The Jet Set Betties

We owe the world a travel journal update, but in the meantime, we just wanted to share that we are booked for the Fort Desolation Fest! Even better, we are camping on the grounds. Looks like it will be a hoot!

Here’s a video from last year’s shenanigans.

Trip Odometer: 5,194

Monday Feb 27 – Sat Mar 4: We departed our housesitting gig but couldn’t find anywhere within a day’s drive to camp without rain, snow, and/or 30-degree temps, so we booked a cozy AirBnB in Diamond Springs, just a few miles up the road. The first two days there were cold, with precipitation alternating between rain and snow. Later in the week we finally got some sunny days with a few nice walks on nearby trails. But by Friday we were back in the rain again. Our Airbnb came with a nice backyard and a Traeger smoker … Matthew tried it out and made a couple of DELICIOUS dinners!

All of this weather has revealed a slow leak in the camper roof (!!!) – looks like it is getting in where the roof panels butt together. It is too cold and wet to do much about it at this point, but we are keeping an eye on it.

Saturday, March 5: We headed out of Diamond Springs for Ashland, Oregon. Yet another drive where there was a winter storm warning for a mountain pass we needed to cross. In this case, Mt Shasta pass. The warnings were so dire in the morning that we decided to trade the straight-shot four-hour drive through the pass for an eight-hour drive along the coast that would skip the mountains and the storms.

Our route was Folsom, Sacremento, Woodland, then Hwy 16 through Esparto, Capay, Brooks, and Rumsey Canyon.

“Wow” for Rumsey Canyon. We don’t have a photo to do it justice. Is was just miles of windy road with these steep green hills and fast running streams. We’ve made a note to come back here and camp when we can.

Then we picked up Hwy 20 and drove along the shores of Clear Lake to reach Hwy 101, which we would then take north for the long drive to Ashland. At this point we called our Ashland host – she said the weather was blue skies! She had hung her laundry outside to dry! We had a choice to make – continue another five-plus hours on our current route, or backtrack for the shorter route and risk the mountain pass. Even with the backtrack, we would get there sooner, so we made the u-turn!

Back we went through Lucern and Clear Lake, then on 20 East to Williams, which was very beautiful with all the almond trees in bloom. Then onto good old I5 through Redding, Shasta Lake, Mt Shasta (by the time we got here the weather alert had been removed – the drive was fine), Yreka (capital of the State of Jefferson), Mt Siskiyou, and then Ashland!

We had a lovely evening with our friend, Alaskan-turned-Ashlander, the amazing Sandy Burd.

March 6: We had made the long drive to Ashland so that our last leg to Bend, Oregon would be a relatively short one. And, amazingly, there were no winter storm warnings when we set out this morning! We took what looked like a scenic route called Dead Indian Memorial Road.

It turned out that the road put us back up in the 4000 ft altitude! We saw very few cars, and these only at the start of our trip. The further we got down the road, the higher the snow, the narrower the road. And then there were intermittent blizzards.

But we made it through, spurred off the road to Keno, then Hwy 66 to Klamath Falls and Hwy 97 to Bend.

In Bend, we met the folks we would be pet sitting for, as well as Mollie and Lizzie, the doggos. We settled in for a nice dinner together. Claus and Annette left at 3:00 am the next morning, and we had a fabulous week in their beautiful home, hanging out with Lizzie and Molly, exploring Bend, and staying out of bad weather!

We also had the good fortune to spend time with dear friend Natalie – one of Kayla’s first and enduring Sitka friendships. Natalie and her family now live in Bend, so we could meet up for walks, dinner, river sauna, a quick trip to Sisters, and even a bowling birthday party for Nat’s daughter!

Bend is just under 4000 ft above sea level, and we’re here to testify: altitude is no joke. Though we spent a week there, neither of us ever felt like we acclimated to the altitude. We would get out of breath just doing simple things.

And all that changed on March 16! We pointed the Bettie Mobile downhill and headed towards Portland! And that’s a post for another time.

