Yeah, I’ll come back and explain them over the next couple days, (afterall, I did write an article about doing that a while back for the Indie Travel Podcast) but I figured this was a nice quick way to get back into posting. We’re in the middle of the Summer Pledge Drive here at KJAZZ so things are busy. But sometimes it’s when I’m busiest that I manage to actually do the most posting.

If anyone can tell me how to rotate the vertical pictures in Wordpress that would be much appreciated.  They open correctly in every other program.

[Show as slideshow]

 

This local restaurant is so popular they opened two more within a few miles of the first.  I split a plate of nachos with my friend Sonya.  I’m not sure what made them so great because they were so simple, but they were fantastic.  Everything in the restaurant is made from scratch so that probably has something to do with it.

Here’s the Yelp pages for the three locations.  1, 2, and 3.  There’s a lot of people are complaining about the service there, but I thought they were reasonably quick.  One warning, there’s no hostess there to greet you at the door.  To get in line for a table, put your name on the notebook by the door.  I can see how if you’re new to the restaurant you might miss that and end up waiting a lot longer than you should.

This post is making me hungry.  I think I’d better finish up here at the library and get nachos one last time before I leave town.

I’m looking forward to seeing some friends in the Bay Area, Portland and Seattle, but mostly this will be a working trip. I’ll have 6 weeks or so on the road and already I’m feeling overwhelmed by everything I want to research and see. I’ll be passing through areas tied to the following trails:

• Juan Batista de Anza
• Pacific Crest
• Pony Express
• California
• Oregon
• Lewis and Clark
• Nez Perce

Depending on what the return route ends up being I may cross the Continental Divide Trail or the Morman Trail as well.

Yesterday, I spoke for a long time with Travis Boley who manages the Oregon-California Trail Association and he’s been fantastic in helping me get a start on figuring out who to contact and hopefully interview while I’m out on the road. Looking for more suggestions though.

Anyone have favorite historic or trail related spots? Any ideas for topics for some short-form (6-10 minute) audio documentaries or people to interview?

I think this was the coolest beach in Hawaii. One of the nice things about having a friend or relative in the area you’re traveling to is that you get to hear about all the cool places not in the guide books. My cousin told us about a beach in an industrial area of Kauai where there used to be a glass factory. The factory isn’t there any more, but the broken glass has been worn smooth from the ocean over many years. It’s not a very scenic place, but if you go you’ll be looking down anyway. Here’s the view of the beach from a point further out in the water:

As we entered the beach to the right of the picture and at first all we found is really small, sandsize pieces of glass. Most of it is clear or amber and the sand itself is black so it was sort of interesting, but not quite the big deal that my cousin had made it out to be. But as you walk further along the cliffs along the left of the picture the sand and glass pictures get larger and larger and we started to see what he was talking about. The first picture was taken about 3/4th of the way along the little beach where the pieces were pebble sized. Talking to a nearby shopkeeper later in the afternoon I found out that we were there at a lucky time because the last few days had been stormy. Apparently it’s now pretty common to go there and discover the glass is all washed out to sea (after all the factory isn’t there anymore), but the storms tend to wash it back up on the beach.

The beach is in Port Allen in Kauai. If you happen to be nearby any of the locals should be able to give you directions. But other tourists won’t be of any help. It’s not in the guide books.

Within a two minute walk of the beach is an old abandoned Japanese cemetery, rich with photographic opportunities. This was my favorite shot:

This picture was taking back in July, but a comment on a friend’s blog made me remember the greedy chipmunks outside of Rocky Mountain National Park.

Renting a car makes it real easy to make friends at a hostel, and after I moved out I hung out with J and D, two guys who were sightseeing in Hawaii after J’s brother’s wedding.

We did some picnicking on the beach, drove around West Maui (which I think is a better drive than the Road to Hana), biked down the volcano, hung at the pool and topped it off by watching and making fun of a couple of westerns. Actually, come to think of it, we made fun of a lot of things. Exactly my type of company.

Lack of planning (partly our fault for constantly distracting him) left D without a place to stay the night before he took the ferry to Honolulu so I had my first overnight guest while living in a car. I wish it’d been in an area I knew better. We had a couple false starts (or stops, rather) trying to pick out a place to stay, but in the end D found a nice residential area and we slept pretty well until about 6am. Or at least I did. D is 6′1″ so I doubt he was quite as comfortable in the passenger seat as I was in the driver’s seat. I was happy to introduce the whole sleeping in a car thing to someone new. I was quite amused by the whole thing.

Then again, I’m quite amused by many things.

For J: Why does the moon rise 50 minutes LATER each day. Trust the astrophysicist.

Anyone have an suggestions for a topic for next month’s article?

Oh well, at least I got an idea of what backpacking is like, (even if I did spend only 3 days rather than 6 out there). I don’t think I’ll be doing the Appalachian Trail anytime soon, but I would still like to do some shorter trail (hopefully with more success than the Kalalau trail). In fact, I think I’m going to make it one of my new year’s resolutions to do either a backpacking or bicycling trip sometime this year.

I spent about four days on the north shore of Oahu at the beginning of my trip. There was a surfing competition going on that I never actually made it to (it was on hold the whole time I was there because of weather) but I did hang out on the beach one afternoon playing around with my new telescoping lens taking pictures of the surfers. I was impressed by the size of these waves, but these ones are nothing compared to what they surf during the competitions.

