What the cow herd - boondocking in Sedona

We left our boondocking spot down in Cottonwood last week. It's a good spot, with a distant, pretty red rock view. Also an easy landing pad coming into town after a day's drive. Although it was pretty crowded by boondocking standards, everyone was apparently solar-powered, because we heard no generators and no air conditioners. We barely heard voices.

Still, hermity by nature, we moved on to another boondocking site in one of Marianne's guides.

What we see:

 

What we hear:

 

You people who grew up with me in the suburbs, did you know cows are early-morning people? Me neither. 

Last evening, there was a little dust-up.

I wanted to play, too.

Really?

The difference between a cowardly duck and an idiot = one electric fence. Which shows you that there may not be burros here, but there's always one jackass.

Goats, see?

I recently read this article on living well for $11,000 a year. Most of you guys already read Glenn's blog, To Simplify.

There's a budding discussion about the plausibility of living on less than $1000 a month over here;  what do you guys think?  Do you mind saying what you spend to live?  I know, your mom told you never to talk about money, but money is a big part of why people think they can't live this life.

We're very bad at budgeting and accounting.  I don't mean that we're unskilled,  I mean that we don't do it. Do you?  If Annie says Do you want to go out to eat tonight?  I count the singles in my pocket and say 'yes' or 'no.'  How are you at budgeting?  Do you even bother?  Can I borrow $20?

We've moved on again

about 200 yards.  Weather people - those pranksters - predict high-90's by Saturday, and I know you have not forgotten the citywide yard sale that we must stay for.  Our old site was quiet, but very sunny for several hours each day.  Our new place is tree-ish (piney), but has cicadas just like the old place.  

 

 I think that horsey people like our new spot, and I don't expect to be as secluded as we were this morning, where we were unexpectedly chatting with three hunter gentlemen and their dogs while we washed and hung out our panties.  The men were pleasant and charming and talked about sun tea, cicadas, beagles and NOT our flashy summer short johns. We pretended they were not the showiest things they had seen since Mabel Louise got drunk on the turned apple cider at the church picnic and showed her foundation garments to God and neighbor. 

 [Picture in your own mind]

Once you get started on a chore, you can’t stop for every camouflagioed visitor who wanders by with a dog.

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You also can’t go through today without me telling you that I turned 50 this morning during my second cup of coffee.  I should have stopped at one.  Fifty is the jewel-encrusted netbook birthday.

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Marianne, from Frugal RV Travel, has added us to her blog roll.  This is an honor, because it was her blog that I found early on in our planning and realized we could stay in beautiful places for free.  That's what made us think about making the Duck a bona fide boondocking rig.  Her site is a wonderful combination of tips, ideas, and resources for making this lifestyle work without a huge income;  you should go look around.  Marianne has also written a series of guides to lesser-known beautiful boondocking sites in the Southwest.  If you forget her link, it's listed here under "Boondocking Resources."
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We've been in this area for nine days, and we've fired up the generator once, for no particular reason.  We use battery power for lights, water pump, fans, and iPad charging. I don't think we had a real grasp on how far our power would go, because it always went.  This seems to mean that 80+% of our power was going to letting the LP detector blink and keeping the solenoid open.
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Getting, using, and keeping connectivity is the trickiest part of my world.  I can write a blog post on iPad ... sort of ... and upload it anywhere we have 3G, which is a lot of places.  I can't add pictures that way.  Or, if my computer has a charge, I can write it in email and queue it up until I get my next wifi fix, but I can't add pictures that way, either. It's only with my trusty laptop connected to some good old wifi, or tethered to Annie's phone, that I can compose a post with visual aids.  Tethering drains my computer fairly fast, so if I've got something to say, I'd better make it snappy.


Today I'm loitering in the public library which offers:

• free wifi
• free charging
• quiet
• air conditioning
• bathrooms
• drinking fountains
• open bar

You'd think more people would be living here.  I'm thinking if I mention my birthday they'll bring me cake.

More of what we got into without supervision.

Kerr Reservoir.

 

Off-grid laundry is faking a curtain call.  We like this Wonder Washer a lot (thanks, Maggie!).  I believe the instructions begged us to use warm water;  our hearts were as cold as the water we washed in.

The wringer we bought from GetPreparedStuff.com.

Our solar dryer.

