“The stars do not stop singing just because you stopped listening.”
~ The Story People
I like to move on Sunday mornings. I’ve found that often the “weekenders” pack up and go home by mid-morning, so if I can arrive at my new destination just before noon, I usually have lots of choices for a great spot. I’d intended to leave Navajo Mountain Sunday morning and head south, back into Arizona. My next destination is Tuba City, AZ, but the weather forecast was for a high of 95⁰. Monday the high would be 85⁰. The choice was clear, and I decided to stay an extra day.
Hurricane Hilary was heading up through Mexico and into California. I didn’t know the west coast got hurricanes. Many friends have written warning me to stay safe. I thought Hilary was far enough west to not affect me, but I kept an eye on the weather predictions just to be sure.
I had such a nice stay in Utah. Monument Valley was beautiful, and I love Navajo Mountain. It was a very nice break from jostling back and forth between the two National Forest spots in Flagstaff.
On Monday morning, I decided it was well past time to defrost my freezer. I had some frost buildup from condensation and apparently one of my tiny ice cube trays either leaked or had overturned. The freezer is the size of a shoebox to start with, but when it gets frosted over, or worse, filled with icicles and mounds of ice, it is nearly unusable. Since I was fairly depleted on food needing to be refrigerated, I knew this was the optimal time. I boiled water and put it in coffee cups and placed it in the freezer. While I waited for the ice to melt and watched the water drip down into the fridge, I took the opportunity to empty out my fridge and give it a good cleaning. Once the ice melted enough to be broken off and pulled out (I used a plastic spatula to get under it and pry it up) I took the ice, put it in my tiny cooler and placed in it the few things that still needed to be chilled. I wiped and dried the freezer with a washcloth and kept it open a crack so it could dry out on our drive down to Tuba City.
I headed south and stayed once again at Navajoland Hotel and RV park. I always ask for a tent spot off to the side. The tent spot offers no hookups, but with the site comes access to bathroom and showers, laundry facilities, ability to top off freshwater tanks before I leave and a pretty nice dog park. As soon as I arrived, I took a shower. The showers are huge, and the water is always hot with good pressure. When I finished, I put in a load of wash and took Cosmo to the dog park. He likes it because it has agility obstacles; there is a bar to jump over, a tube to go through, and several hoops to jump through. He learned these skills as a puppy and now whenever they are available, he loves to show off. If we are alone in the enclosure, he will do his tricks at my direction, but if there is another dog watching, he runs and jumps over and through on his own. He is a real show-off. We went back to the dog park a few times while we were there. At night, a huge thunderstorm blew in from the east. It rained much of the night, but light enough to not flood us out.
We left in the morning and headed further south to Coconino National Forest again. The drive took slightly under an hour and by my clock, I arrived before I left; I started in Navajo Time (They are on Daylight Saving Time) and ended up in Pacific Standard Time, so I arrived before I left. (You know how switching clocks drives me crazy.) We stayed north of Flagstaff at a place I’d stayed on the way to meet up with Kent. Last time, I got the perfect spot. I had high hopes of it being vacant, but no such luck. I drove farther down the road, and eventually found a suitable spot. As I settled in, I realized that there was zero cell or internet connection. I couldn’t do it. I drove back to the entry road and had a good signal. A camper that had been there when I arrived had gone and I pulled in. It was so sloped that there was no hope of getting even reasonably level. I tried for about half and hour and couldn’t get close, so I drove back out to the main highway, and came back in again. There were a few not-so-nice spots on the road in, but even they were taken. I was hungry and tired, so at the top of the road, I turned into a pullout. It was right on the road, so it wasn’t ideal, but it was level and it was available, so I took it.
The wind was picking up and it seemed that afternoon thunderstorms were eminent, so I was just glad to not have to keep driving and looking. I like this part of the forest, so I planned to stay at least that night and see if I could find a better spot in the morning.
I slept well. I had worried that being so close to the road would be noisy. In the afternoon, many trucks were coming and going. They are doing some sort of work down the road I’m parked on. Big trucks pass by carrying loads of gravel for the vaguely named “Forest Restoration Project.” Lots of white pickup trucks come by driving way too fast. It’s impossible to tell which ones are workmen’s trucks and which ones are just owned by campers. It seems everyone in northern Arizona owns a big white pickup truck. Anyway, by nightfall, things quieted down for the most part, and I slept well. In the morning I took a short walk around with Cosmo. To the south, the road I was on was closed off. Just before the gate was a big spot with a pull-behind camper. It had been here the last time I stayed, so I was hoping maybe he was getting bored with his spot and might be leaving soon. I think the reality is that he lives there. I saw him leave for a while during the day and return with a tank of propane. He went inside and then left again and didn’t return before I went to bed. His truck was there again in the morning. He mostly is gone all day and returns to sleep. I suspect he goes to work and then “comes back home” to his trailer in the forest. To the north, is the spot I stayed in last time. There is a run-down van and a tent there. The van is covered with a tarp. When I walked in the morning, I heard a woman singing and saw a young boy with curly hair and a German Shepherd. In between singing, I could hear the woman talking loudly to someone who didn’t seem to be there. By the looks of her, the boy, and the site, I suspected she was mentally ill and more than likely they were homeless and living in the van. I didn’t hold out much hope of them leaving before I did.
