After spending a day travelling, a day getting stuck, a day getting unstuck and a day scouting, I was happy to just stay put for a day. In fact, I was perfectly happy to stay put for the next several days. The spot I had found was a bit of desert concrete that has been turned into a parking lot – it is fenced off as to exactly where you can be. I’m level, and there are hills to the south I can hike to. Plus, three Patreons have shown up, giving me some socialization to do rather than being in solitude.
I’m meeting some people for the first time whom I have corresponded with online via Patreon. We have Melissa and David, of whom I have corresponded with Melissa online, it will be interesting to see what she is like in person. Then they brought a friend who is on Patreon but I’m not familiar with (they don’t post much) we’ll call her Stinky, after her cat. I’m not going to go into a lot of details about them, I’ll just say that they all have characteristics that fall outside of what is considered normal, as in following the norms of society.
We are going to get along just fine, I think, I’m not even close to following all the norms of what society expects of you either. I’m just happy to be back on solid ground with no chance of getting stuck. Having some scenery, cell signal and sunshine to boot is a bonus. We visit a bit during the day, but I’m actually working a bit, both blogging and checking into “real work”, making sure everything is running smoothly and answering a few questions that have come up.
I decide I have time for a little walk as the sun goes down before we all have a potluck dinner together. I grab my camera and head out south into the hills. Larry had remarked to me once that if you travel twenty miles in any direction the desert looks different. I would agree with that – I am now about 20 miles north of my Vicksburg camp, and only ten miles south east of Larry’s camp – each on of those areas looks very different, at least to my eye for natural landscape.
The area I’m in is called “Bouse Y” for the unoriginal reason that the two major roads that head out into the wilderness here split at a Y junction just down from the camping spot we are in. You expect a great story for every name? So, I’m walking into the hills south of the Bouse Y, not too far as I’ve only got an hour to walk at this point before dinner. The first thing you do is go down a bit and cross a set of washes, then you pick your hill to go up, or around. There are little hills, and bigger hills with rocks on them all around. You can walk to a different hill every day for a month if you want. I climb a few small ones, not intending to be here for a whole month to climb every hill.
I decide to climb one of the nearer hills, watch the sunset, then scurry back to my rig before it gets too dark. The terrain is not too bad to walk on without a trail here, but you don’t want to push it too far into dark, or you could stumble and break many things.
Besides providing a nice view, the hill I was on cast a shadow in the setting sun – it’s not a big hill, so I can photograph the whole hill’s shadow on the plains behind it.
The clouds make for a great sunset. I enjoy the moment, then hurry back to the RV; I have some quick cooking to finish for pot luck tonight.
