Category: Cruisin: J’s Camper Chronicles

Everything

actinium, aluminum, americium, antimony, argon, arsenic, astatine, barium, berkelium, beryllium. bismuth, bohrium, boron, bromine, cadmium, calcium, californium, carbon, cerium, cesium, chlorine, chromium, cobalt, copernicium copper, curium, darmstadtium, dubnium, dysprosium, einsteinium, element 113, element 115, element 117, element 118, erbium, europium, fermium, flerovium, fluorine, francium, gadolinium, gallium, germanium, gold, hafnium, hassium, helium, holmium, hydrogen, indium, iodine, iridium, iron, krypton, lanthanum, lawrencium lead, lithium, livermorium, lutetium, magnesium, manganese, meitnerium, mendelevium, mercury, molybdenum, neodymium, neon, neptunium, nickel, niobium, nitrogen, nobelium, osmium, oxygen. palladium, phosphorus, platinum, plutonium, polonium, potassium, praseodymium, promethi um, protactinium, radium, radon, rhenium, rhodium, roentgenium rubidium, ruthenium, rutherfordium, samarium, scandium, seaborgium,selenium, silicon, silver, sodium, strontium, sulfur, tantalum, technetium, tellurium, terbium, thallium, thorium, thulium, tin, titanium, tungsten, uranium, vanadium, xenon, ytterbium, yttrium, zinc, zirconium.

There you have it – the list above is everything that exists in our world. Everything you touch, see, feel, wear, meet, or eat is made up of combinations of elements on that list. There is nothing else. There never will be anything else. There will always be the exact same amount of everything listed above. It does not get destroyed nor made. It only changes form based on it relationship with other items on the list. Living organisms are primarily made of six elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. And each of these important elements cycle through the Earth system. The things that we are made of will eventually return to the earth to become a part of something else.

The periodic table represents both the limits and the boundless possibilities of our world. These elements are finite, yet our creativity has no bounds. From splitting uranium to power cities to engineering silicon for microchips, humanity’s ability to work with this palette of elements has shaped the modern world.


This understanding gives us a humbling perspective: we are temporary arrangements of eternal matter. The calcium in our bones, the oxygen we breathe, and the carbon in our cells have existed for billions of years and will continue to exist long after we’re gone. We are both fleeting and eternal—part of an unbroken (block) chain of existence. The physical part of us truly has eternal life.

Why is this important?

When we realize that the atoms in our bodies have been part of countless other forms throughout history—rocks, rivers, plants, and even other people—it reminds us that we are deeply connected to the world around us. Our existence is not separate from nature but a part of its ongoing story. So as we have a familial relationship with other humans during our lifetime, we also have an elemental relationship with every physical object on earth. We are the earth, we were born from the earth, we will once again become the earth.


If everything is made of the same elements, how we treat those elements matters. Polluting water, depleting soil nutrients, or emitting harmful chemicals isn’t just damaging the environment; it’s altering the very building blocks of life. Recognizing this should inspire us to tread carefully and steward these finite resources wisely.

So the thought for the day – treat yourself with respect. Treat your neighbor with respect. Treat the earth with respect.

I love Pink Floyd’s Eclipse. The lyrics describe this interconnectedness of “everything under the sun” and our inability to see it because “the sun is eclipsed by the moon” which represents the lunacy of everyday life.

All that you touch
All that you see
All that you taste
All you feel
And all that you loved
And all that you hate
All you distrust
All you save
And all that you give
And all that you deal
And all that you buy, beg, borrow or steal
And all you create
And all you destroy
And all that you do
And all that you say
And all that you eat
And everyone you meet
And all that you slight
And everyone you fight
And all that is now
And all that’s to come
And everything under the sun is in tune, but the sun is eclipsed by the moon.

Hello New Orleans!

I have come to the conclusion that I do not like pulling something behind my vehicle. I love the travel part, meeting new people, camping and new adventures, but I need to find someone named James to be the driver.

After leaving Georgia, I headed west on I-10 through Mobile, Biloxi and landed in New Orleans last night. I spent a couple of days in Biloxi remembering why I am single, getting my casino fix, and losing my iPhone.

Thank the heavens for Apple’s security and locating abilities.

