Morningsong, the reason for the road

Morning is God's way of gently shaking me awake with a smile and saying, "Get up, knothead. You're not finished yet."

I love mornings, by God. Always have. And by morning I mean a half hour or so before dawn. It's the grand reawakening of my little corner of the world. Sunrise, birds, the dew; the works.

Sunrise outside my home in Southern California is always spectacular. Sunrise everywhere is spectacular, amid mountains, deserts and seascapes. Even urban alleys and poor, blighted neighborhoods are washed by a hopeful light at dawn regardless of weather and transitory human circumstance.

A new day. A thing of beauty and grace.

I'll turn 60 in a few months. Though I've missed a few along the way I estimate I have had the thrill of experiencing nearly 20-thousand sunrises so far. I don't mean to be greedy but I'd sure like to see a few thousand more.

And, isn't there something extra special about a sunrise on the open road, away from home? 

Whether holed up in a cheap motel, staying with family or, best of all, waking up in my RV in some exciting new place, daybreak feels like the Christmas mornings of my childhood: promises of wonder in yet unopened gifts.

I'll take mornings wherever I find them. 

I'm not finished yet.

Spontaneous travel; flying on the wings of a whim

There is nothing in life more exciting than impulsive action.

It's that phone call you get on a dull Saturday afternoon from a good friend directing you to "grab a toothbrush and a clean shirt, we're headed to Tahoe to raise a little hell!"

It's deciding to call a few people and tell them to come on over right now because you're going to grill some meat and make some margaritas.

It's deciding to go east instead of north.

When our boys were still young Carolann and I took them on a cruise. That's a pretty exciting vacation for an eight and twelve year-old. But when we returned to port in Los Angeles after a week of great food and fun on the Mexican Riviera the letdown was palpable in all of us. We were happy, just not ready to end the vacation. Not quite. So, rather than drive straight home to Sacramento as planned we decided to stay an extra night and take the boys to Disneyland as long as we were in Southern California anyway.

Off we went!

That evening in our motel room, as we tucked our happy, tired boys into bed, that letdown feeling started to return. I picked up a map and looked at it for a couple of minutes.

"You know," I told my wife, "the Grand Canyon is only four hundred miles from here." And that's where we spent the next night.

Carolann and I have done this many times. We're great vacationers. We're just not good at ending them.

Once we were sitting in the Honolulu airport waiting to board our return flight. When the announcement came that the flight would be delayed we took it as an omen, blew off the reservation, phoned work and told them I'd need another couple of days and then we left the airport for another day and evening in paradise.

Another time it was a two-week driving vacation in our Lance truck camper that took us to Idaho, then north to the fabulous Canadian Rockies and from there to Vancouver. On schedule to return home in time for me to get back to work in two days, we suddenly headed west before turning south because driving the Washington, Oregon and California coastline is so much nicer than I-5. And it added a few impulse days to our vacation.

The luxury of spontaneity is in throwing out schedules. It is reminding yourself that you are free to do as you please whenever you wish.

It has been too long. I'm ready to do something impulsive again. The problem is, you can't plan to be spontaneous. Or, can you?

Do you give in to your whims of adventure?

Tell me your tales. They inspire me.

Copyright © 2011, Dave Williams. All rights reserved.

In search of solitude with full hookups

People in campgrounds and RV parks must think I'm weird, at least. Maybe even scary. They've got to be suspicious. I'm pretty sure they warn their kids to stay away from me.

I arrive alone, hook up to the power and water, and then I disappear inside my camper for days. It's a 1994 Lance. It has no slideouts. It does have an awning but I don't crank it open or put out camp chairs or fishing tackle. I don't set up a grill, lanterns, a pile of firewood or any other indications that a campsite is occupied and intended to be enjoyed.

Most suspiciously, I am alone. I just plug in and disappear.

Occasionally I emerge from my cave to haul trash bags to the dumpster, though I tend to do that late at night just before I go to bed. My neighbors don't usually see that solitary indication of normal human life from my campsite. Just as well. They'd wonder what I'm doing in there, creating trash but exhibiting no other signs of normal, RV park life.

Me and my late road buddy, Wiley

When I bring one of our dogs I walk her, of course, but I don't bring her very often because she's a distraction. (I'm pretty sure the dog thinks I'm no barrel-of-monkeys fun, either.)


All I want is to plug in, level the camper and be left alone.

What must the neighbors think?

