1 – “Friends of the Library” bookstores.

Nearly every library seems to have one. Books are usually $1 or sometimes $0.25. Good books, classics. But trash too if you want it. One store had five copies of Eat, Pray, Love. This is where we’re getting the bulk of our books … and where we grab out-of-date magazines too.

2 – Donate / borrow shelves.

Some campgrounds have them, the Jalama Grill has one, and they’re pretty entertaining. You can score a book written in German or a book about Jesus … for FREE! Which, granted, is sometimes not cheap enough depending on the book. This is how I scored Going Postal by Terry Pratchett, and how Lisa picked up a Reader’s Digest edition of Jane Eyre. This is also where we dump our stacks of read books and magazines.

3 – Lending from friends.

Bob lent us his copy of Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage. Ellen lent us her copy of At Home by Bill Bryson. Both were great books that were fun to borrow and ship back. USPS media mail means shipping a book is only a couple dollars.

4 – Used bookstores.

Been to a few. Julian’s was terrible – the first used bookstore I’ve seen with books priced above list. Carlsbad’s was better, it had a good selection of Edward Abbey books, but not Desert Solitaire. Chicago’s Bookleggers is still the best and I miss it.

Got any other ideas on how and where to score books deals? Let us know in the comments.

The campground at Molera is a hike-in affair. It’s a beautiful, easy stroll, just a quarter mile from the parking lot, so you can make multiple trips or easily go back to get something you forgot. The path runs along a crystal-clear, babbling stream, which we’d soon discover was cold as ice. The campground itself is in a large, sheltered meadow about a half mile from the beach. To the east, the Santa Lucia range towers above, when you can manage to look up. It’s spring-summer here, and there’s a huge variety of flowers to keep your eyes glued to the ground. Monarchs flit about, crows poop on your table, deer check you out, and what you assume (hope) are raccoons rustle and chatter in the woods after sunset. Cows moo on the range next door, waves crash on the beach, and the wind rustles through some ancient laurel trees. What’s that? A toilet flushing? Yes, the campground even has running water and flush toilets. Incredible luxury. It was as restoring as a trip to the spa.

It’s a bit shabby, like every CA state park — suffering from deferred maintenance and a ground squirrel infestation. We now know that comes with the territory. At least Molera provides bear boxes for your food, so the squirrels munch the grass rather than your dinner.

Feeling like we’d won the lottery, we pitched our tent, then walked down to the beach. The beach is in a sheltered cove, but the numbingly cold stream flows between you and the sand. There’s nothing to do but to take off your shoes, roll up your pants, and wade across as quickly as possible. A European family that arrived after us took it one step farther and just took off their pants. Makes sense, as all I got in return for my modesty was wet pants. Luckily, we had found a nice stack of firewood at a vacated campsite and later had a raging fire to warm our numbed feets.

There’s nothing like an uncomfortable night in a tent to make your regular accommodations seem like the ultimate in comfort. I’m pretty sure this is the reason some people camp, to better enjoy their everyday luxuries at home. The first night was fine, but on night two, a windstorm blew through and kept us awake all night. The tent flap-flap-flapped, making noises that sounded alternately like tearing velcro, a crackling fire, rain, and, worst of all, approaching footsteps. The ranger had bizarrely insisted (in an offended tone) that it wasn’t ever windy here, but I’d beg to disagree. Still, one overtired day was worth the chance to give Rocky a break from his human inhabitants for a few nights and to feel closer to the nature of Big Sur.

The path between the parking lot and the campground.

The path between the parking lot and the campground.

A sweet little road runs around the edge of the campground.

Our tent, Rocky Jr.

The stream between you and the beach.

The beach and obligatory sea gulls.

The Santa Lucias run along the Big Sur coast, sometimes closer to the sea, sometimes farther.

The Most Ridiculous Supporting Actor

The flying RV. It's very important to be level, even if you're parked on a bluff above the ocean in earthquake territory.

The millionaire's traveling circus.

The dish. I've now seen enough of these to know that the dish is a requirement for most RVers, but at the time, my mind was blown.

The rugged non-conformists in the Sportsmobile. It's the dot-com millionaire's traveling circus.

