SasEz! Simple & Sustainable Living…

Our Travel Style: Remote & Quiet

I don’t care for the idea of RV parks. I’ve lived in mobile home parks before, and it’s not too fun having your house squeezed into a tiny space between two others. I’m not a fan of apartment living either, and mobile home parks are a bit too much like …

Beginning A Nomad Lifestyle

First mistake: Packing too much stuff

Jones Water Campground in Arizona

A long shot of our campsite

Pretty Texas Rest Area

TeePee picnic spot in Texas

Foods We’ve Been Eating While Camping

One of the challenges we’ve had during our travel adventures is figuring out what kinds of meals we can cook. Whether we’re on the road driving to a new spot or we’re camped out in a forest somewhere, food is not as easy as it is in a cozy house or apartment.

At the moment we have no fridge for example, so keeping anything cold for long is out of the question. Eventually we plan to get a propane fridge/freezer combo unit but for now we’ve primarily been going simple and cheap. When we first buy supplies for a new camping spot we can pick up a small pack of fresh hamburger or chicken and put it into our “fridge cooler” with some ice. That lasts at least 1-2 days, so we have time to drive to the next camping spot, set up the campsite, and cook the food before it goes bad.

Other than that though, we’ve been eating primarily canned and dried foods. Corned beef hash, spagettios, and ravioli have become staples. We also buy canned chicken and dried pasta sides (like garlic or alfredo) to cook together as one meal, and we make tuna with macaroni and cheese frequently too. Recently we started making Ranch style beans as the protein, and rice broccoli and cheese as our starch.

Louisiana In August is Hot!

I have no idea what the actual temperature or humidity levels are here at the moment, but they must be high. Clouds have been drifting across the sun all day and that sure helps but good grief I can’t believe how humid it is!

When the sun is out …

Travel Notes & Pictures: Catching Up

Ok, I haven’t gotten a lot of my travel notes and pictures posted here in the last month, so this is intended to be an overview or summary of places we’ve been and things that have happened so far.

If you’re new to reading this site, here’s a quick recap: We started traveling and camping in various national forests at the beginning of July 2009. We primarily tested the waters around Arizona for most of July, getting use to the new setup and tweaking things. In late July we "broke" the truck (details forthcoming) and took several days fixing that. Then we picked up a cargo trailer and we’re now in the process of traveling across country to South Carolina. We’re working on turning the trailer into a little camper as we have extra money available.

So… in early July we bounced around to camping spots near Tucson. Those notes and pics are in previous posts. The next place we decided to try was on the back side of Mount Lemmon. This still isn’t too far from Tucson but far enough to be forest land. This is actually another section of the Coronado Forest area. The camping spot we chose here was right next to the forest road, so we ended up seeing lots of ATVs and vehicles passing throughout the week.

We have discovered as we’ve gone along that things get really quiet during the week in most places. This is pretty nice

When we went back into Tucson the next time we discovered some land for sale in Northern Arizona, so we decided to go take a look at that. The drive up was gorgeous but after taking two days and nights driving through places where the cows don’t even come home… and the "roads" are little dirt tracks you can barely see… and making the mistake of going over a wash we shouldn’t have gone over – even with 4-wheel drive – we broke the truck. And we never found the land.

Today We’re Camping In Louisiana

We made it to Louisiana, just east of Shreveport by around 50-100 miles. We’re north of Minden in the Caney District of the Kisatchie National Forest.

We don’t have much time to enjoy this area because we want to be in SC by early Wednesday. This place is very pretty though. Lots of trees and greenery everywhere. It’s hot but a sticky hot. Sweat has been pouring off of us and every little branch we brush up against leaves things sticking to us. I won’t even begin to tell you about the dog hair

Gearing Up For A Longer Trip

After our 2nd failed attempt to find a camping spot near Tanque Verde Falls, we spent a night on …

In Between… A Beautiful Camping Spot

After the first Tanque Verde experience, we went looking for Pinery Canyon Campground. This one is roughly 130 miles south and east of Tucson in …

Tanque Verde Falls Camping Take 2

On the 4th of July we were in Tucson with William’s family and that was really nice. We left that night and decided to try going further out past Tanque Verde Falls on Reddington Road to see if we could find the forest roads that are supposed to be out …

Tanque Verde Falls Area Is A Huge Disappointment

We tried camping above Tanque Verde Falls our 2nd or 3rd night in Arizona but every campsite we found is littered with trash, glass, and ants. Some of the sites have been used to dump stuff like TVs and furniture.

We couldn’t put our tent up because a windstorm …

Our Ongoing Camping Adventure

So today is roughly our 17th or 18th day on this adventure – I’m writing this on Friday July 17th – and I’ve fallen behind on getting my notes all down. I wrote them by hand this morning while waiting for the laptop to charge, so now I’ll try and …