From there I headed for the megamart in Del Rio, Tx., for the night and then headed east towards Ocean City.  I had lots of hopes, but knew it’s all about the weather.  There’s a lot of Texas to drive through from Big Bend N.P. in the central southern most tip to the northeastern corner at Lake Sabine near where I’ll enter central western Louisiana and pass through Mississippi and Alabama, then cross into western North Carolina.  My path will only go through rural country with lots of small towns.  I’ll feel at home, hopefully I’ll get some good home cooking in the diners and maybe find some rusty gold as the American Pickers do on TV.  I’ll be passing through the Smokey Mountains entering them just east of Cleveland, Tn., with the hopes of enjoying several days on Ocracoke Island at the south end of North Carolina’s Outer Banks.

Little did I know that as I climbed into my truck cock pit at the end of my lizard trek, that Mother Nature was not going to cooperate with me again during this trip!  The highlites became finding a homemade coconut pie in San Augustine, Tx., at a big yard sale around the county court house and eating a smidgen of it to kick off each day til I got back to O.C., changing my own oil in megamart’s parking lot in Natchitoches La., and eating very good Tamale Pie at the Ajax Diner in the Court House Square section of Oxford, Alabama.  Changing the oil was personally rewarding since I couldn’t find a garage that my truck with a camper on would fit into, and the workers would not crawl under my truck to do it.  I did that, though and lucky I could get the oil filter and the oil pan drain screw to turn!

I’ve made these meanderings to the warm parts of our country for the last eighteen years and I’m ready to begin #X1X.  I’ve been many places and know where the good eats are.  I can rarely eat all I’m served, so the leftovers go into my nest’s freezer to be enjoyed in some remote place I’ll be later.  The last of these was mashed potatoes I made complimented by Yakisoba and Gyoza from the Noodle Bar in Key West - delicious!

What’re my plans for my Adventure XIX?  Of course more of the same; be warm when it’s snowing and the hawk from the north is howling in Ocean City.  What will be different?  I always like to include a major new place, sometimes it works and sometimes not.  Last Adventure I included Arnoldland’s (California) Sequoia trees.  It was too cold there in late March, so I only got cursory satisfaction from them.  I wanted to sleep amongst them and be amidst them at sunrise and sunset.  I would’ve froze!  I got there though!  This trip I want to go to all the places that have really been special, but I haven’t gotten back to, because driving there is difficult.  Plus, I want to stay a week or more in all the remote places where everything is working.  That may mean I’ll go to less places, that’s OK.  I don’t do the tourist thing of nineteen states in six days and they think they saw everything.  They didn’t see anything but tourist traps.  I never go to them!  Where will the special places be then?  On the top of the list is ToroWeap at the west end of the north rim of Grand Canyon which is above Lava Falls in the Colorado River at the end of 65 miles of almost unpassable, what the Bureau of Land Management calls Primitive Roads.  Primitive roads receive no maintenance.  I know from my last visit that the last two or three miles I will not drive.  The “road’s” last hill is slanted towards a cliff at about a 25-degree angle and so steep that when I drove my pickup truck down it I could not see the road surface in front of me and the truck rocked from side to side and front to rear at the same time and felt very unstable like it may slide towards the cliff at any time.  I’ll park and spend the nights before I get to that hill and walk the rest of the way to the Canyon. 

I also want to explore the Four Corners Area where Utah, Arizona, New Mexico & Colorado meet, a new place for me.  That’s American Indian Country, where their laws and customs rule and there are lots of restrictions.  There’re lots and lots of “John Wayne” western-like scenery and I want to see it.  I’ll follow all the posted rules and fuzniks requests, but I’m going to see it my way, no guided tours or escorts.  They never go at the time of the day for good photos or want to stay long enough.  Again it’s for the tourists - 19 places in four hours - No Thanks!  Not my style!  Other than that I’ll do what Mother Nature and the weather allows ... enjoy and be warm!

