Sunlight is pouring into the camper through the big window over my bed. When I got up an hour ago it wasn’t. My new thermometer read 50 degrees when I went to bed at 10:20 and 44 when I got up at 7:00. I bought the thermometer yesterday so this is the first time I’ve actually known the temp. Temperature in Quartzite is on the internet but it’s several hundred feet lower in the valley and who knows how much warmer this time of year. My hands are cold; cold computer, cold countertop so this is moving along at a snail’s pace with timeouts to warm my hands. Greenhouse effect isn’t a bad thing in here. Since I started writing the big red needle has moved up 4 degrees. When I get back from the morning class it will be in the 80’s inside and I’ll have to open everything up.
This is more about me than the camping but here and now you can’t separate the two. Keeping track of every little thing is critical because everything you have with you is necessary. Before I left the freezing midwest I knew I had to have a spare key for the truck. I found a good, safe place to hide it even if it’s a little tedious to access. Yesterday after class, reaching for my keys and looking in the window I saw them on the seat with the door securely locked. Thank you, thank you, thank you; whomever! Keys for my security cables/locks are in a small, plastic box on the floor of the cab. Before I can fuel or move the generator I have to unlock the truck, get the key, unlock the cable and return the key. If the key isn’t in my hand it goes back in the box on the floor of the cab. I need to get spare keys made for those cable locks but haven’t been in a place where they can do that yet: maybe soon.
Toilet protocol in the desert can be simple or complex. In the dark, you can get away with ‘Bear-in-the-woods’ etiquette but with so many people and rigs (rigs; new buzz word, even it it’s just the back seat of your 1990 Ford Fairlane) you don’t want to subject them to your poop & pee shenanigans. It’s perfectly normal and we all have to go but not in plain sight. A bushy Palo Verde tree down in a dry wash is enough cover, maybe. A bucket you can take inside the camper is common. It can be transferred and scattered in a dry wash without any fanfare. In the dark, a shovel is another strategy. I have a 5 gal. bucket with sealing lid; add to that a double trash bag and a good supply of kitty litter and it all fits neatly under the camper. You bring it inside to do business and seal it away until you go to town. I put other trash on top of the well kitty-littered, nitrogenous waste and leave it in the big trash barrel at the gas pump. ‘Van Dwellers’, a name most of my current cohorts identify with admit they stretch rules as far as conscience allows. As necessity requires, the conscience becomes more forgiving. But they know beyond any reservation, you always, always leave your campsite clean, hoping the guy who dumps barrels at Love’s Truck Stop never knows the difference.
In the past half hour the temp inside has gone up to 65 and my fingers are at 98.6 again. I have some flea market browsing on tap after class and I’ll refill my generator gas cans. Well into the 2nd week of the rendezvous, everyone seems to be planning their next destination. Some are headed for the Texas coast and some are headed down to Baja. I’m going to see Grand Canyon in winter. I won’t camp there as I can get up and down in one day. I have an old, high school class mate in Cottonwood, AZ and maybe I’ll stop at his place before I head to . . .
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