I'm a writer in a truck camper, that's all. I only require electricity, water and solitude. I can do without water if necessary.

I have written three full-length award-winning plays, dozens of blogs, hundreds of pages of my personal travelogue and half of two novels in my Lance camper by just bearing down and getting into that blessed writer's "zone" for three or four days at a time. Home is just too distracting, with its ringing phones and knocking doors. I adore my wife more than life, itself, but in her company at home or on the road I can't seem to write more than a few hundred words are which thoroughly detached from my heart. It's a left-brain, right-brain thing, I guess.

Bodega Bay, writing Maternal Instincts

Going away and writing for a few days makes me a happier, stronger, healthier husband, dad and grandpa. It makes me a better man.

And that has nothing to do with writing. It's just about finding yourself in solitude, and learning that you like who you are.

So...who are you? And why do you go off RVing alone?

Copyright © 2011, Dave Williams. All rights reserved.

Ansel Adams would be shocked

I swear. We crack me up.

The American Dream is to buy our own home. Once we succeed we look for every opportunity to get away from it all, our manicured yards and picket fences, our TiVoed HDTVs and our adjustable beds. Now we want to sleep on the ground in the dirt in a congested public campground; to hide our food in bear boxes and eat the mysterious stuff we hesitantly fish out of our cold, milky, ice chest goo.

And, like lemmings, we all want to do this every summer. We want to go away alone together at the same time every year.

We really, really do.

This morning I sprang from my bed at 6 a.m., fed the dogs and took them outside. While Cricket and Ladybug performed their morning ablutions I kept an anxious eye on the clock. I brewed my coffee and fixed my darling Carolann's morning fru-fru hot apple cider and cinnamon drink. At 6:45 I crept back into our bedroom, steaming crystal mug of whipped cream and caramel syrup in hand, and gently, yet urgently, invited her to join me at our phone bank.

Like every breathlessly anticipated Christmas morning of my life, Campground Reservation morning had arrived!

This summer our family and friends decided we should all go to Yosemite National Park for our annual camping trip. Sure, it's crowded there in August and yeah, we know we'll be competing for reservations with people from, literally, all around the world. But Yosemite is barely a hop, skip and four-hour drive from here. How difficult can this be? How long can it take to secure four campsites in Yosemite Valley?

Apparently, it may take a lifetime.

The U.S. National Park campgrounds reservations phone line opens at 7 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time and not a moment earlier.

Here's the game: You can reserve one or two campsites in advance of your arrival, commencing at 7:00 a.m. Pacific time (10:00 a.m. Eastern, 2:00 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time) on the 15th day of the fifth month prior to the date of your desired arrival, even if said date is more, and particularly if it is less, than five months from the date of the desired, prescribed reservation date subject to state and local restrictions.

I blame Congress for this formula as it wrote and continues to refine the national tax code with an eye toward simplification. I'd lay a hundred bucks on local park rangers to come up with a better campground reservation system. But, it is what it is.

After several months of studying the rules and regulations of the International Campground Reservations Olympics Organizing Committee; after weeks of training, of checking and rechecking the prescribed phone number; after endless days spent perfecting our dialing techniques,  Carolann and I started punching numbers five minutes early this morning just in case some idiot had released the lines early. Unfortunately for us, the National Park Service apparently doesn't hire time-challenged idiots. The phone system clicked from recorded message into a real-time connection with a real-life busy signal precisely at 7:00 a.m.

Carolann and I rapidly redialed on three phones. For the rest of my days I will curse myself for not having a fourth line. Or a fifth! Why the hell not? It's the 21st Century...we can play phones like Bingo cards!

At 7:03 a.m., as I continued to get a frantic busy signal, my champion wife made contact with the live phone queue! She got a recorded message telling her to wait! And wait, she did, receiving cheesy "wait" music instead of a busy signal. We were both so excited we reached across the room for high fives. I would have embraced her but we were both much too busy. She put her phone on speaker so that we might share our joy and the cheesy "wait" music even as I continued to dial for a Silver Medal connection of my own.

Two minutes later, I cut through the line!

Our euphoria is indescribable. We had both broken through the worldwide attack on the Yosemite National Park telephone reservation system and were in line, blessedly and joyously, awaiting our turns to talk with a live agent -- an angel who would be able to grant our urgent pleas for two campsites apiece -- within walking distance of each other, if that was even conceivable.

