May 29, 2021
A FB friend asked:
Is it a just for fun adventure?
The answer is:
Not exactly. We cannot afford to live where we were and had very large dental bills uncovered by Medicare that destroyed our financial situation. (And didn't work anyway. Say buh-bye to $16,000.) By the time we got out of our rental house (one year lease) we needed to reduce our rent dramatically. This camping situation reduces our rent and utilities.d
We are developing a plan to live in some poor region in western Maryland, or elsewhere that we can afford. Right now I'm sitting in our screen porch with two jackets on while the rain beats a drumbeat on our roof.
I have always enjoyed camping . . . but this is different.

• For one thing, it is on the East Coast, where there is a different kind of tick. LOTS of them.

• It is humid and it rains. A lot.
• So far there has been nothing particularly interesting about the campgrounds. I miss the West Coast. Camping there smelled really good. It was generally nicer looking.

 I never got ticks camping on the West Coast, except that one time when I slept on a tarp on the land I owned near Cazadero, California. I don't remember rain being a problem camping back then. Now rain is a constant obstruction to getting things done. You think an old Seattle-born girl like me would be used to the rain . . . I like the rain just fine if I don't have to walk in it to get to the bathroom, or to go from the bedroom to the kitchen.
And then back in the day, when I used to go camping, I'd stock up on reading material (Scientific American and National Geographic) and just relax. Walk to the beach or the stream or whatever. Now I am too cheap to buy anything as pricey as a magazine; I have plenty of reading material already. And I don't like leaving our gear unsupervised, because I can't just drive home if someone rips me off.
On the positive side, I am getting stronger, that's for sure. I can get up off the floor more quickly. I'm not taking nearly as many naps - but that is principally because the tent is usually too hot for a good nap. I still get tired but i just push on as best I can. One good thing about today is it is 54 degrees - the perfect temperature for a nap, especially with that wonderful Pendleton blanket Mike gave me. I'm 70, dammit. I think I'll go take a nap. Not really. I have chores to do.
~ Dr. P-J

Wednesday, May 26, 2021

We've been here at Campsite 2 for over a week. Yesterday was the half-way point when we resupply. We get ice, propane, and various groceries.
There is an ebb and flow to camping. We show up on a Tuesday and the campground has a lot of empty spots. Most of the people are quiet. On the weekends, the park fills up with noisy people, noisy children, bicycles, people walking dogs. Javy is very concerned about all of this. I like when Monday rolls around and there are fewer people around.
The campsite somewhat opposite of us has had three different camping groups so far. First was "angry woman." She had a big sleeping tent, a littler ten, and a nice-looking cargo box. It looked like a red coffin. There was no car there.
Angry Woman was talking on her mother on her cell phone. She was VERY loud, so we got to learn all kinds of information about her personal life, but there were some gaping holes in the narrative. She had had it with her boyfriend and was going to break up with him. He just didn't care . . . about something. He had another lover, a boyfriend. It had been that way from the beginning. She was homeless! Eventually, someone drove into the campsite. It was a man. Mike and I disagreed about whether that was the boyfriend, or whether it was a different person, a friend in whom she could confide. They kissed upon greeting - if that's a hint.
Not long after he arrived, Angry Woman started yelling and carrying on and using the F word. We could not hear the man's communications - Mike speculated that she was actually talking on her phone. She used the F-word a lot and had really had enough of the whole thing. She was through!
Eventually I could hear an angry man's voice. The Mike saw her get into the car. Then the man got into the car two and they drove away; she was tearing up the road which is impolite and dangerous in a campground but Angry Woman was VERY angry!
Some time later they came back. She had stopped yelling. They went about their business as if nothing had happened. The next day they packed up like experts and made like sheep herders and got the flock out of there.
The next campers showed up on Friday afternoon. A man and three children. They set up a tent. One of the boys and hatchet and he chopped with it on a log for about an hour. I was grateful that he finally got bored. Or maybe his arm got sore. He and his probably siblings got together with another gang of young-uns and ran around the campground playing some kind of Peter Pan game. I couldn't figure out what the game was but it involved a lot of yelling and a certain amount of screaming. 
The next morning, one of the kids was yelling to the dad that "Tyler had the hatchet" indicating the youngest member of the gang. The dad yelled back very strongly, "If Tyler had the hatchet, TAKE IT AWAY FROM HIM." We pondered the danger of that move . . . but there were no incidents. Then they quickly packed up and left. Short camping trip, eh?
The final group, so far, were a very old couple with a nice red flatbed truck hauling a big fifth wheel. They got set up and left. Came back late, didn't spend any time outside. Next day they left early and were again gone all day. Next day, they were up early and left. For oldsters, they seemed to really have it together. AND they were quiet.
​Life without TV leads to spying on your neighbors, apparently.
This morning I woke from a lovely dream about a new attraction at Disney World, kind of a huge outside Haunted Mansion set up with a lot of comedy. There were many interactions with the cast members - I asked one of them if he liked children and he said, "with salt," which I found tremendously funny. I still do. When Rocky takes me to Disney World, I like to ask her, "Where did these children come from and what are they for?"
I actually like children and don't eat them, with or without salt. I'm not the witch from Hansel and Gretel, for goodness sakes! I'm the witch from The Wizard of Oz, the Wicked Witch of the West, and also the witch from Snow White - the one with poison apple. 
​But I digress . . . 