Trip Odometer 4425

We still weren’t finished with San Diego. Let’s not forget that the Bettie Mobile still isn’t finished. Matthew took a sunny day to do paint touch up and some more galley work.

We also had a huge Saturday with our friend/host, Candace:

Even with all the fun we were having in San Diego, there comes a day when it is time to go. On Wednesday, Feb 22 we headed north. By now we were getting steady winter storm warnings for all of California, especially at elevation.

We had our first pet sitting gig in Somerset, CA in two days. It would be about nine hours total driving, so we broke it into two days, with our first stop in Redlands at Dynasty Suites. This place was sandwiched between two fast food restaurants, but clearly from another era.

Thursday, Feb 23

The storms were predicted to get worse in the mountains, leading us, despite our best efforts, to drive around LA, rather than take smaller roads and mountain passes. We got up at the crack of dawn and got through the worst of the stop and go traffic. The mountains to the west were clearly socked in. But still, we got through the worst of it before breakfast.

At around 1:30 pm we decide to save some drive time and cross a mountain pass from Highway 101 to Paso Robles. The weather doesn’t look too bad from where we are, but is predicted to get bad by the evening. We took Hwy 46 from Paso Robles and then picked up I5 in Kettleman City. By the time we pulled into Lodi we were starting to get into the weather. We stayed at a crappy Motel 6 by the interstate.

The next day was just a short drive in grey weather to Somerset and our first pet, chicken, and housesitting gig. We stayed the weekend tucked in from the weather with some goofy dogs and a warm fireplace.

Over the weekend we saw that the forecast for the entire next week was going to continue to be winter storms. We canceled our plans for camping on the coast in Arcata and instead found a sweet little Airbnb in Diamond Springs for the week. Kayla is digging in to work, Matthew is working on getting a Bettie Mobile Canopy designed and fabricated, and everyone is staying warm, dry, and muddy-chicken free for a week.

Trip Odometer 3603

We’ve been enjoying 18 days (mostly) in San Diego, and still have some more to go! We had aspirations for doing some camping in deserts and canyons, but the truth is, it is cold out there. We are comfortable in the camper at colder climes, but the making dinner in the evening and coffee in the morning can be challenging. So, we’ve been taking advantage of our friends visiting and residing in San Diego to find shelter and adventure in this fun town.

We spent the first week plus with Grace and Charlie (and Good Dog Chloe!) just a short walk from Pacific Beach. There’s a string of different beaches along the San Diego coast. Each beach has its own style and flavor. Pacific Beach is clearly the laid-back surfer-forward beach, and that suited us just fine.

Feb 2: We took a day trip to Torrey Pines National Reserve. It was no fun to drive there, but the hike and the views were really nice.

Feb 3: One thing we love about San Diego is there are so many places that are straightforward with their name. Like, right down the road from where we are now there is a place called San Diego Chicken Pie Shop. What do you think they serve there? We took a nice bike ride around Mission Bay that included a stop at a great place called “Ceviche and Beer”.

Feb 4: To help get the Betty Mobile designed, I used an online service called Upwork, and wound up working with architect Aaron Jarrett, who lives in San Diego. He was thrilled when we met up so he could see the thing we had both labored on.

Feb 5: We took a day trip to the slot canyon at Anza Borrego with Grace and Charlie. This was a beautiful drive through mountains, grassy valleys, and then straight-up desert. On the way back we stopped at the small town of Julian, which is apparently famous for their apple pies. Now this is a town of just 1300 people. And somehow, even though it was a late Sunday afternoon, the place was packed with tourists. And they were all standing in lines 20 people deep at the five or six different apple pie shops on the street. Now you do the math here, and it would seem that just about every adult resident of Julian must somehow be in the apple pie business. I wonder if the teens in Julian must feel resigned to their fate of spending their days churning out pies for the masses.

Feb 9-10: We moved from Pacific Beach to our harpist friend Candace’s little hideaway up in Hillcrest (we have the Betty Mobile stashed at her mom’s house next door). Candace had a busy weekend coming up, so we decided it was time to hitch up the wagon again and do some camping in nearby Ramona. It felt good to pull the camper again, and once we were parked in our little spot at Dos Picos County Park, we got lots of nods about how cute our camper was. This was also our first opportunity to get our tent out and experience the full set-up.

