Category Archives: Short Stories

Month #3 on the Road: A Full-Time Camper Life Update!

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Today marks three months of life on the road…and finishing month #3 strong in this tiny camper home with the spouse and pup!

Unlike lots of other solo travelers and couples doing the full-time travel thing that I keep up with, my blog here is just a hobby and a personal outlet. Although a monthly update is about all I can manage with my work my schedule, it’s still something I’m holding myself accountable to on the 14th of each month. And BTW, work is going great…never a dull moment!

Places We’ve Been: Month #3

Month #3 marked a huge transition for this camper journey and a big move from the east to the west. After spending time just along the East Coast so far, we made a quick stop back where it all began (Atlanta) to swap out gear from the storage unit and put in some social visits. Now we’ve moved on to the West/Southwest and will be here for the foreseeable future!

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Here’s a quick recap of this past month’s batch of “homes on the road”:

  • Charlotte, North Carolina: Home on the Road #14
    • Highlights: Last kayaking & SUPing of the season at Lake Wylie, discovering Lucky Dog Bark & Brew (off-leash dog park + craft beer bar!), campfire storytelling
    • Lowlights: Police shooting riots downtown

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  • Atlanta, Georgia: Home on the Road #15
    • Highlights: Taco dinner & great conversation with my BFF, hiking up & camping at Stone Mountain, stocking up on Indian sweets for Navratri
    • Lowlights: Navigating all the excess stuff in our storage unit and wondering why we kept it

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  • Morrilton, Arkansas & Amarillo, Texas: “Passing Through” Homes on the Road #16 & 17
    • Highlights: Hotel stays to treat ourselves after 8+ hours of driving per day, nice trail behind the Amarillo hotel, soup on the side of the road, free Wi-Fi and breakfast!
    • Lowlights: Getting nauseous trying to work on a laptop in the passenger seat

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  • Albuquerque, New Mexico: Home on the Road #18
    • Highlights: Finally checked out the International Hot Air Balloon Fiesta, new alpaca sweater and hats, scenic dog park, started biking again – feels great to be back on a bike!
    • Lowlights: Weather prevented the balloons from launching on the one and only morning we had in ABQ, no dogs allowed at the festival

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  • Cortez, Colorado: Home on the Road #19
    • Highlights: 2 weeks in one place, Mesa Verde, Canyons of the Ancients, Southwest hikes & landscapes, very comfortable town with pretty much everything I want, went to yoga and belly dancing (first ever!) classes, got a good haircut, fall festival in Dolores, boarded Monkey at doggie day care for the first time and that went ok
    • Lowlights: Low of 27-degrees at night with no good camper insulation, annoying locals, not many dog-friendly businesses

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Realizations & Ramblings: Month #3

In no particular order, these are some random thoughts that came to me over the course of month #3 on the road.

  • The East Coast was nice but isn’t long-term for me. I felt ready to leave it and head west.
  • Weather really affects my mood, motivation, and how I spend my days while living outdoors – Cortez has been full of sunshine 🙂
  • Clotheslines are incredibly useful in a campsite – especially if you’re by a beach or doing water sports and trying to avoid a mildew infestation.

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  • I love camping next to trails and have been trying to get into trail running, slowly but surely.
  • Despite all the new environments, I haven’t really gotten sick on this trip so far. Yay! But my immune system gets run down every once in a while with symptoms of a headache and a sore throat. Fortunately, it’s been going away within a day.
  • Bag salads with toppings and dressings are my favorite semi-healthy lunch.

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  • This lifestyle reinforces my lack of attachment to places.
  • The social interactions that every other travel blogger talks about being the “best part of travel” still mean very little to me. Random encounters bring me anxiety, annoyance, and disinterest. Perhaps it’s a phase. Or maybe just me getting older and working/living remotely for so long. Either way, I’m cool with it. And I feel like someone needs to share the perspective of how introverted long-term travel can be just as fulfilling, if not more.
  • Hotel stays are a fun occasional treat – especially after long driving days.

