After a lackluster winter at Amazon’s Fernley facility, Jenn and I decided we’d be better off looking for a job we enjoyed than one that promised big bucks and may or may not deliver. As one of our interests is caving, we decided to try and get jobs at a cave for the summer, even if it meant working the gift shop and cleaning restrooms. It turns out that we lucked into one of the most amazing jobs we could hope for.

Our first choice of positions came through and we got workcamping positions at Caverns of Sonora. For those of you that have never heard of it, Caverns of Sonora is one of the most decorated caves on the planet. While there hasn’t been a study that I’m aware of, I believe it could very well be the most decorated cave in the world based on formations per square inch. We are lucky enough to be spending a fair portion of every day guiding tours in this cave.

The tour is a very up close and personal experience. We are literally inches away from formations throughout much of the tour. On top of that, we are working for some of the best people you could hope to be around. The cave is owned by a family that has owned the land surrounding it for five generations and the general manager has been a true caver for forty-six years. I can’t imagine a better work experience.

Words cannot begin to describe this beautiful cave. But to give you a general idea, we spent a week training with two to three tours a day that are close to two hours long and on our first day off, we took two tours through the cave just to enjoy it and take photos. I snapped five hundred and forty some odd pictures in three and a half hours. Almost eighty have been uploaded to the gallery. The pictures do not do the experience justice, but they are far better than words could ever be. I only wish I had half the photographic skill of the professionals who have done the off-trail photos.

The pictures for this post are chosen more or less at random as I would be very hard pressed to pick favorites from the photos we’ve taken so far. At twenty bucks a person, the tour pushes the limits of our budget, but it really makes me stop and think what beautiful things we may have missed over the past two years by being thrifty. I hope none of them were nearly as beautiful as this, but I will definitely think twice the next time we pass a ‘tourist trap’ by because we don’t want to throw our money away. Some of those traps are probably every bit as worthwhile as this one. Please take a look at the gallery. I’ve yet to see someone come out of a tour disappointed; in fact, the most frequent comment is ‘this is the prettiest cave I’ve ever seen.’

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Well, I threatened to make torches and knives once I got a cascade down with clubs. So far, I haven’t made any knives because I’m still too busy working on torches. I’ve now made 3 sets of torches. The first set was based on the green club construction and worked out pretty well. Eventually though, they started coming apart as the handle detached from the torch. Not good!

The next set I made wooden handles with the intention of swapping club/knife/torch heads out and using the same handles. There were a lot of issues with this version wanting to fall apart. On top of that, they were a pain in the butt to make, took some specialized tools and hardware to do correctly, a little painful to catch, and were just too darn heavy

Yesterday, I salvaged the handle wraps from my first torch set and made some fairly light weight torches. I skipped the aluminum tubing that protected the dowel rod in the previous design and just wrapped it in tinfoil tape. The handles are a little different as they widen up considerably more than the green club handles towards the top.

I did finally find a source for furniture tips, but they are just too light to counterbalance the torch heads even in this ultra light model. So… I’m still using drilled out golf balls for knobs. Will I ever find a better solution?!

I also made a few rings to juggle from clear vinyl tubing. It flexes a bit too much to juggle in the heat of the day without putting a layer of tape around the rings. However, if you wait for the evening and stick a handful of glowsticks from the dollar store inside, they don’t look half bad. The biggest problem with the glow rings as props is convincing the kids to let me have enough to juggle.

They’re pretty nifty little night time toys that are incredibly fast to make for very little cost. Kids love ‘em and I don’t have to keep refueling every 2-3 minutes if I want to juggle at night!

If you make a set of rings, I suggest getting a dowel rod with a diameter close to the inside diameter of your tubing and using a one inch sized piece to connect the tubing together. A couple of inches of electrical tape will secure it enough to stand up to a fair bit of abuse without coming apart.

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I’ve been juggling off and on since I was fourteen, but I never learned much more than a three ball cascade or two balls in one hand. Sure, I could juggle that way indefinitely, but it was kind of boring. This summer in Alaska, I had the good fortune to pick up a juggling book behind a second hand book store free of charge. Suddenly, there were lots of new things to try and a few tricks I had even forgotten about! Combine with lots of free time and stir well.

These days, I’m up to four balls in a fairly solid pattern. But my three ball juggling has gotten a lot more interesting… at least for me. I learned a handful of new patterns and techniques and then started mixing and matching them, which lead to a few things invented on the spot. I drop things a lot more, but at least I’m not bored!

The other day, we were in Wal-Mart and found a really nice, big super bouncy, brightly colored ball. It was a little bit light, but I thought, “Wow, this would look great!” A little hint, any time you’re looking for small, round, bouncy things and there’s only one on display… check under the shelves. Jenn grabbed a wiffle ball bat and rounded up another ten or twelve balls in a few minutes.

They’re a little bit light and a little big, but they are highly visible and have an incredible bounce. It took a few days, but now, they’re pretty comfortable to juggle.

Ok, so I can juggle four balls and make 3 look fairly pretty… but what about torches and knives?! Fear not, I’m working on those next. The thing about torches and knives is, they’re balanced like juggling clubs. So, first I have to learn to juggle clubs before I go around setting myself on fire and sticking pointy bits in my head.

Professional quality juggling equipment is actually rather expensive. I just couldn’t see spending $60-120 on a set of clubs only to find out I couldn’t get the hang of it. Or for that matter, to learn at the cost of abusing some fairly expensive (for me) equipment. Luckily, I ran across the Green Club Project, which was designed to make a very cheap juggling club from primarily recycled materials. To top it off, they also juggle better than some commercial clubs.

It took a few days of scavenging out here at the Slabs, but the cost to build a set of clubs was pretty minimal! I spent $5 on dowel rods and I had a couple of spare tennis balls that I had not yet turned into Russian balls. I wasn’t able to find any furniture tips that were the right size, but my neighbor suggested golf balls, which have worked out pretty well other than a few bruises.

I spent an afternoon putting these clubs together and I think they’re working out pretty well. I’ve spent a few days now abusing them and am starting to get the hang of three clubs. I think it’ll be at least a year before I feel ‘good’ with them, but Jenn already likes them more than balls since they’re even flashier. Once these are abused to death, I may even make a new set rather than buy commercial equipment. They really do juggle pretty well and it’s nice to be able to pick up ‘garbage’ and turn it into something functional.

Yes… I have plans for homemade torches. I think it’ll be a while before I’m feeling comfortable enough with the clubs to move up though.

