Category: September 2020

As I mentioned a few posts ago, we’re now back in Albuquerque. But I still have one final story to tell you about our epic van trip.

After our Utah camping trip, the next step was to swing through Tucson to close on our new house. We were able to sign the paperwork online ahead of time. But we wanted to be there for the final walk-thru, and to collect the keys after it records.

On the way down to Tucson we decided to camp for the night just north of Flagstaff, rather than trying to do the whole trip in one day. It sounded like a good idea at the time. And it would have been except the freeway was closed the next morning, delaying us considerably. The traffic was backed up for miles and miles, and even when the freeway cleared, we remained in a thick band of condensed traffic the whole rest of the way to Tucson. The trip was hot, slow, and miserable.

Turns out we should have driven straight through the previous day, but there’s no way to predict these things. The camping north of Flagstaff was fine. Not particularly interesting, but quite accessible. We’d go there again if needing a place to stay on our way down to Tucson.

Since we planned to go straight back to Albuquerque as soon as we finished taking possession of the new house in Tucson, we rented an airbnb for the night or two between doing the final walk-thru and being given the keys. We rented another stand-alone guest house. Because of covid risk, we like these little detached properties that don’t share an air supply with a main house or building.

It’s nice when we can get an actual southwestern style, purpose-built casita, because they tend to be larger than the converted detached garages that are more common further north. But since it was only for a day or two, we just got a little place that was indeed once a garage, near to where our new house is located. It was cute and clean inside, although very small with zero closet space.

As a bonus, the airbnb had a pool. We were happy to note they had a little bit of bougainvillea growing. John and I have both always loved bougainvillea and are looking forward to planting it near our pool too.

Our new pool looks washed-out and bleak compared to theirs. Not sure if it’s the quality or color of the interior surface (ours is apparently fairly low end), or if it’s the lack of shade, or what. I don’t know anything about pools, and I don’t know what (if anything) would make ours look better. Although I’m sure the yard will be a lot nicer once we get the dead grass removed and some things planted. I also plan to repaint the exterior walls back there. It’s an odd assortment of colors.

Overall I feel fairly optimistic about our ability to fairly inexpensively improve the backyard. We’ve generally done well with landscaping in the past. Where we struggle is interior remodeling – so we’re planning to put that off for awhile, and not do much to the interior right away.

Our pool doesn’t have a waterfall either, but that’s ok. John and I figure if we end up liking Tucson, and if I’m still alive and kicking by the time he’s ready to retire, we can sell both the Albuquerque house and the Tucson house and buy a nicer house in a few years if we want to.

After getting our keys we took one last look around, got it all locked up, and headed back to Albuquerque. We’ve hired a pool service to care for the pool for now at least, since we won’t always be there.

Satisfied with the condition of everything at the new house, we locked up and started back to Albuquerque. We had gotten as far as Hatch, New Mexico, when John first noticed an odd sound to the engine. We pulled into a city park, he took a look under the hood and didn’t see anything, so we continued onward. About an hour later, on an empty stretch of freeway just south of Socorro, and only about 2 hours from home, something went clunk and the engine suddenly sounded like a fleet of motorcycles. Something was very wrong! We pulled over to the side of the freeway.

I was all for calling AAA. We pay extra for high-end AAA service that includes long distance towing and towing of RVs and trailers. No better time to use it than when stuck on the side of the freeway, right? We even had cell reception!

But first John wanted to do diagnostics. He checked under the hood, and then crawled under the van.

This is what he found when he crawled under the van. Doesn’t take an expert to tell that isn’t right! How in the world did that even happen?

Now we can call AAA, right? But John didn’t want to wait who-knows-how-long for a tow. He proposed wiring it together if he could find a piece of wire along the side of the road. I gave him a look and went to find my phone. But before I could even retrieve my phone from the van and call for help, he had found a very nice piece of heavy-duty fence wire.

The found wire somehow cinched the issue, although I still thought AAA was a very viable option. He crawled back under the van to wire it together while I stood along the side of the road and exchanged eye-roll text messages with our dog sitter about the joys of being married to an engineer.

The wire job kept the van running, but we did have some exhaust seeping into the cab, and it still sounded like a fleet of motorcycles. By the end of the trip I had another migraine and we were very glad to be home.

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com

The next day we decided to hike along the bottom of the canyon. We took lots of water, sunscreen, and a small lunch. Because it was quite hot, we set off as early as I was willing to get going (which wasn’t all that early).

