May the four winds blow you safely home

Reached home about 8:30.  Work tomorrow, so I need some sleep and don't have time to write more after getting the essentials out of KD and into the house.  Will update when I can.  For now, I send out love and thanks to all the many friends who were right there when I needed them, who are teaching me how to be an RVer, showing me I can do things well out of my comfort zone, try new things, and most of all, to realize that life is worth living.

To all these dear friends, whether they are living in a house on wheels full time or part time, I send blessings.  May the four winds blow you home again.

The Shadow of Leaving

Right now we are at the Country Kitchen in Coachella for dinner.  We pulled out of the Slabs at 3:30.  There wasn't time to write more in the rush of leaving.  I will have to update later with at least some of the many things I want to tell you.  Here is the Country Kitchen at the TA. 

The Other Side of The Canal

I had wanted to visit East Jesus while I was here, but various dark mutterings by campers in our section of Area 10 had warned me away.  I should have just laced up my shoes and walked over there.  I am a Burner and a Black Rockan . . .I am not afraid of freaks who play with fire, why should I have been timid about meeting the freaks of East Jesus?

But somehow it never happened.  Until, that is, Wednesday.  One of our highly respected senior campers is Chili Bob.  He is known to give tours of the area to show people the interesting things in and around Slab City.  The other morning when I took him a cinnamon orange roll fresh out of KD's oven, we chatted a bit.  I asked him how far away the ordnance was that we were hearing, the weapons fire and enormous booms.  He said they were probably many miles away, and reminded me that sound travels fantastically far out here in the desert.  He asked if I'd ever been on the other side of the canal, and when I told him no, he said to come get him around 9 or 10 the next morning, and he would take us to see part of the military training facility that headquarters much of the activity taking place on the Chocolate Mountain Aerial Gunnery Range.

And so, Wednesday morning we loaded up for the tour.

First we went across the canal (where I'd never been), through the Slab City golf course, 18 holes amid the rocks and brush, each hole marked with a tall, brightly colored flag, and balls painted neon colors to help in spotting them in the dun landscape.  There were golfers out there, and keepers who take it upon themselves to do the work of keeping the course in good order.  Then we were onto the perimeter road which runs along the military controlled land.  I was surprised to see little in the way of fencing, but there were many signs posted all along the berm of the road warning of danger from unexploded ordnance and making it plain that entry was forbidden.  In other places there were rolls of razor wire and concrete barriers, big tires and earth berms that demarked smaller ranges used for handheld weapons practice.

This perimeter road was well maintained, and we rode along in Chili Bob's capable Suzuki Sidekick which skipped nimbly over the rocks and ruts.  At one point we left the main road to explore another loop, washy and drifted with loose sand and gravel, where it was more important to be careful to not get stuck.  Chili Bob told us stories about getting stuck out there, once in a big mound that rattle snakes had made in the middle of one little used road.  The car dropped to the frame, and he had to call Seann to pull him out.  He told us about the various roads, where some of them went, including one that we could see arrowing away ahead of us, straight up into the Chocolate Mountains. 

It was a perfect morning to be in the desert on the back roads.  Brilliant sun and the air with that sweet, clean desert scent, a boundless blue sky all around.  I was seized by the old desire to go further out, to see where the road led, to get far into the back country where there is nothing around but desert and mountains.  But this area is in some ways more remote than other desert places I've been accustom to go wheeling in, and it would be a good idea to go with an experienced desert rat who knew the country.  Chili Bob said he planned to go out with just such a person one of these days.  Maybe next year I'll make it a point to go on a real 4 wheeling expedition with someone who knows the area.

But today we contented ourselves with exploring a few loops of road that Chili Bob hadn't yet been on, until we found ourselves back on the main perimeter road that skirts the gunnery range.  From there we headed back toward the canal, and Bob showed us the old earthen canal which was replaced by a concrete lined channel when it was apparent the earthen one wasted too much water.  The old canal bed still has water in it, and is choked with salt cedar, an invasive species that was brought in because of its beautiful pale rosy flowers.  It fills the waterways and sucks up thousands of gallons of water, crowding out all the other native species and upsetting the natural biome of the desert.  It is being battled in Colorado with a beetle which has been introduced to take it out, and the insect is making its way down toward the Salton Sea and will eventually (so the thinking goes), be successful in finally controlling the pesky salt cedar.

We reached the entrance to the training base, and stopped to take pictures of the sign, which was rather forlornly stuck in the ground without much in the way of an eye to making a tidy entrance.

Around a corner we could see the gate and a collection of buildings that made up the special forces desert training complex.

There was a fearsome looking barrier that was closer to us than the gate shown above.



It's really not the sort of place you want to go knocking on the gate, so we took a couple of quick pictures from a safe distance and then hastily left.

Back along the canal we saw wildlife watering ponds that are supplied from the canal.  They are small ponds that get a continuous stream of water, keeping them fresh.  They are in place to give wildlife an alternative to getting into the canal and contaminating the water or drowning.  I wanted to get a picture of one, but we were moving along too fast for me to do that. 

There were hidden thickets of salt cedar and palo verde, with some kind of palm growing sporadically mixed in.  Little almost hidden pockets of greenery, some of which had been taken by people who had been living there for many years.

Then we headed back to Slab City, and Chili Bob asked us if we had been to East Jesus. We said no, so he swung in that direction.