I went back to my van. I wanted a spot deeper in the woods, farther off the main road, but after some thought, I decided that my spot was not so bad. I had tall pines surrounding me on three sides. I was pulled about 6 feet off the road. I was level with good cell service and internet. On one of our walks, I checked down the road for open sites. There was nothing for at least half a mile, and after a quarter mile, cell service disappeared. I was in the only viable spot for the time being.
I got up Thursday and didn’t know how long I’d be able to stay parked on the side of the road. There was really no clearing behind me, so my door opened onto the forest with tall grass and trees. Cosmo had an upset stomach, so the previous night, he needed to go out and I had to pull on pants and walk through the rocks and tall wet grass. The trucks seemed louder than usual at 5;30 in the morning (probably because I was up twice with Cosmo during the night) and the way the van was parked, my view was every car, truck, camper, and gravel hauler that passed by. And there were many. I was looking to see how far it was back to Lake Mary or Ashurst Lake when I saw a beat-up van drive by. Was it the crazy woman? I got out and looked down the road. The spot appeared to be empty. You have never seen anyone pack up so quickly. I just locked my cupboard doors, threw my cacti into the back of the van, and pulled up enough to grab my leveling blocks and drove the couple hundred yards to the spot I had originally hoped for. I got in and leveled in minutes and Cosmo and I went out and played ball now that we had a dirt and gravel “back yard” to play in.
The woman and child turned out to be what I had expected. The site was littered with crushed cans and lots and lots of dog shit. I’m fine with Cosmo pooping in the woods and leaving it if we are off the path or where no one would likely be walking. To leave 10 piles in a campsite is just so nasty. I cursed her and her child as I moved the piles to the edge of the site, covered them with the sandy soil and then placed a rock over them. People like her are why we can’t have nice things.
I was still about 10 yards from the road, but that was much better than 6 feet. There were trees between me and the road, except where the “driveway” opened to the road. From my seat where I eat and use my laptop, I could see nothing but forest; behind me past the road was more forest and a mountain peak. I felt my shoulders relax and I let out a sigh. The trucks will still come past in the morning but they won’t be so close, and I’m not parked right at an intersection, so traffic may not be as bad.
Lessons From The Road: I’m ready to leave Flagstaff. The places I’ve stayed just have too much of a cowboy/redneck/militaristic vibe. I find it hard to put into words. The forest where I’m staying north of Flagstaff is “under construction.” They had a major forest fire last year, and I suspect that most of the trucks coming and going have something to do with that, although it could be something else and they are just using this forest road? Seems unlikely. Pickup trucks start tearing down the road where I’m parked at about 5:45. I’ve used the “Road Warrior” reference before to describe people here, and I can’t think of a better description. The workers are in huge, extended-cab, white pickup trucks (some marked by a bland logo/company name). Most have oversized tires and are somewhat jacked up. They speed past the section I’m in. It doesn’t feel like they are in a hurry as much as they are playing “monster truck” or something. They take the turn adjacent to my site at a ridiculous speed, fishtailing and kicking up gravel and rocks. It is some sort of game. Or maybe it’s to show off for their fellow workers, or perhaps it’s just to try to intimidate the various campers who are staying here? I don’t know. It feels disrespectful (of the land and those of us using it) at the very least, and almost threatening or terroristic at worst. I doubt I’ll ever know. Most of Flagstaff feels that way to me. I think the workers here are probably local. The campers all have Arizona license plates, but it is possible they’ve come from Phoenix or parts south to get out of the blistering heat. I recognize at least two of the campers from when I was here about 3 weeks ago. They are apparently living here for the summer. One is a makeshift camp with an old van and small tent, covered by and connected to each other with a ragged tarp. This part of the forest is a study in contrasts. If I look out my passenger side windows into the forest, it is idyllic. There is a forest, large rocks, and a variety of wildflowers.
Out the driver’s side is a gravel road, being torn up by construction workers, and during the day, the constant noise of big rigs hauling gravel. I’m ready to leave, but nowhere nearby has weather as pleasant. We are in the mid to upper 70’s during the day and low 60’s at night. There is a thunderstorm nearly every afternoon, cooling things off, bringing out the freshness of the forest and some flower that smells of orange blossom. I keep checking the weather in Prescott Valley and look forward to visiting Barbara and Lark. That could be very comfortable in the next couple of weeks, but after that I’ll want to head south, and Phoenix, Quartzsite and Ehrenberg won’t be inhabitable until at least mid-October, and probably not really until late October. Being nomadic is by and large dependent on weather, forest fires, and this year, floods With what we have done to this planet, I can only expect it to get worse before it gets better.
There is a big contrast between the landscape and the people. I chatted with a woman down the road when Cosmo and I took a walk. She was pleasant but in short order told me of the coming war in this country. She was vague, and I suspect feeling me out about my political affiliation (which I have none). Her way of talking gave hints of an extreme right-wing religious affiliation and she asked me at one point if I had enough supplies to survive for a month if I needed to. The conversation was a bit disturbing, and I made the mistake of watching snippets of the Republican debate on YouTube that night. I was horrified at the rhetoric, hatred, and sheer stupidity and dishonesty. I closed my laptop, and went outside and sat on a large rock, breathed in the scents of the forest, watched the crescent moon move westward overhead and did my best to convince myself that I didn’t live in that world of divisiveness anymore and that the forest was safe and nurturing even if some of the people in it were not.