Within 2 hours I had been able to lock the phone, put up a message on the screen, locate the device and retrieve it without issue. Now losing my iPhone is a common occurrence for me. I use it several times daily, but when those are more like a ‘misplace’ than a lose. I misplace occurs when my hand puts down the phone somewhere in the camper or outside and my brain wasn’t paying enough attention to register when it got put. A lose is where I put it down in public – like on a shelf at a store or on the ledge next to a slot machine and then walk off. Sometimes it’s only minutes and other times it hours when I finally realize that I no longer have the device.

I think I’ve only had to invoke the insurance (for loss, damage is another story) twice. And one of those times the phone turned up in a tool box in the basement on the farm.

Anyway, it’s time to buy another iPhone leash.

<an hour later>

The idea is always to finish what I’ve started, but the last sentence above resulted in an ADD moment that I’d like to explain. These occurrences are never planned, they seem to just happen without my conscious knowledge. They occur hundreds of times per day. What is unusual about this one is that I have come back to the original task and am picking it back up again, which gives me the ability to walk through what happened in the hopes that it might provide some insight to those of you who observe how I operate. Here we go:

  1. I typed ‘buy another iPhone lease’ in this blog article.
  2. I remembered that I had signed up for the Amazon affiliate program and thought I would get an affiliate link to the leash.
  3. I went to the amazon affiliates program page in a different browser window and saw a notice that my number was no longer connected to an affiliate account and to check my email for a potential reason.
  4. I went to my email and searched for amazon affiliate.
  5. An email from AWS came up stating that I had a bill. I didn’t recall having anything on an AWS account that would be generating charges so I logged in and checked, there was nothing.
  6. I saw a link for a tutorial on how to create an app on AWS and I started the tutorial.
  7. <the step ususally doesn’t happen>. I remembered what I was originally doing and came back to the post.

Now the interesting part here is that this is actually a post about New Orleans, not ADD.

Welcome to my world.

Anyway, back to New Orleans – New Orleans is SOOOO much better than Old Orleans.

I haven’t actually been to New Orleans at this point – I landed in an RV Park in East New Orleans and I’ve chosen to believe that I’m on a different planet at this point. When talking to people along my route I was always immediately advised not to walk anywhere, even in the day. The landscape here looks like, well – the aftermath of Katrina. It literally looks like a bomb exploded. There is debris everywhere, half torn down 5 story buildings, tons of housing developments that look to be fairly new that are abandoned – broken out windows, empty lots. The whole scene is rather depressing.

The RV park that I am is truly an oasis amongst the destruction. It’s all gated in, is very clean and has a hot tub and a pool. The clientele is on the high end for trailer trash, with the majority of campers being $50,000-$225,000 models.

There is a shuttle to the French Quarter that I’ll be hopping on today to get a better view and impression of this city. More later.

Farewell to Georgia

The time has come to move on to different scenery and I will be picking up and moving on down the road on Saturday.

I have gotten to know Georgia over the past year and a half and I must say that I really like it here. The roads are in great shape (at least the paved ones), the people are generally pleasant and the scenery is beautiful.

From historic Savana to Macon, Augusta and Atlanta, Georgia has provided a comfortable place to rest my head at night, some fun adventures and some new significant friendships along the way – Love ya Brack, Jim and Howie!

There are some things I won’t miss – the gnats below Macon, red Georgia clay EVERYWHERE, big ugly bugs, gigantic spiders and the LACK OF CASINOS.

I’l be reviewing the three major campgrounds here shortly and will have some more photos to share.

My route will take me South (because north is not an option right now with the forecast of snow and ice!) along the Gulf Coast where I will get to enjoy Alabama, Mississippi, Louisana and finally Texas. The journey will be about 900 miles and I have two weeks to get there so there will be a little time to play along the way. My reservations are set for Grizzly Pines in Navasota, Texas, but are totally open along the way. I’ll probably stay at rest areas or random campgrounds on the route with a casino here and there to make up for lost time.

What year is this?

I have now been in Georgia camping for 12 of the last 15 months. I have found Georgia to be a state full of polite people, but then again I’ve put myself in a bubble of sorts. The campgrounds where I have stayed have been predominantly gay campgrounds which don’t represent the population at large. I was reminded of that with a story I heard from another camper yesterday.

This guy had lost his debit card and had a new one on the way. His bank had used FedEx to deliver his card overnight. It hadn’t shown up the next day. Or the next. Or the next. Finally he went to the office to inquire about it. The office people said they hadn’t seen a FedEx driver there in a couple of weeks. The camper called the FedEx office in Macon, and then the FedEx corporate offices.