As for me, life goes on.  People wanting family photos on the beach are as rare as them needing a telephone booth, and my travel column, although as good as it ever was, isn’t a two way street of info anymore; so it’s time to move on from both.  Of course, I’ll still be traveling to all those nowhere places, taking photos, and writing about my adventures.  See ya on Fb, HH and in my NoWhereLands blog.

Bob R  o.c.FotoGuy
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I drove from Ft. Stockton, Tx. to my camp site here in Big Bend National Park (http://www.nps.gov/bibe/) without stopping to take any photographs!  That’s not me.  Yeah, it was high sun (10am-4pm, which produces drab colors in photos) and hazy, and I’ve been here before many times, and probably got those pictures anyhow before in better light, which happens around sunrise and sunset, but that’s not me!  I’ve been driving 6-7 hours a day, taking a walk, going to get something to eat, then walking back to my nest, and going to sleep for the last ten days.  That’s too much without a break from driving!  I’m taking care of that now.  I’m at one of my favorite camp sites in my travels.  There’re only three camping spots here.  It’s 6pm, the other two have nobody, although the reservation/permit desk said they were taken.  It’s amazing how they can’t keep track of what sites are occupied and which ones aren’t.  I don’t care; I got one for tonight and tomorrow night, and one’s all I need.  The site has a great view of the high rock wall between Mexico and the USA with a break in it where the Rio Grande has cut St. Elena Canyon.  Quite a spectacle and it’s near Terlingua Creek, where I soak my feet, after the sun cools down.  At 3pm on this 28th day of March it was 105 degrees in the sun and 87 degrees in the shade.  I’m looking forward to climbing the bluff after supper in the evening coolness and photographing the desert, creek, St. Elena in the distance and hopefully a colorful sunset and Mother Nature will give me something special to accent my photos.

I got to the National Park, which is about the size of the state of Rhode Island, about 11:30am and after driving here, have not done much, and nothing that required exertion.  I’m considering taking my one pot meal, a combination from my freezer of roast pork, black beans, onions, and plantains from El Sibone, a Cuban Restaurant in Key West, mixed with February’s freshly harvested zucchini squash and sweetcorn from Homestead, Florida.  My meal is a wonderfully slow heated blend of magnificent flavors.  I was going to carry it to the creek and sit in the water and eat, but it’s still 103 degrees in the sun at 6:30pm.  I’ll eat in the shade of my nest!

I walked up the dirt road that leads to here to look at what I needed to negotiate to get here and see if there may’ve been a better way.  Obviously a rain storm washed a gulley down the middle of the road before I got here.  There was barely room on the right side to fit my truck without going too deep into the rut.  I thought maybe I should/ve straddled the rut, but it’s too wide.  I decided I did right.  It reminded me of the terrible hill coming out of ToroWeep on the north rim of the Grand Canyon.  This spot that I had to go through to get here wasn’t that bad, but bad enough.  There’re campsites before you get to the bad spot and it’s less than a mile walk from there to the creek.  I’ll think of that next time!  Then I walked to the creek, walked through the water to the other side and enjoyed its coolness; then up the bank to an old abandoned mining town from the 1920s.  Some of the walls of the stone dwellings still remain and there’re remnants of pottery and tools strewn around. 

I ate my meal, which was delicious, then climbed the bluff.  I got to the top, looked around and headed for the rim overlooking the creek.  As I arrived I saw two large animals crossing the creek. I thought, OMG, could they be bears?  I fumbled with my camera to get the correct settings, but it took too long.  Yeah, I know, just shoot on automatic and get the picture, then do it right!  I stood waiting and hoping there would be more animals, then  three javelina appeared, so the first two must’ve been javelinas, too, but they were much bigger.   Mother Nature always has something special in a place like this. I wonder what’s here that I don’t see?!?!  As I got back to my nest, I saw a light in the sky. It was too big for a star and was not moving.  Not sure what it is.  Maybe the space shuttle, a satellite, or the US Government has a surveillance balloon near here, but it’s to the northwest and this was to the east.  Who knows what it is?  I snapped a couple of photos; when I downloaded them and viewed them, the object appeared to be round like the moon.  What I saw was not round!  Maybe a UFO!