7:07 a.m. -- Our reservations agent came on the line. She was officious, yet pleasantly unsympathetic. 

She dutifully checked the campgrounds, campsites and dates of arrival and departure we requested. We tried to work with her.

We varied our requested campgrounds, we tried juggling our dates and time of arrival.

We offered to arrive in pairs, inconspicuously in the middle of the night in nondescript vehicles or to creep into the campground clad in bearskins.

Nothing worked. Nearly 1,500 campsites in Yosemite National Park were sold out for August. Our agent thanked us and disconnected.

It was just 7:13 a.m.

Copyright © 2011, Dave Williams. All rights reserved.

Memories of Camp Many Ha-Has

I think most of us remember our favorite vacations as the ones farthest from home. You loved your long family road trip from Los Angeles to Banff; a Canadian family loved visiting Southern California. Seems kind of silly when you think about it like that but I admit I've always felt that way about setting out on an adventure in my motor home, truck camper or just with a load of tents and sleeping bags. For some reason, the farther I traveled from home, the more grand and exotic the experience seemed to be.

It's early March 2011 and I just paid $3.84 for unleaded gas at Arco. It will probably hit four bucks by the time I finish typing this sentence. How can we plan a summer family vacation with no idea how much getting there and back will eat into our budget between June and September?

David Montgomery & Jeremy Williams

For starters, we could take our motorhome to a local RV park or nearby campground thereby eliminating those horrifying 75-gallon fill-ups. Or, we could stay home and camp in the back yard as we did when we were kids. Some of my happiest memories come from sleeping in the yard.

If it makes you feel better, or just to add to the family giggles, pack up the car, drive around the block singing a camp song and then back into your campsite and unload.

Years ago my son's future in-laws, George and Gloria Goold, found themselves in hard times, unable to afford even a basic camping trip to the mountains. Did they try to explain the problem to the kids while making a stern reality lesson of it? Did George and Gloria pity themselves in silence and console each other privately? Nope. They did something pretty remarkable. Rather than cancel a vacation they couldn't afford they created one they could.

They brought the campground to their home.

Mid-80s: Ranger George holding Sugar Bear,
"Goold Hysterical Rational Monument."
Note the teardrop trailer up by the garage.

George and Gloria invited their closest family friends, put up a huge campground sign across the driveway and pitched tents in the yard. They built a campfire pit, toasted marshmallows and made s'mores. They sang songs and played silly games until it was time to kiss each other good night and snuggle into their sleeping bags together under the stars, giddy smiles on their loving faces -- right outside their home.

They fired up lanterns at dusk, cooked on camp stoves and kept their perishable foods in that milky, cold water goo of a Coleman ice chest we all despised back then but lovingly remember now.

They went hiking in local public parks and gardens and they visited nearby attractions they had never seen before, just as those vacationers from Canada might have done.

Now, a quarter of a century later, it is the camping trip closest to their hearts. The family nearly cries when they talk about it.

The word "staycation" hadn't been imagined back then. Nor had the concept. My dear friends George and Gloria just naturally understood something that most of us sort of know but seldom embrace:

Vacation is not about going away. It's about coming together.

Copyright © 2011, Dave Williams. All rights reserved.

"DADGUMMIT!!!"

Those of us who love outdoor life are always looking for new ideas, gadgets and tips for making our travels and sports more enjoyable. To that end we watch a lot of videos of RV and outdoor experts pitching products.

Maybe you already know Bill Dance. He's a well-known fisherman and talented TV host and video demonstrator. But we all have bad days. Here are some of Bill's.

Of Fish and Men

My dad, Don Williams, was born and raised in Wyoming. 

About fifty-five years ago he and his dad taught me to fish swift trout streams in blinding snowstorms.

I fished the Yellowstone River for the first time when I was only four or five. It was January in the mid-1950s, a stiff wind and vicious, blowing snow stung my tender cheeks and scared me. I grabbed my daddy's leg. He briefly caressed my head with his free hand just to let me know he was there for me.

Then he cast that Super Duper lure back upstream and continued reeling in the line.

A monstrous, lazy moose stood about fifteen feet away, knee-deep in the rapid, frigid Yellowstone, chewing on green river plants and looking at me with scant interest. The nearly-frozen river, the icy wind and snow, didn't bother that moose in the least. Certainly, he had no fear of me.

My dad, Donald, and his dad, Lester Williams, fished with a religious fervor.

