Jun15
Posted on Jun 15 by Ruth Davis
We are at Chatfield State Park in Littleton, Colorado, at a very large, very popular lakeside campground. The campground is full, but the spaces are far enough apart that it doesn’t feel crowded. Our campsite in in the second ring from an uninterrupted view of the lake, but we have a fifty-foot wide open space between campers straight to the water. And we are so glad to be here for nine days. We are ready for some stillness, some settling in. And yet, despite the bucolic rolling green hills and mountains, and the view of the clear blue lake, I can’t settle into the now, because I don’t know where we’re going from here. I have only planned our route to this place, to be here to celebrate a friend’s Bat Mitzvah. After here, I know our direction – toward the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone State Parks – but I don’t know our route, or, more important, where we’ll be camping. Summer is high camping season and reservations are a must if I want to have electric...
Jun08
Posted on Jun 8 by Ruth Davis
After 5 days in the Albuquerque area, we headed to Georgia O’Keeffe country in northern New Mexico. We stopped first at the Tire Pros and they fixed the two slow leaks. They were so nice and fast and they even pulled the RV in and out, and lined it up for us to hitch up and drive away! We camped a few miles north of Abiquiu at a Core of Engineers campground perched above the man-made Abiquiu Lake, surrounded by a dramatic, 360° sky and towering red rock hills and canyons. At dusk, after the sun fell behind the stands of red rock, the whole of the sky was ringed in fiery pink clouds, not just in the west where the sun was setting, but all around, like a cloud campfire. And I wondered what someone from New York City must feel when they experience this for the first time. Does the expansive landscape make them feel vulnerable and lonely, is the silence painful to their ears, are they in awe that this much open space...
Jun01
Posted on Jun 1 by Ruth Davis
We moved into our new-to-us 2013 motorhome while we were still parked in the driveway at the house, so we had used everything except the shower. During our first week, camped at a full-hookups RV Park in Pinetop, AZ, we discovered that we couldn’t control the water temperature in the shower. We called a mobile repair place and they installed a new shower faucet, and, while they were there, they hung the smoke detector and recommended a great place for burgers. After the week in Pinetop, we were rested, everything was working and we were ready spend some glorious and quiet time in the high desert of western New Mexico in Datil, pronounced Date-l, at a Bureau of Land Management area 140 miles south and east of Albuquerque. No water or electricity, so we had filled the fresh water tank with 20 gallons and knew that our solar panels could store enough energy for us to run the lights, the water pump, recharge our electronics, and anything else we needed. I had no ATT signal but Marika had a...
May25
Posted on May 25 by Ruth Davis
When people ask us what we like most about RVing, we both answer, “being in nature.” And the freedom to explore places outside of the big and busy cities. Even when we have flown somewhere and stayed in a hotel, we’ve always sought out the quiet, open places, usually where Marika can watch birds. Today’s article, first published in 2010, is exactly why we love this life! I grew up reading maps. I have an excellent sense of direction and can usually find where I’m going, even without specific directions. But Southern New Jersey is a web of winding roads where the names on streets don’t correspond to their State Route numbers and, on a cloudy, overcast day, there is no sun to point the way. Marika and I had driven the rental car to one of the Nature Center’s in Cape May and asked the volunteer for some suggestions where to find shore birds. The man circled several places on a birding map, spouting what birds had been seen at each place. He pointed to a spot on the...
Apr20
Posted on Apr 20 by Ruth Davis
Passover has always been the big holiday in our family, when generations of us gather around several big tables for a delicious meal. But before the food is served, there is the required telling of the Passover story, how the Jews were slaves in Egypt, and how God led them through the desert for 40 years to the promised land. A big part of Passover for some Jews is the actual preparing for the holiday. For many Jews, in addition to only eating food that is sanctioned “Kosher for Passover,” you also have to use different dishes and silverware during the eight day holiday. Growing up in a Conservative Jewish household, this meant emptying all of the dishes out of the cabinets and replacing them with the special Passover dishes. And we didn’t have just one set of dishes. We had a complete set of dishes for meat foods and a complete set of dishes for dairy foods, as well as the fancy china for special occasions. The days before Passover, all three sets of dishes had to...
Apr06
Posted on Apr 6 by Ruth Davis
We have found our new-to-us motor home for our full-time living! We’d been looking every day on RV Trader and Craigslist, comparing floor plans, models and miles. Marika and I spent a morning at a dealership a few weeks ago, walking through many vehicles to see them in person. We were still deciding between a Class A and a Class C. A Class A is like a bus with a full window across the front. Class A’s are taller, wider, and roomier. A class C is built on a truck/van engine so the front driver/passenger section is normal width, like a car, and then the rest of the RV is wider behind. We needed to drive an A to see if we could be comfortable driving something so big and wide, and, after the test drive, we knew we definitely weren’t. So now that we were clear about wanting a Class C, we could narrow our search. We made a list of must have’s and wanna have’s, and I kept looking online every day. Two weekends ago I found...