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Parts! Lets see, cardboard boxes – check, aluminum foil -  check, stuffing for insulation – check, pane of glass – no dice! It was a good excuse for a few minutes and then I went outside. There I was reminded that we are camping in, for lack of a better word, a junkyard. Bleh. No more excuses! The only thing to do was wander around the desert for hours searching for a piece of intact glass until Johnny got worried about me, came to look for me, and said that he didn’t want me out doing that again. Brilliant. Another new excuse. Unfortunately, either I gave up too soon , Johnny thinks I am superwoman, or  just doesn’t mull over all of the possible things that could happen to me while I am out. I am going with superwoman.

After that defeat, I decided to formulate a new plan to guide me on my quest for a pane of glass.

Step 1>  Sit around and drink with the neighbors.
Step 2>  ….
Step 3>  Pane ‘o glass 4 me!!!!!

After much contemplation, it really did seem like the best course of action, and it turned out way better than I thought it would. Not only did a pane of glass appear (intact, amazingly enough)  within a few days, but it had a solar oven attached to it. Check this beauty out.

OK. So it’s seen better days, and I think those days were a couple of years ago, but it does have potential. After I cleaned the mud that had caked on the reflectors, knocked the things that looked like rats nets off and (mostly) cleaned up the glass, I decided it was probably a self cleaning oven an tossed it out in the sun. Well to my dismay it didn’t clean itself up, but it did get to 200F degrees. That was yesterday. I gave the self cleaning thing another shot today. It got up to a cozy 250F. Not too shabby. I think with a little love I might be able to coax it into making us dinner.

Another thing that I thought for sure I would do on the road is master the banjo. Ya um… that didn’t happen. At least not yet (see, I am still optimistic!). I was supposed to have so much time to practice. Once again, nada. I don’t think that I have taken the darn thing out more than 3 times in the last two years. I can make plenty of excuses though… “It’s in the outside storage compartment buried behind 30 other things and the camper is on the truck which puts the compartment about 6′ in the air.”, “Oh darn.. we have neighbors here. Well, I sure don’t want to disturb them with my failing frailing.” Oh ya, I have a million more. Excuses I am good at. Banjo…. eh,  not so much.

I am getting better, though! One of the local musicians who graces the stage of The Range (the local nightclub/stage) is giving me music lessons. He is mainly teaching me about the mind boggling fascinating world of music theory. He says that once I have that down, I will be able to play any instrument and will have a well trained ear. I hope he is right. Right now I am struggling with just one instrument. And, my ear? Well, I think it might be broken….along with my rhythm bone and my timing muscle.

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The first thing to do, is go to an Asian food store and pickup red curry paste. Yes, I know you can occasionally find curry paste in your chain supermarkets, but you can actually get a large enough container to make several dozen meals for the same price as the tiny one meal container you might find in a chain supermarket.  In fact, the last curry paste I bought was in the neighborhood of $6 for a 35 ounce container. I don’t recall off the top of my head what the tiny containers you might find in supermarkets are, but I’d guess they’re under 2 ounces for a similar price. We hit an absolute dearth of Asian food stores in Alaska and thankfully couldn’t find the tiny containers either or I’m not sure I’d be able to live with myself.

Okay, that’s the big secret. I don’t have an actual curry paste recipe as that’s way more advanced than I want to be in the kitchen. Once you’ve got the obscure shopping out of the way, it’s one of the easiest meals you can make and still look fancy. As long as you’re in the Asian food store anyway, you might as well grab some coconut milk and whatever you like in your stir fry. Often the prices there are better than chain supermarkets anyway.

You can make stir fry, right? If so, curry is a breeze. Just make stir fry anyway you like it (but without soy or teriyaki sauce!). Depending on what we have on hand, I will use chicken or pork, broccoli, carrots, green pepper, onion, bamboo shoots, mushrooms, baby corn and bean sprouts. I recommend adding things like baby corn, mushrooms, bean sprouts and bamboo shoots last in order to keep from overcooking them. Once you’re done with the stir fry, set it aside and start on the curry sauce.

My personal method is to add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil to the pan over low heat and squirt out some curry paste into the oil. How much is up to you. I tend to like it fairly spicy so add perhaps 2-3 teaspoons. Next, add in coconut milk. Anywhere from half a can to a whole can for two people will work – depending on how hungry you are and how ’soupy’ you like your curry. Getting the right amount of curry paste and coconut milk may take a little trial and error, but you can always add more paste if it’s not spicy enough and more coconut milk if it’s too spicy.

The next bits are optional, but I’ll just tell you the way I do things. If you want a more panang style curry, you can stop right here.  For a sweeter curry, add about a tablespoon of sugar and stir it in. For an even more diverse mix of flavors, I usually add some small pineapple chunks along with pineapple juice. Depending on what you’ve added to your stir fry, you may or may not need to add a little salt. Bean sprouts definitely negate the need for extra salt. Just let this simmer and cook to your own taste. Remember that the flavor will be a bit diluted by your stir fry and rice.

Once you’re happy with the curry sauce, toss your stir fry in and let it simmer for a few minutes. That’s pretty much all there is to it. Serve over rice. We just use white rice, but get as fancy as you want.

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One thing the east coast has that you don’t have much of on the west coast is a large number of caving conventions. There just aren’t very many conventions out here, even if the cavers are at least as active. As luck would have it, we stumbled across the Northwest Caving Association Regional. It’s a little coincidental actually, since it changes areas every year. Regardless of all the random factors that could have prevented it, we did find out about the NCAR in time and make it down to Trout Lake, Washington for Memorial Day weekend.

As with every caving convention we’ve been to, the people were awesome. You don’t meet nicer, more down to earth people than cavers. On Saturday, we bummed a ride with members of the Silver Sage Grotto (out of Idaho) where we had a rather massive trip through Butter and Stairwell. I think we had twenty-four people underground at one point, counting the infant strapped to his Dad’s chest.

There were still a few interesting ice formations lingering in Butter, but they won’t be around much longer with the weather warming up. The nice thing about ice formations is that they grow back the next year, even if people do damage them.

Stairwell was more of a sport cave. The same two dozen-ish people went in, but there were a couple of crossovers that kept us from being right on top of each other as we were inside of Butter. One interesting feature of Stairwell was the ‘bubble room’. This was an area where lava filled the room twice, resulting in an interesting texture to the walls as the original rock was melted down and smoothed out. It was a short squeeze to get into, but certainly worth the trouble to see such an interesting feature.

Due to a couple of the Silver Sage guys being last out of Stairwell, we ended up having a beer around the truck and talking with one of the locals after everyone had left. He gave us directions to Poacher’s cave and since none of us were caved out yet, we headed over and popped around the cave systems in that area. There were many, many entrances in the area and one large passage that went a half mile or more before we turned back with going passage ahead of us. All in all, we had a pretty full day and Jenn and I didn’t manage to stay up much past dark – missing the big party night.

