On the Road
Starting our Journey!
Starting out on our massive-scale project, and finally getting to live in the camper we built was super exciting, but I'll admit I was worried, just a little bit. What if 9 people couldn't live comfortably in a less-than 200 square foot space? What if living out of camp bathrooms was going to drive us insane? How could we possibly manage this?
Well, it turns out, most of my worries were not an issue. it's a bit tricky to live like this, even temporarily, but we've managed it somehow, so far. Here's our first 9 days of living in the camper.
Saturday, January 22nd - Tuesday, 25th
Beautiful Views, Few Issues
We started our trip at a small campsite in the mountains of New Mexico located at Villanueva State Park. It was a gorgeous location, with dozens of pine trees lining the Pecos river right on the site, perfect for hammocks. Directly across from the river was a mountain range with beautiful cliffs and trees. There were also only three or four other people at the 20-site campsite with us, so it felt wonderfully private. We had a fantastic time there! We went on a few hiking trips, getting lost a couple times unfortunately. Thankfully, we found the trail again, and we got to see some fantastic views of the valley. The only issue we had while staying there was that we didn't have any internet connection whatsoever, so updates during that time were sadly nonexistent.
Oh, Snow!
A few days into camping there, though, there was a threat of 7 inches of snow and since the campsite was on a small mountain road with absolutely no hope of being plowed for days, we headed to a KOA (Kamping Across America) site in Albuquerque. It wasn't nearly as nice as our little spot in Villanueva. There weren't any great views and we were surrounded on all sides by massive RVs. I'll admit we looked a little funny in our drab little cargo trailer next to the giant glampers. However, there were plenty of things to do in Albuquerque. That day, we visited Explora Children's museum and I met an adorable axolotl named Lucy. She was very cute, and the rest of the museum was pretty neat, too. After this, we drove around a bit and visited Old Town Albuquerque. We looked around the shops for a while, and saw some neat things. I think my favorite store was a quaint little soap shop with all sorts of bath products. It was decorated very nicely. After the excitement of the day, we got dinner from a fantastic Mexican restaurant, but nobody was able to finish their food. We ended up having leftovers for lunch the next day.
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| (E playing with a wind cannon at Explora) |
Wednesday, January 26th
Science :) and Sickness :(
The next day we returned to the Explora museum and visited with some family. I got to see Lucy again, which was really fun. Also in the animal section, there was a snake, I believe it was a Bull Python, which was fed while we were there. The keeper put a live mouse in his cage and he slowly suffocated it and ate it. It was fascinating watching him eat. We experimented with a Van de Graaff generator and bubble foam, which flew out of our hands when the machine was turned on. I was shocked quite a few times, physically and metaphorically, both from the Vaan de Graff and also from an electrical generator in another part of the museum. Unfortunately, today was the day that I finally got the sickness that had been floating around my family for a while, so I started to not feel well. Other than that, I had a fantastic time.
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| (Lucy the axolotl) |
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| (A blowing bubbles) |
Thursday, January 27th
Artful Thursday
Today, we visited a Native American Arts and Culture museum, while my dad stayed at the camper and got some work done. At the museum, all of the exhibits except for one were either under construction or closed to the public. We did get to see some really pretty blown glass sculptures, though, and in my opinion it was worth it. When my siblings got tired of the glass, we drove down to Old Town Santa Fe and window shopped. There was a pretty neat toy shop there, and we bought a few things for T's birthday, which is coming up soon. It was this day that I really started to feel sick, but the day was a still enjoyable.
Friday, January 28th
On the Road Again!
The next day, we drove to a KOA in Las Cruces. This took pretty much all day, so we didn't do anything else.
Saturday, January 29th
White Sands Sunburns
We visited some family today! After meeting with some second cousins, we headed to White Sands National Park. We spent several hours there, and everyone had a great time. It was really pretty, and sliding down the sand dunes was super fun. (Climbing back up again, though, was another story). We did a lot of sledding, piling up sand, burying people, and we dug a very large hole. I was still sick at this point, though, so it wasn't as enjoyable as it could have been. I also got a bit sunburnt!
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| (White Sands National Park) |
Sunday. January 30th
Scary Camping...
We left the KOA today and drove down to Tucson, New Mexico. We had hopes that we could stay at a campsite, but it was drive-up only, so we took a risk and didn't plan for any other backup campsite. This turned out to be a pretty bad idea, as the campsite we were hoping to stay at had no availability. So, we looked around for a while, hoping to find an available spot somewhere else, but we had no luck. So, as a last resort, we found a BLM camping spot and set up there.
If you don't know, BLM stands for Bureau of Land Management, which is basically government owned land that is payed for with taxes, so it is technically legal to camp there. So, the upsides are plenty of space, it's completely free, and there's no specific spots so you can camp wherever you like. There are a few downsides, though. being a completely free camping space, there will inevitably be some interesting and potentially dangerous people that camp there. There's also no water, electricity, or bathrooms. So you have to be completely self-sufficient.
Either way, we settled there and made some pancakes for dinner.
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| (Pancakes and an New Mexico sunset) |
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| (Saguaro cactuses) |
Monday, January 31st
Saguaro Birthday
T's birthday! The first thing we did was visit Saguaro Cactus National Park. We hung out for a while at the visitor's center, and S,L,F,A, and E got their Junior Ranger badges. We then hiked around for a few hours, and saw lots of cactuses. Then we came back and had cake and T opened his presents.
Final Thoughts
So far, living in such a small space with so many people hasn't been as bad as I was expecting. I've loved visiting New Mexico and Arizona, and seeing the different cultures. It's also been interesting to see so much desert, coming from a lush and vibrant town in Indiana. I've learned to appreciate the dry, rocky, and sandy landscape, but I'll admit, I miss seeing more trees than trailers.
I'll see you all in the next post!
- C
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