Calling the Mojave Desert Phone Booth

After dinner on Monday night we sat around talking, and the subject of the Mojave Desert Phone Booth came up.  The Phone Booth was popularized by Godfrey Daniels (otherwise known as Deuce) back at the end of the 1990's, and you can read the whole fantastic story here.  It was an ordinary Pacific Bell phone booth with a working payphone in it, and was located out in the middle of the Cima Dome area of the Mojave Desert for many decades.  Before the modern payphone there was a crank operated telephone there.  It had been an important utility for the ranchers and mine workers who had no other means of making a call in that remote corner of the desert.  It was well off the paved road, and to reach it you needed a reliable four wheel drive vehicle and the willingness to leave the pavement.  My visit to the booth was my first 4WD adventure and my first time going into the back country.  From that moment I was hooked on four wheeling, back country adventures, and the Phone Booth itself.

I told my campmates about my visit to the Booth on Christmas Day of 1999, and how pissed off and disgusted I was (and still am) with the National Park Service (may they rot in  hell) for forcing the removal of the Booth not long after.  The Booth was destroyed after its removal, even though it was a cultural icon and an important communication resource for the local people who lived and worked in the area.  But then I remembered that some time back I'd programmed the number into my phone, and I'd done that because I'd read on Deuce's website that the number was once again active.

The phone company understandably did not make that number available for use again following the demise of the Booth, and they made statements to the effect that they never would.  But an intrepid Booth fan kept careful watch, and when the number was made available after all with a block of similar numbers, he snatched it up and set up a bridge number so that people who called it would be connected into a kind of conference call.

It wasn't the same as bringing the real Booth back.  It's hard to describe the experience of unity and mystical connectedness that happened when you found yourself standing in the surreal desert night, surrounded by thousands of Joshua trees, wild burros and creatures of the night moving in the darkness, and the impossibly thick splatter of stars arching overhead while you talked to some breathless Booth fan calling from Austria, or Poland, or New Zealand, thrilled to have finally had their call answered by a real Booth visitor, or a group of friends from England sitting around on Boxing Day who dialed the number on a whim, or a prison guard calling from a nearby state correctional facility, bored and lonely up in the guard tower as he kept the long watch of the night and only wanting to hear a friendly voice to pass the time.  Or friends who called to talk to you because they knew you'd be there, and had called earlier and left a message which had been taken down carefully by an earlier Booth visitor, who had left the folded message wedged into the coin slot for you to find when you got there.  On the surface it was a silly pop culture phenomenon, but in practice it was something more, a little glimpse into the better nature of humankind, its yearning to make contact across distance and find the perfect connection between stranger and stranger.  It was surreal and altogether wonderful.

Still, to take back that number and return it to something like what it once was, a vehicle for strangers to once again talk, not as anonymous identities on the Internet, but as real voices speaking on the line. . . .that is a commendable thing.  I had often thought of calling, but somehow I was waiting for the right moment.

This was the right moment.  And so I said, "As a matter of fact . . ." and I picked up my phone and pulled up the number from my contacts.  I dialed the number, and put it on speaker phone, and suddenly we were listening to a conversation about snapping turtles.  We kept the line muted on our end for awhile and listened.  Then I unmuted and butted in, introducing myself and asking how many other Booth fans were on the line.  It turned out there were four of them, one being Lucky, who was responsible for snatching the number back from oblivion and restoring it to some semblance of its original usefulness.  There was someone from Colorado whose name I didn't catch but who railed against the freezing weather where he was, and someone named Kyle, who told us he was just over the border in Mexico, boondocked in an RV, just as we were on our side of the border.  When we said we were in Slab City, he laughed and said he knew it very well and had spent a good deal of time here.  When we said two of our number had just been to Los Algodones to visit the pharmacy, he laughed again and said they might have seen him, a freak riding his bike around town.  It seems the serendipitous power of the Booth to dissolve distance continues. . . .

They seemed impressed to hear that I'd actually been to the physical Booth, and told me I was the first caller they'd had who had ever been there. This gave me an odd turn, as at the time of my Booth visit and for many years after (and still sometimes to this day if I'm being honest), I was living in a cloud of regret at having missed great moments of counter culture history.  It was that regret which had, in part, led me on quests and adventures to find the Unspoken Thing, the Nexus of the Cool, wherever (or whatever) it might be.  I had not yet completely absorbed the idea that all I had to do was keep my eyes open to the moment in which I found myself, that the cool things and moments that were meant for me would find me as long as I paid attention and gave them half a chance.  That my adventures of today would become a story that would one day impress someone else who might regret that they had not had a chance to experience some Cool Thing that they wish they could have seen.  But of course, they have their own adventures waiting for them, just as I have mine.  And it's hard to say how we will find our way to the Nexus of the Cool that is waiting for us.  Sometimes we stumble upon it in unexpected ways. 

It was a good conversation, and I was able to tell Lucky how much I approved of what he had done in snatching up that sacred phone number.  For awhile the distance seemed dissolved, and we were all talking around one great cosmic campfire, swapping tales and finding that, though strangers, our paths ran closer together than we might have guessed.

I'll call it again, I think.  When the time is right.  When I'm lonely or trapped in the hopeless beige of suburbia, far from the star filled desert night that is wild and mysterious and just a little scary, filled with Joshua trees and invisible desert creatures and ghosts of desperadoes and cowboys, and spirits that move, whispering, along wires that connect strangers.  Or that move along tiny radio waves that travel from tower to tower, making the loneliness and isolation a little less, and suggesting that in the desert, anything is possible.

Long live the Mojave Desert Phone Booth.  It lives on in the ether, it is a state of mind, it is finally safe where it can never be destroyed, as long as two strangers pick up any phone and dial the numbers . . . .

(760) 733-9969

 

Go on.  Call it.  You know you want to.

