jenn April 5th, 2010
A 7.2 earthquake struck about 80 miles south of us yesterday. It was the first one that I have ever been in (or at least felt). Johnny and I had joined the Scott/Riggs family for their Easter festivities and BBQ. The kids were running around playing with water guns while the adults were chatting and playing chess. Next thing I know, the ground starts shaking and all of our trucks start rocking back and forth. It was pretty surreal. It was like being on an amusement park ride except that you didn’t know what was going to happen or when it was going to end. And, everyone was ready for it to end. I never get motion sick, but I was starting to as was everyone around me. It just kept going and going. The news is claiming that it only lasted about 30-55 seconds but everyone near me agreed that it felt more like 2-3 minutes. I wish that we would have timed it, but being in Slab City, no one had a watch on.
I guess it shook the whole SW. I received an email from liveworkdream.com stating that they felt it all the way over by Tuscon. Wow!
Above are maps from USGS showing the earthquake activity in this area (we are near Niland, CA) over the last week and the shake map for the 7.2 that hit yesterday. There are a lot more maps and information on their website.
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johnny January 22nd, 2010
Whew! The weather has been pretty nutty around here lately. We spent a couple of days in Quartzsite putting up fliers for freecampsites.net and got rained on every evening. One mid-day shower caught us while out on the scooter. Fun!
Quartzsite is just not our scene. Two days would have been more than enough even if the weather had been great. It was pretty crazy to pull into the BLM area the first night and see rigs lined up awning to awning just like a commercial campground. We had to go about a quarter mile deep into the area before we found a spot where we could get a mere hundred feet from a couple of neighbors. The next morning, we found out why the area was so ’sparsely’ populated as the kids in the converted school bus had breakfast and blasted the MTV version of the Grateful Dead over the world’s crappiest PA system. Ah, well… at least it wasn’t polka.
This morning, we got up ‘early’ to try and make it back to Slab City by dark. Apparently, I was still on California time and not really adhering to Jenn’s schedule. Still, we got out at a reasonable time and then sat in mid-morning traffic at Quartzsite while the rain started splattering. The wind had not stopped in at least 24 hours.
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johnny December 30th, 2009
Somehow, we managed to get everything back in shape to roll and sneak through Donner’s pass in what Jenn is calling the ‘6 hour no-chains window’. Before we quit driving for the day, they had put chain restrictions back in place at Donner’s Pass and will probably leave them in place another day or two as they’re calling for 100% chance of snow at the summit today and tonight.
I think we got lucky with a weather window and it seemed like a good time to get the heck out of frozen Fernley. Jenn’s alternate route was going to keep us in mountains for quite a ways, which would have been cold! Also, apparently there were numerous closed roads connecting to that route, which didn’t seem auspicious.
Hopefully, we’ll be finding a longish term spot in the desert tonight. Last night next to the highway and the train got old early.
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johnny May 11th, 2009
…on a rainy day.
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.
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jenn June 22nd, 2008
Well, its a another rainy day; which is good, because the streams are pretty low here. But today, I’d planned to finally finish up that hide that I have been carrying around with me. A year ago, I fleshed it out and mostly worked it soft while I was at Rivercane Rendezvous.
I didn’t mess with it again until we were out of our stick and brick home. At that time, I pulled it out of the freezer and finished the softening stage. I couldn’t make a fire to smoke it at that campsite. So, I put the hide back in a bag and stuffed it into outside storage.
Since we are talking about staying in this great campsite until my family gathering at the beginning of the month, I thought it would be a great time to finish the hide. So, yesterday, I gathered up some rotten wood to smoke with, some nice (fallen) trees to make a tripod, and started sewing up the hide. Johnny was so excited about the prospect of not having to smell my brain tanned hide when he opened that compartment anymore that he offered to erect the tripod. Such a nice guy. Thanks hun! Nice work.
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