We didn’t do much exploring over the weekend, instead focusing on getting the camping part of our traveling sorted out. The weather even gave us an opportunity to experience how our camp handles the rain. At some point there will be a fully designed and fitting tarp solution for the Betty Mobile, but for now, we are using the tried and true tarp method.

One other thing we learned from the rain (not pictured) is that with the galley hatch open, water can find its way into the top shelf of the galley – the one with all the electrical wiring. That wiring passes through holes in the shelf (which haven’t been properly sealed). Those holes lead into Mathew’s clothing closet. Luckily his base layer of t-shirts soaked up all the water, and we had a pretty dry night.

Over the course of our San Diego adventuring we’ve also been making connections for an exciting twist to our traveling adventure: pet (and other animal) sitting. We are using two online services, Trusted House Sitters and House Sitters America. We’ve lined up FOUR sitting jobs already, and have turned down as many offers from folks who are cold-contacting us with offers! This is going to work out great for us, as we need to start heading northward to catch a nephew’s college recital and connect with friends and family along the way. With the consistent cold this season, house camping is going to be preferable to outside camping until we get to a proper spring.

Spoiler: there will be dogs, of course, but also goats, chickens, and at least one house-pig coming up.

Trip Odometer 3384

January 28:From Portal it was just a hop, skip, and bump to Bisbee AZ to meet some Sitka friends who were on their own traveling adventure. We made had time for a nice bite and a walkabout through the town. This was once a big copper mining community, with the scars to prove it. The mine crashed in the 50’s and in the 60’s the town was repopulated by “Hippies and the the counter-culture.”

What we found was a funky town with a strong artist and visitor community but without too much pretense. The people were friendly and the prices were fair. The former mining town felt like a drier version of Juneau, AK: Wooden houses stacked against steep hills and winding streets that turn into steps. The hotel where our friends were staying, The Inn At Castle Rock, was like a a little maze of rooms and cozy meeting spaces. The reception desk is right next to a deep rock well!

For those keeping score, our route from Portal was Rodeo, Apache, Douglas, Bisbee, Tombstone, St. David, Benson, and with a concession to interstates, I10 into Tucson.

And before we knew it we were tucked away in Tucson with our Sitka friends Judy and Stef in their sweet little desert getaway! We enjoyed some Alaskan fish for dinner and a dip in the community hot tub before a great (and warm!) sleep.

Jan 29: With a delicious breakfast we said our goodbyes and pointed westward. Our plan was to find camp on the east side of the San Diego, which would make it an easy evening, and an easy drive to San Diego the next day. We had as a potential camp the fabled Slab City, but there were many other options for boondocking in the AZ desert.

We did a bit more interstate, just to remind us of why were vowed never to drive interstate, through Marana, Piccacho, and to the big dairy cowtown of Stanfield, where we had a parking lot lunch. A fellow pulled up in his truck and asked us what we had for sale. Our askance looks had him quickly explain that this lot is kind of an informal flea market, and folks park there all the time to convert their trash to some lucky buyer’s treasure.

GIla Bend, Dateland, Yuma (appears to be nothing but miles of parking-lot-in-a-dessert RV parks), and then off the interstate and onto barely-there roads and increasingly sandy desert. By the time we get to Glamis, we are looking at hard-blowing sand dunes all the way to the horizon.

With the hard winds we decided that any spot in the desert wasn’t going to be any fun, so we steered away from Slab City etc and headed toward Bradley to look for a more sheltered site. That’s when we got the Severe Weather Warning that the San Diego Mountains were going to expect heavy winds and snow at high elevations that evening, and could be impassible for two days!

