One Year

Last week marked one year of living in sunny Tempe, Arizona. Charlie the Wondervan has been sold to a German couple who promised to put him to good and gentle use befitting his venerable celebrity status. Jax the Dog has settled in to the apartment life and spends his days napping, passing gas, napping some more, and consuming kibble. It really is a dog's life.

I have been working as a Licensed Massage Therapist (LMT) at a Chiropractor's office in a nearby town. It has been a relief to have a base of operations and to sit still for a while, but as the one year mark passes I find myself feeling the pull of far off places tugging at my heartstrings once more.

Luckily, Arizona has an incredibly long outdoor season, ranging from October to late April, and possibly longer depending on your tolerance for heat. I have been backpacking and exploring every inch of the local surroundings that I can.

The landscape is stunning and varied, with rocky shards of mountain thrusting to the sky right along rolling plains of Saguaro and Cholla cacti. On one early morning hike I was lucky enough to catch sight of two Bighorn Sheep crossing the path.

Although I am thankful to have the time to rest up and recover, I can't help but be drawn by all the endless opportunities that are out there. The sedentary life is just not for me, not now. Raising the financial resources to travel will always be the great challenge. Although travel can be free or even cheap, certain bills and obligations do not stand still. For now my energy is focused on how to save enough to travel while still feeding the ever-hungry banking beast. I have considered Americorps and other options, but so far have not made a decision.

For now I have been doing some backpacking, both solo and with friends, to help ease the mental struggle of staying put, and to enjoy this beautiful desert environment.

Is it hot enough for ya? Harhar har....

An update from the valley of the sunburn! At the request of several friends and family members, I'm going to try to update the blog again. :)

We have settled into a beautiful apartment in Tempe, Arizona. After nearly 4 months of living in a closet sized space with no internal plumbing, the staggering luxury of our very own apartment was mind boggling. We spent the first few nights in the kitchen within inches of each other, hovering together by instinct before we all noticed that we had room on all sides, and slowly began drifting apart like planets falling out of orbit. On our first night in the new place, Jax the dog ran ecstatically from room to room at full tilt, reveling in the carpeted floor and cozy environment. I stood in the center of the large living room and spun and spun and spun in circles till I fell down giggling and nauseous.

                                                          Happy in his new home.



We got very lucky in finding such a wonderful place. It's huge for the two of us and has gorgeous high vaulted ceilings and lots of natural light. My morning routine consists of rolling out of bed, throwing a pot of coffee or tea on, and then walking out to the deck to collapse on the futon and soak in the sun. There is a large palm tree outside that has had a small group of peach faced lovebirds taking up residence. I love watching them flirt and chirp to each other, it still seems so very exotic to this small town Washington girl.

I have enrolled in a professional massage therapy program at Arizona School of Massage Therapy, and I LOVE IT! Once the program is complete, I finally get to exercise my entrepreneurial ideas and be a private contractor. I will be graduating in October of this year, and will finally get to see my family after a long time apart. I've made some wonderful friends through the school, and even adopted an honorary younger sister! Her name is Tawny and she is a Colville indian from Omak. We ended up moving here within weeks of each other and enrolling in the same program. Small world! It's been wonderful relaxing and learning new things.

                                            Tawny and I on the way to school!


Nothing could have prepared me for the weather here. Dave has taken it a bit harder than me, but I think he is beginning to adapt. It quickly ramped up from the low 80's to the low 100's, and now it is between 108 and 117 every single day. We live in a constant state of sweatiness. The daily sun however, is absolutely lovely. We are currently in the monsoon season, which means that once or twice a week it clouds up, the humidity skyrockets, the temperature mellows down, and if we are lucky we get some spectacular lightning shows. I absolutely adore lightning and thunder, they are better than fireworks! I sit out on the balcony and watch the strikes all around and feel the thunder shake the floor. Jax the dog is incredibly nonplussed by it all, and will settle down on his bed with a grumble and a sigh.

                               Dave got this amazing shot of the lightning from our deck.


Before it got so hot, we did quite a bit of hiking in the nearby desert. I love the landscapes of strange rounded rock formations and cacti everywhere. There are tons of places to go within half an hour of the city, and we're trying to explore as many as possible!

Jax says stay cool everybody!!

I'm Still Alive!

Hello everyone! I know it's been way too long since the last post, and I do apologize. It would be nearly impossible to backfill all of the things that have happened since my last post, so I'll do a short summary:

We made it all the way to North Carolina! We both decided at this point that we'd had enough. It was too darn cold and we were ready to get back to school. We went back and forth for a bit and decided on Phoenix, Arizona as our final landing place! Fast forward a couple weeks, we flew back to Washington for a quick visit with the family, threw the rest of our meager belongings in a UHaul and motored back down to Arizona.