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  • We played a fun storytelling game one night that was really fun. It goes like this: Tear up pieces of paper and on each one, write (a) characters, (b) characters’ goals, and (c) an obstacle to characters’ goals. Randomly draw one piece from each category pile. Grab a small notebook and Person #1 writes one page to start the story. Person #2 only gets to read the very last sentence of what Person #1 wrote and then keeps the story going with one more page. Go back and forth 3 times and then read your story aloud at the campfire. Our story involved a park ranger who dreamed of making the best grilled cheese sandwich ever but had debilitating social anxiety.

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  • For the first time on this trip, we stayed somewhere more than a week: Cortez. We really need more than a week to get beyond the tourist highlights and get into a good work groove to discover local stuff. It’s nice to get to a point of comfort in a new place where I can do normal things like get a haircut, go to a yoga class, and try belly dancing for the first time (hip scarves are hot).
  • Small decorations for fall make the camper feel more festive for the season.

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  • I enjoy the hassle-free lifestyle of small towns but the anonymity of larger cities.
  • Playing disc golf with a dog is impossible – never again!
  • I have no idea how to dress for fall. Living most of my life in Illinois, hot summer basically turned into cold winter before I had a chance to think about fall clothes. I went shopping for some layered outdoor wear, but I still struggle with what to put on myself when it’s in the 60’s. I’m open to advice on this one!

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  • Desert landscapes make me feel peaceful.
  • Chief Surfs with Manatees, my Jeep, hit 88,888 miles (now over 91K) and is still going strong!

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Looking Ahead to Month #4

Month #4 will continue our exploration of the West in Colorado and Utah. We’re skipping the familiar parts of Colorado that we already know and sticking to the southwestern part of the state between Cortez and Grand Junction.

Other than an epic canyoneering trip in Zion a few years ago, Utah will be totally new to me. So I’m definitely looking forward to checking out Salt Lake City, Moab, Arches, and all the amazing landscapes here. I recently upgraded my iPhone to the 7+ so I’m also planning to snap some awesome photos to share!

A quick look at the calendar tells me that Halloween is also coming up, which is my favorite holiday of all time. So we’re planning to celebrate with a pumpkin patch visit, perhaps some cheap & easy costumes, and plenty of pumpkin-flavored desserts and beer!

Thanks for following our adventures and definitely looking forward to what month #4 brings!

 

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Lost Arrow Campground: A Spooky Short Fiction Story for the Campfire

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Lost Arrow Campground

It was about 9:00 pm and both driver and passenger were starting to nod off. They were keeping an eye out for campground signs and pulled over at two different ones. But was a Saturday night and neither had any space left to set up, so they moved on.

Aura, Raoul, and their dog named Chicken had been moving from one campground to the next to see the country and explore the great outdoors. That sort of lifestyle would be spontaneous enough for most people, but these adventurous three had fallen into a comfortable routine after six months and needed to switch things up a bit.

So on this particular day, they had decided to drive their Jeep and pop-up camper until they could drive no more and then look for campground signs along the highway. It was a hot, muggy day in late August, and they had made it as far as Oklahoma. This was a particularly long stretch of road that they were looking to get through as quickly as possible.

A few miles later, they saw a sign that read, “Lost Arrow Campground.” That sounded just fine, considering it was almost 11 pm and a thick fog was starting to roll in.

They pulled into Lost Arrow and saw a small shack at the front. Understandably, there was no one working at this time of night, so they decided to just set up and check in and pay in the morning. Camper set-up went quickly, and the couple divvied up the last tasks of the day. Aura took Chicken out for her last walk of the day, and Raoul went to a nearby utility sink to wash dishes from their on-the-road dinner.