The Unimog. From Germany, driven by real Germans, parked in a campground near you. Capable of driving ANYWHERE, but hey, why push it?

The back of the Unimog. A crowd of spectators gaped at this homage to over-preparation.

The Awesomest, Most Covetable Actress

A regular Sportsmobile. Without all the other crap. Paul really wants one of these.

 The Sportsmobile website is much lower tech than the Sportsmobile itself.

The T@B. Lightweight, compact perfection.

T@B info — Paul accidentally calls them T&As. They’re just as sexy to some people.

The Airstream Bambi. It can't get much cuter than this. Or more expensive.

Airstream Bambi floorplans and pricing…yes, there is a Design Within Reach version.

The old Carmel library.

Man, we need amps more than ever before. Lisa’s camera’s almost dead, both our laptops are out of both lithium and ions and we need juice, Carmel. That’s all. Looks like that’s all we’ll get here, and thanks to the Harrison Library, we’ve got WiFi too. We’ve been to San Luis Obispo and are camped in Big Sur and we’re on our way to Paso Robles, but we need to do some research, need some ideas. We don’t want to just bounce around Paso Robles like we did in Temecula. We want good wine. Great wine, if they’re pouring it free. Maybe we’ll even buy a bottle or two.

So we’ll be here for an hour, just enough time to top off the batteries, top off the gas tank with gas priced below the Big Sur premium, but still premiumly priced, and maybe we’ll even have enough time to grab a sandwich before sundown so we don’t have to cook when we get back to camp.

Cheer up, Carmel! I’m sure your golf handicap is bound to improve.

“My husband and I stop here every year [here was Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, near Alamogoro, NM and White Sands National Monument], but just for a few days, for a rest. We’re on our way to the BLM [Bureau of Land Management] land outside Yuma. Have you heard of it?” I admit to the elderly woman in the ladies’ room that I haven’t. “We have a special permit, a six-month permit, to camp on the BLM land. It’s totally off the grid – no electricity.” Here a big grin crosses her face; she’s really excited. “We have a whole group of friends who meet up there every winter. It’s wonderful.”

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was speaking to my first boondocker. Boondockers generally dislike the term boondocking, preferring dry-camping, or dispersed camping, but I like the ring of it. Basically, boondocking means that you possess a vehicle with a self-contained septic system that you can park somewhere either for free or for a small fee and live independently, off the grid. A lot of boondockers have complex solar panel power systems, satellite dishes for TV and internet, and generators for when the sun don’t shine (enough). There are entire guides posted on strategies for conserving your tank of water. Most have fancy RVs, but every once in a while you see a customized van or a real beater of an RV.

Months later, we found the BLM land I had heard about, outside Yuma. Oddly, we felt completely out of place. We didn’t have the entrance fee: the RV. We were hoping to spend a week or so on the BLM land ourselves, off the grid, but this grid was pretty fully occupied. There were possibly five hundred RVs spread over maybe a thousand different sites in about ten designated areas, and only one site had restrooms – all other sites required self contained vehicles. The camp area that was equipped for people who have to poo outside their vehicles was the worst area of all: namely, the one downstream from the dam, with the scary warning signs about bells and flashing lights that would fire off when immediate evacuation was required. It was a very organized kind of off the grid living, with different cliques lining up in different areas. Since we didn’t have the entrance fee, there was no place for our kind.

I remained conflicted in my opinion on boondocking (and BLM land) mainly just feeling left out, until recently, when I read a collection of articles by Edward Abbey called Abbey’s Road. They were the typical crazy, destructive, respectful, romantic adventure and misadventures stories that I love so much. But one of them surprised me — one called The Winnebago Tribe. Here is Edward Abbey in a tone that I didn’t think was possible: conveying an understanding of a group of people he had previously despised, realizing where RVers come from.

