Writing from a motel room in Taos, where we have showered, paddled around happily in a very warm indoor pool, relaxed in the spa, eaten a delicious Wendy's hamburger (MEAT!  well, I did; he didn't, but managed with a baked potato, as everything else in town was closed.)  A motel, you say?  STFU; we had our reasons.  Air. Air was the reason. Air does not seem to be our friend, this trip - it tried flipping us into the sky, knocking us over, and when all that didn't work, it tried smoking us out.

92,000 acres have burned in New Mexico, containment is at 3%, and the last part of the drive here was obscured by smoke, enough that it was difficult to breathe.  We did check into an RV park, but after some consideration, it got obvious it was an indoor air-conditioned evening.  If we planned to breathe.  We don't plan much, but that one is kind of a no-brainer.

Hotel signs offer discounts for firefighters and evacuees. Carson National Forest is closed. We won't try driving through any more of this ^!@#^.  Good thoughts for those who have lost homes & property.  We'll re-route.

Another unfair strike by air is that Dapple is struggling along and must go in tomorrow for some R&R of its own - possible issues with vacuum, M says, which I darkly think is just another air trick.  Perhaps air feels rejected when you choose ground travel, I don't know.

We shall see. In the meantime, there's Taos, which we will make the most of tomorrow. I think we can both use a non-driving day. Or all three of us, counting Dapple the Brave. 

But today - before we hit the smoke wall - we visited an outrageous place coming into Taos, the Earthship, a completely noodle-appendaged off-grid community, or religion, or whatever you choose to call it; beautifully built of bottles and cans and tires and straw and using solar energy only, recycling all its water for maxiumum use, insulating with earth, all amazing and available to each and every one of us if you have deep pockets, which they cheerfully admit.  Still, the architecture is beautiful and whimsical, and, as M knew, appealed to me very much.

The entry to Taos is dotted with dwellings - they are not houses by any conventional standard - built on buses and campers which have evolved with clay and corrugated tin and cement and creativity into spaceships of their own, and they are fascinating - but they are also private, and too far from the road to photograph well. But the Earthship photos represent much of what we saw.  I want to build a place like that, perhaps as the final resting place of Dapple the Brave, but I want to build it in Bolinas*, and I think land is not so cheap there. ;)

We also stopped and wandered through the CumbresToltec Narrow Gauge railroad, a transit buff's playground, and sort of followed the rail line up through the San Juan Mountains.

So. A full day. And a spa evening. And tomorrow will tell us more about the future plans of the All Who Wander Tour.  But I know I will get another hot shower, and there are no tornados in this motel room. Bliss!

* I am afraid they might have air in Bolinas, though.

Tree, uprooted by that windstorm in Zed & Jed's RV park last night.
And you thought I was exaggerating.

The Indecisive Apache Chinese Restaurant where we lunched.

Earthship!

Railyard. I love rust.

A Day With No Trouble

Yeah. No tornados. The kind of day I like: tornado-free.  Note to self: remember to be grateful for that more often. ;)

It was a Tony Hillerman day, is what it was. Shiprock, Kayenta, Teec Nos Pos. Like that. It was quite a thing to see those places - some looked like I expected, and some didn't. 

It is striking, how much Hillerman loved this land and these people.  It's evident not only in what he wrote - which I knew - but in what he didn't write.  I learned that today.

The rest is snapshots - weather. I was wind-skittish like a colt today, which is understandable; I don't trust that shit right now.  And it was hairy windy, again, slowing us wayyy down - the camper has things in common with a clipper ship - the tumbleweeds sped across the road faster than we could (as we did not want to adopt their method of travel today, anyway.) 

I stood on the corner at a gas station, in warm wind, and it rain/hailed on me as I stood there, and in the distance I could see the dry dust storm we were driving into.  It's all powerful stuff.  The weather is a serious element here - you can see it, see the grey clouds in the distance hazing rain down to the ground, see the brown-red fog of dust storms that make you roll up all the windows, see the distant rainbow that tells you that yes, that is rain across the canyon. It's a thing to reckon with. I learned that too.