I didn’t get any color in the sunset, so I returned to my nest.  It was hot inside.  The hinge on the vent in the ceiling broke a week or so ago, so I have it tied shut.  It really enhances the ventilation, when it’s opened.  Hopefully tomorrow before it gets too hot, I can get it fixed well enough to open it, and then tie it closed again before I get on an interstate.  Going up on the roof of my nest now was out of the question.  I’d have singed anything that touched that metal roof!

Tomorrow I’m hoping to get awake early and gaze at the stars.  I won’t be able to ID many of them, but Mother Nature’s display will be awesome.  There are absolutely no distracting lights here.  This is as remote as I’ll get.  There’re no electric or telephone lines, there’s no cell phone service, no airlines fly over, and I can’t get any radio stations.  Then, I’ll be here all day without starting my truck’s engine or moving it.  Next year in my western swing I need to go to less places and stay at each longer.  My best days are always when I don’t drive!

Bob R  o.c.FotoGuy
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I’m in Visalia, Ca., deep in central California, now.  Everything is completely new to me here.  I stop at new spots each year, but they’ve always been between ones where I’ve been before.  Here I’ve never seen so many farm crops I had no idea what they were, saw what must’ve been groves of date palms, oil wells (never knew Ca. had oil), huge windmill farms, and passed many factories I had no idea what they were making.  All of that was on a freeway going 65mph!  I’m deep in Arnoldland, land of the fruits and nuts, where gas and most stuff costs more than anywhere in our country.  I saw gas prices from $2.39 to $3 close together and I had a good meal last night for a reasonable price and MegaMart let me park there all night.  It was 50 degrees at 8am, and I doubt if I can find a campsite at low altitude in Sequoia National Park, National Forest, or National Monument, (yeah, there’s one of each), so I’ll be making a MegaMart’s parking lot home for a couple days.  I have a propane heater that’s labeled “inside safe,” but I hope I don’t have to use it. I want it to be in warm weather!

I know the Sequoia Trees are on the west side of the Sierra Nevada Mts., which have an altitude of 3-10,000 feet.  What a place - trees taller than most buildings and they don’t get that tall till you’re in a mountain at 6,000 feet here in California.  That’s why I came here, to see a Giant Sequoia Tree; that was my goal.  Of course they were a most flabbergasting sighting, but to me seeing a bear or panther is more thrilling, but sorry, here is not my style.  I want to stay a while, find a nice spot to park my nest where there’re trails to enjoy the wildlife and scenery that’s nearby.  Sequoia & Kings Creek N.P. are mostly at 6-8,000+feet altitude, which means it’s too cold to be there and camp (park my nest) overnight, plus there’s snow on the ground.  I’m not interest in being cold!  I decided I was going to see a Sequoia Tree and I did it.

I returned to a MegaMart in Visalia, Ca., each of three days I was there and walked to the restaurant district about a mile and a half away to eat my evening meal.  Yeah, I’d have rather been up there amongst those trees, but it would’ve been just too cold at night.  Was it worth the drive and the effort?  Absolutely!  Will I do it again, probably not.  The locals in Visalia recommended that I go on to the home of Old Faithful, since I was so close as they said, but I rejected their suggestion.  I knew Yosemite N.P. was several hundred miles farther north and at high altitude, it would be too cold to camp; so it would be another drive through, not the way I do things.  I want to be there and enjoy for several days or a week without moving my vehicle. 

The trees were immense, a great memory, but from here I’m headed east now.  I wanted to do it and I did, but the idea of these Adventures is to be warm; I wasn’t there, especially if I’d camped up in the mountains, so going to Yosemite was out of the question!  Being warm is where it’s at!  My next overnight place will be Kelso Dunes in the Mojave Desert and on to Big Bend N.P., Tx.; both will be hot.  That’s the ticket in the winter!!!

Bob R  o.c.FotoGuy
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