Calipatria

Monday was an interesting day.  My peeps left for Mexico in the morning, then neighbor Seann left for El Centro, then neighbor David left to go into town.  It was warm, and the morning lapsed into peaceful quiet, marked only by birdsong and the distant, sleepy drone of a generator running somewhere.  I had plans for the day.  I was going to town to do some shopping, and had promised I'd do a water and garbage run.  I had gotten up early and made coffee so I'd be ready to be civil to Biela when she came over for a shower before hitting the road.  I was dressed and the bedding was put away, the bed put back into couch mode.  Theoretically I should have been ready to leap up and start getting things done as soon as I hugged my campers goodbye for the day.

But a terrible sleepiness overtook me.  It was so quiet.  It was so peaceful.  I tried another cup of coffee, I tried to read for awhile, but in the end I gave up and flopped back down for a nap.  I set the alarm so I wouldn't sleep too many hours and gave up the struggle.

I awoke before the alarm went off, thirsty and hot.  I still felt logey and half-drugged with the soporific warmth and quiet, but I forced myself to get up and take a shower and prepare to go out.  It was later than I wanted by the time I finally got going, but at least I got going.

My first stop was the hardware store in Calipatria for a 12-volt socket and extension cord so I could stop begging recharge privileges from my campmates.  Calipatria is a tidy little town that always seems white and fresh to me after scruffy Niland and the dun colored desert and tan and green fields that flank Highway 111 for the 8 miles it takes to get there from Niland.

In the center of town is a clock tower with thermometer.  They also have a very tall flagpole.

The hardware store is Zendejas Hardware.

Zendejas is the go-to place for all kinds of stuff.  They are the closest and best hardware store for many miles.  It's a family run business, and there is always someone to help you and make sure you find what you need.  It's not a huge store, but it is well stocked and the service is excellent.

They have a garden section too, and have things like gravel and landscaping materials and pet supplies.  They even sell tropical fish!

Somehow we always end up making many trips to Zendejas when we are staying at the Slabs, for things like screws and wire and tools and dog biscuits for all the beloved Slab dogs.  They get Five Trees on the Mountain.

Right next door is the Fair Store.

I've been by there many times, and to use a turn of phrase from my Dad, "I've been layin' off to go in there."  I finally decided that I was going to check it out.

The Fair Store sells clothing, primarily clothes for work, hunting, outdoor sports like paintball, and uniforms.  They stock an astonishing number of uniforms, including California Department of Corrections apparel in use at the nearby Calipatria prison.  Those racks gave me the creeps, so I didn't take any pictures of them.  But they also have a lot of old stuff high up on the upper shelves that appear to be there just for interest.

A collection of guns and western memorabilia.

A few more weapons and a row of vintage and interesting bottles.

More fascinating stuff.

There was yet more to the collection, all of it dust free and carefully arranged, often with labels.  I was short on time, so I didn't give it the careful attention it probably deserved.  They had an old pinball machine which I was told didn't work, since mice had gotten to the wiring and it would be expensive to repair.  They were using it as a table.

There was  a good work boot section, including the classic Redwing work shoe.

Tons of jeans and tshirts, quite a lot of camo, and even some sport coats.  They sell B.D.U. fatigues and law enforcement uniforms, paint ball guns and supplies.  This is an interesting little store, a solid place for a working man to get the duds he needs to get the job done.

I told the lady who asked me if I needed anything that I was just stopping in to check things out after having passed by so many times.  She told me it is a family run store which has been in operation for sixty years!  Art and Lydia Valdez are the owners, and after so many years they are preparing to retire and turn things over to their son Steve.

It is an interesting place, worth a stop if you are in Calipatria and needing sturdy work or hunting clothes.   They have a lot of stuff in their little store, and very friendly service.  You can also check them out at www.fairstoreuniforms.com.

After Calipatria, it was on to the Two Rivers Rest Stop to drop off garbage.  Then on to Brawley to shop at the Vons for groceries and a few necessities not available elsewhere, and to check out the Family Dollar Store.   On the swing back by Two Rivers, I stopped again to get water.  The pump was running slow and it took forever to get the containers filled.  But it was peaceful and calm, with the sound of birds from the nearby waterfowl refuge calling in the last amber light of the sunset. 

I got back to camp after dark and steamed tamales for a quick dinner.  My peeps were back, having successfully gotten their prescriptions filled for far less than they would have paid at a U.S. pharmacy.

We sat around talking, and then we made an interesting phone call.

Cinnamon Rolls and Sleeping Through the War

The little oven that could got a triple workout today.  I had promised the campers cinnamon rolls this morning, and so I got up early and made them.

I didn't have a proper pan for them, so I had to improvise with what I had.  There's a Claim Jumper pie tin that has been coming very much in handy long after the original pie that came in it is just a memory.  It's been used heavily for everything from cinnamon rolls to shortbreads to quiche.  The remaining rolls went into my Dollar Tree 8 x 8 pan.

Nobody seemed like they were in the mood to fire up the charcoal grill this evening in order to cook the filet mignons we have waiting, and last night was mac n' cheese, or "KD" (for Kraft Dinner), as my kara amika from Canadia calls it.  We decided that we had to have KD in KD, so last night we did.  Kara Biela felt the need to put ketchup on hers, which in my opinion gives it a rather lurid traffic accident look.

In any event, we didn't want pasta two nights in a row, so I slammed together an Impossible Pie, one of those Bisquick inventions that is fast and satisfying, if not entirely healthy.  It came out beautifully.  We didn't have any green veggies, so I didn't quite make a passing grade on the healthy plate test.  I did the best I could with some carrots.

Check out the kicky napkins they brought me back from the bargain bin at Von's after a recent shopping trip in Brawley.  They fit the goofy, seventies vibe that sometimes seems to seep from KD's walls.