Sunday, we had an interesting cave planned. We had a group of about ten people, which was much more manageable than the previous day and headed over to Dead Horse. Dead Horse is one of the larger lava tubes in the country and we’d had people trying to scare us away from it since Friday evening. It seems there was concern that the lower entrance was flooded and the upper entrance, or ‘Rat Hole’ was a tight, awkward squeeze that was even tougher to get out of than into.

Mark and Randy from the Silver Sage Grotto

The Rat Hole turned out to be easier than popular opinion had predicted. We did have one person unable to enter due to body size, but everyone else got in without too much trouble. We actually had a couple of first time cavers on the trip and ended up getting creative halfway through the cave. At one point, we realized we had someone without a headlamp who was carrying a maglite! Mid-cave, we did some impromptu outfitting and got him a head lamp and some clips to hold it on his helmet.

Towards the bottom of the cave, one of our group seemed to be getting mildly hypothermic. Understandable, as he was wearing a T-shirt and shorts and had been crawling across a rather damp floor in a cave that was a little chilly. Once again, the group managed to take care of itself. We improvised a thermal suit from a large garbage bag, got him something to put between butt and cold rocks and got some carbs in him before we turned back.

At the rat hole, everybody got out without too much trouble. Just in case, we’d sent a more experienced caver out first who was giving anyone that needed it a quick tug. At the end of the day, we were all out safe and sound with nothing more than a few scrapes and bruises. Even our new cavers were still raring to go, so we popped into Wicked cave for a few minutes since it was right across the road.

Overall, NCAR was a blast and we were happy to make a caving convention this summer. We’d been expecting to miss them all as there aren’t very many west coast conventions and we can’t be in Alaska and at all the east conventions at the same time. We made some new friends and now we’ll have a few more people we’ll have to pop in and visit when we want to go caving out west!

Free/Cheap Campsites mentioned in this post:
Trailhead BnB

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Many thanks to Caro, Tony, Siobhan, and the ladies roosting down by the sound. We have enjoyed the “fruits of your labor”.

This post was brought to you by the letter E.

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I guess we’re starting to see the ‘real’ Washington weather. Our first week in the state was pretty dry, but the past week has been rather damp or perhaps moist. In fact, you could say it has been downright soggy.

Last Sunday, we headed towards Mt. Rainier National Park from the north side. The park is still closed, but there is a lot of forestry land around the park which allows dispersed camping. We spotted at least one exceptionally nice boondocking spot on the main road into the park, but as it was a fairly well traveled road, any and all turnouts were occupied. Near the park entrance, we crossed a rather long one lane bridge across the Carbon River.

Immediately, the road turned to gravel and around the first bend, the road was constricted by a fallen tree and a couple of large boulders on the opposite side. This particular section of road was more mud, boulders and tree roots than gravel. We had around 18 inches of clearance between the jacks and the obstacles. Not too bad, but the angle of attack required getting rather close to the edge of the road. Normally, this wouldn’t be a large concern, but we’d already seen the edge of a couple roads washed away that morning.

With Jenn’s help in the form of ambiguous hand signals (does anyone know what two crooked fingers forming a ‘U’ means?), we managed to get through the constriction without any new dings or scratches. Not too far up the road, we found a somewhat obscured pullout that would be our home for the next week.

I think we had one sunny day, on Monday, followed by four rainy ones. We then figured we might as well stick around through the weekend since Washingtonians seem to enjoy camping and grabbed all the good spots on the weekends. Anyway, it seemed like a good idea to let that hairy bit of road dry out some as there was a drainage culvert right above it.

So, how did we amuse ourselves for a week when we were rained in without internet? Better than you might expect two people to do while cooped up in the back of a truck. It turned out we were able to tune in an HD channel that played nothing but older movies and we managed to tolerate the commercials fairly well. There was also a good selection of radio stations, one of which happened to play both kinds of music – jazz and blues.

One thing I made sure to pack when we left was four decks of cards, which we actually used for the first time at Patrick’s party. I don’t think Jenn and I have ever played cards together, but we played a bit of gin rummy and I taught Jenn to play UNO using two decks of cards. We’re going to have to get a real deck some day! At one point, the house rules got downright silly: we were using poker chips, two decks of cards and a made up ’spinner’ for random number generation. The game was alternating between UNO and gin, with the winner of a hand allowed to spin for poker chips which could be spent to make up a temporary rule for the next game. Silly, yes. But, I won!

Jenn spent a lot of time being constructive as well. She’s been knitting me a pair of socks. So far, they cover about half of my foot. I think we’re going to have to get back out in the middle of nowhere before I can expect the other half. She enjoyed bragging about how all of her half-finished projects give her plenty to do during the moments when I was scrambling for something to keep me occupied. I played with my electronics kit a bit for the first time in two years and even managed to shoot a few arrows during a brief lull in the rain. Just enough rounds to ruin another arrow… 15 yards is really a bit too close for practice, but I was bored!

Somewhere in there during a lull, I climbed up on the roof and resealed an area that turned out not to be leaking. Four days of rain along with temperatures in the low forties overnight and low fifties for mid-day highs and we had some pretty awful humidity in the camper. Yep, raining from the skylight in the bathroom! Water forming on cans in the cupboards. As long as I was doing repairs, I fixed the connections on our inverter, which were not exactly up to code. The connections look much nicer now and should hold up much better, even if it is a bit harder to check the exact battery voltage now.

And then, there were video games! Yes, we’ve quite a collection of old games that we’re dragging around. After trying out a few things, Jenn settled in on a real time strategy game of some sort and I went to an old favorite – Slash’em. It’s a Nethack variant, and if you’ve never fought a nethack addiction, well, I suppose you’re like 99.999% of people. Any UNIX gamer will know Nethack, but there aren’t all that many of us! I’ve spent a lot of time playing Nethack off and on over the past 13 years and I’ve ‘won’ exactly twice. I don’t think I’ll ever ‘beat’ it.

For those keeping score on the costs of boondocking, I think we used roughly two gallons of gasoline keeping the batteries charged enough to watch TV, listen to the radio, read books, play video games and run the furnace. I’m guessing we used two gallons of propane keeping the thermostat set at 52, but that’s a bit harder to judge… I don’t actually remember when we last filled the propane.

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After we left Quartzsite, our next ‘destination’ was Slab City, just outside of Niland, CA. First though, we really had to do some shopping before I broke into the emergency can of baked beans. So, we hit Brawley, which is about twenty miles south of the Slabs. As long as we were in town, Jenn wanted to get some work done on the freecampsites website, so we endured horribly slow internet for a night, under the assumption that we’d have no internet at all once we hit Slab City.

Go figure. Slab City had the best EVDO connection we’d seen since we left Phoenix. In fact, it’s so good they have an internut connection in the lending library. Speaking of the library, I was really impressed with the selection of books available and found my share very quickly. I rather wish I’d spent more time in the library as I could have dug around for a few gems instead of grabbing the first half dozen titles that looked interesting.