As it turns out, the delivery driver assigned to this campground doesn’t like to deliver here so the packages have not been delivered. They are all just sitting on his truck waiting for who knows what to happen before getting delivered. Some of the “who knows what” has included recipeients driving all of the way to Macon (about an hour away) to pick up their packages, others getting refunds and other just not knowing what to do.

Companies shipping these products have paid FedEx to deliver them and are not receiving the services that they have paid for.

All because the guy doesn’t want to deliver here.

I don’t know what kind of crazy world this driver lives in in his head, but if you don’t do your job, you shouldn’t be getting paid for it. This has evidently been a problem here on and off for years. Why does this guy still have a job? He’s not doing it and is costing people money. Even worse, why isn’t FedEx doing anything about this?

When the camper called corporate, they told him they would be in contact with the driver and if it hadn’t been delivered that day, that they would have the driver turn around and come back to deliver it. If that didn’t happen, they said the driver would no longer have a job.

The package didn’t show up. I’ve yet to hear the final chapter of this story but will be sure to share when I do. I wonder if anyone from FedEx was around (of course they were, it went on for decades) to see what happened with the Coors Boycott that still has effects on its sales.

Here’s the fear: with the new administration removing LGBT protections and corporations quickly following (Wal-Mart, Target among others) there will be no retribution for these types of outward discriminatory behaviors not only aimed at GLBT communities but other minorities as well.

Prediction: We will see a lot more of this stuff in the coming years.

Food Delivery Service Dilemmas

Every once in a while we all get tired of cooking and cleaning up afterwards and want to eat food prepared for us in containers that can be discarded. And many times after a long day, the thought of getting dressed and going to a restaurant isn’t so appealing either. Food Delivery services like Uber Eats and Door Dash have been a nice alternative and especially handy when traveling.

For those in urban areas, this is a great way to get a nice hot meal delivered fast. When in a remote area, a recent experience has left me with the conclusion that perhaps it isn’t such a good idea to even offer it.

I’m staying at a campground in South Central Georgia. The nearest town is 10 miles away with a very limited choice of eats. About 35 minutes away is a city of decent size with choices that Uber Eats indicated would deliver to me.

My choices were Dairy Queen, Red Lobster, Wendy’s or Subway. I wasn’t in the mood for fast food, but I don’t eat fish. I ended up going with Red Lobster and choosing their sirloin steak, some garlic linguini, a caesar salad and a chocolate cake for desert.

When I ordered at 630, the estimated time of arrival was 7:25. At 6:45 it had jumped to 7:35. Then I got a notification that it was delayed and would be there at 7:55, almost an hour and a half from when I ordered. I wasn’t too upset, knowing the distance between the campground and the restaurant.

The food ended up arriving at 7:45. The food was horrible. The fries were soggy and cold. The meat was not cooked properly and was cold. The cake lacked the ice cream described in the description. The pasta had shrimp in it which wasn’t indicated when I ordered.

I paid about $50 for this meal and was left with a bad impression of Uber Eats and Red Lobster. What should change here? Should I as a consumer expect less having a delivery a log ways away from the restaurant expecting that it be substandard? Should the restaurant or Uber Eats invest in technology to keep the food hot and fresh? Or should this service just not be offered when the distance is so great? Not sure of the answer here, but I’m not a customer of the service any longer.

Yet ANOTHER thing NOT to do while camping…..

So the other night I was cleaning up and I smelled a funny smell. I thought I’d dropped a piece of meat and it was rotting or a mouse crawled up inside somewhere and died. I really didn’t think much about it and went on with my day.

I’d left to go do something and when I came back, the rotten smell was worse. I began to tear apart the camper looking for the offending smell. I opened the windows and lit some candles to try and cover it up.

Fast foward to next morning – I get up and am going about my morning routine and I smell the smell again. I was getting pissed that I couldn’t find it. I was putting the dishes away and I pulled up the towel on the stove (I’ve been just putting a couple of towels over the burners of the stove for a drying rack since I have no space for a real one) when I noticed that the burner was not turned off! I’d been smelling propane! For 16 fucking hours! While smoking and having candles lit! Thank God I had the sense to keep the windows opened. Feeling a bit lucky today.