As typical, Aura was distracted on her dog walk and texting her best friend, Michelle, about their exhausting journey to spontaneity.  She was looking down at her glowing iPhone when BAM! She walked into a towering beast of a man with a huge belly, bounced right off of it, and fell backwards into the gravel. Meanwhile, Chicken, who was always alert-to-a-fault and way too social, didn’t even respond to the fat man that was in their way. The pup had only been startled by Aura’s fall, nothing more.

Stunned and shaken up a bit, Aura brushed herself off and picked herself up off the ground, still holding on to Chicken’s leash. Feeling paranoid and a bit frantic, she rubbed her eyes and whipped her head in either direction. There was no one there. No one to apologize for being fat and in the way, no one to give her a helping hand out of the gravel, and no one to explain why she had bounced back so violently. Exhausted and unwilling to think about it anymore, Aura and Chicken made their way back to the camper to settle in for the night.

Meanwhile, Raoul was behind an old rickety shed hovering over a large sink with a few dirty bowls and spoons. He turned on the water without really looking at it and it instantly felt thicker than any water ever should – even campground water. It was pitch black outside, and his headlamp battery was becoming dim. The water coming out of the faucet was red, blood red. Instead of feeling alarmed, he was just angry. He had grown weary of life on the road and all the shitty accommodations along the way. For a brief second, the thought crossed Raoul’s mind that it could be blood, but he blamed his headlamp, his tiredness, and his color blindness and didn’t get it a second thought.

Back at the camper, Aura and Raoul were too tired and cranky to even get into their respective stories about what had happened on their separate outings. Instead they just crawled under the covers and tried to forget about what just happened.

That’s when they noticed that a smell was starting to creep in. It smelled rancid, pungent, and unlike anything they’d ever smelled before. Over the past six months, they had camped next to landfills, pig farms, and Appalachians with serious BO. Yet nothing compared to this smell. It was the smell of rotting flesh, yet they had no idea.

Still hoping to get at least a couple hours of sleep before the sun came up, they closed all the windows, lit a stick of incense, and covered their heads with a blanket. This seemed to work for a little while until the sounds started up.

Moaning sounds echoed through the trees and bounced off the flimsy canvas covering that separate the inside world from the outside one…and the familiar one from the hauntingly strange one on the other side.

Heavy duty earplugs helped to muffle the moaning sounds better than nothing, and before long, the birds were chirping and the first glimpses of sunlight peeked out onto the horizon. Aura, Raoul, and Chicken weren’t entirely sure where they were, but they just knew they wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible and get back on the road.

Still angry at having stumbled upon yet another disappointing campground, Raoul started packing up. In her usual stubborn way, Aura refused to help and insisted that they go check in at the front office to pay first. They already had an outstanding citation for failure to pay at a campground in Pennsylvania, and the last thing they needed to add to the mix was more legal trouble. The couple went back and forth in a passive-aggressive fashion until Raoul finally threw his hands in the air and gave in just to keep the peace.

The three of them stepped outside the camper and started making their way to the front office to pay for the night’s stay before packing up. There was a low-lying fog that blanketed the ground and hovered about three feet high in all directions. Chicken seemed to disappear in the fog as they walked towards the shack along the road. There were no other campers or tents in sight, which was a bit odd, but not entirely unheard of.

When they arrived, they found no one…only an abandoned, dilapidated shack with splintered wood and broken windows. There was no sign designating the business as Lost Arrow Campground and no pay box in sight. So they gladly accepted that this terrible night was at least a free night of camping and started walking back to the pop-up to take down and move out.

At that moment, the blanket of fog was just starting to lift. And what was under the fog began to reveal itself.

Tombstones. Gravesites. Corpses. Everywhere. And in all directions.

The real Lost Arrow Campground was up the road another half mile, and they just hadn’t gone far enough. Aura, Raoul, and Chicken had just camped overnight in a cemetery.

The residents were none too pleased about it, and they weren’t about to let them get away with a free night of camping for nothing. Mangled limbs began to claw their way out of mounds of dirt, and there was nowhere to run.

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