For one thing, it was the only way they could hope to enjoy fresh trout for dinner. More than that, though, they embraced God's challenge that they provide for themselves and their families and be grateful for His bounty.

I loved my dad and grandpa. I wanted to be like them.

I'm a California kid just trying to hold onto family traditions. Yet, I occasionally have to jettison them when they no longer serve a practical purpose. 

My son liberated me from fishing nearly thirty years ago.

Jeremy was about six or seven. I took him camping into Northern California's Plumas-Eureka Campground. He had caught his first fish there when he was just five, back when he was still anxious to learn from me and to please me with his effort. 

(He still is and does, of course. I'm just sayin'...)

By the early 80s -- just a year or two after his fish harvesting experience -- he was thinking for himself:

"Dad," he said seriously and with no hint of sarcasm, "you know we can buy fish at the grocery store, right?"

He was right, of course, just as my dad and his dad were right in their time and place. 

We have all been right together, forever.

Copyright © 2011, Dave Williams. All rights reserved.

At the corner of Thisaway and Thataway

The other day I Googled my own blog searching for inspiration. Danged if I didn't find it!

Smack dab in the middle of Arkansas there is a tiny town called Yellville, where you'll find the intersection of Thataway Rd. and Thisaway Rd., just about a quarter mile from Whichaway Rd. Wouldn't you love to hear somebody out there giving directions to a lost RV family? Shades of Abbott and Costello.

Thataway and Thisaway isn't the only funny intersection you may come to. In an Arizona retirement community residents undoubtedly get a thousand laughs a day from living, as they do, at the corner of Stroke and Acoma Streets.

If you're bored and depressed in Albany, Georgia, you can always go hang out at the corner of  Lonesome and Hardup.

Presidents are apparently tempting fodder for local street namers. Folks in Houston, Texas, are keeping true to their largely conservative perspective and their well-deserved reputation for being facetious by naming converging streets Clinton and Fidelity.  In Ann Arbor, Michigan, people engaged in brief political commentary by creating the intersection of Nixon and Bluett.

You have to love Americans. We don't get as much credit as we deserve for having a national sense of humor. Just look at some of the street names scattered across our fruited plain:


There are several streets in the U.S. called Psycho Path.

In Story, Arkansas, the only way to get your truck camper to Constipation Ridge is to drive up Farfrompoopen Road.


And, while we're on that unfortunate topic...

Folks in Central Pennsylvania can direct you to Cowshit Ln. if you will kindly refrain from stealing the street sign. It seems to happen a lot. In fact, that's why the merchants of Amador City, California, years ago began selling copies of their iconic Pig Turd Alley sign, hoping that it would stop thefts of the actual sign. That must have worked. I bought one.

Some street namers seem to be completely baffled and give up...

Lambs Terrace, NJ

...while others just seem to lack interest.

Vallejo, CA

There are some streets you should steer clear of...

And the famous road less traveled.

Wherever your RV adventures take you, keep smiling. We live in a very funny country.

Copyright © Dave Williams, 2011

Watch For Staring Rocks!

We all want to leave something behind. 

We desperately want to have mattered.

We want to believe that our lives were not coincidental and that somebody, a few years after we're gone, might be grateful that we passed this way.

Most of us can leave our footprints in the sands of time just by leading good lives and enriching the lives of those who love us. Surely, that's enough. We don't crave fame.

And yet, it would be nice to be remembered for doing one small, unique thing that touches others; to leave something of a legacy, a personal thank you for the life we lived and loved and wanted to share.

Please meet my friend, Cheri Fuller.

Cheri is a passionate 60-ish wife, mother, grandma, friend and artist. The world is full of Cheris, of course, but this one is ours. She's as uniquely gifted and personally delightful as nearly everybody whose name you'll never learn nor remember, except for one difference:

Cheri paints Eyerocks and leaves them scattered about in the spirit of Johnny Appleseed.

If you occasionally wander the rivers, streams and the ocean beaches of Northern California, if you're really lucky, you may stumble upon an original Eyerock by Cheri. They are individually simple and yet magnificently striking works of art found lying about, here and there.

Eyerocks by Cheri are nothing more than a human endorsement of the fragile beauty of nature and a statement, that we humans are also part of Mother Nature's landscape.

We belong here and we matter in the grand scheme of things.

If you find one, turn it over carefully so as not to disrupt its canvas. You'll see this signature.