Our first campground was Westmoreland State Park in Virginia. We departed on Monday, May 17, 2021. It was okay. The showers were never cleaned the entire two weeks we were there but they were free, had HOT water, and had waaay better water pressure than we've had since we moved to Virginia six years ago. I give that campground a C. It was okay. No big whoop. Perhaps if I had been able to go on the Ranger led walk to Fossil Beach I would have enjoyed my time there more, but the work of having your entire life in your vehicle is taxing. It's been 12 days since I posted to this blog; I have been too busy or too tired or my internet was too lousy . . . but I did write a story.
It's called "Tick Vision" - not to be confused with the poem of that title somewhere below this post.
Link to fiction story "Tick Vision"

Saturday, May 15, 2021

Tick-vision
by Dr. P-J

Recurring visions of ticks:
Small,
Medium,
​and Large,
Crawling.
Barely attached,
Dug in and surrounded by infected tissue.

Grasp with tweezers
Steadily but gently
Pull,
Tug,
Wrench.

Isolate in a wet wipe.
Smash until dead
Through a single layer of paper.
Repeatedly re-check tick mortality.
Re-smash as needed.

How long does it take
Until tick-vision subsides?

Sunday, May 9, 2021

So, tonight is the first night in a long time (we’ve only been out here 6 days?) with no ticks. Last night I had zero and Mike had two, so he is winning the tick competition at this point.

We took trash to the dumpster today. All trash must be brought up to the front of the camping loop. It would be a long walk but we were headed out in the van to the store adjacent to the entrance to refill propane and get ice. Ice they had but will not refill propane (unlike what the sign says). They expect you to trade your canister for one of theirs. Seems odd. So, we drove a ways down the road to a tractor supply store and refilled our five pound propane canister. Bonus – I found hand sanitizer spray in the store when I was walking through roughly an acre of store to the bathrooms in the very very back.

There are certain surcharges when you leave the campground. You have to go the Sheetz (what kind of a name is that?) which is a gas station with a food service set up. You have to get two sandwiches, tater tots, 6 bananas (what a find!), a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, a Snickers bar, two small packages of roasted peanuts, M&M peanuts, and, of course, a chocolate muffin. A chocolate muffin is the modern update of the Hostess Sno-ball, which was once the most delectable snack on the planet. Perfect chocolate cupcake, some kind of frosting inside, and soft gooey marshmallow all around with toasted cocoanut sprinkled liberally on it. Later it was hollowed out – cake not tasty, hard, filling a little spurt, marshmallow coating thin and chewy, cocoanut smaller and fewer pieces. And then of course, after corporate hacks destroyed the product, the whole company went out of business. But chocolate muffins are pretty good – with chocolate chips inside. They’ll do for an illicit snack.

We are collecting sunshine and converting it into laptop and cellphone power. And lanterns and fans. And electric toothbrushes. We can make tea and coffee of good quality. Our ice chests work. Mike made dogfood from scratch. We are figuring out how to use our stuff, organize our stuff, and FIND our stuff. That last bit is kind of the hardest. We have a dishwashing system worked out. Mike has a solar water heater, but you can also just heat up water on the stove and put that in there and it has a foot pump to build up air pressure to drive a hand held sprayer. It’s effective. We even washed a cloth napkin today and dried it in on our cool clothesline. I have ambitions to wash more clothes that way. I need to get started early on a sunny day and perhaps I could wash my pants.