The Impossible Pie (made with bacon bits dating back to Burning Man 2011) came out great, but I had a couple of bad moments when the too-full pie tin slopped over and began burning on the hot oven surface, and then I realized I'd forgotten that all-important top garnish of cheese and tried to pull the rack out to correct that, nearly spilling the whole works entirely.  Then I couldn't get the rack back in.  It was a moment when the happy-housewife veneer was definitely cracking, and I didn't have any valium to complete the motif.  Instead I reminded myself to Remain Calm and Carry On, and in the end the little bit of smoke from burning cheese and egg concoction was whisked away by KD's efficient vent fan (powered by her awesome batteries that were in turn charged up by the sun!), and the final product was perfect.

Finally, I'd also suggested strawberry shortcake as a way to deal with the big container of strawberries bought a few days ago in El Centro.  Once again the pie tin came to the rescue, and the oven turned out perfect shortbreads to be served still warm with fresh strawberries and whipped cream.  My only picture sucks, and fellow bloggist Biela has promised to send me the picture she took of her portion before she demolished it, so I'll hopefully I'll be able to update that soon.

In other, non-food news, the nearby Chocolate Mountain Aerial Gunnery Range is just across the Coachella Canal from us, and for the first time we are experiencing it in an active phase.

 

Since the holidays are over, this is a regular work week for the Navy and Marines who use it to train.  A couple of days ago it sounded like a heavy fire fight was going on, until lunch time when everything stopped.  This morning there were some real rip-snorters, detonations that shook the trailer and made the unwary jump.  Enormous, ripping booms that rippled out over the desert.  It is exciting and scary at the same time.  Slabbers are used to this sort of thing, but I can say that I've never been so close to so much explosive force and flying hot lead as these last few days.  Let me emphasize here that the range is literally  just across the canal (which is just on the other side of the road from us).  We are only yards away from the boundary, although what we were hearing was probably considerably further off.  I am told that some Navy SEAL training takes place here.  Listening to the long, furious firing of automatic weapons allowed to gallop at full tilt, presumably running some battle scenario that the senior warriors reasonably expect they might encounter some day, is deeply sobering.  Train on, men.  We silly campers are depending on you to guard us and keep us.

This activity starts early in the morning, so that as I am sleepily opening my eyes to the first warm, rosy light of the new sun coming in through the curtains, I know that the soldiers practicing their craft have been up before light and are well into their work day.  That's when I usually put a pillow over my head and roll back to sleep.

Tonight I continue to hear jets overhead and off in the distance, some kind of firing intermittently continues in the dark.

The final note of the night was an exciting fun-with-propane moment.  I was doing the last batch of dishes for the night.  Cooking creates dishes, and so I've been spending a lot of time at the sink.  I can feel Kenny's disapproving spirit peering over my shoulder, shaking his head and muttering that I should be using all paper plates and pans from the Dollar Tree which can be thrown out when too dirty to wipe clean with a paper towel.  That was part of his tutelage last year, when he patiently explained to me what I was doing wrong by being up to my elbows in dish water so much of the time.  But no matter, he did not fully understand that doing dishes is part of playing house, that it soothes me to once again be doing little domestic tasks in my own home, even if it is on wheels at the moment.

Tonight, however, I noticed that the rinse water was lukewarm.  That was odd, since the hot water is hot enough to scald, usually.  And then, as it grew progressively colder, I realized that the problem was what I had been half expecting for the last few days.  We had finally run through the tank of propane.  Good thing I got the guys who were out here delivering a few days ago to refill the other tank.  Ordinarily I would have left it to deal with in the morning, but my campers are going to make a trip to Mexico to the pharmacy in Algodones where many snow birds get their prescriptions filled.  It is a place to get prescription drugs at far below the regular cost here in the states.  I don't have my passport together, so I can't go with them, but Biela will want a hot shower before she hits the road.  They will try for an early start, and nobody is going to be in the mood to fool with changing propane tanks in the predawn darkness and cold.

So I fetched my campers back from their rig before they had quite gone to bed, and we changed tanks with only a little minor difficulty, and proceeded to relight the water heater.  Having done it once already, I was feeing confident enough to dispense with the part of the instructions that direct you to turn everything off and wait five minutes to let the accumulated gas dissipate in the burn chamber.  Since I had clearly run out of propane, I reasoned there would be no more gas left, so didn't see the need to wait that pesky five minutes.  We relit the pilot light, then turned the control to the full on position.  The burner lit with a WHOOMP and a BANG, and a jet of flame shot out of the back of the burn chamber six inches and straight at my midsection.

JEEZUS! I yelled, leaping back.  Biela nearly convulsed herself, she laughed so hard.  I guess I'll  wait that five minutes next time.

Easy Bake Oven

The Easy Bake Oven was an iconic toy that had its heyday about the time I was a kid of the proper age to have one (there is an updated version you can still buy your little girl today, but they are styled with neon colors and goofy curves, more like a fashion accessory than an oven).  I never did get one, though it wasn't something I particularly wanted.  One of my friends had one, and she fired it up one time when I was at her house.  It was powered by a light bulb.  There were special little mixes you had to use, and tiny pans . . . the resulting cake was small and unremarkable.  It was gone in two bites and tasted meh.  I remember thinking the whole thing was a pretty cheesy outfit. 

But the idea of it . . .the cultural meme of it . . .somehow it worked its way into my consciousness so that years later I yearned for what it represented.  Perfect domestic competence, smiling, sunny neighborhoods full of well-adjusted people and perfect lawns, happy wives who lived to cook for their families, the distillation of the whole American love affair with consumer goods.  The actual thing was a crappy toy.  The idea of the thing was a shining metaphor for an idealized life that never was.

I often joke that it was my unrealized longing for an Easy Bake Oven that fuels my love affair with camping stoves and ovens.  But it isn't an unrealized desire for a toy that makes me swoop, magpie like toward, say, the Camp Chef Outdoor Oven.

