Writer and World Traveler

Today I am starting a travel blog.  Days seem long.  A lot is happening and then not much is happening.  Today I am sitting in the Whole Foods in Sedona at Bar 1902 writing on my computer and listening to noise cancelling sound so I can think.  I’ll start at this moment and work backwards until I tire of it.  I just switched over to my laptop because my Bluetooth keyboard wasn’t working for my Ipad.  I walked out to my car and fished out my laptop from under the passenger seat.  I walked back to the café and pulled it out of it’s case.  I found it to be wet, the case.  I am so glad that the bluetooth keyboard wasn’t working.  At first I was frustrated.  Why the heck isn’t this thing working?? But after discovering my wet laptop case, I saw the bigger picture.  Because my laptop might no longer be functional if it had sat in a wet case for even minutes longer.

The water came from my dromedary that was leaking on the car floor.   I filled up the water bladder yesterday at the Red Rocks Ranger Station of Highway 179 at 8:50am.  I found the black bladder served as a perfect solar shower the day before.  On the previous day, I filled it up with water from Beaver Creek.  I was slightly concerned that there might be parasites in the non-filtered water, so I planned to fill it with filtered water the next day.

I arrived in Sedona on Wednesday, January 3.  I’ve been living out of my car since Monday, January 1.  On Monday, I slept in a parking lot in North Phoenix next to my mom and Dave (in their camper van).  On Tuesday, I slept at the Sunset Point Rest Area off of I-17 near Black Canyon City.  I missed the sunset by just a few minutes…  On Wednesday, after arriving in Sedona and familiarizing myself with the town, I drove out to Lawrence Crossing off Forest Road 121 just east of I-17 from Highway 179.  Lawrence Crossing is a free, dispersed, walk-in campground 3.5 miles down mellow dirt road directly on Beaver Creek.  I stayed there Wednesday and Thursday night.  I was almost the only person there for 36 hours.  A couple showed up on Thursday at 10am and left at 11am.  Also, another couple drove through the round-about around 6pm as I was cooking Kunyi out of the back of my car.  They didn’t stop.  Friday, I came back into Sedona.  I met a German woman named Aysha while at breakfast at The Chocolatree and we went on a hike together to Mount Wilson around 11:30am.  After the 11 mile hike, we went to dinner at The Golden Goose.  I got Chicken Marsala with mashed potatoes.  She got seared Ahi with au gratin potatoes.  The food was decent.  The service was superb.  After dinner we said a sweet and heart-felt good-bye.  She drove back to Surprise, Arizona and I drove 5 miles south of Sedona on Highway 89A to Forest Road 525.  I found a dirt pullout to park in and sleep.  There was a lot more competition off FR 525.  It seems I’m not the only one living in their vehicle around here.

When people ask me what I do, I say I’m a writer and a world traveler.