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My cup needs fill’n

Part of stealth/guerilla/dispersed camping is the constant need to find drinking water. We could buy jugs in the grocery story, but we are all about saving our pennies so we can travel as long as possible, so we have a never ending search for free drinkable (non chlorinated) water.

A few places we normally get water:

1. Fire stations – they usually have a spiget out back, but it usually has chlorine.

2. Campgrounds – we pretend we want to look around for a site, quickly fill our 5 gallon jerry cans and decide not to stay.

3. City parks – they usually have spigets, but again it is usually chlorinated.

4. People feel sorry for us and give us theirs when they are heading home (this also works for free firewood).

5. Springs – people mark them on iOverlander (see previous post)

Today, we happened to pass a spring that had great water flowing right out of the Rockies. We have two 5 gallon jerry cans on the front of the vehicle and a 15 gallon tank inside. We normally carry 5 or 10 gallons during regular travel (it is amazing how little water you really need, but then again we are probably over due for a shower once again), we carry more if we know we are going to be way out for a prolonged period of time. We also carry a military grade water filter for emergencies.

Rocky Mt. Spring.
Darrin filling 1 of our 5 gallon jerry cans..
And into our 15 gallon internal tank (water is heavy so filling the internal tank keeps the weight low in the vehicle).
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Rendezvous in WY

What chance is there waaaaay out here in WY of meeting up with family and friends. Well, not quite as slim as you think.

Our first meet-up was with Darrin’s younger(?) brother, Paul, and his lovely companion, Virginia (and of course Trouble, aka Beastie Boy, and Harley). They were travelling all the way up here from FL and we happened to land at the same campground. That’s our story and we are sticking with it!

Darrin’s younger brother Paul…where’s my walker?

Then we met-up with the Conways from NH at Devil’s Tower! We had a great reunion, catch-up, chow down and soggy hike around Devil’s Tower. Thanks for swinging by guys! Safe travels!

Our friends from back east!

We have had a great, if soggy, week in the WY Black Hills and Devil’s Tower area. We stayed at a great little campground in the national forest, Reuters. Randy, the amazing host took great care of us. Thanks Randy…hi to Boo and Shadow!

The whole motley crew…Paul, Virginia, Randy and well you know the guy on the end😎
WY Black Hills. Camping in the clouds, 40s and 50s and raining.

They say the sun is supposed to shine tomorrow, but we are not holding our breath. Remember how we were complaining about the heat? Well, be careful what you wish for. It is in the 50s and soggy, but what a view! We’ll take it! Although I can’t figure out why Darrin keeps piling up his mash potatoes?

Thanks Jenny and Scott for the inspiration for the blog title and the sage. I think I’m feeling a little batty now😋 Hope you had a safe trip back to Laramie!

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Our first breakdown

Well, it was bound to happen. Not knowing my own strength, I twisted the lock on my door right out of its little Rover pin. Luckily, I travel with my mechanic😊. He rigged it to make it work, sort of.

We contacted Trevor at Rovah Farm outside Little Rock who was more than happy to help us get the parts we needed. The hard part was mailing them to us somewhere along the way, no easy feat when you don’t actually know where you are going.

Finally, we were able to find a future destination, Lake of the Ozarks State Park in MO. Trevor got the parts in the mail, even figured out the cheapest shipping rate. We let the park know they were coming (the staff was super about it, keeping the parts locked in the office until we got there), Trevor put tracking on them so we would know when they arrived and voila, 3 weeks later my mechanic picked them up and we have new door locks!

The new door lock!

Thanks Trevor! I’m sure we will be in touch again soon!

Oh, and my mechanic fixed the leak over my door….with Gorilla Tape!

Gorilla Tape rain gutter🙄

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Today we drove through  more of the Alabama country side.  We are currently camped in an overflow area at a county park near the TN border and it is slightly raining, a huge improvement from the earlier storm.  During said storm, we found a few new leaks in the Rover we hadn’t noticed before (it was pouring). The leaks were the top of my door and into my clothes locker. See a theme here?  Darrin has some work to do before the next storm😉.

Where we are set-up is a very busy boat ramp/fishing area and we are quite the novelty.  It is fun to watch the guys in trunks crane their necks to get a better view of our rig.  None of them stop, they just drive slightly off the road to look.  Quite entertaining.