It is an echo of that seductive promise of utopia that was stealthily inserted into all those Saturday morning TV advertisements.  In the end it didn't matter that the reality was a pallid joke compared to the exciting promise of the ads that ran between cartoons.  The essential message had found a home in my imagination and would always be there, waiting to come out at just the right moment.

And so, I look at KD's little oven, and my heart melts.  Her kitchen is my play kitchen.  I feel like I am about 8 years old, playing with pots and pans and wooden spoons filched from my mother's real kitchen.  I am seized with the desire to cook colorful meals that look like the illustrations that were in my sixth grade health textbook.  And then there is the fact that I had an oven which I liked very much and cooked many meals in and on, but it is gone, irretrievably gone.  Having another oven of my very own, that is important in a  way I can't fully articulate here.

The first meal of ramen in the parking lot of the Walmart has been followed by many other firsts.  First coffee, first pancakes (Kodiak Cakes Flapjack and Waffle Mix  http://www.kodiakcakes.com/, they are absolutely wonderful, and healthy too.  Cook up beautifully, and mix up just with water.  Beats other pancake mixes all to hell).

Friend Soup Bone, who put a lot of himself into KD when he kept her for me for the year before I was able to pick her up, more or less forbade me to cook bacon in her.  He said it would make the trailer smell.  Well hah!  I have cooked bacon!  I didn’t think to get any pictures of the historic moment, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.  I can report that the venting fan ran and did a great job, and I carefully cleaned up all the grease.  As far as I can tell, there’s no bacon smell now.  Although, frankly, I fall into that group of people who might actually consider a bacon-scented air freshener.  Bacon gives life.

But one of the most important firsts was the lighting of the oven.  I was more than a little nervous about this, probably because of an incident I read about in Wyoming Wife, by Rodello Hunter.  The book is long out of print, though it can still be found through second hand book dealers.   It tells the story of a New York writer who marries a Wyoming outdoorsman  and goes to live with him in that state.  They have a travel trailer, and they take it out so her husband can go hunting.  Presumably she waits for him back at the trailer while he is out hunting.  You don't get the impression she likes that trailer very much.  She talks about how difficult it is to make the bed, and darkly mentions an episode when the oven "blew up" as she tried to light it.

Wyoming Wife is one of my favorite books.  I guess the anecdote about the trailer oven stayed with me as much as those Easy Bake ads did, because when it came time to light KD's oven, I was pretty nervous.  There were no instructions, although there were plenty of old RVers here at the Slabs who could help me.  But I kept putting it off (kinda like the water heater, but worse), until my campers came to join me.  Then Biela came over to help me figure out how to light it.  We did some web searches for instructions and found one or two helpful tips, but in the end we had to just stick our heads in that little oven and figure it out.

The oven has probably been used some in it's life, but not very much. 

Time has left its mark, but only in the form of some corrosion from moisture.  The inside looked mostly untouched.  There were a couple of mouse turds, some powdery dirt and tufts of insulation that look like they had been pulled from the opening at the back that provides ventilation.  I used a spatula to reach in there and clean that stuff out as best I could and wiped it with a paper towel, but I couldn't get it all and Biela said to just let it burn off.

The dial has a setting for Pilot Off, Oven Off, and then the progressive temperature settings you'd expect.  There's no Pilot On setting, so Biela just cranked it up to the first oven setting and told me to jam a match in there.  We'd located what looked like the only possible location for the pilot light.  And so, saying a little prayer for the repose of my soul (and KD's, and Biela's, and Baby Bear's), I cringingly applied the Aim N' Flame.  And instantly the pilot light gently lit.  No fiery death scenes, not even a scary whump!  Once the pilot was lit, we turned up the knob and waited a bit, and the burner slowly, almost ponderously, lit in a rippling progression from front to back. 

I slammed the door shut and still wondering if it would burn down the trailer, reached for the Jiffy corn muffin mix.  At the Dollar Tree I'd picked up a muffin tin and also a plain 8 x 8 cake pan.  I opted for the simpler approach and used the cake pan for cornbread to go with the black eyed peas I'd made for luck in the new year. 

The only way we could tell that the oven had reached the proper temperature was when the main oven burner went out.  It seemed to take a long time, but that was probably only because I was being such a worry-wart.  There was the smell of old dust and junk heating up, like the smell of the furnace when you light it on the first cold day in the Fall after it has lain idle all summer.  It wasn't pleasant, but I turned on the vent fan and opened the door.  Biela said there was nothing for it but to let it cook off.

And then, wonder of wonders!  I opened the door to check the burner, and it had turned off.  KD's oven had reached it's set temp, which meant everything was still working right.  I hastily slid in a pan of cornbread batter, and we set a timer.  Once again, a simple, cheap, homey pantry mainstay seemed like the way to go for the inaugural cooking event, which is why I picked the Jiffy mix.  It wasn't long before KD began to smell like fresh, warm cornbread instead of baking mouse turds.  I checked it when the timer went off and while it wasn't as browned on top as I like, it was obviously done and I didn't want to burn the bottom.  Because it is such a little oven, the rack is pretty close to the burner and there can be a tendency for the bottom to get done quicker than the top.

But it was a success!  I pulled out the pan and let it cool a bit, and then cut it into pieces to serve with dinner.

Something really baked in my real little oven.  I was amazed and delighted.  My Christmas morning toy was not a cheesy outfit but a real, working item.