Like Quartzsite, Slab City was quickly emptying out for the summer. However, there were still a few folks around and the area was a bit more active than Quartzsite. Since Ryan and Nicole were joining us the next day in their tent, Jenn kept me driving around the area looking for the perfect campsite longer than I could handle. Her requirements: a nice shade tree (preferably three or four), not too close to the neighbors, close enough to the center of things to be a close walk but not so close that we’re in the middle, and easy to find so Ryan and Nicole wouldn’t have to spend too much time looking.

Now, we’re talking about the desert here. If there was any tree large enough to provide shade that met the rest of her requirements (or even one of them), someone had parked under it. Even more likely to me, was that they had parked next to it and dumped their gray water on it for a few years until it grew into a shade tree. Eventually, I quit listening to things like ‘turn left behind us twenty feet’ and let my own pioneer spirit take over. I found us a spot that met all of the requirements if you considered a more liberal translation of the phrase ’shade tree’. I think it could be a nice little tree in a few more years if only someone would dump their tanks on it for a while.

Once Ryan and Nicole showed up, we all got to demonstrate our cooking abilities for a few days. It turns out Ryan is actually a pretty good chef and Nicole makes a mean chili dog. They even brought along their starving dog, Kay, to handle dish detail. She wanted to play with the cats and Hunter was ready to ‘play’, but cooler heads prevailed and Kay didn’t get any kitty snacks.

Between cooking, I gave Ryan a quickie archery lesson and he proved to be a natural. In fact, I gave him my slingshot as I’d long ago given up actually hitting anything more specific than ‘the ground’ with it. Apparently, Ryan grew up playing with slingshots and hadn’t lost the knack.

Once Jenn saw Ryan and Nicole driving around without their trailer, she started pestering me to work on the moped. That piece of junk had crapped out on me in Phoenix and hadn’t been started since I’d walked home from the police station. Lacking a good excuse, I was forced to unload the scooter and make at least a token effort.

Once I got the fancy sides off, it wasn’t too hard to see one of the problems. One of the fuel lines had dry rotted and was causing a loss of vacuum to supply fuel to the carburetor. Now, I’m far from a mechanic, but I did manage to snip a bit of uncracked line from elsewhere and get it replaced, albeit a bit tighter fit than is normal. I had to recharge the battery a couple of times to get enough fuel in the lines to start it and keep running. The kickstart is worthless on that thing; it probably still has a few small vacuum leaks and definitely needs a new spark plug, but it did finally fire up. Since I couldn’t do anything about the rest of the problems, I declared it ‘fixed for now’.

The first day or so, it seemed most of the neighbors viewed us as transients and would ignore our campsite as they drove past. Once we got the scooter ripped to pieces in the backyard and the hood on the truck up to charge the battery, I guess we were starting to look like locals. The neighbors started waving as they went past and one even stopped to invite us to a party, which we didn’t actually make, as it was the day after we all pulled out.

To stress test the scooter, Jenn and I rode it out to the ‘abandoned’ county park on the Salton Sea while Ryan and Nicole took their truck. It turned out that the park was a bit further than we thought and Ryan and Nicole beat us there by about twenty minutes since we were poking along at twenty-five miles an hour. The sun was pretty brutal, but we were determined to have a picnic, so we utilized some Slab City engineering of our own. We found some random boards scattered along the beach and used them to hold one side of a tarp up to form a shelter. One side was jammed in the truck windows and the other was held up by a broken board tied to a big log and the other half of said board tied to the scooter.

While Nicole, Jenn and I were building a squatters camp, Ryan was frying up yummy quesadillas. Since we had set up in the main parking area of the abandoned park, we shouldn’t have been surprised that a few people came along to check out the area. What was funny, though, was watching how studiously they avoided looking at the crazy people under their makeshift shelter. You could practically hear them chanting “Don’t make eye contact. Don’t make eye contact.”

Knowing how slow we’d be, Jenn and I started back a bit ahead of the rest, after watching Ryan circumnavigate a small sand bar in his inflatable boat. I think we made a bit better time than the inflatable raft would have, but that’s about it. The ride was really a bit too long for two people on a moped on the highway, even if it was pretty lightly traveled and had a nice shoulder to stay on. The scooter did pretty well, all things considered. It lost power a few times for a couple of seconds, but picked right back up with just enough of a hiccup to make us nervous. I think a little more work on the fuel lines and a spark plug will fix it’s major woes. The rest of our time at the Slabs, it cranked within a few attempts and purred along nicely, provided Jenn remembered to curse at it by the third attempt.

So, how do I feel about the Slabs after spending a few days there? I loved it. You’ve got a free place to camp without any real rules except “don’t piss off the neighbors”. Unlike your average HOA, these neighbors are pretty accepting. I mean, one of the old timers, Leonard, has been building a giant, multi-colored monument to God out of adobe, paint and random junk he found in the desert over the past twenty-five years. Maybe it’s only becoming a tourist attraction because people want to see what some crazy old coot has been working on, but some of the neighbors actually come out and help him construct additions to  Salvation Mountain.

At the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got a few folks living inside the old military bunkers. Their idea of fun is burning old tires and shooting at each others bunkers with the biggest guns they’ve got. I’m not all that keen on burning tires, but I’m not about to argue it with a neighborhood full of folks that are hunkered in so deep that they get a kick out of firing off a few rounds at each others houses. We skipped the ‘bunker party’ invite under the rash assumption that alcohol, guns and burning tires might not be the healthiest combination.

And in the middle, you’ve got a lot of just ordinary folks. People are running businesses out of Slab City. Some of them are actively involved in trying to keep a community feel to the area. You can tune into CB channel 23 weeknights at 6pm and hear the daily news, which primarily consists of the TV Guide and a list of goods and services people are selling. I guess there’s just really not that much going on and gossiping about the neighbors over the air may not always be the brightest idea. During the winter months, there is a lot more going on, but even in the Spring, we were invited up to the Range for live music, over to the Oasis for a chili dinner and the infamous bunker party. Your neighbors might have concertina wire strung around their camper or a line of old tires delineating ‘their yard’, but they’re not likely to complain about the pink flamingos stuck in your own yard.

Water might be scarce in the desert, but Slab City has it’s own hot spring and a shower fed from said spring. If nudity offends you though, best to go to the spring when you’re sure no one else is around. I certainly wouldn’t drink the water from the spring, but it’s nice to jump in for a hot soak on a chilly evening. During the day, the shower is quite cool and can be a nice contrast to the desert sun during a warm spell.