Now, we are set up in a great apartment in Tempe. I am enrolled in the Professional Massage Therapist program at Arizona School of Massage Therapy. I absolutely love it! I will be graduating in October of 2014, and hopefully starting my own business shortly after. Money is tight, but luckily we're used to that. ;)

Dave has been working on getting our assorted vehicles up to snuff. Sadly, the time has come for Charlie the Wondervan the bring some motorized joy to a new family. We'll be putting him up for sale any day now. Dave plans to work for a while, and then enroll at Arizona State University for Mechanical Engineering.

This blog will most likely not be updated very ofter while I'm in school, as my hands are totally full. I'd love it if you could all take a peek at my new business website:

 fortianimo.weebly.com



Thank you so much to everyone who has come along with us on this journey in spirit!! Your support means the world. I miss you all dearly and wish you all the best.

2-8-14 - Fort King George

Today brought us a history lesson, and an interesting one at that. We were maneuvering the van along some narrow residential streets in Georgia, which were populated with old Southern plantation style houses and massive, spreading Cypress trees. We trundled into a parking lot and found ourselves at Old Fort King George. In the parking lot Spanish moss draped from the branches of more Cypress trees. The tendrils of moss swayed softly in the damp breeze. A small rain storm had passed through and left wet puddles that I stomped in happily while Dave examined the fort. We decided to pay the small entrance fee to check things out.

A historical society had restored to exact specifications the old fort, which originally stood for active use between 1721 and 1727. It had a brief and ill-fated run. It was designed to be an outpost to encourage settlement and trade but never lived up to the grand plans of those who commissioned it. The soldiers stationed there were the elderly, wounded and sick, many of whom were sent to the fort directly after a month long hospital stay nearby, intended to restore them to "fighting condition". Considering that a hospital stay in those days consisted of blood-letting, leeches, and poisonous plant-based powders and pills, it's no surprise that most of the men died, and the fort only stayed in use for six years.

The restoration of the fort and grounds today was flawless, and must have truly a labor of love for those involved. When the fort was built, carpentry was a real art form. All of the wooden supports and beams were held together by jointing, an intricate process of puzzle-piece fitting and wooden pegs. I loved the feeling of the exposed, unfinished wood beams under my fingers. We wandered through the buildings of the fort, all of which looked as though the inhabitants had just stepped out and might be around the next corner. I felt slightly nervous, almost like we were intruding on someones private life.

This building was built with an overhanging top level that had gun-ports built into the floor. When the Native Americans or other forces would attack, they would press flat against the walls to avoid being shot, and then storm the inside or shoot through the windows. This new building design prevented them from doing that and gave those in the fort a great advantage.

We went inside and climbed up the hand-made wooden ladders to the top story, where I looked out from a central window. The view was marshland for as far as I could see, and it made me feel isolated and lonely. I can't imagine being in the shoes of the soldiers stationed here, so far from home without hope of reprieve. There were small excerpts from one man's diary inside the museum that gave some insight into the difficulties they found. The fort had also been home to a large sawmill at the same time as housing soldiers, and everything was originally built of the Cypress wood that grew in the swamp. The man's journal described the nightmare of wading neck deep in the brackish water and hauling the huge logs by hand through clouds of thick mosquitoes and flies in oppressive heat and humidity. In 6 years, over 60 percent of the men stationed at Old Fort King George died.

Luckily, Dave and I escaped with our lives and a new sense of appreciation for modern wonders like sanitation and waterproof boots. That night we fell asleep to the sound of cicadas and a soft night wind, with the warm Georgia air soft on our skin.

Updates!

Hello everyone!

Apologies for the long absence from writing. I had some sad news from home and didn't feel much like writing for a while.

Now that I am settled in, I'll be updating the backlog of blog posts and pictures, and posting them up as soon as I can!

Thanks for you patience!

In the meantime, here's a picture of my dog in a bunny costume.

2-4-14 - Blue Skies and Red Sand

After the ladybug incident it took us a few days to work up the nerve to return to the woods. Luckily the cold weather seemed to have demoralized the enemy forces, and there was nary a little bug to be seen, excepting the occasional straggler stowed away inside window frames and loose clothes. We horsed the van down a track of deep, soft sand, stopping halfway through to unload all excess weight and to air down the tires for extra traction. We just barely made it to solid ground without getting stuck and there we set up camp for a couple days. Just up the road I found some bones from an animal of some type, possibly a couple different ones mixed together in a bone pile. The skull looked canine, but the bones looked like a deer or other large mammal. Like a good scientist I tried to piece them together, but couldn't make heads or tails of it.

Jax did his own scientific investigation. Nom nom nom...