With that news we hot footed it back to I8 and drove over the mountains to San Diego and Sitka friends Grace and Charley for a surprise early visit. The drive starts, appropriately, at Devil’s Canyon. It was bleak, curvy, dark, torrentially rainy, and absolutely no fun. And it didn’t get any better from there. When we at last got to the other side of the mountains, suddenly we were in busy California city and a whole different vein of multi-lane driving terror! But cool heads and white knuckles got us to our destination safe and sound and just in time for dinner.

Jan 30: That bad storm led to solid rain the next day, which was perfect. We spent a day lounging on couches and doing very little. We are enjoying our days in (now) sunny Dan Diego and will write up a full report next!

Trip odometer 2689 miles.

Jan 21: From Texarcana (for those of you tracing our route) we crossed a big hunk of Texas, including Learn, Hooks, New Boston, DeKalb, Avery, Clarksville, Detroit, Reno, Paris, Sherman, and Gainesville. We made camp at the LBJ Grasslands on the Tadra Trailhead. We had called the Forest Service that morning just to be sure we were heading to the right camp spot (there are lots) and the kind gentleman told us what we needed to know, and then excused himself, as he had a fire to manage. Sure enough, about an hour or so from LBJ Grasslands we saw the smoke. It was a controlled burn, but I guess there have been some wildfires recently in the area.

Jan 22: LBJ Grasslands was a place we could have easily stayed for another day or two, but we were still on a tight schedule to get further across the country. The next day we passed through Alvord, Barrie, Vashti, Windhurst, Archer City, Megargel, Throckmoprton, Haskell, Roby, Snyder, La Mesa, Seminole, and then into New Mexico and Hobbs and landed in Carlsbad.

We had a bit of a nailbiter finding gas at one point. When we finally got to a gas station we put in 24.5 gallons into our 25 gallon tank. Whew! Carlsbad was another just-passing-through town. It was getting pretty dang cold in the evenings, so we found a unique place to stay amidst all the hotel chains in the city.

This felt like a very Alaskan experience. The rooms were all what looked like pre-fab storage containers – what you might see a construction company install on a job site for a long term construction gig. And it did seem that most of the folks there might have been working on nearby hotel construction. All the other guests were gone by 7:30.

Jan 23: Out of Carlsbad we passed the salt flats and Guadeloupe National park, then entered Texas again and had to pass through El Paso. I hope to never have to drive through El Paso ever again in my entire life. Traffic (and computer guidance through it) was absolutely awful. No doubt we earned a few new gray hairs getting out of that city.

And it was in El Paso that we first experienced traveling so close to the Mexico border. I mean, here we were at a stoplight in El Paso, and Juarez was just over there. The contrast was stark. I regret not having a picture to help tell the story, but, as you now know, the stress of navigation overtook the documentary narrative at this point.

Moving past El Paso we travelled parallel to the Mexico border. We crossed back into New Mexico and and through Columbus, Hachita, Animus, and finally Rodeo. Most of the cars (trucks, actually) that we saw on the road were Border Patrol. At different points on the road, a truck would be parked with some sort of high-tech equipment in the bed, pointed at the border. The road was strewn with empty water bottles, and sometimes full bottles tied to a fence by some good Samaritan. At one crossroads, there was a fence that someone had decorated with items found from immigrant crossings: shoes, blankets, and the like. I was struck by two things I saw on the fence: a child’s backpack and a teddy bear.

Once we got to Rodeo we stayed at the fabulous Rusty’s RV Ranch. Amid the hundreds of RV parks we’ve passed, Rusty’s is something special. First there’s Rusty’s Round Up, a nice community space that was blissfully warm when it the outside elements weren’t. Then there was Rusty’s menagerie of exotic birds, goats, and other oddities. This is dark sky country – a place where folks flock to haul out their telescopes to look at a night sky not faded from lights. In fact, there were stern warnings throughout the park that one would be asked to leave if they were putting out too many lumens.

But the big draw of getting to Rodeo is that it was just a few minutes drive over the border to Portal Arizona, and our dear friends Becky and John!