Our rig tonight. You can see a bit of the lake in the background. What you can’t see are the guys down by the dock staring up at us or the trucks going by slowly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few of observations from our time on the road so far:

1.  The old corner store at every crossroad is long gone.  The buildings are slowly falling in or being reclaimed by the vegetation. We went through quite a few rural areas where the store that was probably the busy hub of every road crossing has long been deserted. The derelict buildings reminded me of the book Fried Green Tomatoes.  These were probably replaced by the new main street which are newly deserted for the Walmart like stores, which are now being challenged by Amazon like stores.  What’s next?

2.   Every state is clear cut happy.  In Florida, they were clearing to build everywhere and in Georgia and Alabama they seem to be clear cutting for no visible reason.  Whole hillsides have been cut down to nothing.  Very depressing.

3. Alabama has beautiful license plates.

4. There are still people who will go out of their way to help you. Tonight a guy from the RV next store went driving around the park to find the guy in charge so we could get a spot and get set-up inbetween rain storms.

Tomorrow we hope to be in TN and sit for a few days…so I can dry my clothes out.  😊

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Sturgeons on the Suwannee

Still catchung up.

We spent a very nice week visiting family in Florida.  We played golf (yes, we know how to play golf, but we aren’t very good🤣), swam,  got to watch some baseball and just spent time with loved ones. Thank you to all, we had a wonderful time.

We then spent a very hot night on the Suwannee River in northern Florida near Convict Springs. We asked about the name and apparently there was a remote prison camp here in the early 1900s for the work crews, called chain gangs, to use when they were working too far from the prison to get back.  We went for a dip in our clothes thus cooling down and doing our laundry at the same time.

Our rig set-up above the Suwannee River. The bug room was a necessity!
Convict Springs
I don’t know if you can see the 2014 and 2009 signs on the tree, but those are flood/hurricane years. I took this picture out a window and the signs are even with me.
Suwannee River
The sturgeon were  jumping like hot cakes. We didn’t catch one in mid air, but we heard them slapping back into the water and it sounded like a tree falling.

 

 

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We are finally off!

Well, we did it!  We are off on our adventure.

After a frantic few weeks of final preparations on the Rover and last minute loading we finally said goodbye to friends and our housesitter and drove out of the driveway

With mixed emotions and a few tears we left our home state and headed south.

 

 

 

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Pack, repack and repeat

Question of the day.   “What are you taking and how are you going to fit everything in?” I guess that is actually 2 questions😁

The short answer is 1) only what we really need and 2) very carefully😁

The longer answer will take several blogs and months as we pack,  repack, leave stuff behind we thought we would really need and find better options for stuff that isn’t working. The most important thing we have learned from years of backcountry camping and motorcycle travel is that in such a small space,  everything needs an assigned spot.

Today I’ll just focus on our staging area and what we think we might be bringing.  Most items will need to have several uses and no items are above being cut before being loaded into the Rover or even after.

Here is a picture of our staging area:

Packing - staging areaIt probably looks like a mess, but is actually very organized.

From the left:  Cold weather gear and rain gear, bedding, freeze dried food (plastic garbage bag – this will be reduced and is for emergencies only), a tent for camping away from the Rover or lodgings with suspect bedding, packs and satchels for days hiking or walking around town, pee bottles for night (a lot of places you don’t  want to get out at night in the dark), towels and toiletries, art supplies and knitting needles, med kit, regular water bottles(not to be confused with the pee bottles), travel hot mugs, large water bladder that is great for hanging on the side of the Rover for gravity feed water or warmed in the sun for a quick shower, and a military grade water filter.  The whole right side is the kitchen.  The wooden drawers all go in cabinets in the back of the Rover. These are for our pots, plates, dutch oven, food, etc. Not in the picture: journals, maps, chairs (actually you can see one against the back wall), binoculars, etc.

That’s it, except for the huge clothes pile we are still weeding through.

This needs a lot of work.  I’ll get back to you as that progresses.  (And just to be clear, all those shoes are Darrin’s😎)

So, that is the quick tour.  I’ll post more pictures as we weed, pack, repack and find we packed stuff we really don’t need.

Back to packing!