From Las Vegas, we made a week-long field trip to Los Angeles, the better to drive some new cars and meet some models for photo shoots. We found a secret place to hide the Incorrigible in Long Beach for a week of dry-camping, and set about exploring the madness that is L.A. 
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We stopped in Michigan for a couple of weeks, resupplying from the storage area, tending to housekeeping matters and visiting friends and family. Some of you were probably there for that. All the home-time was in preparation for our longest single move yet–from Detroit to Baker, Nevada, where we landed a summer work-camp job at a small hotel and restaurant in the middle of nowhere.
For those who aren’t familiar with the concept, work-camping is a sort of cottage industry that’s sprung up around the growing number of full-time and long-term RV travelers. Many campgrounds, RV parks and other businesses need seasonal help, and many travelers are looking for ways to reduce their costs. Enter the work-camp job. Spend a few hours a week working at the campground during the summer, and you’re rewarded with a free campsite, utilities, laundry, and sometimes a small salary as well, depending on how much work you’re expected to do. Work-camp jobs aren’t just limited to RV parks, either: tending large ranches and property, helping with animal rescue, and environmental jobs are all available.
Long story short, it sounded like a good supplement to our freelancing incomes for the summer, so we took a look around and found an interesting-sounding job at the Silver Jack Inn and Lectrolux Café in Baker. We’ll be waiting tables and cleaning hotel rooms for the summer, and the job should afford us time to explore the area around Great Basin National Park as well.
First, of course, we had to get there. It’s a two thousand-mile-plus haul, the longest we’ve done in the Incorrigible at a single go so far. And on top of that, I had to do it by myself. Lexie had pressing business in Michigan that overlapped our job’s starting date, so it was up to me and Mushroom to get the RV to Nevada. Driving off with the house and Jeep and leaving our navigatrix behind was an unpleasant and unsettling feeling.
The Incorrigible churned through Chicago traffic and Illinois/Iowa monotony without complaint. Along the way, I stopped for a night in Omaha, Nebraska, to visit briefly with John Thomas, an old friend of the family. John runs a private dental practice in nearby La Vista. According to my father, who’s known him since high school, John wanted to become a dentist since he was a teenager. He purchased the practice from another dentist about fifteen years ago, and has since grown it into a well-respected, old-school dental office that’s much cozier than the big corporate dentists that are becoming more and more common in the ‘burbs.
Well, what the heck? I hadn’t been in for a cleaning in far, far longer than is healthy, so I spent some time in John’s chair getting my teeth tended to and some minor cavities repaired. It was a perfectly painless process; I spent the whole time staring at the mobile on the ceiling and was on my way with a numb face in no time. John also presented us with a bottle of homemade cranberry wine which Lexie reports is quite tasty.
Headed across the Great Plains, I encountered…windmills! (I also encountered bugs, as evidenced by the black spots on the windshield) Along I-80 in Nebraska and Wyoming, there are a growing number of wind farms, and the big white propellers turn in a stately fashion that’s almost hypnotizing as you drive past. From what we’re told, the locals hate the things because they make noise. They’re fun to watch from the freeway, though. It’s impressive to see objects that large–each of the blades is longer than a semi truck–twirling at significant speed.
As I passed through the plains, the road began to rise, and that’s where things got a little difficult. The Incorrigible’s underpowered as it is, and introducing increasingly steeper grades and higher altitudes into the mix made for slow going. The issue was compounded by unusually high winds through most of Wyoming. A ten- to twenty-mile-per-hour cross breeze has a significant effect on the handling and fuel economy of a motorhome, especially a light-for-its-cross-section rig like the Incorrigible (our rig weighs about 17,000 pounds, while some larger but not-much-bigger motorhomes are pushing 30,000). For much of the day, it was physically impossible to get the Dolphin going more than 50mph; it was getting slapped around a great deal, with gusts strong enough to push it over half a lane. This changed, of course, when we reached some of the long descents, where curvy freeways combined with a six-percent grade and a tendency to suddenly swerve to the left or right as a massive gust of wind hit. Not fun! Not fun at all! After that, I’d almost upgrade to a bus-based diesel pusher motorhome just for the security of the additional weight and power in bad weather.
On the plus side, the scenery was just gorgeous. The horizon looms when you’re in the Rocky Mountains, in a way that just isn’t possible in the flatlands of the Midwest. Why, oh why, did I have to make this part of the trip without a decent photographer?
By the time I reached Salt Lake City, I was exhausted, and I couldn’t reach my friend Jim to ask about crashing on his couch, borrowing his bathtub, and filling his driveway with motorhome. Salt Lake’s curious freeway layout (and a bunch of ill-placed construction) meant that I drove past two Wal-Marts that I could see from the freeway, but couldn’t see how to reach, and there wasn’t a truck stop or RV park in sight.
