Greetings from the southwest. We’re Food Partying! on the road visiting geologic wonders including The Wave (accessible through National Park Service lottery)
Horseshoe Bend
Monument Valley
And beyond. Friends joined for The Wave, and since then we’re travelin’ solo, tent in tow. That’s me in the foreground.
A common response:
They: Aren’t you afraid? I would be.
Me: What are you afraid of – people, animals, your car, or yourself?
No matter the answer – safety first. I always stay in / pay for a “real” campsite and avoid undeveloped/dispersed, i.e. free campsites for starters.
We’ve done other Travelin Solo posts: Mendocino county, Slab City/ Bombay Beach, and Southern Oregon.
This time it’s 33 days on the road – 26 camping.
We’ve all gone to look for America.
Staying Airbnb in Kanab and Moab cuz it’s too hot to camp now. The rest of the trip is mostly cooler elevation, but I’m starting to be concerned about the heat of summer travel. The sun is so strong at elevation – I hike in a plastic nose!
Why go alone? Travelin’ Solo is a wonderful way to reconnect with yourself and do what you want. Get to know yourself a little better. It’s freeing to go it alone and you’ll run into opportunities you wouldn’t traveling with others. Plan in friend/family stops along the way.
I like cooking outside. There’s more time to enjoy it. My kitchen is tight after 30+ years bike and car/tent camping. For car camping I bring two stoves, a two-burner propane stove for dinners, and a backpack/Jetfuel stove for coffee in case I don’t want to bring out the larger stove. Some days I’ll cook a big dinner and eat off the leftovers the next day, but mostly I open a can of soup, or some brown rice and Indian food packets and top with sautéed veggies and/or sprouts and protein. Please don’t forget to eat your veggies on the road. A small, indestructible cast iron skillet, flat wooden spoon, and bottle of olive oil make for a cool vegetable camp cook kit.
Keep your cooler clean by transferring anything that might leak, like coffee cream, into a mason glass jar or plastic container with a tight fitting lid. This heavy plastic works well for coffee cream
and commercial glass jars, like olive or jelly jars keep a good seal too. I packed homemade sauerkraut in olives jars – no leaks yet.
Another important tip: find a water bottle for your tent that won’t leak. Ahh memories, how many times in my youth did my “closed” bottle poured onto the tent floor in the middle of the night and soak my bedding? I care not to remember. And even the bottle outside the tent has soaked me now and again.
I’ll be posting along the road for the next few weeks with more thoughts on successful cooking and eating on the road. Thanks for coming along for the ride!
Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. – Howard Thurman
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