If I had to sum Slab City up, I’d say it’s as close as you’re likely to get to an Old West frontier town in the United States today. In the middle of nowhere, you can get away with just about anything you want, but once you bring people together and form a town, you get a lot of rules about what you’re allowed to do or barred from doing. At the Slabs, you’ve got a unique situation where there really aren’t any laws because the state owns the land and doesn’t care enough about it to run folks off. It attracts all kinds of people. Some just want a free place to live. Others want freedom in a truer sense. What most of them have in common, though, is a ‘live and let live’ attitude. If you aren’t bothering your neighbors, they aren’t likely to bother you.

Libertarianism, anarchy, call it whatever you like; but, even in the Slabs you’ll be reminded that you better not get too rowdy by the occasional Sheriff and Immigration patrols as well as the military choppers, hummers and trucks that roll through every day. At least you get to see some of the fancy hardware your tax dollars are paying for!

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I hate to post two stories so close together, but since our internet connection is about to go from ‘two tin cans and a string’ to ‘no one can hear you scream’, I’m going to go ahead and put up the Carlsbad post along with a link to the fancy pictures.

One of the sights we were both looking forward to since we hit the road was Carlsbad Caverns. Neither of us had been here since we were children and while I couldn’t recall anything about the cave, I remember being fascinated throughout the entire trip. Since we’ve taken up caving as a hobby, Carlsbad has taken on the aspect of your run of the mill holy shrine and a required pilgrimage.

We knew our America the Beautiful pass would get us into the Big Room for free, but one day underground wasn’t going to do it. We’re trying to stick to a budget here, so rather than paying for a guided tour of other sections of the cave or other caves in the park, I emailed a couple of people in the local grotto and asked if they had anything going on. It was short notice, but they both responded and took us on two separate trips in two days with two caves each day!

Day one, we hit the Parks Ranch cave system while we were waiting on one person that was traveling from El Paso for the trip. It was a fairly narrow system that was much drier, hotter and full of sharp gravel than we’d become used to on the east coast. There was a small campground right above the cave system, so we left the camper right there for the night and hitched a ride with Phyllis to Slaughter Canyon.

I learned just how hardcore desert cavers are for the next part of the trip. We hiked a bit over ninety minutes across the desert to reach Christmas Tree cave. Before even reaching the cave, I was just about out of water. Luckily, it was a pretty easy cave that was much cooler than Parks Ranch and we came out at sundown for the return hike. Christmas Tree is a very decorated cave. There are formations all over the place including the cave’s namesake ‘Christmas Tree’ formation that actually looks like a small evergreen was planted and then calcified.

On day two, we met up wth Kevin, who was taking a family group from Colorado out for the girls’ first wild cave tour. They sure got a fair bit of excitement – the first cave we jumped in was Yellow Jacket and within thirty feet of the entrance we found a fair sized Western Diamondback curled up and none too happy about intruders in his home. We were glad he’d taken up residence at the far side of a fairly large room so we could ease past him. Overall, this cave had very few decorations and was mazy with a few tight squeezes. Jenn finally got to see just how fat I am when she wriggled through a hole that was so tight on me that I was forced to exhale in order to move forward and had to quickly pull my pants back up after exiting the hole! That squeeze ended up being our stopping point as one of the group couldn’t fit and one of the girls had no intention of trying.

The kids must’ve had a good time, though, because everyone was up for a run over to Doc Brito, which is a fairly short cave. The only really interesting part of this trip was a hairy section on the climb down. I went first and missed the hole for an easy climb down. I was left hanging by one arm with a short drop onto unknown ground. I managed to pull myself back up and onto the right path with a lot of huffing and puffing. Everyone else got a mini-lecture on which route to take as even a small drop like that could have been nasty with an unlucky landing and the bad route seemed to attract most people as it was the easier to see coming in.

On day three, we rested! Thanks very much to Phyllis and Kevin for organizing these trips. Thanks also to Brenda, Amy, Bryant, Gina, Andy and his family for making the trips so enjoyable. Gypsy cavers couldn’t hope to come across a friendlier group than the Pecos Valley Grotto.

Finally, on day four we made it to Carlsbad. We took the natural entrance to the Big Room and were likely the slowest people there that day as we had to stop and shine flashlights into all sorts of nooks and crannies. Also, I had to shoot roughly a hundred pictures; but sadly, most of them didn’t turn out too well because the scenes are just so large and impossible to light up well. We did get a few good shots, though. Now we have an excuse to go back again soon.

We ended up taking something like five or six hours to make it through the ‘basic’ tour. I do believe we were passed by everyone that started the tour after us, including an entire busload of Asian tourists who would pause for a few seconds, stick up a camera phone to snap a picture and move on. For all I know, their pictures turned out better than ours. We did, at least, see what we were taking pictures of and sat down a few times just to enjoy the scenery and peace. But, I guess they had to hurry as they have an entire country to see while they’re on vacation. I’d hate to hear what it sounds like during the summer after hearing the approaching tour group!

I won’t even try to describe Carlsbad. You can see a few of the keeper pictures from the gallery here. However, the pictures don’t even come close to doing it justice. You’ve really got to see it for yourself.

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In New Mexico, the mountains were dotted with cave systems. On one dirt road, North West of Carlsbad Caverns, I saw four of them on the same mountain. As usual, Johnny wasn’t able to scout, because he was driving, so I showed them to him. He then pointed out that they were moooving.

Maybe I should wear my glasses more often. That way I wont end up sticking my head in a cow.

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For your participation, you will receive free camping during the event, an official T-shirt, a guided cave tour, new friends, and a fuzzy warm feeling that comes from making a difference.

Work will include the following:

• Formation Repair and Cleaning

• Visual Work to Camouflage Man-Made Features

• Vandalism / Graffiti Work

• Clean-Up of Trails and Commercial Areas

• and Much Much More!

More information can be found on the website. Please ignore the 2008 date. It is a typo.

You can also contact them @ 606-286-4411.

The event will be held at:

Johnny and I had a great time in this park. It is where we worked on the bat gate. There is a ton of wildlife in the area. We saw deer every day for most of the day. We also saw a fox and a number of skunks. Its a very nice park with a lot of caves in it.

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Grandma’s Chocolate Pie

Grab a medium sized pot and toss in everything but the pie crusts (duh!), Cool Whip and butter. Set your stove to medium or medium high heat and begin mixing it together. Once the mixture seems to be warming up a bit, toss the stick of butter in and keep stirring. You’re going to do a lot of stirring. Basically, you want to keep stirring until it achieves the consistency of a thick pudding. I recommend a whisk for this… or even a small hand mixer if you can keep it from splashing all over.

Once the mixture thickens up, remove it from heat and pour into a couple of pie shells. Personally, I like Oreo or graham cracker pie crusts, but it’s pretty hard to ruin this pie by picking the wrong crust. Next, I like to leave the pies sitting out under a paper towel so that the steam doesn’t form condensation and make the crust soggy. About an hour should do it. Once they’ve cooled a bit, toss them in the fridge or freezer to cool further. Before serving, cover them with Cool Whip and grab your own fork and plate so as to be sure of getting a slice.