From there the possibilities were endless.  After cooking three of our six chicken quarters in the pressure cooker for Little Christmas, there was the issue of what to do with the remaining three

we still had in the cooler.  These were from the batch delivered to us by our neighbor who didn’t have freezer room for us.  Mia kara Biela suggested Shake ‘N Bake and cooking them in KD’s oven.  I was a little dubious about this, but we couldn’t think of anything better.  I wasn’t in the mood to fry them, so I went along with her idea, and I'm glad it did because it turned out awesome!  The chicken was good, but more satisfying was how well the oven performed.  A few days ago there was a discussion around the evening camp fire about how RV ovens tend to burn everything.  But KD’s oven does not seem to have that problem.  Because it is small and the rack is necessarily close to the bottom of the oven (and thus the flame), you have to take some care to watch the bottom of things like cakes and quick breads, etc., but raising the pan up on an inverted pie pan seems to do the trick.

I set the oven for 400 and it came up to temp.  I didn’t have a good baking pan that would fit all three leg quarters, so I decided to do them in my trusty cast iron skillet.  I have a collection of these and use them regularly, but the one I find most useful for camping trips is the 8-inch.  It is small enough to fit well on the burner and still is large enough for most cooking I do (usually for about three people).  The chicken fit perfectly in this pan.  We shook them up in the bag with the coating and popped them into the pan, then into the oven.  Biela asked Siri to set a timer for 45 minutes, and then I crossed my fingers.

Pretty soon we could hear them sizzling, and then we could smell them cooking.  Right on time, we took them out of the oven, and they were beautiful. I even got my plates to look like the pictures in the health book.

This was followed a couple of days later with baked butterfly pork chops (we Shake N' Baked those too.)  They were awesome.  Tender and juicy, and they came out of the pan (once again my cast iron skillet) with no sticking and no mess.

The plan for tomorrow morning is to make cinnamon rolls, and later, strawberry shortcakes.  There have been a few broad hints from certain parties about pizza.  I'll keep you posted. 

Quick Update

I updated the Little Christmas post with a couple more pictures, so check that post again to see hand-painted ornaments from a friend at work.

Went back to the Buckshot with most of the rest of the folks camped in our compound for a group dinner tonight.  Everyone had the special, which was fish and chips with coleslaw.  It rocked.  So I can report that our first meal there was not a one hit wonder.  They serve reliably good food.

It was a quiet day.  I'm still not over the cold I've been battling.  Today I felt very sleepy for some reason, so I took a brief nap in the middle of the drowsy afternoon, while my campmates went to town to do laundry.  Here's a picture of the sunset from the evening of the 4th.  Sunsets out here can be spectacular.  My camera can't always capture the full glory, but this gives you a hint.

Laptop is nearly at the end of its battery power, so this must be brief.  I'll charge up tomorrow (with the power of the sun!), and should have a longer post or two tomorrow.

Propane Delivery

In spite of what I may have said earlier about having to bring all your utilities with you to Slab City, in fact some came to us yesterday.  We got the word the propane truck was coming, and neighbor Seann gave us a sign to post up in the window to let the driver know we wanted a delivery.  He arrived late morning, but it wasn’t until mid-afternoon that he finally got to us.  The Loners On Wheels club (LOWs) were having a big gathering/rally, and so there are a lot of folks at the Slabs right now.  It took him a few hours to work his way through all the folks who wanted propane.  Price was $3.40 a gallon, which was about thirty cents more than what we could have gotten it for if we’d taken our tanks the four miles to Niland and filled up at the Buckshot (which in addition to serving awesome food, also sells propane.  Go figure, it’s a very small town).  But it was probably worth the small savings in order to not have to make the trek into town with the tanks.

We got all our tanks topped up except the one tank I’ve been running on KD.  I would rather not go home with two full tanks (due to tongue weight concerns), so I will run down the one I’m using now (which was full when we put it on at the start of this trip), and if necessary will use the other one just filled today.   The one I had filled was one that came with KD when I bought her.  I may have trouble filling it at other places, since it is past the date when by law it must be pressure tested before being refilled.  I was just going to ditch it, but it is still a perfectly sound tank, so if I can get one more use out of it, I will.  The other one that had come with KD had the old-style valve on it, and so could not legally be filled.  I had a full tank from other camping trips, which had never been used, though it has been carted around on several trips as a backup supply.  It has finally met its destiny, supplying the stove and water heater in KD.  But I was concerned we might use it up to run the water heater, and I didn't want to run out mid-shower, so I wanted the older tank filled too, if possible.

When the truck finally reached our compound, we waved it over to us.

Biela's rig got its built in tank filled first.  The rest of our collection lined up and waiting.

My tank took 4.5 gallons and the driver rounded the cost to $15.  Propane deliveries were once a regular part of my life.  I quietly thought it sort of symbolic to once again see the familiar, lumbering propane truck heading over to provide my home with this needed commodity. 

After that business was concluded, I did a huge mountain of dishes which I'd allowed to collect.  Most of them were from Little Christmas dinner.  That took a fair bit of water.  I have the three bucket method, taught to me by a dear brother years ago as practiced at the Rainbow Gathering, down pat.  But I'm still refining the best way to do dishes in KD, and I haven't quite got it perfected.  I always feel daggers of guilt when I rinse the dishes under running water, feeling like I'm wasting it.  It's not really an issue here, given the amount of water we have in the drum tank and our ability to replenish it.  But years of dry camping have conditioned me to be miserly with water even when there isn't such a need to be.  And there's no doubt that last huge load of dishes put a dent in the supply.  We had done a water run the previous evening, so we had the water to top up the tank.  It was just a matter of transferring from our 6 and 7 gallon containers to the main tank.  Today I decided to try a syphon hose I brought along.  It worked beautifully.

It slowed things down slightly because it takes longer for the water to flow through the hose than it does to dump it directly out of the container mouth, but it meant that we didn't have to lift the containers off of Goose's tailgate.  We could just run the syphon to the barrel.  It's a tube called a shake syphon.  I bought this one years ago a county fair.  You can now get them on the Internet.  You shake the end up and down in the water and a marble alternately lets a column of water in to the hose until a syphon is started.  Works great, no sucking on the end of the hose required.