100 Things NOT to take on Your Camping Trip

  1. A leather hole puncher.
  2. An ice bucket
  3. The change you have been saving for 23 years.
  4. Wrestling shoes.
  5. Antique guitars
  6. Blue mason jars.
  7. Shot glasses from the 1903 Worlds Fair.
  8. 25 rugs.
  9. 2 years worth of cleaning supplies.
  10. 3 years worth of charcoal
  11. 4 years worth of paper plates.
  12. 22 bottles of liquor.
  13. 4 wireless mice without the transmitters.
  14. 87 phone chargers.
  15. 3 comforters.
  16. Extra outlet covers.
  17. Ethernet end pieces.
  18. Unmatched socks.
  19. A non-working printer.
  20. 42 screwdrivers.
  21. 4 laptops
  22. 16 towels.
  23. 4 huge containers of laundry detergent.
  24. Halloween decorations.
  25. Christmas decorations.
  26. 150 wash rags.
  27. 3 brooms
  28. 3 sets of sheets.
  29. 250 dryer sheets.

If you count the multiple items, it’s way over 100. Living on the road and pseudo-hoarding don’t mix. The key to successfully living in your camper on the road is to learn how to embrace your minimalist self, and if that doesn’t exist – to find one at your local discount store and have it installed in your right lobe.

I can’t turn around without knocking something on the floor, It’s ridiculous. Every storage space in the camper is full, the truck bed and back seat are full and I still have to stack stuff outside. I thought this would be a good cure for my thrift store addiction, but it hasn’t.

I have gotten better at throwing stuff out. i no longer pretend I’m going to fix it later, install it on Wednesday or reorganize it on the weekend. If I can’t find a place for it or it isn’t working 1000% correctly at the moment, it gets chucked or put out on the picnic table with a FREE sign next to it.

Simplicity is pretty complex.

Breaking away from the Hideaway

So I finally broke away from the campground I’ve been staying at since November and moved on. I arrived in Statesville, GA yesterday at 7am just in time to get set up for work. I’m staying at the Mill Creek Equestrian Center outside of town and it’s amazing – 140 acres of horse pasture, lake, forest and housing for the owners and workers. They give riding lessons, board horses and have a horse camp for kids. My buddy is the assistant manager for the place and invited me to come stay for a couple of days. Some pictures below.

Frustration and Drama Arrive

I almost didn’t get here. I got so frustrated on Wednesday night trying to get everything ready to go I about started to cry. I got everything packed up and was getting ready to hook up the trailer to the truck. This is about 9pm, so it’s dark and I’m working against a time deadline – I don’t want to make a lot of noise past 10 so I’m trying to hurry. I couldn’t get the stupid sway control bars put on for the life of me. They just weren’t going in. So it was getting close to 10 so I decided stay and give it another shot in the morning. I think the issue was how the camper and truck where with regards to alignment but it was too hard to see and I was getting pissed. It wouldn’t have mattered, I couldn’t find the hitch pins anyway. Aargh. Sometime I just want to kick myself.

and more arrives….

So then I couldn’t get the truck to disconnect from the camper – the hitch latch was not moving up as it should. I cussed and yelled and finally just got in my truck and tried to go to sleep in the truck. After I while, I went back to the camper, moved the monitors to one side of the bed and made a little room for myself to sleep.

When I got up, I had a slightly better attitude but I still couldn’t get the sway bars connected. I decided to see what it was like to haul the camper without them and took off towards Stateboro. Well, my phone died and then the light on the camper stopped working so I stopped at a stop sign and remedied both of those issues.

The camper didn’t sway too much without the bars, but i didn’t drive much over 50. I obviously made it to Statesboro in one piece.

But the silver lining appears….

Luckily my buddy know a lot about trailers and hitches and hookups so I am going to engage his assistance. Funny story – I was on my way home from one of my Augusta excursions and was driving through Statesboro when I got a message on Grindr. It was from my buddy from Des Moines. A few years ago he and his partner moved to Stateboro for a job, but I didn’t really know at the time exactly where he was going so I didn’t know he was here. It was great to reconnect and timely as I needed a place to park for a couple of days and some assistance with my trailer so it all worked out for the best.

I’m much more relaxed now and don’t have the desire to throw it all down and go back home. I was pretty frustrated.

Remodeling Lessons Learn(ing)ed

So I can’t be without at least 3 projects going on simultaneously without completely losing my mind. One of the three that I’ve been working on lately is remodeling the camper. It was very cramped and crowded in there and I didn’t really have enough space so I decided to remove the dinette and turn it into an office and then flip the bed around and make a bench, put in a credenza and give myself a little more space. I was constantly tripping over shit and swearing at everything and I thought that a little more space would be good for everybody involved (you know those voices in my head). Below is a picture of what it was before and what it is now and how I created a bunch of space.