Eventually I blundered south to Sandy, UT, and staggered into a Super Target to get some dinner. After inquiring politely with the management, I was allowed to park in their lot for the night. Overnight dry-camping is available at many large retail outlets (not just “Wally World”); you just have to ask first. And the worst they can say is no, after all. I celebrated with a quick pork chop dinner on the Foreman grill and turned in early.
In the morning, refreshed, I finished the trip into Baker, a three-hour drive from SLC. My first reaction was to quote from Priscilla, Queen of the Desert: “Oh, Felicia…where the f__k are we??”
Dallas proved to be a bit difficult. As we only planned to spend about ten days there, we decided to try and do the time without hookups, as we did in Savannah. It’s a big town, with lots of Wal-Marts and other twenty-four hour parking lots, after all.
This did not go as smoothly as we’d hoped. The first few nights were fine; the Incorrigible was under the knife at Camping World, having our new Everpure water filtration system installed, and the folks at the Denton, TX, store were happy to let us camp out in their lot for a couple of days, even loaning us an electrical hookup one night when the temperatures got chilly. We have a new set of tires on order, and plan to return to Denton to have them installed when the time comes.
After that, however, it got a bit rocky. Close to downtown Dallas, the Wal-Marts we found proved to be very RV-unfriendly, and we were kicked out of the lot after parking for only three hours in the middle of the day (even though we made a point of patronizing the store to stock up on groceries). “NO OVERNIGHT PARKING” signs barred the entrance to every lot we checked out as night fell, and we eventually wound up driving the Incorrigible to the Lizard Lounge, where we danced the night away and the management was kind enough to let us stick around in their parking lot until the next morning. It was definitely the shortest drive home after clubbing we’ve ever had!
The next day, we went in search of a roosting spot, and had to venture all the way to Irving before we found a friendly Wal-Mart. The next night found us back out in Denton, where we risked stopping in the Golden Triangle Mall’s lot. Mall lots are generally an iffy proposition, but as night fell, the mall closed, and nobody harassed us, we figured we might be okay for the night.
Wrong! The security guard woke us up at one in the morning and told us we had to move. Why he didn’t knock on the door at ten, when it was clear that we planned to stay the night, I have no idea. I was polite, and got the Incorrigible out of there in less than five minutes. When we’re boondocking in a parking lot, I always keep the motorhome and Jeep ready to leave at a moment’s notice; we don’t set up the computer table inside, use the leveling jacks, or take the Jeep out of neutral. It was a five minute drive to the Denton Wal-Mart, and we overnighted there.
It was all too much trouble in the end, and we decided to rent a hook up at one of the inexpensive RV slots at the Lewisville Lake Park. We hadn’t budgeted for a nightly hookup, but the $16 overnight fee wasn’t much more than it would’ve cost to dump our waste tanks anyway (which also needed to be done) and we wanted to get at least one night’s sleep without having to keep an ear open for security guards. It was a good decision; the park allowed us to host some local friends for a dinner of venison (remember our Alabama adventure?) and an extremely tasty brown rice recipe that Lexie makes.
Out in Grand Prairie, halfway between Dallas and Fort Worth, there’s a massive outdoor flea market called Trader’s Village. Outdoor flea markets are popular just about anywhere that it doesn’t snow regularly, and there’s always interesting stuff to be found. Trader’s Village is one of the biggest we’ve seen, however.
With a permanent location in what appears to have once been a self-storage facility, the vendors had just about everything: furniture, car parts, musical instruments, books, CDs, antiques, sugar gliders, four wheelers, kitchenware and clothing. A carnival-like atmosphere is provided by the amount of walkaround food that’s available: while Lexie looked at rugs, I munched on an ear of roasted corn and a roast turkey leg.
While in town, we also attended the “Underground” art show put on by ArtLoveMagic. Featuring local artists, the show was a dizzying blur of mixed-media presentations, music, poetry, photography and socialization, and the only thing that was missing was a larger display space than the Janette Kennedy art gallery, which was overwhelmed by the number of attendees. Our friend Kevin Steele had a booth just around the corner from The Crow creator James O’Barr’s. ArtLoveMagic is dedicated to developing and showcasing local talent in and around Dallas, and organizes regular events around town.
Other random travel notes: we found two awesome places for food and workin’ on the computer: Banter, in Denton, and Buli, in downtown Dallas. The report on both is the same: awesome food, creative non-alcoholic drinks and a comfortable environment. Buli especially is notable for serving our wickedly tasty sandwiches in old-school lunchboxes. Cool.