Soon the barrel was topped up and ready for another round of showers and dish washing.

Little Christmas

The plan was to spend Christmas in Slab City again for 2013, since it is a place that has given me much consolation at a time that is especially hard to cope with following trauma and loss--the holidays.  But problems with getting batteries mounted meant that I didn't make it here until the 27th, and my Campin' Fun Buddies had their own delays which put them even further behind.  We were both sad to miss Christmas together at The Slabs.  I had packed and loaded all the Christmas decorations, a tree, lights, wrapping paper, ribbon and other accoutrements of the season before it was obvious that I wasn't going to make it in time to celebrate the day with the rest of the folks in our compound in Area 10.  I didn't want to unload it.  So I told my camp mates that we would make our own Christmas after they arrived.

It turns out there is even an official day for this.  That day is today, the 6th of January, which is the Feast of The Epiphany or the twelfth day of Christmas.  This is the day that tradition says the Magi arrived to give gifts to the infant Jesus.  It is apparently also sometimes called "Little Christmas," a term which I had never heard of until now, though I had heard of Epiphany.

And so, we made plans to have our Little Christmas celebration on January 6th.  Yesterday we went to El Centro to do some shopping and found an interesting 99 cent store.  It wasn't until we got to the register that I figured out that really everything is priced at four decimal places instead of 2, so that a 99 cent item is really only 1/10th of a cent less than a dollar, and when they ring you up, they charge you that tenth of a cent anyway, so you end up spending a dollar.  So it's just another dollar store, but with the tricky psychological ploy that makes you focus on that fraction of a penny you think you are saving.  I think you'd have to spend a hundred bucks there to save that one cent.

On the other hand, they have things in there for less than a dollar, unlike the Dollar Tree, and they had a lot of name brand items and a striking variety of foods, including fresh produce and a dairy and frozen foods section.  With careful shopping, you actually could get good value there, especially if you only need or want small sizes of things, like if you are in an RV with limited storage space.  My BFF camp mate loves a bargain and turns unerringly into any dollar store she sees.  This one was next door to another store we were shopping at, so we went in there to do some "Little Christmas" shopping.  That's become another tradition with us:  most of the gifts we give each other come from the dollar store.

At the Slabs, where a lot of people are on fixed and/or severely limited income (or no income), the dollar store is a shopping hub.  Even people who can afford to shop at the better stores spend time at the dollar store.  At the campfire each night people tell each other about what good bargains they've found there.  This is good information, since you can sometimes find out that a certain sketchy-looking brand of canned strawberries, for example, are really very good.  Or you can learn they have the boxed, shelf-stable 2% milk, which is almost impossible to find anywhere else and which is very useful here in off-grid land where not everybody has refrigeration.

Dollar stores down here appear to be better stocked than the ones at home.  It's probably because people depend on them so much more and so the bigger customer base supports and demands the better selection.

We did our Little Christmas Eve shopping, then headed home to begin preparations.

I have to say, this has probably been the most efficient, stress-free, orderly, and in some ways satisfying Christmas I've ever had, Little or otherwise.  In the space of about an hour and a half, I'd cleaned up the house (trailer), put up the tree and the decorations, wrapped presents, set the table, and cooked Christmas dinner.

Here is the tree and (somewhat abbreviated) "Christmas Village," all lit up and ready for a special and festive evening.

A lighted tree and lighted house with it's own little forest of trees, rabbits in the pines and deer grazing in the snow, presents piled up around.  It sets on top of something Shasta described in their sales brochure as a "built-in dresser," which always cracks me up.  KD had the optional furnace installed, which takes up all but the top drawer of the "dresser".  But it provides more table space and serves as a kind of end table for the couch, and it makes the perfect place to set up the tree.  There is a mirror mounted on the wall behind, which is why it looks like there are two trees.  All the lights are LEDs powered by batteries.

Here is our table, set with cheery red dishes (bought just for KD), in which the salad is served. 



Dinner was chicken quarters brought to us today by a campmate who got more than he could use himself at the commodities giveaway in town.  This food distribution helps folks who have a hard time putting food on the table, which includes a lot of Slabbers.  But without a freezer, fresh meat like chicken has to be cooked fast, so it is usually shared out with neighbors and friends.  I browned them in olive oil in the pressure cooker, then cooked them under pressure for 7 minutes in stock and some Pinot Grigio donated by another camper who left it along with a magnum of Shiraz as a parting gift before leaving the Slabs.  It was savory and good, with baby carrots, tender red potatoes, and onion.

Dessert was peppermint ambrosia made with canned pineapple, coconut, Cool Whip and peppermint marshmallows, and a no-bake creamy dessert cake with chocolate cookie crumb crust, both made by my BFF camp mate.  We served it on some snappy red gingham paper plates picked up at, you guessed it, the Dollar Tree!  KD says she is on a mission to find out just how many versions of red plaid she can fit insider herself (check picture of my bed in a previous post).  There was freshly made fudge too, but we were too stuffed to eat it.

It was a good Christmas, little or big, early or late.  I'm grateful for my many blessings.  Things in KD are writ small, but less is more, as I'm still engaged in learning, and it is still possible to have a very merry yuletide season even after the official day, and even after seeming misfortune takes away the skeleton on which I once tried to hang my ideal Christmas.  It's all a state of mind, anyway.  Here's another view of the tree display.

And here are hand-painted ornaments given to me by a friend at work, who crafted them herself.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a goodnight!