So I broke down and bought a roll of paper towels today. I had beat the paper towel habit when I had a washer and dryer handy. I used real towels and washcloths and rarely used a paper towel. I could get one eco-friendly roll to last months . . . I’m already starting to recycle plastic bags again. I have Mike wash them and I hang them on the line unless they are gross. I had been planning on never buying plastic bags again . . . but now I am going to buy some more gallon size and see if I can find some larger zipper type for ice. My ice idea worked but once the ice in the plastic milk containers thaws . . . it takes up room I don’t have. Camping is a drain on certain resources, but we are using way less fossil fuel generated power. No heater. No AC. Very little electricity, comparatively. So I think the planet is better of with me camping than with me in a house in Fredericksburg.

It was hard to leave the house in Fredericksburg – good friends, good work. But all migration has a push and a pull. And one of the pushes was ARMI property management. We got mice in the kitchen and we tried to just use glue traps, but they kept coming. The house was porous.

One day I was sitting at the dining room table and I heard the tell-tale scratching sound of a mouse in the kitchen, and I looked in just in time to see a mouse fall from the light fixture in a hail of mouse poo. It landed on the kitchen floor and scrambled under the stove, ne’er to be seen again. Well maybe he was contestant number 10 in the glue trap on the counter next to the stove, who knows? The mice in the winter were skinny. This one was a fatty.

So, I finally decided to contact ARMI – I filled out an online form on Friday about my distress but of course heard nothing back. I called on Monday – no one answered so I left a voice mail complaining bitterly about their lack of responsiveness. Eventually I got an email back claiming that problems of mice infestation are the responsibility of the tenant. I am still floored by that. The problem is that the house needs to have the holes patched up where the mice are getting in. I looked it up online; in Virginia law the owner is responsible for vectors like mice. But when you are a tenant, you are in a powerless position. If you are perceived as a problem by the owner/property manager, they can withhold your last month’s rent and cleaning deposit. So ARMI is a slum lord, as far as I am concerned. I have no hope of getting back a nickel from them; they have shown themselves to be content to violate Virginia law and have a cavalier attitude in dealing with tenants. We were at that location for six years and caused zero problems but ARMI is just a computer algorithm.

Out here in camping land – the mice have every right to be here. If I leave food out and they take it – it’s my bad. We only have food out while we’re eating, and we generally clean up and do the dishes immediately after eating. The forces of nature are intractable.

Dr. P-J

Monday, May 10, 2021

UPDATE
ARMI knew we were leaving on May 4th. They agreed, in writing, that we would be turning off the utilities on 5/5/21. But none-the-less, they contacted us this morning to tell us that if we didn't turn the utilities back on until Friday, they would charge us . . . how much? Unknown. Hard to say. Whatever the market can bear, which, when you exploiting people from a position of power, could be one's entire next pay check. There is no way to hold them accountable. They hold all the cards, that is to say: the first and last months rent, a deposit, a pet deposit, and the money we wish to have back from leaving the property before the lease is up. Slum lords are used to abusing tenants. It's how they roll.

We are out  here, in part, to escape the jack boot of our corporate masters. But they are having a hard time letting go. It's coldish and overcast. No sunlight to capture on our magical devices. Hoping for some sunshine soon.
​~ Dr. P-J

Saturday, May 8, 2021

I started camping with my parents when I was very young. We lived in Seattle and my folks would take my sister and me out to the woods where we slept in an Army surplus tent with a wooden pole in the middle. It was made of green canvas. At night, my mother burned a candle for light in the tent. Just an open flame in a dish with the candlestick glued to the dish with candle wax. My mother fascinated me. She knew how to do all kinds of things.

It rains a lot in the Pacific Northwest. When it rained, we were stuck in the tent. We played games. Eventually, I read. My Dad does not appear in most of these memories. Perhaps he was doing the chores while Mom minded the kids. Perhaps he walked out to the nearest bar. Probably both. He was always industrious and kind in my presence. When they rarely fought, they both gave as good as they got. They were rational operators.


While camping, my mother cooked almost all the food from scratch. At least in the earlier days, when we were poor. She made chili, I recall. All on a two-burner kerosene stove.


