Our Nest on Wheels

by Steve

We recently spent a week at the Grand Canyon. We were last here just three years ago, when doing our bucket-list rim-to-rim backpacking trip, and we didn't think we'd be back so soon. But people told us, "Once you see the canyon by hiking through it, you'll want to come back." We didn't believe it at the time, but here we are. The canyon seems to have a pull on you, especially near the edge.

There are limited places for a large RV at the Grand Canyon. Most RV people stay in Williams, about an hour away. The main campground in the National Park does not have electricity and is limited to vehicles 30 feet or shorter. There is a trailer village in the park that has full hookups and can take longer RVs, but it is always booked far in advance. So imagine my surprise when on a whim I checked on availability and found a site in the trailer village big enough for us, and available for eight days. I grabbed it. And so we had eight days staying right at the canyon. Jane wanted to be able to walk out the door and go hiking. Well, the campsites are a ways from the rim, but they are as close as you can camp to the rim. Plus there are elk that hang out in the campground and walk right past your window.

One of the benefits of this mobile lifestyle is that we can spend however much time we want in any one place. In one sense, it's a bit like we are always on vacation. We're going new places and seeing new things all the time. But in another sense, it's not. We're just living in different places, and much like the people who already live there, we don't go out and sight-see every day.

When we initially thought about doing this, we thought about living for a month or so at a time in different locations to see how we might like to live there. That way we could get a feel for the place in a way that you don't get in just a one-week stay.  But you can't stay for a month at every stop or you'd never get anywhere. We've been on the road for 10 months now, and have been in over 40 different locations. That's an average of about 7 days in any given spot. But we have managed to stay for a month in a few places, including Door County, Wisconsin; Williamsburg, Virginia; and Cedar Key, Florida.

Our second month-long stay was in Williamsburg, home to Colonial Williamsburg, the largest living history museum in the US. We've been to Williamsburg before, when our children were very young—like 3 and 6. That was 20 years ago or so. We have good friends and relatives who live there, so we decided on a return visit as we worked our way down the east coast in the fall. We spent the month of November there, so we could do a deep dive into experiencing the full history of the place—the kind of deep dive that you can't do with a 3-year-old.

If you've never been to Colonial Williamsburg, consider this strong urging to go. Spend some time there, like a week or more. There probably are a lot of people who spend one day, see many of the major historical buildings, and learn a thing or two about our country's history. But to really appreciate it, you need to commit some time. As a living history museum, it is populated with characters who once lived there. You may encounter Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, or General Lafayette among the more famous residents. But you'll also meet the printer, the blacksmith, the milliner, and the tavern keeper. All of them will be fully in character, and generally won't step out of character. On any given day, there may be as many as 700 people working in CW, and at least 300 will be specific characters.

While there are lots of interesting historical buildings in CW, they don't tell too much of a story. It's the people that bring the place alive. Each of these actors playing a character knows a wealth of history about their character—much more than you can imagine. They are basically historians, with detailed knowledge about the person that they portray, dedicating time each week to continuing their research on their character. This is where the gift of having as much time as you want comes in. To fully benefit from the experience, you need to engage the characters, and through asking questions you can learn so much more than a casual brief visit will garner.

But remember that while these are actors, they will stay in character. So don't ask questions about current events, as they will have no knowledge of them. We heard people ask Thomas Jefferson what he thought about President Obama. Of course, he didn't know what on earth the question was even about. And try to use period appropriate language. I remember one adult asking George Washington if he did become president, whom he would like to see in his cabinet. Washington responded that he could not think of any person whom he would want to put inside a piece of furniture. (The term "cabinet" to refer to secretaries of executive departments was first used by James Madison in 1793.)  And don't call him General Washington when he's only a major. (Insider tip: You can tell by the color of his hair: brown is Major; white is General.) If you're a young child the actor portraying the character will likely help you along with your question, so you learn in the process.

And that's really what history is all about, isn't it? Learning from the past to enlighten our view of the future. If you take the time, there's so much to learn, see and do. If you play your cards right and nobody else is looking, you may get to try your hand at working at a historical craft.Here Jane learns that creating a book was a little more involved in the past.  

by Steve

We're in Williams Arizona, about 60 miles south of the Grand Canyon. Williams is home to the Grand Canyon Railway, which makes a daily run to the Canyon, taking 13 train cars of tourists up to the canyon for the day. The train goes right past the RV park where we are staying. I guess that may be why it's called "Railside RV Ranch," although there is very little "ranch" about it.

The town of Williams seems to survive mainly on tourists. But not just the ones there to visit the Grand Canyon by train, although that does seem to be a lot of people. The town's claim to fame is that it was the last town on the old Route 66 to be bypassed by the expressway. In October of 1984, the section of Interstate 40 that runs across northern Arizona was completed near the town of Williams, thus eliminating the last stoplight between Chicago and Los Angeles. 

That stoplight in the town of Williams has since been removed, and now Williams is a no-stoplight town. But it is cashing in on Route 66 and the nostalgia that people have for the old road that once carried so many travelers the 2200 miles from Chicago to LA.

This is what technology looked like back then. Some of the equipment used to test the missiles is still on site.

 They missiles were stored above ground in buildings like this because the water table in the Everglades is so high. 

