Current Location: Shonto, AZ
Current Song: We Intertwined by The Hush Sound
Current Beer: Railhead Red by Lumberyard Brewing

So good news, those people didn’t murder me. Hooray.

After I finished up the last post they invited me over for some burgers, which I politely declined since I had just eaten. Then they offered some hot cocoa and s’mores around their campfire and… well, I mean, come on now.

There were three of them, a couple who were sleeping in their Subaru-like hatchback SUV type thing. Then a third guy who was sleeping in a hammock like a fucking boss. They were from Prescott, AZ. Names? Oh fuck no, I don’t even REMOTELY remember their names, I’m fucking horrible.

So we sat around and talked about the “driving around everywhere, sleeping in your car” lifestyle.

Small note to add context to all this, they were high as fucking kites.

As the first guy was going on about his setup and how proud he was of his nice rechargeable battery and how his table also doubles as a screen for his movie projector (which is admittedly pretty cool), the third guy just leans in and goes, “I won’t ruin his stride here, but I know what you got in there (pointing to my van). Good job letting him do his thing.”

I laughed and just kinda told him how I used to do this in a minivan, so I get the pride of maximizing such a small space and all that. But yeah, I’m on that next generation of van, everyone has their path. Then he let me know he builds out vans for this type of stuff (he’s on his third buildout, he sticks with Ford E-Series), so we talked a bunch about how we build things out, preferences, which model van is best and why, etc.

Then I let the dogs out to see how they would do and Charlie promptly jumped up and punched him square in the nuts. Like, down to a knee shot to the goods. I could not apologize enough.

Then Goose jumped up to try and get the first guy’s hamburger so… they failed. And went back in the van. Whoops.

The next morning they kinda did the “heeeeeey, so, would it be cool if we took a look inside your setup here?” To which I said no problem, and spent the next 5-10 minutes kinda bragging about how perfect it was for me, how I used the space, how building out was such a rewarding experience, and so on. Nice proud papa moment.

I took the dogs for a walk and when I came back they were packing up and heading to the next spot. So we said our goodbyes and off they went.

And 100,000,000% percent, that couple got into some kinda debate / argument about upgrading to a van like mine. He just had that look in his eyes like “OH YEAH BABY, this is how we should be riding” and she… really, really, really did not. Good luck to them, I guess.

After that I walked down to the end of the road that led to the site and put up a string to indicate the site was taken… as cool as that was meeting people out here, the next set of people to show up on a Friday/Saturday night could be complete dickheads.

But that lasted about 10 minutes, because then I decided I wanted to leave anyways. As previously mentioned, Goose will just fucking disappear on me, so we decided to invest in some GPS collars just in case he decides to find his true calling in life out there in this big world… or more likely gets lost / gets hurt. I ordered them on Amazon to be delivered to a local locker in Flagstaff on Saturday. Perfect. I’ll just go hang around town, run some errands until they get delivered and hit the road after that.

Spent Friday doing some of that, ended up staying at a nearby casino and won another $30 at roulette because I’m apparently amazing at it. I’ve defied the laws of math and science and long term I can beat the game of roulette playing Jenny’s birthday. Clearly.

Woke up Saturday, hit the dog park to get Charlie down to her cruising altitude so she won’t drive me fucking insane in the van, stopped at Lumberyard Brewing for burger and a beer, and then just kinda treaded water until the collars arrived.

Yeeeeeah, except they never got delivered. As I sit here Sunday evening UPS hasn’t even received the package yet. So that was a major bust.

By the time I realized that fact late Saturday afternoon it was a little bit too late to drive the two hours to the next spot (and on a Saturday night, possibly too late to even get a spot at all) so I decided to try and find something around Flagstaff one more night.

The last spot was up Highway 89 which kinda goes northeast out of Flagstaff. The side road to get there after that was pretty rough, and I just didn’t feel like dealing with it again as fucking amazing as that spot was. Again, especially if it’s a Saturday night and I go through all that to see someone else already sitting there.

So instead I went up Highway 180 which kinda goes northWEST out of Flagstaff. Found a nice quiet site off a forest road with only one other person I could see through the trees a good 100 yards away. Perfect.

Admittedly slept horribly for some reason, then hit the road early. But first, one more stop at the dog park because OBVIOUSLY one more stop at the dog park.

Almost immediately Charlie got into another scrap with a dog, but this one was zero percent her fault. Some idiot riled his dog up nice and good, so when Charlie came over to join in the other dog DID NOT like that and went after her. Which, fine… dogs… but the owner just didn’t even remotely try to break them up. Not a grab, not a clap, not a yell… nothing. Just stood there and watched it happen.

So I ran over (I was across the park with Goose) and basically said, “Hey can you grab your dog? Why are you just standing there?” Which I thought was an extremely fair question.

He goes, “Oh, YOU want to put your hand in there? GO AHEAD, you put your hand in there, see how that goes!” As in, you don’t reach in as dogs are fighting. Which, okay, sure… but basically your argument at that point is somehow this fight is both vicious enough to be unable to interject without personal bodily harm (which it absolutely fucking was not), but not vicious enough to try and stop. In any manner whatsoever. At fucking all. Come on man, you can admit you just froze up, it happens.

Either way, by then I called Charlie out of it and threw a tennis ball to get her over to the other side of the park and as I was walking away I just said, “well, I guess next time your dog attacks mine I’ll have to, won’t I?” And that was that, they left a few minutes later.

The rest of the time was actually really nice, and even Goose was feeling it. Usually he just trots around and sniffs fucking everything. Both Saturday and Sunday’s trip there he found a husky to mess around with.

I was all excited to get more video for Jenny when they decided to follow that up with this:

Oh okay, cool guys, thanks.

Then it was coffee, shower, two hour drive up to northeast Arizona. We have an amazing view out the back of the camper that the photo does absolutely zero justice.

That’s a whole canyon down below. Like those aren’t bushes, they’re tall ass trees, and those cliffs are miles away and huge.

Goddamnit I hate how it’s so impossible to capture things like this. Guess you’ll just have to come out and see it for yourself.

Currently undecided how long we’ll stay here, but next stop is Valley of the Gods in Utah which is… fuck, it is just amazing. And way less popular and therefore less restrictive than Monument Valley. In 2020 we did a drive through the 17 miles or so around, and then came back at night to see the comet that was around at that point.

This time we’re just gonna… you know… live there. For a maximum of 14 days anyways.