes too. 

Leaving Quartzite…

I had actually planned on staying at Roadrunner for an extended period, but once you check in you are locked in for the full 14 days and can't come back to the campground until 14 days past your check out date.  Even if you leave early, the dates are locked in whether you are there or not.  That doesn't really seem like much of a problem but if you are limited to a few campgrounds in one area and you are ping ponging between them every 14 days, you can actually end up with no place to go if your not cautious about your time frames.

So since I had to run my errands and pick up a few things on Monday anyway, I thought I might go south towards Yuma AZ to check on some other possible camping areas.  The advantages of heading to Yuma were warmer weather and a little higher humidity, both a plus when the weather is leaning towards the cool side, and it’s a lot of fun exploring new places lol.

I ran all of my errands, and my last stop was Albertson’s grocery store in Blythe CA so I just got out to the van, put my refrigerated items away, and headed south.  I stopped at the Pilot Knob LTVA (Long Term Visitors Area) just outside of Yuma to visit a friend of mine who I met in Ehrenberg.  LTVA’s are BLM land for people who pay a fee to stay long term, no 14 day limits.  Non-residents can get a season pass for all BLM lands, from usually September to March or April, for $180, or you can go short term for about $20 a week.  Pretty good deal overall, and I might use that option in the future after I learn the ropes of nomad-ism, but for now I prefer camping in the free areas if possible, it saves money and I enjoy changing locations especially when I’ve been in one spot for an extended period.

We had a nice visit and it was getting late so I headed out to find a camping spot.  I searched for BLM land nearby and found a spot that had good ratings and reviews about 15 miles north east.  At the time there was road construction going on so I went via the back roads and found the spot.  There are two areas here, the Sidewinder Road area, (wonder what that means… snakes…  lol…), and the American Girl Mine Road area just adjacent to Sidewinder.  I opted for the AGM road and it turned out to be a really nice place, at least so far.  You really don’t know until you spend some time at a spot if it’s going to be something you enjoy, part of the process…

The American Girl Mine is an active gold mine, one of the first mines of the gold rush era, according to Wikipedia.  I hope to travel back down the main road to see if I can get some pics of the operations before I leave and I will share them with you.

Just a few miles west of here there are huge areas of sand dunes, yep, acres and acres of sand dunes.  In some of the pictures I am posting you can see them off in the distance.  I did drive down that way, out of necessity really, due to construction on the interstate, but it was really amazing.  I couldn’t find a good spot to get off the road and not get stuck, so I didn’t really get any pics when I was there, but I did manage a short video, it doesn’t do justice to the Dunes, but…

I used my telephoto lens to zoom in on the view of the sand dunes from my AGM road camp spot.

AGM Road BLM land is in Ogilby CA, not far from Winterhaven.  The first couple of days we had rain, the first rain I had seen in months.  No major poor downs or anything, pretty light, but I enjoyed being in the desert with the rain falling.  After a rain there was this fragrance in the air that was invigorating.  I remember the thunderstorms we would have back home, and afterwards there was this clean, fresh scent that filled the air.  It’s like that, but different… lol  If you really close your eyes and try to distinguish the different fragrances it seems to be almost like an exotic herbal mix.  I could smell the creosote bushes, the wet sand, the rocks, the Palo Verde trees, etc… but much of it was beyond my limited olfactory capabilities to discern.

Of course, I have sunset pics.  These were taken the night I arrived, the colors, oh my…

Here are some samples of the pictures I took over the past several days including landscapes, interesting (to me anyway) tree and plant formations, and of course amazing sunrises and sunsets.  The sunrises have been beautiful too, but not as spectacular as the sunsets, they're a bit more reserved and shy…

sunset photos...

Anastasia with the sand dunes in the distance.

The formations of the trees and plants are so amazing...

One of many ant hills, the size of this one is about 2-3 feet in diameter.

recent sunrise shots

I’ve made my first trip to Yuma for supplies and I really like it.  They have a Sprouts Farmer’s Market here, which is basically a Trader Joes, and a Fry’s grocery which is owned by Kroger, so my rewards card worked there, both have lots of organic food and veggie options at reasonable prices.  The laundromat I used was really nice, I’ll be going back, and I ran a lot of errands, found everything I needed, all within a few miles of each other…

On a sidenote...  Have you ever wondered how the park rangers keep up with the large number of vehicles on the BLM lands?  

Periodically the rangers glide over the entire camping area, photographing vehicles and their locations.  This helps them to maintain the 14 day limits for campers.  I wanna ride...

 

That's a lot of information and pics, I'll try to update more often to keep the posts small.  Anyway, in closing, I don’t know how long I will be staying at AGM road, it all depends on the weather I guess, or my wanderlust, but I’ll keep you informed…

Until next time, thanks for sharing my adventures...