After a couple of days we left our little campsite in the woods, determined to finally head North out of Florida. We shot East over to Daytona Beach and it was there that I caught my very first ever glimpse of the Atlantic Ocean. The air was hot and humid, with a stiff wind coming up from the South. We walked down a weathered set of wooden stairs and finally set foot on the East coast. It's funny, I never thought I'd be there. It almost seemed more exotic in my mind than foreign countries thousands of miles away. Yet there I was, with my toes in the red sand, inches away from the roaring winter waves of the Atlantic Ocean.

We walked down the beach for a while, taking it all in and trying to comprehend the massive scale of this journey, of it all. On closer examination, the red sand turned out to be made up entirely of tiny shell fragments. It's amazing the things that lie just beneath our feet and go entirely unnoticed, till you just take the time to look down.

Dave caught a great shot of a surfer coming out of the waves to dry off and warm up. Although the weather was warm, the water was icy cold and the waves surprisingly violent.

Just as we were getting back into the van to leave, we heard a loud buzzing in the sky and glanced up. Two people slowly floated by, smiling and waving. They were seated, attached to a sail and powered by a gigantic fan. It looked like way more fun than any two people should be having.

They slowly floated down the beach into the distance. We hopped into our own brand of motor-fueled freedom and laid the pedal down, headed North towards new adventures.

1-28-14 - Quit Buggin' Me, Man!

After seeing a good portion of Florida we're steadily making our way North! We decided to head to the Ocala National Forest to hang out for a few days before shooting up to Jacksonville. The next 3 to 4 days were supposed to be really cold, so we thought it would be good to stay in the warm areas till it heats up again.


Ocala looks very similar to Appalachicola, which is on a similar latitude on the West side of the state. Pines, white sand, and saw palmetto make up the majority of the landscape. We drove down a sand road that bordered a square of clear cut land and parked underneath the shade of the trees just as the sun went down.

By the time we had finished making dinner and cleaning up it was pitch black outside, and beautifully quiet. The only sounds we could hear were crickets, and even they seemed to be making an effort to provide soothing ambiance.


Dave had just stepped outside to hook up the generator when I saw his flashlight beam freeze and heard a startled “Whoa!”. I immediately sat bolt upright and asked what he had seen. There was a pause and then a very unconvincing “Nothing....” After scanning the ground with his flashlight beam for quite a while he stepped back into the van with a wide eyed, uneasy look. After a lot of prying I finally got out of him what he'd seen out there: spiders. My least favorite animal in all of God's creation. Apparently he had caught small bits of reflected light in the flash beam that turned out to be light shining back from their eight beady little eyes. I scoffed disbelievingly, as it seemed a bit far fetched. Ever so cautiously I leaned out the door of the van and scanned the area around us with the light. Evenly spaced, about every 8 feet, were a couple little pinpoints of light shining back, like dewdrops catching the sun. I relaxed, relieved that they must be exactly that, and just as turned to laugh at Dave...one moved. I nearly jumped out of my skin and let out a startled yelp. Gripping the light with both hands I wielded it like a police beam, and sure enough, there were the hideous reflecting eyes of a hundred ground spiders winking back at me.
Needless to say, sleep was a little slow in coming that night.

The next day we woke up and went about our business outside. Luckily our eight legged infestation vanished in the daylight, probably sleeping off a hard night of spider partying and crawling all over innocent people's faces. I took a walk to take in the peaceful natural settings and explore. I came back and sat in the van with Dave when suddenly Jax hopped up into the van with a pitiful yelp, shaking his back foot. We immediately grabbed it to take a look and saw four or five large red ants with huge pinschers clamped onto his foot, stinging him aggressively all the while. We cleaned them off and gave him some Benadryl to soothe the pain. These must have hurt much more than the small red fire ants he encountered before, because he sat grimacing in pain and licking at the area for quite a while. We looked them up and they appear to have been Imported Red Fire Ants, a larger and much more aggressive species. They're about 1/4" long and mean as Hell. We weren't able to get a good picture, so I borrowed this one from Google:

Thoroughly miffed by the insect population at this point, we started to make lunch. Some movement caught my eye and I noticed a little ladybug waddling across the window outside. “Awww” I said, smiling “I like ladybugs! They're the only insect I don't mind!” Little did I know exactly what was to follow.

So cute, so innocent.

We had just left for a short walk down the road when I heard a zipping sound and felt a light impact. I looked down and there was a ladybug on my leg! I smiled graciously, and carefully removed him. Suddenly there was another zip and impact, then another and another. We both started hopping around and swatting as a cloud of ladybugs began to form in the sky like adorable little locusts. We hightailed it back to the van, which had in the meantime had become coated in hundreds of ladybugs. We sat inside safely (or so we thought) and watched them swarm the outside. We both laughed in disbelief at the strange sight and wondered how long they would stay.

Just the beginning....