As the years passed, we added more children to the story until we were a family of eight. I am the eldest of six and that explains a lot about my personality and why I became a leader at various points in my life. Leader of a small business. Leader of a Civic Association. (which is a precursor to a homeowner’s association). Adult Girl Scout Leader. Leader of a teacher’s association local. Leader of the Queer RIG at University of Oregon (UO). Leader of First Fridays (a support group for graduate students at UO). Leader of the Eugene chapter of Jobs with Justice. Leader of an Indivisible group, We Are For America (WAFA). Is that all? I can’t recall.

But I digress. I know how to camp. Camping is easy. I’ve camped all over the West and the Southwest.

But now it’s different. It’s so much harder. Is it merely because I/we are old? We ARE old. I’m 70 and Mike will catch up to me in October. He likes to say that while he’s in his 60s, he’s married to an older woman who is in her 70s. This is true, of course.

So being old means have less energy, needing to rest more. It means disabilities and workarounds. I think I have had a tendency towards aphasia all my life, mixing up the names of two students for the entire school year being one example. But now it’s popping up more frequently – I use the word “tent” for all manner of other nouns. Makes it hard for Mike to figure out what I’m on about . . . put that leftover food in the tent . . . (?!?) But the upside is I know SO much more stuff than I did when I was young . . . I know how to cut the gristle off meat efficiently. I know how to make a spreadsheet for many different uses and how to make a data display that is effective. Not much use for data displays out here, but the spreadsheets on the menus and resupply for ingredients in week two are handy.

So being old and slow are part of the cause of the difficulty I am facing. But there’s more. When I went camping in earlier incarnations for vacation, I had nothing else to do but camp and soon enough I’d be home again to my hot shower, my dishwasher, and my washer and dryer. My enormous supply of clean towels.

Now, this is it. If I didn’t bring it, I won’t be obtaining it until Tuesday, unless it is critical. There’s no Door Dash here for if I’m too tired to cook. There’s no Instacart if the bananas go bad too quickly. Actually, they may deliver here . . . but it’s not the brief. We are simplifying our lives, getting healthier, challenging ourselves, building dendrites, and saving money. In our Fredericksburg home the bills grew larger every month while our income remained fixed. I have a small teacher’s retirement, Mike has some Social Security money, and he still works . . . as a contractor don’t cha know. Contingent labor is another name for it. With inflation since 1969, he figures he is making minimum wage. But . . . he works from home and that permits him to work from any location, even a campground.

Which leads to the other greatest difficulty. Mike is still holding down a job while we are taking on all the challenges of living outside. The rain yesterday shut down our work and cooking – the lack of sunshine shut down our solar collection operation which we need for him to work.

I think my biggest concern is Javy. He cannot at all – ever – run free. First of all, it’s against campground rules, but also – it would be too dangerous. At least he has flea and tick medication that is so far working. At tick inspection he comes up clean every time. As we get more organized and build up habit strength on our new processes, we will have more time to take care of our little doggie better but right now he isn’t getting groomed enough. He must be coaxed to eat and he is just less joyful than he was. Last night he seemed fine but when he got into the tent, he peed all over Mike’s sleeping bag. Now that sends a message. He had just been walked and relieved himself! So, I know he’s stressed out by the change. He loves a routine, and we are far from having any routine now. Well, we HAVE a routine but we can’t accomplish it. We are getting there but my poor doggie. But at least Javy is with the one he loves . . . Mike!

But oddly enough, this is still what we want to do. Even with the ticks. OMG I’m winning the tick contest now. I had one last night, he had none, and the night before I had two and he had none. So I’m winning by one. I’ll have to look up the score card before I post again.

~ Dr. P-J

Wednesday, May 5, 2021

“May the Fourth Be with You Day” has come and gone. We packed up from basecamp, loaded up all the food, and hit the open road. We found a great deli (simple food, made well) at a diesel gas station and picked up sandwiches for the rest of the day’s meals. Also some deviled eggs and a very nice salad. Okay, and a chocolate muffin.

Then we got a text from the older of our two daughters (the one who is providing the home of basecamp, not the one who lives in NYC with her wife and they're having a baby!); she asked if we intended to leave the dog food behind, in her refrigerator. This is home-made dog food that Mike prepares once a week . . . so to make a long story short, she drove out to our campsite and brought Javy his food. What a good daughter!