At the base of some of the cliffs water dripped and ferns grew right there in the desert wash! If you look at the bottom of the photo, you can see how small John looks. And that picture doesn’t include the top half of the cliff wall. It was huge.

We hadn’t gone very far when we came to this small slot canyon. John eyed it with interest. I knew he wanted to get down in there. It was only about 15 feet deep.

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Then John wanted to go up a side canyon, which turned out to be inaccessible from the canyon floor. However, a little further up the canyon we found a place to get up onto the bench that lead into the side canyon.

In the side canyon we found a water hole.

The sides were steep and I worried about John getting too close and sliding in. Just then he spotted a tiny frog. Of course he started trying to catch the frog.

Suddenly he slipped and started to slide toward the hole! He was fine, but I was like, “Aaaaah!!! What did I tell you?!?” Ugh. He’s just like a kid sometimes.

At the head of the canyon we found an incredible grotto; an enormous overhang and underneath was cool, shaded, wet and echoed with constant dripping.

We ate lunch in the grotto and started back to the van. When we stepped out of the oasis, the intense desert heat hit us hard. Definitely time to start back!

Here’s John looking for cell tower. We had no cell connection at all in this entire region. It was strange to go three days completely unable to contact the outside world. Amazing to remember that used to be common before cell phones.

Here’s where we climbed back down off the bench. It was easier than I thought it would be.

Desert rock surfing. I think the heat was getting to us. “Surf that wave, baby!”

When I took this next picture, I assumed the moth was dead.

But then a brief breeze overturned him, and he started struggling. We righted him and poured a bit of water out at his feet before continuing down the canyon. I assume he never made it, but who knows.

When we got back to the entrance of the small slot canyon, John decided to walk down it.

I stayed topside. I have no interest in slot canyons, caves and other tight spaces.

About halfway down the slot canyon, John paused considering the mud. He wasn’t in his hiking boots, and didn’t want to get his tennis shoes muddy. I walked ahead a few feet and peered down from up on the bench, trying to gauge the extent of the mud at the bottom.

Oh shit. That’s not just mud, there’s a big damn snake down there. “Back up, go back, get out!” John briefly considered scaling the wall, gave up and retraced his steps while I stood and stared down at the gigantic snake.

We stood safely above it, evaluating. Enormous rattlesnake or just a big, harmless bull snake?

We decided probably just a bull snake, but we weren’t going to mess with it.

We continued on in the heat. By then it was mid-day and around 100 degrees.

Almost back to the van…

By the time we got back, we knew it had been too long of a hike for me, even though there was no significant elevation gain. I am still recovering from the cancer treatment and don’t have the stamina that I used to have. I had a migraine for a couple of days afterwards, but still, I’m grateful I was able to go on such an adventure.

The next morning we packed up and headed back through the culvert and south toward Arizona.

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com

After giving up on our initial Utah destination due to impassibly deep sand, we headed further south toward some canyons we had visited before. The first time we were in this particular location, a year or two ago, we couldn’t take the road John had wanted to try because it was under water after a rare rainstorm. It’s been very dry, so our plan was to try again.

Do you see that little slot below the highway guardrail? John’s plan was to drive through that. In a 9′ tall camper van!

I was like, what? No way! That doesn’t even look like a road!

We crept down towards it anyway.

At this point I got out of the van to take pictures (and to avoid getting stuck in a van in a culvert).

Piece ‘o cake. That little slot was bigger than it looked like to me.

Turns out it was an official road.

With a good surface.

We drove a short distance away from the highway and into the hills and called it good enough.

We could still hear the highway in the distance, but it was not a busy road, not like the freeway of the previous night.

We got the van leveled out the old fashioned way, by driving up onto a pile of rocks.

It was a pretty spot.

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com

In Utah, the semi trucks are allowed to pull three trailers at once. I didn’t take any pictures of that, but I thought it was nuts. They were like little trains speeding along the freeway.

And it wasn’t just the truckers. When we stopped for gas, I saw this rig; a pickup pulling an enormously long RV, which was in turn, pulling a trailer with an ATV on it. The owners (a couple of big gnarly dudes) were giving me the hard stare as I stood by our van surveying their rig(s), so I had to take my pictures surreptitiously. I couldn’t get it all in one picture.

Here’s the front half (as seen through our van window):

Here’s the back half, with an ATV on a trailer attached to the extra-long RV trailer. And that sort of set-up wasn’t even all that uncommon!

