Jun29
Posted on Jun 29 by Ruth Davis
I believe there is great power in working with others. Sharing ourselves with people we trust and respect helps us see many more possibilities and options than we can imagine in our own minds. If we are really honest with ourselves, we crave intimacy, really talking with a person and connecting at a deeper heart level. We want to be heard and understood and we want to feel supported when we share our wildest dreams and deepest fears. As humans, we need contact and connection with other people. But what I’m learning is that basic contact isn’t enough. We’re wanting deeper connections with others, and with ourselves. I’ve been self-employed for 30 years, and, until recently, I also lived alone, so I know, first-hand, how important it is to step outside of my solitary comfort zones and seek the wisdom and companionship of others. Now that I am living on the road full-time, I no longer have an obvious community. I don’t go to my weekly yoga class or get together with friends for dinner. I don’t see...
Jun22
Posted on Jun 22 by Ruth Davis
Living in a small space with your dearly beloved is bound to be challenging sometimes. We are two very different people with moods, habits, our preferred ways to do things. For the most part, we work it out. After all, we have 27 years of practicing. But actually we don’t do things the same way we did the first time we lived together. We’ve had so much time and space living alone since then to develop our own habits and ways to do things, but, for the most part, we compromise without much discussion. But there is one thing that she does that drives me absolutely crazy. She does not rinse her dishes, and then everything crusts and hardens and I have to work twice as hard to clean them. I rinse my knives after I slice my sandwich, before I sit down to eat it. For me, cleanup is part of the preparation. For Marika, cleanup happens when there are enough dishes to wash them all at the same time. And then she’ll...
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...