Thursday, May 6, 2021
Lost all the rest of my writing Wednesday; am not working directly in the on-line Weebly post anymore; working in a Word doc which I will faithfully save often. Going old school, I reckon. SAVE YOUR DOCUMENT! (ADDITIONAL NOTE: I started writing in the on-line version again . . . so now I am using the "save" function often. I swear!)

The first day we were here, a major storm blew in. We were warned about the storm by the camp host, Doug, who rolled up in a golf cart. We scurried to secure and rainproof everything, then hunkered in the sleeping tent while the storm pelted, pounded, thundered and lighteninged. After a while the rain subsided and we were able to eat our store-bought supper in the screen porch (screen tent?).

Last night at tick inspection Mike found one near my neck. I found three on him. The “good tweezers” are efficient at removing them whole, which is essential. I’m using sanitizing hand wipes to clean the wound and tweezers. The tick can be killed with the tweezers inside a single layer of the wipe.  The score so far in two rounds is as follows – Round 1: (pre-camping at that campsite with the helicopter pilot training missions overhead) Mike – 1, Shelley – 2; Round 2 (Camp 1 Day 2): Mike 3, Shelley 1; Total Score – Mike 4, Shelley 3. So Mike is winning . . . the creepiest contest regarding the hands-down worst thing about camping in Virginia.

This morning it is cold. My sleeping bag is warm and my little sleeping hat is working well. Oh Mike is waking up. Time to get moving. More later.

So it is later. We had a delicious breakfast of (for her) oatmeal with sliced bananas in it, orange slices, and a wonderful cup of tea in my bitchen cup and (for him) buttered toast, orange slices, a banana, and excellent coffee also in a bitchen cup. When I say "bitchen cup" I mean a cup that holds a hot beverage hot for a looooong time. It stays hot enough to burn your tongue for about ten minutes and hot enough to be a hot beverage for another 30 minutes, and hot enough to be palatable for at least another hour.

As for the toast . . . we literally threw away the little toaster that sits on top of a propane camping stove burner. Buttered bread in the frying pan is literally ten times faster and easier to manage as well. We only got it because we were increasing our order to save shipping. So around $6 for body wipes (the camper's shower) and $4 for the toaster, which is now in the trash can. We did not want to give something to Good Will that is actually a curse. We speculate that the well-toasted bread in the photo was done using a real toaster. Buyer Beware! This is America!

Today's lunch we are going to make a salad with sliced turkey and hard boiled eggs and some sliced cheese and use those supplies before they go bad. Actually, the ice chests seem to be working very well. And for this campsite, at least, there is some kind of roadside market right at the entrance to the park. They advertise ice, propane and gasoline.

I wonder if they have any chocolate muffins.

~ Dr. P-J

​

Monday, May 3, 2021
We are completely out of the Fredericksburg house. We have established a base-camp in the guest bedroom of the home of our eldest daughter. Scooter and Javy are acclimating just fine.

We have been sorting and finalizing for our departure tomorrow. Today we bought the needed groceries and washed, prepped and packaged much of it. We are trying to set up to resupply at the end of one week and then come back to base camp to resupply at known grocers, etc. A week is a long time to go, even with two excellent ice chests. We'll see how it goes.

Tomorrow we will finish packing the food and locate all the items that go camping from all the places we've distributed them, since we got here Saturday.  The last three days have evaporated - a lot like the water I throw in the pan to see if it's hot enough to cook a pancake. Splat, sizzle, gone.

It's been a long time since I've worked this hard, at least physically. The logistics are very complicated but that's in my wheel house, so I'm not really stressing about anything. My body is complaining and I'm trying to be careful not to do more than I am capable of handling. I'M OLD! OMG! How did that happen?

The sun is beaming through the window. Roxanne is sitting nearby with various pets lounging around. Her BF is at work. Mike is making the rivers run backwards, I mean working for a living. NOTE: They have good WIFI here. That whole rural broadband issue is just an old wives' tale. (JUST KIDDING! Don't get yer drawers in a bunch!)

My main goal,
once we get settled
into our first real camp,
is to lay
on my pink chaise lounge
and do
absolutely nothing
for as long as I want.
​
I say:
​Set your goals high!