Uncle Mike’s Limoncello

Limoncello is a fashionable after dinner drink all over Italy. There are many commercial limoncellos sold today, but only the homemade liqueur has the fresh and refreshing edge that makes it such a wonderful drink. The popular way to serve limoncello is from the freezer and syrupy thick, but it is often served at room temperature as well.

The key ingredient to limoncello is, of course, the lemons. The fresher the lemons, the more oil can be extracted from their skins and the more flavorful the liqueur. Traditional recipes call for a few green lemons as well as the yellow, but green lemons are difficult to find in the US. Mottled yellow and green lemons are an excellent choice. Green (or mottled) lemons will add more fragrance to the drink, while yellow lemons will add more flavor.

Peel the lemons, being careful not to remove any of the white pith along with the lemon zest as it gives a bitter taste. A lemon zester works best for this task, however a potato peeler or knife will do in a pinch.

Put the lemon zests into a half gallon container along with the grain alcohol. Store this in a cool, dark place for 3-4 days, taking out to shake several times a day.

Once the lemon zests become pale and crisps, you’ve extracted all of the lemon oil from them. Strain them out of the alcohol and discard the zests.

Grab a pot and mix your sugar and water together. Heat this on the stove over medium-low to medium heat and stir until the sugar dissolves. Do not let the water boil. You are aiming for a clear sugar syrup. Once achieved, let the sugar water cool down to room temperature.

Mix the alcohol with the sugar syrup and you’re all set. You’ll need a couple of liter bottles to store the limoncello. You can drink it at this point, but the flavor will round out a bit if allowed to sit for a week. As for the leftover lemons, need I suggest lemonade?

Happy turkey day everyone!

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While we are here, we have been doing some caving. Our good friend David visited us and we headed over to Camp’s Gulf Cave. We had a great adventure. Either Johnny or myself will post about it as soon as we get the pictures . Hopefully he, Pam and Chaos will join us for some more caving fun before we head off once again. We are surely going to miss them when we leave this side of the country. Its not often that you find good people who are great company and are willing to meet up in various places to do the things you like to do. We really lucked out when we met them. We would have probably left the east coast sooner if our paths had never crossed.

For some reason, when I get to my parent’s place, I turn even more domestic than usual. Tonight, for instance, I decided to make a batch of pasta. It was my first time, and I would have to say it turned out well. While it smelled just like the stuff in the box, it wasn’t quite like it. The best way to describe it would be to say that it was much more hearty – not so much thicker, but more… wholesome. I have to say that I prefer it to the boxed stuff. Not only is it more hearty, it is better tasting and I know exactly what is in it. Which is a major plus for me. I hate turning over a container and seeing 3425437 ingredients in an item that I know should only have 5. Not only that, but now I know that I can make it, too.

Next time we are out in the boonies and out of pasta, I will not fret. I will just make some. Ah… self reliance. Its a good feeling. Lately, my staples have been milk, eggs, flour, sugar, and olive oil. More and more I have been finding that those, some meat, a few spices, and veggies are all I need to make just about anything. Quite a far cry from the old days of ordering in for every meal. Life is good. There’s no way I could have found the time to experiment like this when I was working 9-16hrs a day.

So, have I convinced you to make your own pasta? Its incredibly easy, and it only takes 5 ingredients. Water, oil, flour, salt and eggs. Here’s the recipe:

* 1/3 cup water
* 2 1/3 cup all purpose flour (or whole wheat)
* 1 teaspoon of olive oil
* 2 eggs
* 1/2 teaspoon salt

Mix 2 cups of flour and salt in a large bowl and create a depression in the center. Beat eggs. Add water and oil to eggs. Pour egg mixture into the depression you’ve created in the flour mix. Mix well. Use remaining flour to cover your work surface. Knead dough on the floured area four about 8 minutes. Dough should have elasticity and be smooth. Cover dough and allow to sit for 10 minutes. Divide the dough into 4 quarters. Lightly flour working area and roll each quarter out with a rolling pin into a 12×12″ square (1/16″ thick). Set them aside for 20 minutes. Cut into desired shape.

You can also use this recipe to make egg noodles. Just substitute the 2 eggs with one egg and two yolks. You can freeze the left over egg whites for use at a later date.

If you want to store them, you should allow the pieces to dry for at least 1 hour. Dry them by hanging them or placing them on a rack. After they dry, you can seal them in a Ziploc and put them in to the fridge for a couple of days. You can also freeze them for up to 8 months.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t stop thinking about the possibilities. Herb flavored pasta, spinach, raviolis, unique shapes, etc. Heck, with the right packaging and ingredients, it might even make a nice gift.

Tonight, I served it with my “almost from scratch” marinara sauce. Yum yum! Maybe someday I will post that recipe too. Or, maybe my homemade alfredo. Tomorrow, I will be making another batch of beef jerky. I am going to try it a little differently this time. I might also go ahead and make that new twist on pesto sauce that I have been thinking about. Oh, the possibilities!

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1. Part One – The fulltime lifestyle
2. Part Two – Why a truck camper?
3. Part Three – Weights & Dealing with them
4. Part Four – Boondocking resource conservation

So, you want to live in the back of a truck… First off, you should probably face the fact that you’re a bit of an odd duck. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about some of the things that you’ll encounter along the way to making this grandiose fantasy a reality.

Where are you from?
You’re going to hear this question a lot as you travel around. It’s simply a polite thing to ask strangers that “aren’t from around here”. There are a few schools of thought as to how one should answer this question. You can tell people where you left “real life” from if you are in a hurry and don’t want to explain how you come to be living in that truck over yonder. If you’re dealing with a business or government agency, it’s usually simplest to give the address of your mail forwarding service or the address on your driver’s license.

The next two options are a pretty good way to strike up a conversation, so use them carefully as you may end up trying to explain yourself to a posse in the wrong town. You can simply tell the truth and explain that you’re traveling. This can lead to all sorts of interesting questions such as “are ya’ll circus folk/gypsies/carnies/hippies/destitute?”. I wouldn’t recommend telling the cashier at a local business this, but it goes over well at campgrounds. Events that bring a lot diverse folks together are also a good bet. You’ll have to explain yourself a lot more, but as you’re there to meet people anyway, it gives you an interesting topic to talk about. A lot of people are curious about the fulltime RV lifestyle and have lots of questions. The final answer to “where are you from?” is to say “I grew up in…”. This is a polite way of making smalltalk without committing yourself to answering a lot of personal questions from complete strangers.