People.  I don't think they liked us or our funky camper or our California liberal attitudes in Kanab, Utah.  I didn't like them, either.  I've never wanted to get shut of a place as fast as I did this morning. The campground guy had a sharky smile that was more predatory than friendly; Good Sam, my $%@!.  No bathroom usage if you check in after 6 (but M begged the code off a neighbor),  and when I asked if they had a utility sink (I wanted to wash dishes) he said incredulously, "You folks don't have a SINK in that thing?"  Well, yes, we do, of course - it's just that it's hard to get around the spa and the widescreen TV sometimes.  (We DO have a sink, but we have no hot water, and I thought it'd be easier than heating water on the stove.)  The hardware store man looked at me like I might steal something. Anyway, Kanab, Utah:  don't go there, unless you are there. In which case, you can have it.

In contrast, everywhere in Navajo Country we got smiles. The place where many live in small barrack-like homes, or shacks or old mobile homes out in the canyons, where our truck is no older than anyone else's, where it is so painfully obvious that we have gone horribly wrong with the way we built our society and community - there, I felt welcome.

When we put gas in the truck, a man with a gas can approached M - he'd brought his sister to Kayente to the Navajo health center for her asthma medication, and had no gas to go back home, twenty miles.

Part of the reason I am on this trip with this man is that I did not have to watch to know M would put gasoline in that can.

"Did you believe him?" I asked, curious, when we left. "It doesn't matter," he answered. And he was right.

___________

Edited to add:  while I was shutting down M's computer, a gust of wind blew up a huge cloud of dust right through the screens, and his keyboard filled with dust and I was sitting in dismay - and then all hell broke loose, with winds that the weather channel said were over 60 mph, and lashing rain.  The camper threatened to blow over, the power failed, and M came down from the bunk so we could easily make a break for it if the thing rocked any harder. We got the windows and vents shut, even the door that threatened to tear out of my hand.  And then it all stopped.  And now there's light wind, no power, and emergency vehicles cruising the campground.

Weird, Auntie Em.

What day is it? I am already confused.

Eventful. Today was eventful. We left Ely and headed down into Utah, hitting really fierce winds - gusts up to 50 mph.  It just went on and on, with no letup. It's not that easy to drive a camper in that sort of wind. It isn't even easy WATCHING someone drive a camper in those sorts of winds.

We stopped for gas and so on, and I noticed that the third vent (the one I didn't replace) had come untaped and was flapping.  Figuring if it flapped it would rip off and we'd be left with a hole in the roof, I suggested a trip to the hardware for Gorilla Tape. I was all set to climb up and tape the living %$#! out of it, but M got sensible and said no, I wasn't going on the roof in 50mph gusts. He's resourceful - managed to find one of those self-carwashes to pull into so I had some protection. I taped the ^%#!@ out of it as planned, and we headed back out into the awful wind.

Somewhere on the road - I don't remember what little city - we stopped again and I took over driving. Outside of that city the wind got even worse - no, really, not just because it was me driving, it really was bad. But here's the kicker - as I drove along, we got hit by a small tornado.

Yes. A tornado.

Looked like one of the dust devils we get at home, only quite a bit taller, and I saw it out of the corner of my eye and had time to say something suitably trepidacious, when BAM!  it crossed the road, and the camper was no longer in my control, swerving and swaying, and then something lifted up and went KABANG back down, and it was over and we were miraculously still upright and I pulled off the road.  "I think we're all right," M said. I said, "No, I think the camper came off the truck."

A guy on a three-wheel utility vehicle from the farm we were next to came tearing up while we were still sitting in the cab getting oriented.  "Are you all right?  I saw that! It picked you right up! Never seen that before!" 

