February, and the Great Inbetween

Or, As the Plans Hatch

2/14/2022

Thank you so very much to my earliest of followers! ❤ It means the world to me to have you on board. I thought I would jump right in, right where we are, for my next post.

Our nomadic life is of the mixie variety.  For a large portion of the year, we travel at will, or on a whim.  The whim is mostly mine.  Never did I ever expect to meet someone who was just as keen on roadlife as I am.  Dan is willing to just punch in the addresses or coordinates as I speak them from my jump seat behind the driver's seat. Don't doubt that he is curious about direction, but he trusts my navigational skills, and is completely willing to go anywhere my little heart desires.  He's just drivin' Miss Brenda, and pups.  He says that this fills his own heart, indeed.

When we first met, he was making a quick run from Kentucky to Arizona to be part of the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous during his vacation time off of work.  I retired early for medical reasons, and had been living in my van for a couple of years, mostly in the south and southwest part of the country.  I was out there already, living my impossible dream. The wide open spaces and stark landscape of the desert soothed my soul like no place I had ever been.  I always say that my shoulders drop when we reach the edges of the desert, a place we chose to make our home, for at least part of every year.   We met here.  It's a nomadic mecca, where our friends come through to see us, a cheap and easy place to squat for part of the year. When we decided to buy a “plan b" kind of place, it just made sense.

So, generally we traipse back and forth across the country doing our thing, but as the van mileage increases, we long for the palm trees and cacti of home.  When we finally land in Quartzsite for the winter months, we are fairly spent. 

There is the time of deep cleaning of dust in our little 1979 Shasta Traveleze park model trailer before we can even start to carry in the duffel bags and unload gear from the van and cargo trailer.  No matter how well we clean before departure, the desert dust and sand finds its way in while we are gone. You can bet that the van crevasses also hold sand from more than one coastline since our last visit back home.

We spend the next few months getting stuff out of the van or cargo trailer, to bring into the park model trailer, to live awhile.  Then we haul it all back out there when it's time to leave again.  It's an endless cycle of organizing and prioritizing, cleaning, and making ready for the leapity-leap, while at the same time enjoying a respite from the joys and hardships of the road (which is not always smooth sailing). 

We desperately need days where we don't have to rise with the sun and vacate some parking lot, or do weeks of laundry and reprovisioning in a couple or hours as we roll through one town heading to another way off in the distance. 

Yes, the laundry piles up in the stationary home as well, but the visual cue of an overflowing laundry basket in the corner of the bedroom is easy to quantify.  So is being down to the next to the last of your clean drawers, wherever you find yourselves. Some self-care alarm goes off and you do the stuff, here, there, and everywhere.  Home ownership of a tin can paper mache palace comes with maintenance, plus the usual van and cargo trailer maintenance and all that jazz. So we stay busy, not busy, until it's time to re-launch the rolling home.

February is the month of savoring the tail end of the days of a winter spent in our desert oasis, the wee park model trailer, and under the covered patio, and in the fenced in yard.  Some winters we are elsewhere, but we dug in and spent this one right here. This is sheer luxury for all four of us road dawgs, who usually don't desire to be leashed or anchored to any certain spot.  We like it, though.  We need it. 

We like to nap, make creative messes, cuddle, gaze at the stars, contact the world on ham radio, cook, paint, talk to friends, write, make, do, sit awhile.  I am working with my writing mentor, LaVonne Ellis, on a weekly and sometimes daily basis while we have been home this rotation. I plan to continue that no matter where we go. A lot of great things happen in the she-shed Dan built for me.

This part of the season includes both the feeling of the niceties of stay, coupled with the frequent and persistent itch to go.  Having spent an entire pandemic year here in the Sonoran Desert after being completely packed to make our usual rotation, we are confident in our ability to settle in deeper, think like lizards, and not move in a month, as expected. 

On the other hand, we have the ability to travel short lengths at almost zero notice, to arrive higher in altitude with the rising temperatures, or to just continue as we do, half packed and sitting on go, always, but also enjoying another month or more of sitting on stay. Liberty and Layla enjoy the perks of both our rolling and our stationary life, as we do. They are up for anything.

Always the messages fly as February dwindles and March peeks over the horizon...y'all coming here this time?  We peruse the maps, think places, faces, distances, and wait in the great inbetween for the guidance from the Divine, which directs our every step. 

The plastic is still on the window unit air conditioners and all the doors are flung open wide, sunlight streaming in. We piddle with small tasks but worry not about when or where just yet.

It won't be long before the coin flip, the load 'em up, giddy up go. For now, we sit and listen to the wind in the palm trees and imagine ourselves in a variety of locales come sumsumsummertime. 

We rest awhile longer here in the warmth of the days of 70's and 80's temps and blue blue skies.  We dabble in local short hops and overnights, like our recent visit to camp with friends at Palm Canyon, within Kofa National Wildlife Refuge, around 20 miles from home. 

We see a friend or two for an outdoor patio conversation as they pass through the area, but we see less than one handful this season. The crowds are gone, but we were never part of them, anyway.  For now, and always, the Cordrays are at home. Home is where he is, where I am, and the pups, and the road forward which always reveals itself in its own sweet time.

Blessings,

Brenda Cordray

“Desert Rose"

Buy Me a Coffee!