What do you bring along?
This is a really tough question and will depend mostly on what you enjoy doing and how much room you have. Jenn and I had a lot of different ideas on what is considered “essential” to the fulltime RV lifestyle, but one thing we both agreed on was that tools should come along. The only tool I can recall leaving in storage is a sawzall that simply took up too much room when a circular saw could accomplish much of the same work and be a better all around tool besides. Jenn is carrying around a full size sewing machine and I’m dragging along an acetylene torch with miniature gas bottles.

Why are tools so important? They give you the ability to work on your own rig! It might take years to become an expert craftsman or handyman, but with tools at hand, you can attempt to fix problems or fabricate new solutions. It might be ugly or even fail the first shot, but you can probably do it two or three times for the cost of having it done by a professional. Let’s face it, if you’re not going to work every day, you probably have a lot of free time. Why not spend a couple of days making something that a skilled laborer could knock out in a couple of hours? The satisfaction that comes from making things just the way you picture them is well worth the time involved.

Entertainment is also an important item to think about. If you can use some of the tools you brought along in a hobby such as wood working or sewing, you’ve knocked out two birds with a chunk of iron. But what about books, movies and toys? Yah, I said toys. Unfortunately, books take up a ton of space and are quite heavy. DVDs aren’t quite as bad, but they still take up a considerable amount of space. Our solution to these was two-fold: electronic media and reduce what you carry.

Movies were a pretty easy solution. Most of our movies were ripped to disk and stored on hard drives for backup, so we simply moved them over to the ReadyNAS and keep fifteen or twenty on a Cowon for easy access. The movies we wanted to keep but were not yet ripped got stripped down. You don’t need that plastic box they come in. Grab a CD/DVD travel case and fill it with nothing but disks…. you just cut the size of your movie collection down significantly.

Books are a bit harder. Electronic copies are a good start, but I still haven’t found an E-Book reader that I was happy enough with to shell out the bucks. Reading on the laptop is doable, but it’s a drain on the electricity and not entirely ergonomic. For now, I’m still carrying around a couple of dozen small paperbacks and swapping them out for new books as we find new books from friends, family, lending libraries and public libraries that are giving away old books.

Ok, so I’m just a big kid at heart. Two toys we made sure to bring along were Jenn’s Mindstorm lego kit and my 500 in 1 electronics kit. I’ve got to admit that we’ve spent no time at all playing with either of these toys, but I still like to think that there is enough ‘play time’ there to keep us busy for several years of rainy days. For low cost, small storage entertainment, old video games are great. They take up very little room and you can get them at bargain basement prices. A few days of entertainment from a $1 game is a helluva deal. Simple board games without a lot of pieces are also a nice way to pass an evening.

You can make room for just about any hobby if you are passionate enough about it. You just have to ask yourself if remodeling vintage automobiles is worth hauling around a trailer with your Model T frame and random parts for the next twenty years. Jenn and I are hauling around bows and arrows along with a practice target, fishing poles with minimal tackle, a fair amount of caving gear and enough old radio dramas to play for three or four years straight just to name a few.

This article has gone on longer than I expected when I began writing. If it’s popular, perhaps we’ll turn it into a mini-series about what to expect from and how to prepare for life on the road. Happy trails!

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We left South Carolina in a hurry and made a beeline for the Great Saltpetre Cave Preserve in Mt. Vernon Kentucky again. We were hoping to get some caving in and see some friends once more before it gets too cold to be in Kentucky and we head out west for the winter.

We got to GSP on a Friday evening and were disappointed to find there weren’t many folks around for the weekend. By the end of the weekend, we hadn’t managed to go caving, but we did meet the head of the GSP committee, who had not heard of our ‘pseudo-real temporary membership in lieu of an actual real membership and almost real camping pass’ which had been issued by the former membership chair of the Greater Cincinnati Grotto. However, Bob, was polite and let us stick around while we straightened things out.

Halfway through our first week there, we met Shane, who had come up to do some trail maintenance and caving. We ended up doing a night trip with Shane to John Griffin cave. We later heard conflicting information regarding the closed state of this cave due to bat hibernation season. As of this moment, I am unable to find it listed on the cave closure list. I wish we’d had this list handy during our time at GSP. There is a 1600′ stream passage that has acted as an obstacle to finding the other entrance to this cave system. During our trip, this passage was nearly dry and it would’ve been an excellent time to try and find the other end without risking hypothermia as previous expeditions have.

Friday night, Shane’s wife and daughter came down and we hooked up with another couple to do an evening trip to Sinks of the Roundstone. Jenn and I had been in the cave during Karst-O-Rama, but we barely scratched the surface of the cave. During this trip, we saw several new areas. Now, it seems like an even nicer cave because I’ve seen that there is quite a bit of cave there that we haven’t seen and experienced some of the more interesting passages that we passed up during our previous trip.

Saturday night was the Halloween party. Jenn got suckered into sewing tarps to act as a wind break for the party. I made a couple of chocolate pies, decanted a bottle of whiskey and finished making the bottle of limoncello that Jenn had begun work on during the week. I can safely say that none of this was left over except the ‘lemon hooch’ that I had to wrestle free after a drunken hayride so Jenn could have a drink or two.

Sunday, we got together with Shane’s family and went to Climax cave. Climax is a really fun cave. It has several different maze areas where you can get quickly turned around if you’re not careful. Jenn and I have been on trips to this cave twice now and I’m still not sure we’ve seen much more than half of it. This is one of the caves that makes people really appreciate the reflective markers I’ve made up. In fact, the next time we ran into Shane and family, they’d made their own set of flags similar to my own.

The first half of the following week passed quietly until people began arriving to setup for the Rockcastle county elementary school field trips. Once again, Jenn got suckered into sewing tarps as the previous tarps were not dark enough to block the sun so that we could show movies to the children. Thursday and Friday, we got to remember what it’s like to get up early… we were helping with the cave tours of the Great Saltpetre cave for 2nd and 4th grade students. We had a lot of fun and made sure to follow as ‘tail gunners’ for a different guide every trip. Each guide had a little bit different lecture to give as we were walking through the cave, so we got to hear quite a bit of the history of the cave.

By Friday evening, we finally got our GCG membership straightened out and were no longer ‘the squatters down on the point’. Dave rolled in Friday evening and we spent the weekend hanging out and looking for caves. The sad thing is that we were looking for known caves, but with poor directions. We spent Saturday afternoon climbing all over a ridgeside and found a few holes, one of which was human-passable, but only about 40′ one direction and 15′ the other. The upside to this was hearing Dave scream like a girl upon seeing ’some sort of giant rat-like monster’ and then hearing him shout ‘OOGEDY BOOGEDY!’ in order to frighten off the critter before sending Jenn and I in for further exploration.

Sunday was almost as bad, except we drove Dave’s truck through some 4WD trails rather than actually walking. We found one potential cave, but the entrance was awfully tight and downhill around a corner; none of us was really comfortable with trying to get out of that belly-crawl once we got in. Jenn made it in the farthest, going headfirst while I held her feet. She was able to see around the corner and it was more of the same, so we gave up on that particular hole as being a lousy way to experience a first hand cave rescue.