Portal is right at the entrance to Cave Creek Canyon, which is all kinds of beautiful. It is one of those birder’s life-list kind of places, and we saw plenty of birders swooning about. It is about 5000 ft altitude at the base of the mountains. There had been a snowstorm three days before, and plenty of snow remained in the shady parts of the canyon. We spent our days hanging out and hiking with Becky and John, and our nights back at Rusty’s in the cold, cold camper. We spent five full days in Portal before continuing West.

One thing we both agree on is that we are looking forward to a slower pace of travel once we get to San Diego. We have some urgency to meet some of our Alaskan family there, but it has meant driving longer hours and passing by places and things that we would normally spend some time getting to know. Still, even at this pace we’ve managed to pack in some great experiences. In the next days, we will catch up with some other Alaskan family in Bisbee AZ, Tucson AZ, and get ever closer to our goal of reaching the West Coast!

Hello from Wright Patman Lake in Texarkana, TX! The Bettymobile has been on the road for a week already! And we’re doing just fine. For the most part we’re avoiding interstates, and really enjoying the quirky sights of rural towns.

We spent last weekend making tracks to Oxford MS, opting to stay in hotels the first two nights because A) we wanted to keep moving, and B) it was cold at night!! Our route took us through Greensboro and Asheville NC (we had a really hard time not stopping in Asheville to enjoy their beer district!), Waynesville NC (where we accidentally got in with a funeral procession), then Young Harris–>Elljay–>Shannon GA (home of the Frisky Biscuit), landing in Rome GA at a comfy hotel and some Thai takeout.

On Monday we drove across Alabama and landed in Oxford MS. As soon as we crossed the state line into Alabama, the road was literally lined with cotton! (It had come loose from the bales in recent windstorms and got caught in the roadside.) We found an excellent family restaurant in Snead City and had a delicious lunch of BBQ and dirt pudding. YUM. After crossing the Mississippi border, we hopped on the Natchez Trace Parkway – a beautiful scenic drive maintained by the National Park Service – which took us into Tupelo, and then it was just another 45 minutes to Oxford.

Our connection to Oxford is my friend Deb, who I met in the summer of 1995 when we both worked in Grand Teton National Park. She had a remarkable impact on my life that summer; we had a soul-sister type connection. I’ve seen her only once since then – in the fall of 2000 – so it’s pretty amazing that we have stayed connected! It was excellent to see her again, and to meet her delightful family. Oxford is a really interesting town! Deb’s husband Mike is a phenomenal tour guide, and a professor at Ole Miss, so we got the VIP campus tour (in a golf cart!) plus the opportunity to meet a few locals as we enjoyed the downtown square. We were also able to use their driveway/garage to finish a couple of details on the camper and reorganize our packing a little bit, plus I was able to work from their back porch. We are so grateful to them for being the first stop on our shake-down cruise – it was a perfect combination of catching up with friends, learning about a new place, and problem solving.

We left Oxford on Thursday morning, but we couldn’t venture *too* far because I had a spate of meetings starting at 11 am! Matthew’s becoming an expert on the Dyrt app – which helps locate campsites and has a bunch of filters so you can screen for things like cell phone coverage, wifi, bathrooms, and high ratings from other campers. His research led us to a casino near Tunica MS, right on the Mississippi River (although you couldn’t actually see it from there). It was awesome! I found a quiet corner of the casino (it was difficult, but I found it!) where I worked all afternoon and even had a couple of video meetings, while Matthew set us up in the parking lot campsite. We had access to the pool and fitness area (although we ultimately didn’t use them, but what a nice perk!), and we grabbed dinner in a perfect southern diner.

Yesterday we drove all the way across Arkansas and ended up here, just outside of Texarkana. It’s a beautiful campground, and I wish we could stay longer! But I need to wrap this up and grab a shower so we can get on our way. Our ultimate goal is to get to Portal AZ by Monday evening, so there’s still some ground to cover. We’re planning a shorter day today – aiming for a spot north of Decatur TX, which is apparently all grasslands! We’re looking forward to a slower traveling pace, where we’re not on the move so much, but we’re trying to get to warmer weather and meet up with some pals in the western states. So, off we go!

