photos

The Happy Camper

Mer & Lucky Dog in Wyoming -- note the tarp because of a leak

We sold our camper this weekend. Although that is not the lifestyle change it appears to be, it is the first time in 13 years that we don’t have a camper. That warrants a little explanation and recollection of the thousands of miles we travelled with the camper on some great adventures, as recently as last week.

our first camperIn 1998, Lucky Dog adopted us. Soon after, we bought a camper that slid into the truck bed and popped up, with the top two feet canvas; part tiny cabin, part large tent. Our first trip to Water Canyon immediately revealed that a four cylinder Toyota truck could not carry the camper. Moreover, the small cab required Lucky to ride at the passenger’s feet.

By providence, Merri found a newer Toyota Tacoma at the same place we had bought the old truck two years earlier: Ideal Autos, owned by Rick Jackson, a very nice guy. The truck had an extended cab for Lucky and 6 cylinders. We added leaf springs and stiffer shocks and we were off. We drove 5,000 miles that first trip of 5 weeks, all the way to Hinton, Alberta. The experience was mostly wonderful.

Early on, we pulled into a campground in Montana. Nearby, two people struggled to set up a tent. It began to rain. We popped up in a minute and soon had bacon frying. The next morning, our poor neighbors threw their soaked tent into the trunk. I never missed tent camping or sleeping on the ground after that. Eventually, we had little need for campgrounds. Time and again, we drove to the end of a rugged road to camp.

somewhere west of MagdalenaEvery year, for 13 years, we loaded the camper and drove north. We drove to Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming several times. We heard wolves howl near the Frank Church Wilderness. Mer followed a heron to the top of a mountain to discover a phenomenal view of the west side of the Grand Tetons, which we watched at sunset and sunrise (very cold). Another trip, I opened the camper door to find a moose standing 20 feet away. One summer, we drove to Washington state and Oregon, specifically for a CD-release concert by our favorite commercial musicians, Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer (the CD: Drum-Hat-Buddha); we camped next to an urban park that night. [Dave Carter died suddenly months later. He was a fantastic lyric poet. We were so glad we got to see him then.] We camped some in Utah; poor Lucky nearly died in the heat at Hovenweap. Most of all, we camped in Colorado. Each year, we drove a little less and camped a little less, but we still got out several times a season.

somewhere west of MagdalenaI took our first camper to Chaco, where the wind promptly ripped the canvas side. I drove that camper to Springtime Campground, San Mateo Mountains, west of Socorro, for my 47th birthday, with my first friend, John Stewart. The truck died suddenly 47 miles south of Albuquerque. We set up chairs and sat beside the road, waiting for the tow truck. After a quick and minor repair, we resumed our trip, joining a dozen other great friends.

Merri enjoying the new camperFor my 50th, I drove that first camper to Resumidero, San Pedro Parks, north of Cuba, to meet many of the same folks. Driving up I-25, I heard a weird woosh as the truck suddenly slowed down. A passing driver with a horrified expression gestured frantically. I pulled over to find I had only latched one of 4 latches for the top and it had popped up, tearing the canvas worse than a Chaco wind had. Thankfully, the one latch held strong, and no one was killed by the blankets and sleeping bag that blew out and disappeared.

We fixed that camper and sold it cheap and bought a much nicer camper, which had a propane-powered fridge and lots of storage under the bed. That second camper kept us comfortable for five seasons.

On Stoner MesaSometimes, plans change as you are making them. That’s the way a lot of our trips developed: one day at a time. This year we bought a newer truck to replace that truck we had for 13 years (our 3rd truck from Rick Jackson). When it came time to ready that truck to carry the camper, we balked: did we really want to burden our new truck so soon? With the end of summer nearing, would we store the camper in the driveway as we have for 13 years – making it impossible to use the garage for the newer truck? Could we justify two trucks, and wouldn’t that just wear out the older truck? Suddenly, it made sense: sell the camper, sell the old truck, park the new truck in the garage, see what happens next camping season. Mer posted the camper on Craigslist and Karl responded within an hour. He had looked at many older campers in worse shape, costing more. Campers that fit smaller trucks are hard to come by. He was delighted to buy ours. A yard sale motivated us to clear out much of the garage. Now, we are selling the old truck on Craigslist. For the first time in 13 years, the rig I called Turtlehouse is gone.