M said later he doesn't believe it actually picked up the whole truck, although the farmer dude said we were up on two wheels, and from what it felt like, I think it's possible. But it DID definitely shift the camper, and loosened the turnbuckles.  And it shifted enough that the turnbuckles couldn't be retightened.  How on earth to shift the whole camper back, move it up on the truck?

M wins the resourceful prize again. He backed it slowly into a telephone pole.  Yes, he did.  I spotted for him, and he just backed it up like an elephant scratching its rear end, and pushed it on the telephone pole until it shifted up a couple inches. Defacing Public Property, most likely, but it worked and we were outta there before we could get caught and spend a night in the Utah hoosegow.

One turnbuckle is still not as tight as you'd like, but we were back on the road, headed up over the mountains.

And then the truck decided to have engine trouble.

We're still miles from anywhere, up a steep mountain, and the truck is stumbling and coughing and trying to die.  M pulls over, and revs it, and it runs when it's not under load, but pull back out onto the road, it won't run.  We're doing a coughing stumbling 2 mph, watching every turnout, and I'm saying nothing because what can I say that would be helpful?

M changed tanks and that did improve it, and we made it to the top of the hill.  We had plenty of gas, but M thinks the truck doesn't like uphill climbs at 6,000 feet. We kept going, though!

Due to vents, tornados, and engine issues, we pulled into Kanab, Utah sort of late,  dropped by the grocery store for a few dinner things, and found a Good Sam RV park, which is where we are right now.  I climbed up into the back, and looked at the camper and the closets, and thought, "It looks like a TORNADO hit it."  Really.  I thought that. And for once I was literally correct. Things were tossed all over, nails popped out of the walls - and Ganesh must've dived for cover, 'cos he's nowhere to be found.

I said it would be an adventure, didn't I?

Photos (but none of the twister):

Trip, Day Two

(Where are we? We're in Ely, Nevada, headed for Utah, at a KOA (hey, it looks like a parking lot, but the sky is full of stars, and they have hot showers!)

The Loneliest Highway in the World, they say.  I don't know that it's lonely, but it's something.  Something that goes on for a long, long time, graced on either side by shades of blue-grey and distant purple and hopeful bits of green; hawks and the occasional scattering of cows. M likes the desert colors, but they're not my favorite.

Halfway between Almost-Somewhere and Somewhere Else, which is a very great distance of sage and heat, is the town of Austin. It's not much of a town as towns go, but like you don't criticize the hygiene of the Eskimo who pulls you off the iceberg, you don't look Austin in the teeth. It's actually charming in just the sort of way I like - old buildings full of history but not yet renovated, or being renovated, or simply derelict.  I was glad to see Austin and get coffee there, and to walk the single downtown street with M, and admire the general weirdness of the place.  Oases are whatever you need, when you need it; I didn't know it, but I needed a vanilla soft-serve, so bless Austin and its hard-bitten inhabitants.

(waiting for my coffee in the restaurant) "Do you live here?"
"I sure do."
"If you live here, you just kind of stay here, right? Because it's so far from anything?"
"Well, Austin doesn't have a grocery store."
"You're kidding."
"No, we have to go to Fallon, 120 miles each way."
"Bet you don't eat a lot of salad, then."
"Nope."

The Day We Didn't Leave.

We're leaving today!

Yeah. Or not.

"I knew we wouldn't," the man says.  Not smug enough to slap, but smug. Yeah, I'm always late. Yeah, he knows this.  So?  I COULD have been on time. I MIGHT have. It could happen. I'm not that predictable.

So. There is one big hole in the roof where a vent ought to be, and I have sheet metal cuts on my hands and caulk on my jeans.  I'm not done and I'm not ready. Today - the big push. Change out both vents, pack the camper, put in the propane tank, finish paying the bills, say my goodbyes. We leave tomorrow.

No, really, I mean it.

I DO make progress.  I do. I can prove it.  See?

Dapple the Camper now!