On our way to the Salton Sea from Joshua Tree NP, we drove down a canyon that was designated BLM land. It was a very wide, flat, sandy-bottomed canyon, and the paved road twisted and turned through it. But the tire tracks went all over the place. If someone didn’t feel like taking that turn, well, they didn’t take it. They went straight ahead. You could camp anywhere, as long as you didn’t have a fire and properly disposed of your (biological) refuse. The number of other campers was pretty limited, and I could see why. You can’t live for six months in a wash. Too stressful (a few months earlier a huge storm had flooded the area, closing the Cottonwood Springs area and campground inside Joshua Tree for months and washing debris down the canyon for miles). We parked the car and hiked around a side canyon. It was strewn with beer cans, rusted gas cans, shotgun shells, handgun shells, toilet paper, bonfire remains, and plenty of other garbage.

I previously had a less than favorable view of boondock paradises like the BLM land outside Yuma, but thanks to Mr. Abbey, and my general BLM observations, I’ve since come around. As our friend Mary said: “Anything goes on BLM land.” Maybe that’s why certain areas have been staked out and populated by the retiree crowd. It’s a way of guaranteeing protection from the shotgun-wielding, bush-pooping, beer-drinking crazies (like our Edward Abbey, in his day). It’s great that there is a free to low cost, semi-wild option available for people who want to live a non-traditional, nomadic lifestyle in their retirement. Seeing a crop of a few hundred RVs in the desert is not pretty, but it’s like the SVRAs (State Vehicle Recreation Areas) – if you provide a place where people can drive all over and generally tear it up, then hopefully they won’t do it anywhere else. Same goes for boondocking.

I should mention that there’s a whole other crowd of people out there who boondock, just for the sake of living for free — we call them the stealth campers (more about them in the future). I’m cool with that too. We’d like to do the same.

To all the other BLM abusers out there, I have but one recommendation. Go buy a few acres of your own, in New Mexico, say, to abuse.

A group of Boondockers in what I call the Wagon Circle formation.

Boondockers spread across the Ocotillo Wells Vehicle Recreation Area. Wake up and you're off-road.

Warning: Not as good in the morning if you let the mug sit out overnight and fail to finish it off after falling asleep while reading in the van you live in down by the river.

Warning #2: Reading Edward Abbey’s books may make you want to go outside, explore, drink Bourbon, or blow up the Glenn Canyon Dam. Ye be warned.

Warning #3: Edward Abbey seemed to be a quantity over quality guy. Evan Williams is exactly the mission whiskey he’d buy.

Drink cheap like Abbey -- get Evan Williams.

• 1 can mixed beans, rinsed (our can had black, kidney, and pinto)
• ½ diced onion (we used a white one)
• ½ can diced tomatoes, drained (you could use fresh ones, just get rid of the extra water)
• 1 handful chopped cilantro
• spash of vinegar (we used white, but I bet red wine vinegar would be good)
• salt and pepper to taste

Mix everything together. No Coleman stove needed. Just let it sit a bit so all the flavors get friendly. It’s good straight-up or on tortilla chips.

Note: It’s not really raw, the canned beans are technically cooked, just not by you. And it’s probably vegan. At the very least, it’s vegetarian. Don’t add any pearls or honey!

When we're using multiple photographers, I sometimes look at the wrong camera.

Go as heavy on the cilantro as you want.

Final product. It's yummy.

To enter to win the package (book + $50 gift card), all you have to do is follow @drivinginertia on Twitter or ‘like’ Driving Inertia on Facebook. Technically, you could enter twice, and that’s fine.

We currently have about 80 fans on Facebook and over 100 followers on Twitter. As soon as either of those numbers goes over 200,  we’ll select a winner from the combined Twitter and Facebook pool of people. Confusing? It shouldn’t be. The sooner we get to 200, the earlier we’ll select a winner.

Family members aren’t eligible. We (Lisa and Paul) are gift enough. Individuals only — corporate accounts are not eligible for the giveaway.

So far we’ve been pointed towards Peach Canyon, Adelaida, Daou, and J. Lohr (champ of the cheap wine challenge, but the most expensive wine in the show-down).

Any other recommendations? The more free the tasting, the better.

And if there are any winemakers out there that would like to be featured on our blog, we’d love to talk with you and hear your stories. Lisa’s keen to open a winery someday, and we’d love to hear how you are living out this dream.