For the first night, we had picked an area we had never been to before (always a risk). From google satellite view we knew there were orange and pink rock canyons, and dirt roads leading away from the highway into the canyons.

What we didn’t count on was the depth of the sand. Here’s John determining whether the van can proceed.

Yep, deep sand. We crossed the freeway and tried to go the other direction instead. More deep sand.

It was getting late, so we decided to stay the night there, even though the sand was too deep to get very far off the freeway.

It was a nice canyon.

John’s always happy at a canyon’s edge.

Here’s John trying to get enough cell reception to plan the next day’s trip. We didn’t want to continue to stay so close to the freeway.

Here’s the road we would have taken, had there not been so much loose sand. You can see the sky is still hazy from the smoke, but it was a lot better than in had been in California.

Smoky canyon sunset.

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com

I’m behind on my posts – we are currently back home in New Mexico. But first, let me continue my story of our epic trip out west.

We decided to leave California sooner than expected, due to the poor air quality. Time to get out of there! It was looking bleak on the way out of the eastern Bay Area:

Our goal was cleaner air in Utah.

But we had a lot of driving through smoke to get there. Sacramento was blanketed. It continued unchanged as we headed into the mountains. We couldn’t see the mountains even when we were in the mountains.

Here’s Reno. At least that’s where I think it should have been.

We drove for hours in this as we crossed Nevada.

By the time we reached our destination for the first night, the air was significantly better.

We camped for the night along this woodsy creek in the grasslands of eastern Nevada.

Next stop, Utah!

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com

The air quality continues to be very bad in the Bay Area.

Here’s a picture of my shoes, lol. They aren’t spotted shoes, that’s ash that has fallen out of the air.

We’ve enjoyed seeing Laura and Alex, and I’ve been hanging out with my good friend, Tracey, who lives right here in Livermore. We’ve had a great time but the air quality is harsh, so John and I have decided to leave early. John had a quarterly review at work yesterday, so we needed to stay here for that.

So where next? We could just go home, but we want to be in Tucson for the final walk-thru and closing at the beginning of next week. So if we went home, we’d just have to turn around in a couple days and drive 6 hours back westward again. We could go straight to Tucson but we’d have to get a vacation rental because it’s too hot to camp right now.

We’ve got 5 days, a camper van, and smoke across the entire west coast. Where would you go?

There was a time when I assumed that the beach would always be smoke-free. I think I must have imagined a consistent onshore fresh ocean breeze. But this time of year in particular, the hot valleys and deserts of the southwest cause west winds, blowing dust and smoke toward the coastal communities. To get out of the smoke, we’re going to have to go east for quite a distance.

If we go due east across the Sierras, and then start heading southeast toward Tucson, we’d go through Las Vegas. We don’t gamble so aren’t interested in the strip, plus, covid. Plus, temps over 100 starting tomorrow. We like Lake Mead but don’t have our boat with us or our kayaks or anything.

Another option is to go farther east, and end up in Utah before heading directly south to Tucson. John has a real fondness for the landscape of southern Utah. We had planned to go camping in Utah next month, but we probably won’t have time once we close on the house. So why not do it now?

At the moment, southern Utah looks pretty good. The four corners area is a clear spot in a sea of smoke. Although who knows what it will look like in a couple of days.

Meanwhile, here’s some pictures from our week in Livermore!

Laura and I dehydrated figs from her tree:

She and Alex have a huge and prolific fig tree in their backyard. They keep it pruned down to a bush shape, to better reach the figs, and to keep it out of some overhead power lines.

In addition to drying figs, Laura also made fig pies and tarts.

One day we visited Alex’s mother, Tamara, and her partner, Michael. Tamara and Michael were babysitting for Michael’s kids, who were out of town on a short vacation. Here’s Tamara with the family dog, Bucky, showing us the fancy cookies she was serving in honor of our visit.

Laura

Laura, Tamara and Bucky

Here’s Tamara with her granddaughter, Layla. She’s Tamara and Michael’s first grandchild.

Here’s a picture of me with Tracey. Without thinking I went to stand right next to her for the picture, and she moved away an equal amount, like two apposing magnets. Laura said, “Social distancing!” Oh yeah, oops. This pandemic is such a bummer. Pandemic plus wildfires is surreal.

Here’s Tracey, at lunch downtown. I love this picture, with the covid warning in the background, the American flag, the deserted street due to unhealthy air quality. It’s all so poignant. When I arrived in Livermore the temperatures were over 100 degrees, but then the temperatures plummeted. Not sure if it’s just because of that front that went through the entire western US, or if it was because the smoke obscured the sun for several days. Or both.