Valley of Fires State Park
above: Valley of Fires State Park, near Carrizozo

DSC00528
above: Molly, Dave Mehlman, Chica, Luke, Merri, & Mark along Treasure Creek, Colorado, June 2011

On Stoner Mesa
above: on Stoner Mesa, July 2011

Mer relaxes with a cuppa tea
above: Mer relaxes with morning tea

Look for it -- on Beaver Lake
above: look for it; camped next to Beaver Lake, Cimarron, Colorado, July 2011

Uncategorized

Wow – we were just there

Heavy rain triggers mud, rock slide that halts Durango trains; blocks roads after storm | The Republic

Rain also triggered two mud slides that temporarily blocked traffic on two highways in Colorado. The Colorado Department of Transportation says boulders fell across both lanes of U.S. 50 Tuesday night, temporarily closing the highway west of Canon City.

Another slide blocked U.S. 550 north of Red Mountain Pass in southwest Colorado, but traffic was moving.

The National Weather Service warned that monsoon rains could bring another round of moderate to heavy rainfall to southeast and southern Colorado on Wednesday. The weather service said storms could cause street flooding and more rock or mud slides.

Heavy rain triggers mud, rock slide that halts Durango trains; blocks roads after storm | The Republic

NADA - New American Dark Ages

Our Masters

Six and a half years ago, I wrote this blog entry following the coronation of Duhbya, the Idiot King, the strutting fool, the faux Texun. Now, it turns out the Confederates are masquerading as tea partiers.

mjh’s blog — The Real Inaugural Address

Greetings from Richmond, Virginia, the Capital of the Confederacy. My name is Jefferson Davis and I am here to accept my mandate — the people have spoken! It was never red versus blue states; it was always Blue versus Gray. [keep reading after you finish the current entry]

mjh’s blog — The Real Inaugural Address

The Tea Party, the debt ceiling, and white Southern extremism – War Room – Salon.com

From the earliest years of the American republic, white Southern conservatives when they have lost elections and found themselves in the political minority have sought to extort concession from national majorities by paralyzing or threatening to destroy the United States. …

As white Southerners, upset with the Democratic Party’s racial and social liberalism, migrated into the post-Goldwater GOP, they brought their Dixiecrat attitudes into the party of Lincoln. The Kemp-Roth tax bill of 1981, which inaugurated the policy of creating permanent deficits by slashing taxes without cutting spending, had its strongest support among Southern and Western members of Congress and the least support in the fiscally conservative Northeast.

The Republican Party’s attempted government shutdown of 1995 marked the new domination of the Republican Party by Southerners like Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey and Tom DeLay. The impeachment of their fellow Southerner Bill Clinton was an attempted coup d’état by the Southern white minority in the United States, which, as in 1860, was frustrated because its candidate lost the presidential election.

The debt ceiling crisis is the latest case in which the radical right in the South has held America hostage until its demands are met. Presidents Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln refused to appease the Southern fanatics. Unfortunately, President Obama and the Democrats in Congress chose not to follow their example and instead gave in. In doing so, they have encouraged the neo-Confederate minority in Congress to find yet another opportunity in the near future to extort concessions from America’s majority by sabotaging America’s government.

Michael Lind is Policy Director of the Economic Growth Program at the New America Foundation

[hat tip to dangerousmeta or NewMexiKen, I can’t remember which]

The Tea Party, the debt ceiling, and white Southern extremism – War Room – Salon.com

And a counterpoint:

The Tea Party is bigger than the South – War Room – Salon.com

Michael Lind is a very smart and wonderfully erudite writer with a bit of an obsession. His understanding of the deeper cultural wellsprings of American history and politics has left him, as a sort of side effect, with an abiding fearful hostility toward a particular group of people, the "Anglo-Celtic" Southerner. Lind sees them everywhere in our politics as a baleful, disturbing presence spreading bacilli of violence, bigotry and religious fanaticism. And in his recent Salon essay arguing that the Tea Party movement is an essentially Southern phenomenon, his prejudices blind him to a rather important and unprecedented phenomenon: the virtual disappearance of geography as a significant factor in the ideological character of the Republican Party.