Take a picture. Take two or three.  You've discovered a treasure that is, as far as I can figure, a unique gift to the world.

But, please put it back where and how you found it.

 

Copyright © Dave Williams, 2011

Nowhere to run

"There is no such thing as boredom." -- D.M. Williams 1929-2002

That was my precious dad. He used to tell me that. I was always tempted to respond, "Well, not for simple-minded people, maybe," but even as a kid I usually had the good sense to keep my pie hole shut rather than give Dad a smartass comeback.

By Dad's challenge and my own definition I suppose I have often been simple-minded because I am usually bored at some point in virtually every day of my life. Certainly, I get bored when camping. As much as I love the great outdoors, whether I'm in one of my RVs or on a patch of dirt with a sleeping bag and a lawn chair, come midday I will inevitably break out a book and read for an hour or so. It's that time we wax about eloquently, how we go camping to relax. But then I get tired of reading and we never mention what comes next.

Nothing.

After cleaning the campsite or motor home, as the sun climbs high toward noon, I always get a little bored unless we're off on some adventure. This is when electricity and cable TV come in handy. I hate to admit that but if I can, so can you. It's nothing to be ashamed of.

So, here we are in the 21st Century and technology is almost everywhere, giving us more things to do in our down time. Or, depending on your perspective, more ways to avoid meaningful conversation and philosophical introspection. Even many camp grounds now offer pretty reliable WiFi and cell phone signals, making it possible to Tweet your heart's content to thousands of mostly nameless, indifferent people hundreds of miles away rather than actually talk with the one or two people sitting next to you.

Like laptops, the cell phones have become virtual arcades that can consume entire days of your life if you wish or allow it. I recently got the top-of-the-line (for a week or two, anyway,) "smart phone," the Android EVO 4G.

I wish we could go back to naming cars, and now phones, after animals instead of techno-geek babble like "Android EVO 4G" and "BMW Series 3 Mach 6 BFD!"

I miss the Bronco, the Impala and the Barracuda.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. The magic phone.

My phone will allow me to communicate with people in countless ways. I can talk on the phone, of course, though that assumes I wish to hear what the other person has to say. (Two-way conversations are sooo 20th Century!) To avoid that I can email, text, Tweet, or post endless streams of meaningless consciousness on Facebook, MySpace and other social networks.

"Just made a tuna sandwich! LOL!"

My phone will even allow me to talk to people while seeing their faces as they see mine. Haven't done that yet. Can't really see how viewing my fat face on a tiny screen would advance our communication.

But I can do these things almost everywhere on Earth. It will soon become so. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/13/technology/13wifi.html?_r=1&src=busln

I can take campground pictures and send them to you instantaneously, if not sooner. If I catch a big fish I can show it to you within seconds of its landing! (As if I'd be fishing when I have all these gadgets to play with.)

And by now you're wondering if I am writing in support of or opposition to high-tech camping.

The answer is, both.

The problem is obvious and nothing we motor home jockeys haven't heard for years: "You say you want to 'get away from it all' but then you take it all with you!" We get that from tent campers who have no TV to watch about midday and from people who have trucks with over-sized dualies to haul dune buggies and jet skis everywhere they go.

Still, it's a fair question and one for which I have no pat answer.

But, riddle me this:

Why is reading a book at a campground more noble than watching TV, reading a blog or socializing on Facebook with your iPad? It's personal time, right? You can do it alone or while sitting next to your spouse and kids, sharing natchos and guacamole, just as you do when you're reading a book. To hear us tell it when we get home we spent the entire week resting, reading and playing board games with the family. Balderdash. We did some of each and we spent a lot of time just goofing off or being bored. That's nothing to be ashamed of, either. It's who we are.

Heck, your family can only put up with an hour or two of bonding, anyway.

We'll eventually get over the novelty of WiFi and cell phone reception everywhere and learn to accept them as tools and not merely toys.  Until then we just need to impose time limits on ourselves as we do with the kids in front of the TV or on their video games.

I can't see how family and friends will ever go out of style. So, celebrate technology but love your peeps! Keep the campfire tradition. Make S'mores! Sing songs, tell stories and laugh! Try to learn to embrace your boredom, too. It's who you are. It keeps you balanced.

As kids today say, it's all good.


(But in your down time, Tweet me! @DaveWilliams_1)

© 2010 by David L. Williams, all rights reserved