Laura, lunch downtown. Note how Laura has her mask attached to her hat rather than behind her ears. It’s much more comfortable! It was Tamara’s idea. They cleverly sewed buttons on baseball caps to hold their masks. I’m going to do that as soon as I’m home. Unfortunately I had not brought a baseball cap on the trip. I could have bought one but I’m trying to stay out of indoor spaces, like shops.

Here’s John throwing a stick for Zane in Laura’s backyard.

John also bought Zane a bully stick, which is a tough, beef-based chewing stick for dogs. He loved it of course. Here he is playing with the small end left after he had eaten most of it.

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com

Despite dodging insane heat and smoke, we have been having a good vacation. I’m happy to be somewhere other than home. And it’s so good to see friends and family.

We originally intended to start by camping in the Six Rivers Wilderness, in the far northwest of California, and then go down to the Bay Area, and then home. But then we acquired an errand in Tucson – we didn’t want to buy a house without seeing it! Then we stayed in Southern California for a week waiting for the smoke to clear in the north, instead of our camping trip in Six Rivers. When the smoke improved, we headed up to the Bay Area.

When we arrived, it looked like this – classic California. (I was taking a picture of the palm tree, I didn’t think to take a picture of the fleeting blue sky!)

But conditions have been challenging! Here’s the gazebo where we have been sitting 6 feet apart in the searing heat and haze with our masks on to visit.

Check out that temperature – ouch!

Then by Tuesday afternoon it looked like this:

And if you’re thinking, aww, well, that’s just a sunset, think again. Here it is in the middle of the day at 11:30 AM yesterday.

It was vastly cooler, thankfully, but I was reminded of the concept of a nuclear winter. Here’s a picture of the sun at noon. See that little dot?

The scary thing is, the air quality was far worse toward the end of August, a couple of weeks before we got here. I can’t even imagine how bad it must have been.

Here’s Laura’s picture of the sun in the middle of the day in Santa Clara yesterday:

And here’s some more pictures sent by friends in San Francisco and Berkeley. These were all taken in middle of the day!

Meanwhile, as you might have experienced in your state, it has gotten suddenly cold. Another friend sent me these pictures from her garden in Santa Fe. The temperature plummeted from in the 90’s to freezing in 24 hours. Those poor plants!

Then we found out last night that ALL of the national forests in California are closing due to fire hazard. So much for our camping trip to Six Rivers!

We had another week planned in the Bay Area, but with our postponed camping trip now impossible, we’re starting to wonder about our “Plan B”. We’re not sure what the next few days will bring. Is it time to hit the road again?

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com

On Friday before Labor Day we left the beach and made the drive up from the San Diego area to the eastern edge of the San Francisco Bay Area. It’s no further than Tucson to San Diego, but it’s a much more miserable drive. I-5 remains busy, despite covid. The trucks are still trucking.

It was also insanely hot. We stopped at this little tourist spot and eyed the ice cream shop.

After some deliberation, we decided against ice cream. We are avoiding going inside public places to the extent possible.

Instead, we wandered around in the 100+ heat. John climbed up on this – whatever it is. He’s still a kid at heart.

In Livermore we rented a little detached studio right next to the cute main street downtown. There’s a farmer’s market less than a block away, twice a week!

Yeah, I don’t know what that is on top of the shelf. It’s in a stand, like a piece of art, but it looks like a bong, lol.

John’s been working, but I’ve been hanging out (outside) with Laura and local friends. Lucky me!

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com

John somehow managed to find a lone remaining camping slot for the Thursday before Labor Day weekend at Carlsbad State Beach. We only got it for one night, because the park was completely booked for Labor Day weekend.

It wasn’t a spacious campsite like we had at Stone Creek in the San Jacinto mountains. They were just little gravel spots, tightly packed in long rows. But we had oceanfront!

Here’s the view looking down over the fence right behind our van.

When we first got there our neighbor was running his generator.

It was deafening! I wish everyone had solar panels! But we went for a walk on the beach and by the time we returned he wasn’t running his generator anymore.

Here’s the view from the top of the stairs down to the beach.

Pebbles and sand.

A nearly empty beach. The weather was perfect too.

We could see the back of our van from the beach.

We watched the sunset from back up on the bluff.

The next morning we went for a short walk on the beach before leaving. It was warmer than it looks.

I’m so happy it’s only about 6 hours from Tucson to San Diego. I’m looking forward to going more often!

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com