As you can see, I’ve created a little more space as you walk in the door and a lot more space with the dinette used to be. One thing I didn’t mention is that I converted the shower into a closet – I just shower in the campground showers. I’ve also taken it upon myself to paint the entire place. I’ve chosen a nice light black almost a gray for all of the cabinets and a deep blue for accent walls and a nice gray for the rest of the walls. I’ve purchased a decal that is the night sky that I’ve placed around the bed as that wall curves up into the ceiling. I’ve added LED lighting so I don’t really have the overhead bright lights that a camper provides. I still have way too much stuff and I can’t seem to get everything put away at the same time so everything’s always just kind of messy. Every time I start a project everything gets put everywhere and it becomes a problem.

The challenges that I found when painting a camper especially when you’re living in it: If you want to take the cabinet doors off, you only have room to put one somewhere to dry so taking the cabinet door off, painting it on one side, allowing it to dry turning it over and doing the other side, allowing thjat to dry, turning it back over repainting the first side turning it over repainting the second side takes about four days and it was making me crazy so I gave it up and just started painting with the doors on. There’s nowhere to put anything so in order to paint you have to move stuff around they’re just isn’t room so unless you have a lot a large outdoor space that you know it’s not gonna rain, It’s really difficult to do painting in a camper that you’re living in. The paint store is about 35 minutes away so I’ve had to go back there three times because I’ve run out of paint and I decided one of the colors I got it first I didn’t like so that’s been also a challenge. It’s been a project though and I really like how it is turning out.

The other thing I learned about being in a camper is that you constantly have to recheck the seals on the outside because the rain will come in and the sealant that you put up there won’t last forever. In fact I sealed before I left and it already needs to be resealed again. I looked outside after a storm the other day and there’s plastic like Camper sealant all over the place and it’s almost depressing. I really hope that I’m not destroying the inside of the camper and it gets moldy. I’ve taken the suggestions of some online forums and purchased two dehumidifiers – one of them is doing a really good job in the bathroom and the one in the main room doesn’t seem to be collecting any water – so I don’t know what’s going on with that. I think it might be broken, but it’s important to keep the humidity in the camper or it will start to mold especially if you cook and shower in the camper.

Hideaway

I’m definitely liking my new strategy of staying in one place for a longer period of time rather than jumping around each week.

After Lake Meadows in Missouri, I spent two weeks in Canon, Georgia at a campground called In the Woods. It’s a private, membership based campground that sits deep in the woods in the mountains of North Eastern Georgia. The road to get the campground was narrow (single vehicle), dirt and covered by trees and bushes. A bit intimidating for me but I made it in and out.

The coyotes howled each night and boy they were loud and close. The campground was a mix of short term, medium term and long term campers and there was a definite sense of community there. Very helpful and friendly folks and nice surroundings.

I think I’ll be back.

After Canon, I headed south to Collins, GA – again pretty much in the middle of nowhere. I had previously reserved a spot at the Hideaway and of course arrived late. They kept the office. open for me and once again I set up in the dark. Getting pretty good at that.

Like the campground in northeastern Georgia, this one too has great community. It is run by a guy and his mother, and they have really made a nice spot. There are several areas with RV sites, tent sites, and big motorhomes, and they also have several cabins and a bunk house that can be rented. There is a pool, a hot tub, a community club that opens as a bar on the weekends (more on this later), laundry facilities and several showers.

There are residents here that started out as campers but didn’t want to leave so many people are here full time. They have a bunch of activities that they put on (just got back from a pot luck today) and damn Georgia likes to decorate for Christmas. There are more lights here than Vegas, I swear. It’s pretty set up. Liking it so much that I booked an extra month here which will have me here from October

Interesting fun fact: The county I’m staying in doesn’t have any bars. Well, except for one. And it’s in the campground that I’m staying at. Evidently the laws just don’t exist yet for serving alcohol here yet – It can be sold (but only in packaging stores) but it can’t be served. Unless it’s a private event/party/location, which this is but they can’t charge. So when the bar is open here, it’s free. Evidently the campground owner has been working with county officials for years to figure out how this could work and it’s in the works, but has been a long process. In the meantime, I’ll drink for free!

(as a side note, I can’t believe it took me so long to figure out this county had no bars!)