Week #4: Back Home in the West!

Even though both Ginny and I are from the East Coast, we really love the West and connect more with the land and the wide open landscapes of the western US. It's hard to put into words but there's something inspiring and freeing about big mountains, endless horizons and desert landscapes. Terry Tempest Williams said it best with this quote:  

"To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from."

And there's no question that the West is much better for the lifestyle that we're currently living. We've had our best campsites of the trip during the past week as we've traveled through New Mexico, Arizona and California. 

We spent a full week in New Mexico which Ginny had never visited before. We loved the high desert and mountains of Northern New Mexico. Photo below shows a traditional adobe structure in Taos, NM. As we were leaving the state, we stumbled upon the El Malpais National Conservation area which was beautiful with huge rock formations, lava flows and wide open vistas. We liked it so much that we spent two nights camped out there!  

We did a brief stop in Flagstaff and Williams, Arizona which is high country south of the Grand Canyon. We camped out in a Ponderosa Pine forest outside of Williams, AZ where we had our first campfire of the trip. Then it was on to California! We had been gone for more than four months so it felt great to be back in the Golden State.  

We spent our first two nights in California in the Mojave National Preserve, a high desert wonderland in Southern California. Despite driving by here numerous times, Ginny and I had never visited before. There are very few services in Mojave but it's perfect for people like us who are self-sufficient in their vehicles and are looking to do dispersed camping (aka boondocking). We absolutely loved the solitude, austerity and quietness of the Mojave Desert. We camped in two different places and one was surrounded by big boulders and the other was much more wide open and we were surrounded by dormant volcanoes!    

We've been living out of our van for a month now and I thought it would be interesting to reflect on how it's generally going. Ginny and I had never done any campervanning before building our van so it was definitely a risk to go all-in on building this van since we didn't really know if we'd like the lifestyle. Here are a few observations on our first month of travel:

• We're together 24/7 (except for my morning run) so it's a good thing that we enjoy each other's company. There's no question that a van is a small space to share with another person so if you ever decide to try this crazy adventure, pick your travel partner wisely!
• While building this van was challenging, it means that we're fairly well-equipped to fix things as they break. We've already had to do some minor maintenance on the composting toilet and ceiling fan and our inverter is not currently working so hopefully we can fix that before too long!
• Sleeping in the van was a little stressful at first but we've gotten the hang of it and love our comfy, cozy bed. We're still not huge fans of stealth camping in cities and much prefer getting into unpopulated areas where we can have our van doors open and really enjoy the natural beauty around us. Unfortunately that's not always possible so I suspect we'll get more comfortable with stealth camping as we do this longer - tonight we're in a Walmart parking lot in the Central Valley!
• Showers are overrated! We built a shower in our van but since our inverter isn't working, neither is our hot water heater. Since we've been in colder climates for most of the trip, I've only taken one cold shower and Ginny's taken none...in the van, that is. Don't worry - we've managed to get some other sporadic showers in and we do sponge baths. We don't think we smell (too) bad!
• Our favorite days have been when we've traveled the least. Hanging out in our van and exploring the beautiful places that we visit is really what this is all about. Going forward, we're going to try to drive less and stay in the same place (or general vicinity) for longer periods of time.
• We only have two small cabinets each for clothes and we thought that was not going to be enough. However, we actually seem to wear the same clothes day after day and have lots of clothes that we don't wear at all. So, we may simplify our lives even further and ditch more clothes especially once we head south to Mexico and don't need cold weather gear.