South Hill, Virginia, treated us pretty well.  They don't seem set up for RVers in general, but we ran into some very accommodating people.  Some things you might like to know, if you come here:

 Free wifi:

• public library (inside and out)
• Chamber of Commerce, outside the building in the 2 hour free parking 
• Food Lion parking lot (just outside C&M Tobacco the signal is awesome)
• Denny's 

We logged into all of these easily with our booster.  CoC and library signal was so strong we probably didn't need it.

Public library had some books set out for sale.  Not sure if it was a Friends of the Library situation, or something they do all the time.

Tom and Aubrey at Advance Auto Parts were very helpful.  They gave Annie a discount because she was patient, let us fill our fresh water tank from their city water spigot, and let us park in their lot while we walked around town.  I'm not saying they do this all the time, but if you're in need, I'd say go ahead and ask.

Propane at Parker Propane on 58 between Boydton and South Hill.

Public dumpsters off Rte. 4 at the corner of China Grove and Buggs Island (Rte 4) Roads, just outside the WMA entrance.  Next to Buggs Island Boat Co.

We didn't find a Super WalMart in South Hill, but we did find this:

We went in, because how could we not?  I wanted to take inside pictures really hard.  Miscellaneous grocery items were heaped up on tables.  One item would be recognizable to people who speak Spanish, but none of them was me so I don't know what they were.  My guess is tiny whole pears, but that's always my guess.  Piles of damaged cereal boxes.  Soda, dented cans of vegetables, noodles, big bags of rice.  We chose a canned ice tea and a tomato, and when we checked out, the cashier told us we could have this other tomato with a spot on it.  Where do I sign?  Because, seriously.  How can we talk the frugal talk, then turn down a free 98%-good tomato?  

If you're here in South Hill, face it:  there's not a lot on your agenda.  So, while you're walking around town, I implore you to visit the Tobacco Museum on W. Main Street.  I can't even imagine how lonely that curator's job is.  You'll see a 15-minute video produced by Philip Morris, but you will learn stuff, I swear it.  You'll hear phrases like "supplemental contract workers."  You'll hear the difference between Bright and Burley tobaccos.  Afterwards, the curator will guide you around the museum to show you turn-of-the (20th)-century tobacco farming equipment.  He let us try the metal dowsing rods.  Upstairs there was a small daily-life museum from the era.  At the end of the tour, you'll feel obliged to donate a couple of dollars, but you would just have spent that money on cigarettes anyway.

Afterwards we had a weird craving to smoke.

We'll leave today.  The Dick Cross WMA gets 4.75 stars, dinged for ticks.  This is a largely deciduous forest, so I imagine it would be beautiful in Autumn, and the plus side is that major tick season ends in September.  See ya later, forest!

I complained to my friend, David B., about all the diseases I could contract from tick bites.  He wrote me a song - catch it next time!

She Rubbermaid® Me Do It.

I was going to let this one slip past, but Bruno said we had to blog about our leftover containers:

[Flipper added for scale]

There are two like this,

and two like this:

They qualify as a Good Luck Duck twofer;  they are space-saving AND frugal (yard sale).

We had dinner with Bruno and Alphonse, Kathy, and the triplets.  Alex spent some quiet time completing her commissioned works.  You'll see right away that this one is my Annie;  her hands are huge, which is a metaphor for getting lots done.  They even have power tools growing out of them!  Rawr!

Her shoes are pretty great, too.

I  dress adaptively in layers and slip-ons.  Fine motor skills are best left to others.

We realize we will greet the winter here, and even hobnob with it awhile.   We hope to weather that experience in the Duck, and I'll start showing you how.

Killing time. (Roxi)

Not that I'm ever radioactively energetic, but now that I have time, it would be nice to be working on the Duck. So, Annie is working vicariously by reading 10-Minute Tech - The Book.

If you know us in person, it's pretty obvious that frugality is allowed to reign unchecked in our household. It's like a naughty child that we love too much to discipline. So, we saw the younger sibling of this book in Camping World, for some price that had two digits before the decimal. Please. My clothes don't have two digits. I'm not talking about the size - stop it.

Clearly, though, this series is valuable! Shopping on PaperBackSwap was fruitless, but a trip to Amazon netted us a used copy of this book for under $8, shipping included.

My point started out to be that Annie has been dog-earring pages like mad. Which she has. When I started to write, though, I realized that I haven't been saying nearly enough about our religion: Thriftianity.

By the time we've used up all the thrifty ideas in this thrifty book, I'll bet the next edition will be available for less-than-double-digits. Meanwhile, we'll have soaked up all these ingenious and frugal plans that someone else tried first.