If you read our previous post on the Everglades, called Part 1: Flamingo and Shark Valley, you might be dissuaded from visiting. We were a little down on the heat, humidity, bugs, and general decay of some parts of the park. But the truth is we really did like the Everglades. It's like no other place on earth, and in this installment, we'll focus on a couple aspects of the park, one popular and one really off-beat.

First, the popular. The Anhinga trail is located about 5 miles into the park from the main (east) entrance. If you have limited time and want to get a good feel for the park, this is the place to go. Drive out from Miami (about an hour), enter the park, and drive another 5 miles to Anhinga. Here you will see an amazing concentration of birds and reptiles in a very short (0.8 mile round trip) paved path and boardwalk. This location also has some amazing history. That Everglades National Park exists at all can probably be traced to a group of women who made it their business to preserve this natural wonder over 100 years ago by lobbying the state of Florida to create Royal Palm State Park, the predecessor of Everglades National Park.

This is an Anhinga. This water bird likes to swim underwater, hunting for fish. But when he comes out, he needs to dry off, and so he usually flies into a nearby tree and assumes this pose for about 10 minutes until dry. This is a very common bird to see in the Everglades and often makes for a good picture. This one is on the Anhinga trail.

Everglades National Park is an amazing place. I'm glad we went there this February.

Also, I don't think we'll ever go back.

Besides its manifold attractions (which I will eventually get to), the Everglades is known for heat, humidity, and bugs. Lots of bugs. Mosquitoes especially. And they don't come out just at dawn and dusk; they rule the place all day long. The Visitor Center has a handy chart to help you understand the current mosquito level, as if you didn't know already. We were at the "Unpleasant" level.  I can't imagine what "Hysterical" would be like.

Add to that combination a broken air conditioner (and the fact that the Flamingo campground is 44 miles from the nearest small town and who knows how far from the nearest RV repair person), and you don't necessarily get happy campers. 

But enough of our first-world problems. 

Everglades National Park has three main areas: Anhinga, near the entrance to the park; Flamingo, at the southernmost tip of the peninsula; and Shark Valley, accessible via a different entrance to the north of the main east entrance.

There are campgrounds at Long Pine Key and Flamingo, but you can't reserve a site at Long Pine key (and it doesn't have electricity). We'd heard (and have found to be true) that reservations are important in Florida in the winter, so we stayed at Flamingo.

It's hotter at Flamingo than elsewhere in the park. And there are more mosquitoes. Just saying.

Let's start with the stuff that everyone goes to the Everglades to see: alligators and birds. The place to see these is Shark Valley. This day-use area is located on the north side of the park off a road appropriately called "Alligator Alley." Shark Valley has a 15-mile bike path that takes you about 7.5 miles into the Everglades, along a canal that is very attractive to alligators because it has water all year round. We started counting alligators, then gave up. It's amazing how quickly you can become blase about seeing these large reptiles.

Here's Jane carefully avoiding one. I note that she is being careless by riding on the wrong side of the road...

At the end of the bike path is an observation tower that gives you a good view of the surrounding area and the large pond at its base. We got to see this fellow attack and eat something, probably a fish. It was hard to tell, as alligators tend to make a lot of splashing in the water when they catch something.

Flamingo is a different environment. Flamingo sits at the southern land tip of the Everglades park (the park extends far out into the gulf of Mexico, and the water is only a couple of feet deep for much of it), and it also happens to be at the northernmost range of the crocodile. At Flamingo, the fresh water from the Everglades flows into the salt water of the gulf. Since alligators live in fresh water, and crocodiles live in salt/brackish water, Flamingo is the only place in the world where alligators and crocodiles live together. Manatees also tend to congregate in the marina at Flamingo. Seems that they know that there is fresh water dripping out of the outboard motors when they get flushed (to remove the salt water), and the manatees come up to the motors and drink the dripping water.  Odd, but cute in a way.

Here's a large (12 feet long) crocodile that hangs out in the marina area.

You'll notice the differences from the alligator - the crocodile has a pointy snout and is grey in color.

The Flamingo area used to have a lot more activity than it has now. There was a lodge, a restaurant, and rental cabins. But all were severely damaged by a hurricane in 2005 and had to be closed. Read more about it here. By 2008, they had determined that the lodge was damaged beyond repair and would need to be torn down when the funds were available. It's 2017, and the lodge is still waiting to be demolished. The restaurant is sort of semi-functional. There's a seating area that's usable, but the kitchen is not. So there's a food truck parked next to the building where they do the cooking for a limited menu.

The Everglades is a World Heritage site. People come from all over the world to see it, and we did encounter people from many different places. But what they find is one of the great US treasures left to decay, without even sufficient funding to demolish the damaged buildings, let alone replace them. They can't understand how the US can let this happen, and neither can I.

by Steve

Next: Everglades, Part 2: Anhinga and Nike missiles.

Or, more accurately, in a necklace.

I (Jane) have found a creative outlet by making necklaces that represent in some way the various places we've been. (Previous projects include Door County shipwrecks, Acadia National Park, and Plimouth Plantation—the revisionist version and the Doctrine of Discovery version. Plus a few I haven't written about yet.)

Here's my Cedar Key history necklace. If you've read Steve's posts on "old Florida" and clams and oysters, you already know some of the story.