That's when things got serious... The little bugs found that they just barely could fit through the crack where the windows seat and began pouring inside in tens and twenties. I screamed like a little girl and began trapping them in cups and throwing them outside while Dave laughed at my antics. As fast as I chucked them out, they came crawling back in. I glared at him in a frazzled manor and said “We are MOVING.” He obligingly agreed and went out to secure the generator, which by now was absolutely covered in bugs. Now it was my turn to stifle giggles as they crawled all over his arms, hair, and back. I was supremely glad to be a woman about then, as bug-swarm recovery tactics fall strictly into the man's list of duties. He jumped into the driver's seat, still shaking off clinging bugs, and we got out of there as fast as we could. For the five miles to the exit of the forest the air was thick with flying ladybugs, dotting the windshield and clinging to the windows like zombies in a horror flick. “Let me innnnn!” they seemed to cry in tiny voices. “Love meeee!”

Waiting...watching...lurking in the shadows.

It's been three days and I'm still picking the odd straggler out of our laundry and bedding. And that's how we got kicked out of our campsite by ladybugs.

1-27-14 - Don't Put That In Your Mouth!

Here in Florida we've had the opportunity to try some really strange new tropical fruits. One of my favorite parts of travel is getting to try local foods where they are freshest-at the source! Just outside the Everglades we stopped at an outdoor fruit market with a tin roof that loudly proclaimed “ROBERT IS HERE” in big letters. Apparently that is the name of the market, although I never got the story behind who exactly Robert is.


We wandered around happily taking in the sights and smells, tasting samples of local fruit and honey. We left with a bag full of strange new fruit to try. We even caught this little guy taking a nap and keeping the pecans warm for us.

The first was a Canestel. It was soft and yellow, shaped a little like a Hershey's kiss. The inside had an incredible velvety texture, somewhere between custard and cooked squash. The flavor was almost exactly like a sweet egg custard. It was incredibly delicious!

This one was just too strange to not try. I'm not sure what it was called, as I forgot to write it down. But how could you not try such an alien looking little fruit?? It was really good, and tasted a bit like Midori melon liqueur.

Next we tried Sapodilla, which is also known as “tree potato”. A very fitting name! The description said it tasted like “a pear with brown sugar.” Despite the nondescript exterior, the interior had a firm pear-like texture and golden-pink flesh. Unfortunately, it stunk to high heaven and tasted so bad that I spit it out after one bite.

We tried again with a Black Sapote. This was easily the strangest thing we have eaten! It's sometimes called “The chocolate pudding fruit”. The exterior looks exactly like a large, green tomato. As it ripens it turns black and wrinkly and begins to seep black juice. At this point most people would throw it out as rotten, but this is when it's at its most tasty! When you slice it open the inside has few large seeds, which you discard. It has a great creamy texture and tastes like very mild, sweet vanilla. It's awesome!

The last was the Mamey Sapote. This is a huge favorite of the Cuban population in Florida. They blend it with ice cream to make milkshakes. Again, I was not a big fan, but I'm glad we got to try it! It had a texture a bit like squash, and tasted like fruity caramel.

1-25-14 - Blue Cypress Lake

After 4 days at Middleton Fish Camp, we had to head back into town for supplies and laundry. Luckily this gave me a chance to use the WIFI to upload some pictures!

The area we stayed on Blue Cypress Lake was simply beautiful. I saw more wildlife there than anywhere else I've been!

There are huge snail shells lying all over the ground, most likely dredged from the lake by birds and then dropped. Some are as big as your palm!

We went for a walk and found a path that went back into the woods. It's a true jungle here, dark and humid, with creeping vines and palm fronds everywhere you look. You truly have to be aware of 360 around you, lest something nasty end up crawling up your leg or falling on your head.

Like this guy.

Our last night, right before bed, I heard a loud splashing in the swamp and jumped outside to take a look. I caught a glimpse of a big, brown head poking up out and the water and suddenly a huge otter popped out onto the bank! He was rich chocolate brown, sleek, and much bigger than I expected. I stood and watched him pop in and out of the water, sliding through the mud like an eel and digging in the leaves.

1-21-14 - Everglades or Bust?

Bust.

We drove to Flamingo Campground, the farthest Southern point on the Florida mainland, to stay in Everglades National Park.

Unfortunately the campground was awful. Essentially a glorified grass parking lot with no privacy and the filthies bathrooms I've seen, we simply couldn't reconcile the $16 a night to park. We stayed one night and headed out in the morning.

We did get some lovely pictures out of it though!

The small beach at the campground at first appeared to be white sand, but on closer inspection it was entirely tiny little seashells. The one below shows the scale. The background is the fabric of my jeans!

We did see some cool wildlife amongst the mangroves! A tiny crab blended in perfectly to the trunk of the tree, and this little heron posed perfectly for me.