The Tea Party is bigger than the South – War Room – Salon.com

NADA - New American Dark Ages

Obama, Raygun Democrat, Moderate Conservative – or just too smart for fools like me?

In keeping with disappointment with Obama’s performance:

Obama & the Fake Debt Ceiling Crisis: This President Is Really Just Smarter Than You Are | Black Agenda Report

What if Barack Obama is a Reagan Democrat in every meaningful way, right down to a fanatical belief in trickle down economics? What if the president counts on corporate media and his army of careerists and sycophants to shut down and cover up cracks in the Obama consensus through which reality might leak? What if Obama is not weak, or timid, or vacillating or waiting for us to “make him do it”? What if what we’ve seen is all there is, all there ever was?

The truth is that Barack Obama’s actions are entirely rational, understandable and even predictable if you suppose him to have been a vicious, vacuous and cynical right wing operative from the very beginning. …

Still don’t believe it’s the job of corporate Democrats to push the corporate agenda further than Republicans ever could? When Bush 2 couldn’t even pass his own bankster bailout in September of 2008, he called Barack Obama in off the campaign trail to round up a sufficient number of Democratic votes, including votes in the Congressional Black Caucus, to pass the Bush bailout. Before even assuming office, Barack Obama was carrying out Republican policies even Republicans could not enact. Upon becoming president himself, Barack Obama quintupled down on the $3 trillion Bush bankster bailout with a further $16 trillion, the largest transfer of public wealth to private hands in the history of humankind.

So if you’re an Obama supporter, and you’re disappointed that your president won’t fight for you — if you’re an Obama supporter and you wonder why the president won’t stand up for Medicaid, Medicare and social security — here’s the answer. The president really, really is smarter than you. He knows what side he’s on and you don’t. He knows that the two-party system is a veal pen, where as long as “he can play good cop to the Republicans’ ever worsening bad cop, the game is fixed, and not in your favor.

Look out! Over there! It’s President Michelle Bachman!

[hat tip to dangerousmeta]

Obama & the Fake Debt Ceiling Crisis: This President Is Really Just Smarter Than You Are | Black Agenda Report

The Cult That Is Destroying America – NYTimes.com

The reality, of course, is that we already have a centrist president — actually a moderate conservative president. Once again, health reform — his only major change to government — was modeled on Republican plans, indeed plans coming from the Heritage Foundation. And everything else — including the wrongheaded emphasis on austerity in the face of high unemployment — is according to the conservative playbook.

What all this means is that there is no penalty for extremism; no way for most voters, who get their information on the fly rather than doing careful study of the issues, to understand what’s really going on.

[hat tip to NewMexiKen]

The Cult That Is Destroying America – NYTimes.com

NADA - New American Dark Ages

I don’t want to vote again for Obama

I donated more money to Obama than to all the candidates I’ve donated to before. I supported him when Hillary was the front runner and could have been my candidate. When Barack Hussein Obama was elected president, I felt America was reclaimed from the strutting dimwitted Duhbya and the ugly, small-minded, cheap bastards. I felt proud of my country, yes, for the first time.

I still think Obama is smart, decent, and competent. I even see he was a bit clever to get the Republicans to avoid a repeat of the recent nonsense in 2012 (surely they don’t comprehend how stupid they look). However, Obama is incapable of standing up for progressive values against the bullies of the GOP who see only their way and no other. The GOP doesn’t just want 100%, it wants you to give up more to persuade them to accept 110%, at which point half of them will crow like drunken frat boys and the other half will demand more concessions. Piss on them.

Progressives need a candidate NOW to pull Obama back to the left – the center, really. And, that whoop you just heard was the GOP celebrating their only goal: to keep Obama to one term. If only Democrats had worked with such focus to defeat Duhbya in 2004, the whole world would be a better off. Fuck you, GOP. You’re taking us all to Hell with you.

"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds." — Sam Adams