Summarizing Six Months Living on the Road

It occurs to me, I don’t believe I ever wrapped up my lengthy road trip with an all-encompassing journal entry, and that omission ends now.

Last February, 2023, we left Olympia, pointing south, and putting all the pieces of that sliced and diced trip together, I think the four of us, Bev, the dogs, and I, in one fashion or another, were gone for six months.  It was a bit of a fractured trip, including a come home only to return south, but total time gone was pretty close to that six-month estimate.

Let me tell you my thoughts on those six months.

A popular sport, played by most of the news agencies in the world, certainly in the U.S., is to bash everything, to drown the unsuspecting with wave after wave of horrific news, appetizers, main course, and dessert, all stories of death and deceit, greed and the gullible, lies and lost souls.

If you are sitting in Paris, enjoying a glass of wine and a croissant, and news comes on about the U.S., more often than not that news is about a school shooting, a bookkeeper stealing the retirement fund, or the government in lockdown because of the latest bomb threat.  If you are sitting at Joe’s Diner in Wichita, Kansas, and the overseas news comes on, you will hear about a Prince and sex trafficking, a royal yacht sunk by rebels, or a rubbish workers strike, in Jolly Old England, where piles of trash threaten to derail the British photographers. as they try to capture the soon-to-be Queen in her undies.

Bombings in the Mideast? Check!  Media gag order in the Far East? Check! The threat of nuclear war next week? Check!

Day after day the news bombardment continues, leaving one with only one rational conclusion: The world has gone mad, and all of its inhabitants are ruthless assholes looking out for themselves and no one else.

And I’m here to tell ya, it plays on your psyche, and despite an intelligent person’s best effort, it affects the way we look at other people.  Before we left for the California-Mexico border last February, I had preconceived notions of what I would experience when I met people in Southern California, mild concerns about boondocking on a country road and being robbed by gunpoint, or being forced off the road during an irrational moment of road rage.

Here’s what I found.

Two weeks ago, I received an email from an employee at the KOA just outside of Campo. She said she just wanted to know how Bev and I, and the doggies, were doing.

Almost eleven months since we last saw her.

Tonight, I received a text from the owner of a general storage along the Trail, Montezuma’s General Store, to be exact, wondering if I would be stopping by for the upcoming 2024 season, she sure would like to see me again.

Ten months since we met.

I am in contact with eight others who we met along that journey, employees or Trail Angels or store owners, who find the time in their busy lives to inquire about Bev and I, two people they knew for all of a couple days.

Add another dozen hikers, probably more, who still stay in contact, a couple of whom I consider to be, close online friends.

Not one negative experience.  Not one.  Over ten-thousand miles of traveling, meeting, I’m guessing, over a thousand people, and not one negative experience where I could say “what an asshole” or “man, that really sucked.” I had people walk up, in parking lots, to chat with us.  People in RV parks and state parks and rest areas, eager to talk and find out what Puddle Walker was all about. And oh my God, don’t even get me started on how the dogs were treated. I swear, I’m surprised those two don’t have some statue erected for them in one of the trail towns, so popular they were.

But it was more than just the people.  We discovered, or rediscovered, in my case, the absolute stunning beauty of this country, and we only saw three states.   We saw a Super-bloom in the middle of the desert, almost overnight, a seemingly desolate landscape turned yellow, purple, orange, a kaleidoscope from drab, the snap of your fingers, magic by Mother Nature for all those lucky enough to be there at just that moment.

We saw the abundant life of the High Desert, hidden at a distance, but very apparent once you get down and dirty, walking through the chaparral.  We saw tiny towns, no more than dots on the map, and the largest of large cities, so large you could see the glow from their lights, literally, thirty miles away, and each and every one of those towns/cities was inhabited by people just like us, living, breathing, weeping, joyful, hard-working, unemployed, worshippers and non-believers, all humanoid in species, and all fascinating, each man, woman, and child.

Rivers and lakes, snow-capped majesties and mounds no larger than a cupcake, ponds and streams and an ocean, forests and harbors and volcanoes, charming country stores, quintessential American hamlets with town squares and reminders to support your local high school athletes, painted by cheerleaders, while mothers pushed strollers down dust-choked main streets and farmers toiled more hours than humans were ever meant to toil.

Not once did I meet someone rude.  Not once did I meet someone aggressively mean.  Six friggin’ months on the road, folks, and not once did I meet that cross-section of America we hear about on the news nightly.  Which leads me to believe: Is what we see on the news a mirage? A manufactured gig to up the ratings?  Or is it really the United States and its citizens?

Here’s what I believe.  We are a country of over 360, 000,000 citizens, and in that number, you bet your ass there will be malcontents and no-gooders, rapists and murderers, raging Karens and out-of-control Billy Bobs.  But I believe they are the smallest of small fractions of the whole, and by and large, the U.S. is made up of decent people who will treat others kindly if an atmosphere of mutual respect is established.

There is nothing special about Americans, except that they are humans, and humans will continually amaze you with their humanness.  And there is nothing special about the three states we visited, except that within those three states is some of the most jaw-dropping, eye-popping country you can ever imagine.

One of our first days along the border, we met a trio of siblings from the Netherlands, and naturally we asked them what they think of the U.S.  No hesitation in the answer: “It is so big,” the three said, almost as one, “and it is so beautiful.”

I agree, adding only that the Americans we met along that six-month sojourn can share a meal with me any old day.

I would be remiss if I did not mention the visitors from other countries that we met, easily numbering in the hundreds, and this is no exaggeration, to a person they were polite, enthusiastic, respectful, and in awe of this country.  In fact, I gained a new appreciation for the U.S. as seen through the eyes of our foreign visitors.  I think we Americans have a tendency to take this country for granted; after all, we see it daily, we’ve lived it our whole lives, it’s just something we see but don’t give much thought to. But seen through the eyes of someone from Sweden, or Bosnia, or Israel, let me tell you straight, this is Paradise.

One final note in this wrap-up: truth be told, I had not one clue whether selling the house and moving into a shorty bus was a good idea. There were nagging doubts in the back of my mind.  Maybe one of our friends was correct when she said we were batshit crazy for selling the house.

Nope, turns out she was wrong, turns out I was right, and neener-neener to her. I loved my time traveling in Puddle Walker, easily six of the best months in my life, and I have no regrets now that I am living full-time in Puddle Walker, all 85-square feet of her.  This lifestyle is like a warm chocolate chip cookie, right out of the oven, for me.  I have no responsibilities to worry about. I have no finances to worry about.  I am strapped down by no schedule or held to no timetable. I do not care one iota about wealth, and if the economy took a dive tomorrow, it would barely register on my give-a-shit meter.

So there you have it, a summation of six months on the road. Thank you to those who followed along on our journey, and thanks to all of you reading this, for caring enough to spend some time with this graying fossil.  To those of you who encouraged us, and never said a negative thing about the planned trip, I say thank you.  And to those of you who doubted us, and just had to share your negativity in comments, I say, well, you know what I would say if I were not a gentleman.