Monday, Shane and his family came back down and he took us over to Wells Cave which is about and hour drive from GSP. The entrance to the cave acts as an excellent nerd filter. It took about ten minutes to negotiate a crawl through four to six inches of mud that has the consistency of peanut butter. Behind this, there is over eleven miles of cave. We’ve barely explored this cave; it would take much longer than the time we had available to see anything approaching the entire length of such a system.

And today, we’re back on the road!

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After we spent a couple of weekends at the Great Saltpetre Preserve caving with some great people from the area, we headed towards Boone, NC to start our next stint as carnies. However, we got sidetracked leaving Kentucky as Jenn noticed Carter Caves State Park was just a few miles out of the way. As this is where Crawl-a-thon is held in January, we decided it would be worth a quick stop over and looksee.

We got up bright and early and explored Laurel and Horn Hollow caves. Both are rather short trips, that have been ‘prepared’ for tourists, but they are still unlit, self-led trips. Horn Hollow has a beautiful entrance, but is otherwise not much to look at from inside. Laurel was quite a pretty little cave and we were able to get off-trail and explore the upper passage as well as climb a small waterfall that most non-cavers would have never seen.

Once we got to the camper, covered in cave mud, and I got stripped down to my high performance underwear, a couple of guys walked up, and rather than running away, they wanted to chat, which marked them as cavers and not afraid of dirty, half-dressed hippies in a parking lot. This was our introduction to Roy and Jerry. They were in the area building a bat gate, which is designed to let bats in, but keep people out during bat hibernation season. Since we were the only muddy folks around with a bat sticker on our vehicle, they assumed we’d be good suckers, err… candidates, to volunteer to help out.

Well, they were right and we decided to come out with them the following day and see just what it takes to build a bat gate. It turns out, that it requires a lot of sweat and a fair helping of calluses, bruises, burns and muscle. Just a friendly note: if anyone ever asks if you’d like to ‘pack in steel’, run away screaming. Steel gets packed in increments of roughly 400 lbs, in this case by five guys along a ridge, both uphill and downhill. After a few hours of this, I was more than happy to be put in charge of the acetylene torch. While I spent a lot of time bending and kneeling, it beat the heck out of packing steel. Luckily, the forestry service and wildlife management services were contributing a lot of manpower to the project or we’d still be trying to get the steel in today.

Roy and Jerry were super nice folks to work with. They took us out to eat a few times and related lots of caving stories. By the end of the first day, Roy had promised to pay for our campsite as long as we hung around. By the end of the second day, we were on the payroll for the duration as well. By the end of the week, we’d been promised a spot to camp in Texas or Virginia and a cave trip into Mexico if we manage to get out west this winter.

This was Roy’s 310th gate and he says he’s quitting… after just one more gate. We had a great time working with Roy and Jerry as well as all the forestry and wildlife folks. You can’t beat doing something new and intriguing, getting paid for it and having a free campsite while meeting interesting people!

View more images from Carter Caves State park, including building the bat gate, Horn Hollow Cave, and Kevin’s Kave in our gallery.

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Before we headed to Karst-O-Rama, yet after our time in Gatlinburg, we spent a good deal of time hanging out at my parents place in Tennessee. We had only planned on spending a few days there, but those few days turned into a month. I was having such a great time that the days were passing as quickly as hours. If it had not been for Wormfest, Johnny would probably still be trying to think of a gentle way to coax me out of my parent’s yard.

Its been a long time since I have been able to spend more than a couple days with my parents. We have lived pretty far apart for the last 10 years. The first part of that was because I was getting my career together in a far away city, then they semi-retired and started traveling around. They did end up settling down and getting a home base, but they can’t seem to stay there for more than 2 months at a time. So, the majority of the time we saw each other was a quick 3 day weekend once or twice a year and Christmas every other year. That’s just not enough!

So what did I do in that month since I wasn’t writing weblog posts? Well my mom and I spent a good deal of time in the kitchen. We made jam from the fresh picked blackberries (yummy!). We (mostly she) made desserts like keylime pie, cheesecake (David helped), (fresh picked) blackberry pies, peach pies, chocolate pies, rhubarb pies, and decadent chocolate cake. My Aunt Joyce made some excellent desserts as well.

My mom and I also tried our hands at granola bars. While they tasted very good and disappeared , they were a failure. We aren’t sure if it was us or the recipe, but the stuff ended up with a cake texture. Good stuff, but not quite the pack for the trail bars that we were looking for. We will have to try again.

I guess this whole post is going to be about food.

While there, I tried to make beef jerky. The first batch turned out pretty well but disappeared almost instantly. Most of the second batch evaded my hungry nephew’s bottomless tummy and became cave snacks for us and our new found friends at Karst-O-Rama. I still have most of the third and fourth batches. My experiments with the fourth batch didn’t go well. I tried to use a lot of liquid flavoring and it turned out kinda spongy looking.

I also caught my first catfish. My dear uncle let us come over and fish from his pond.
Thanks Uncle Mike! After I wacked it 1346523 times to kill it, my father taught me how
to clean it. I don’t really like catfish, but I did want to know how to clean and prepare
them. Its always great to have another skill. So, then I cut the fillets into little pieces and
soaked them in milk for about 30 hrs. The next day, my uncle helped me cook them. I know,
its just battering and frying and everyone from the south knows how to fry food, but I never
fry anything. Even though I don’t like catfish, I did have to try some. Most of it was
pretty good but parts of it still tasted like mud.

I have lots more to say, but we are about to lose Internet access again, so I will cut it
here. That way I atleast get part of it up.

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We are still alive. We are sorry about leaving you hanging, but we have been too busy living and having fun to sit down and write about it. We should have some more time on our hands soon. In the last month, we went to Karst-O-Rama, stayed with my folks and made all kinds of

tasty treats, met tons of great people, explored some wild caves, went to Wormfest, been practicing rope climbing and decending, and… well that’s enough for now. Stay tuned; Lots more to come!

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Without further buildup, here’s the recipe. In a one liter bottle, add:

(using 190 proof grain alcohol)

• 1.75 cups of grain alcohol
• 2.25 cups of filtered/distilled water

(using 151 proof grain alcohol)

• 2.1 cups of grain alcohol
• 1.9 cups of water

• Roughly 20 grams of Jack Daniels wood chips. (I found these in the home & garden section of Wal Mart near the charcoal)
• 2 pepper corns

Allow to age for at least four weeks in a cool, dark place. Agitate every day or two for twenty to thirty seconds. Filter through a paper towel or coffee filter.

Add ice and enjoy! You’ve just made the world’s cheapest scotch.

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