Fire on The Mountain

Last Friday as we were wiring up the solar panel and installing the charge controller, we noticed a column of dark smoke making it's way up into the blue sky from some ways away.



 "Somebody's rig's on fire!" someone said.  It was a fifth-wheel trailer parked up on a low hill, and as we watched flames erupted from the roof.  There was a scurry of activity, looking like an attempt to save what they could, but in a frighteningly short time, the thing was fully involved and it was clear there was no hope of saving it.  My campmate got a better shot, which you can see at her blog at http://www.blsbdv.blogspot.com/2014/01/a-sombre-reminder.html.  (You can tell she's Canadian by the way she spells sombre).  The fire department eventually arrived and made a rather leisurely and desultory effort at putting it out, but before that happened there were some pretty spectacular detonations as propane tanks and possible tires went off.

We heard various stories, some suggesting that the person using the trailer had only a couple of weeks ago lost two other trailers to fire.  Nobody seems sure what really happened, but Slab City has a dark side, and it is an accepted fact that one way of dealing with unwanted neighbors is to burn them out.  We will probably never know what happened here, but it is a reminder to be extra cautious about fire in an RV, especially an old wood framed trailer like, gulp, KD.

Saturday's hazy sun started to put back into the bank what running the pump and lights had taken out (in the form of power in the batteries), but Sunday was a much brighter, clearer day, and well before sundown the batteries had reached "float".  They were fully charged, and all from one 85-watt solar panel!  The full-strength sun made all the difference. I no longer have to worry about turning on a light at night, running the fan to suck out the cooking fumes, or taking long showers and running the pump.  The marvelous, wonderful sun will make more energy for me in an endlessly renewable cycle.  Never before have I understood how wonderful solar energy can be.  In a place where there is nowhere to plug your phone in unless you have a battery or a good and helpful friend with charging capability, and no way to run the systems you need to live comfortably in a little house on wheels without a way to charge the batteries, the ability to take the gift of nature and turn it into power is meaningful on a much more personal level.  It's true that we care most about what affects us directly.  To paraphrase my campmate, now I've become a solar junkie.

Kadydid is alive in a way she has not been for perhaps a long time.  Her new water heater makes and maintains hot water, plenty for me to use whenever I need.  The electricity flowing through her wires gives me light and powers the fan that ventilates and the pump that gives running water.  Her plumbing hums with water and her drains work well.  Her freshwater tank is filled and her auxiliary water take up line gives me access to a much, much larger tank than KD could carry herself. 

It's a good thing.

The Buckshot

Since nobody was feeling like cooking last night, we decided to check out the Buckshot in Niland.  Niland is a scruffy desert town about 4 miles from Slab City (though it feels somehow closer).

The Buckshot Deli and Diner building was a Chinese restaurant for awhile, and now it is the sort of well worn, decidedly down-at-heel place that fits in with decidedly down-at-heel Niland.  The building itself is sound, but it has an air of gentle dilapidation.  The concrete under the roof overhang is worn, pitted and cracked with the years.  Parking out front is on course gravel.

The blaze-orange vinyl booths inside are patched with tape, or just holed with chunks of foam coming out.  Yet it has a welcoming air anyway.

The staff match the décor, seamed and weather beaten, but pleasant and likeable as a kindly desert morning.  The patrons appeared to be a mix of locals and hunters who are in the area for dove season.  The specials were barbequed ribs, and chicken soup with wild rice and cornbread.

One of us ordered a bowl of the soup with cornbread, another the ribs, and I decided on chicken fried steak with potatoes, soup and cornbread.  I knew there was no way I would be able to do it justice, since the virus we've all had was doing a number on my appetite on top of the usual effect the Slabs has on me of making me not want to eat much.  I probably should have ordered just the soup, but this way I can report to you that behind that funky old roadhouse exterior the Buckshot puts out food almost too good to be true. 

That chicken soup . . .it was pale gold, thick and creamy without being cloying, filled with chunks of vegetables and tender chicken that was not at all like the tasteless hunks of Styrofoam you usually get in soup.  White and wild rice, just enough to add body without turning it into porridge . . .the stuff was like ambrosia.  There was a mix up with the order and somehow I ended up with the full bowl that was supposed to go to my campmate instead of the cup that came with my meal, so they brought him another whole bowl with replacement cornbread and we were swimming in the stuff.

The recipient of the ribs stripped them to the bone, cleaned her plate and pronounced them "really, really good."  My chicken fried steak was tender and flavorful on the inside, crispy on the outside and covered in country gravy that tasted like it had actually been made instead of being poured out of a number ten can from a restaurant supply company.  Mashed potatoes that must have been real and not reconstituted, huge squares of dense, moist cornbread with just a hint of sweetness, and a little dish of mixed vegetables that I ate every bite of, they were that good. . .I only wish I could have eaten more of all of it.

They brought some to go containers and I took everything I couldn't eat home.  Today, feeling like crap, I heated the soup up on KD's stove and had it for lunch.  It was just as great reheated, and had awesome restorative powers.  I added a liberal amount of pepper to try and open up my stuffy nose. 

The menu, covering breakfast, lunch and dinner, isn't hugely expansive and is wholly anchored in the land of solid, unapologetically American cuisine, but what we had seems to prove the point that hole in the wall joints can sometimes be the best, or perhaps that every once in a while in the strangest of places you can get served a damn good meal.

Every day they do a drawing from the day's receipts (they ask you to put your name and number on the receipt).  Whoever gets drawn receives a free meal at the Buckshot.  Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

The Buckshot gets the coveted and prestigious Mountain Kimmie Five Trees On The Mountain Award.  If you are passing through Niland, give them a try.  Find them right on Route 111, running straight through town.   Just remember that the kitchen closes promptly at 7:45pm.  This isn't the big city.