We did it! We packed all our stuff, cleaned up the shop and the house, hitched the BettyMobile to Twyla, and hit the road! I’m sure you’ll be shocked to read that we left a little later than we’d hoped (story of our lives, apparently!), but we *almost* left Virginia today. As I write this, we’re 11 miles north of North Carolina, in South Boston, which is south of … Halifax. **shrug**

Anywho .. it sure has been a full couple of days! Finding the perfect spot for those last little bits of stuff was kind of challenging, especially because the camper is full of new little spots for stuffing stuff! And there were a couple of curveballs on finishing the camper that Matthew had to navigate (but I’ll leave that part of the story for him to tell).

We actually slept out in the camper the last couple of nights, and even though it was a little chilly, we were super-cozy! We’re not camping tonight or tomorrow though … we just want to make tracks, plus the evening lows are in the 30s right now; for both of those reasons we don’t really want to spend a lot of time figuring out how to park, set up camp, make food, stay warm, etc. We’re aiming to get to Oxford, MS by Monday afternoon. I have a long-lost friend living there and I’m super-excited to see her and meet her family.

I’m gonna sign off now and catch some zzzs, but stay tuned for road stories ahead!

Last night I had a dream where I was in an airplane. But it was more like just sitting in a seat that was hurtling through mid-air; there was no body to the plane itself. I was LOVING the ride – the view was amazing (open air! tons of leg room! no shared armrests! 10K feet above land!) – the whole experience was exhilarating! But … I had the feeling that my seat was tipping forward. That I might fall out of it and plummet to Earth (!!!)- which was pretty scary. And …. I was having the hardest time holding onto my stuff. Y’know, like, my water bottle, my magazine, the peanuts the flight attendant handed to me* .. all of it was succumbing to gravity and I was trying desperately to keep my hands on it. It felt like a lot of things to keep track of, and I was pretty nervous.

I don’t think it takes a professional dream interpreter to figure out what this is about. We are really truly super close to actually doing this thing! This thing where we use a trailer that we built from scratch (FROM SCRATCH) to be our primary dwelling (!!!) as we string together points A-B-C-D-E-F (etc). It totally feels like jumping into the air, enjoying the view and the ride, but all the while scrambling to make sure we hold onto our stuff. I … (and when I say “I” … I’m pretty sure it means “we”) … have a fair amount of anxiety about what it means to dive into this unconventional lifestyle. Every night I wake up trying to solve how we will do this or that in the future. “How will I figure out cell/internet coverage everywhere to make sure I can make it to all my meetings?” or “What if there is an uncomfortable amount of condensation inside the trailer – will the fan really help with all that?” or “What will I do with my shoes and outside clothes at night when I tuck inside the camper?” or “What app(s) should we be watching to avoid scary storms?”

But, wow, how exhilarating it is, as well! We’ve sketched out a 9-month scheme where we reconnect with loved ones and explore interesting places in MS, AZ, CA, OR, WA, CO, IA, MN, and MI! And if it works (i.e., if the camper is working, if we find a happy balance of camping/housesitting/friend-visiting/work AND we’re still enjoying it) …. how many more states and friends/family might we be able to visit in the next 8-12 months?!?!

As a side note: we’ve been watching “All Creatures Great and Small” and here’s a quote that played heavily into the episode we watched last night: “Without fear there can be no courage.” (Also, we’re taking to heart some recent fortune cookie advisements — see attached photo below.)

So …. yes. We’re actually making it happen. There are still a number of things to put in place in the next few days (gasket on the hatch door, sealing the fan [haha see what I did there?], attaching a bike rack, installing a countertop) but **if they all come together** we’re aiming to vacate this lovely family home 0n Saturday and set off on our great adventure.

Oh! By the way, we took the BettyMobile out for a test run last Thursday — we drove out to “our bar” (the one we worked at this summer/fall) and had some of our coworker and bar regulars have a look-see. Video below as evidence.

*PS I have no idea how the flight attendants were navigating this free-form flight and distributing comfort (nuts) and safety (prevention from plummeting to Earth). Surely it’s a sign of providence and proof that it’s possible.