Tomorrow morning I’m starting the Kalalau trail along the Na Pali coast.  A couple days ago we did a plane trip around the island and I took this shot.  At the time I thought it was as close to the Kalalau trail as I was going to get.  The trail has been closed because rain in the mountains had made the rivers too high to cross.  A couple days ago it reopened, and barring no major weather events I should be starting off bright and early tomorrow. I’m not sure how far I’ll make it. Miles 6.5 through 8 are right along the cliffs and hopefully those aren’t too washed away to pass.  I know mom and dad are worried about me doing this, but I just keep reminding them that I’m neither stupid nor reckless.  If I think it’s not going to be safe I’ll just turn around and head back.  But if I do make it the whole 11 miles in I’ll have three nights of camping on the beach at the end of this valley:

I’ve had a chance to go through almost all of the photos I’ve taken on the trip so far.  I’m going to attempt to set up some posts for the next couple days so there’ll be more photos appearing here even while I’m on the trail.

You can find out more information about the Kalalau trail here.

If you run a website or are just interested in this sort of stuff check out their development work.  There’s lots of cool wallpapers and of course the very cool theme vSlider for Wordpress.  All of it is up for sale (donation) as they’re trying to finance a trip around the world.

When I get back to LA and have some more time for playing around with this stuff, I’ll be purchasing a spot on their map of the world.

In the mean time, I give you another picture from Hawaii.  This is one of the many red-crested cardinals hanging out all over Oahu.

I’ve finally gotten around to starting to go through some of the pictures I’ve been taking here in Hawaii, so you can be expecting to see some more here soon.  You may have also noticed that I’ve also finally found a picture to replace the generic header that came with this wordpress theme.  That’s a picture of the shadow of our tour van as we went up the Mauna Kea on the big island to visit the observatories.

The article is a quick run down of what I think are the most important things to do to modify a car for living out of. These are only the basics (I only get 800 words an article), and can be done in one weekend or less. They mostly deal with privacy issues. I’m thinking that for the next article I’ll do a run-down of what you might want to add in the next weekend to make it more comfortable. What do you guys suggest? A cooler? An inverter to charge electronics? A hotplate? What modifications or items have you found most useful?

Any suggestions for things to see or do on Oahu, Kauai or the Big Island would be greatly appreciated!

Now I’m back to work and am updating my links page (”Other Stops on the Road”).  I know I’m missing a lot of great pages, send me your suggestions.

I have a new article up on the Indie Travel Podcast website.  I talk about “My Maps” on Google Maps which is a great way to keep track of travel suggestions.  Here’s the first two paragraphs:

Today I want to devote my article to a single resource. The ““My Maps” section of Google Maps is a valuable resource for planning and sharing trip details with friends and family - you create markers on a map and you can add pictures and details to personalise it further. You can even choose different icons to use as markers for different types of location.

As nice as it is to have a map to imbed on a blog that shows where you’ve been, I prefer to use Google’s My Maps for pre-trip planning, by storing information about places I’d like to visit all over the US and Canada. I used to have data everywhere: boxes of scraps of paper, articles ripped out of magazines, links stored in emails I sent to myself after finding out about an interesting place online.

To read more, check out the article on the Indie Travel Podcast Website.  I also take advantage of the ITP audience to hit them up for suggestions for places to visit in Hawaii (I have to admit that this was the main reason I choose to write this particular story now rather than save it for later).  I’m pleased to see that I’ve already gotten some suggestions.  Now I’ve just got to go through and add all these to the map.

The Indie Travel Podcast has also been nominated for a podcaster’s award.  You can vote for it (and other great podcasts in other catagories), once a day, every day.

That being said the one question I get more than any other is about showering, so I’ve written an entire post about it. Also common is questions about good places to park.  For that one I’ll refer you to an article I wrote for the Indie Travel Podcast website.

Hope that some of these pages help answer some questions!

Don’t think it’s going to happen for the next couple weeks.

I’m down in San Diego which is going to be my home base for the next four weeks or so before I head out to Hawaii for two months. (No the car is not going with me). Between now and then I’ll mostly be finishing up work, packing and planning for Hawaii, working on a couple projects (including the website), hanging out with some friends, and a whole lot of cleaning and reading of books so I can get rid of them.

That’s basically what I’ve been up to the last two weeks and pretty much all I’ll be up to for the next month

I do have an article up on the Indie Travel Podcast website that I haven’t mentioned here, and I’d better mention it soon since I have another one going up later this week. The current one is about starting up conversations with people on the road. I’d love for you guys to read it and leave comments with the ways you start conversations with people.

You may have noticed that I’ve also added a page about tatting. Eventually I’d like to set-up a better page, but this is a start.

I don’t really know what to go and see/do in Hawaii. I bought the plane ticket because I had an airline voucher I needed to use before it expired and the ticket to Hawaii was just the right price as to be practically free. I’ll be going to Oahu, Kauai, the Big Island for sure, possibly to Maui, and anywhere else that’s recommended as well. I have two months, so plenty of time to see a lot.

At any rate he’ll be in the US later this month and is looking for other people to talk to about their experiences. here’s the paragraph he wrote for me to put up here:

Nick Rosen of the Off-Grid website is in the process of writing his book “Off-Grid America”.” He will be in California through October and New York State through November and he is looking for car-dwellers, van-dwellers, in fact any sort of off-gridders who have a story to tell – most of all, what are your reasons for living off-grid, and what do you especially like (or dislike) about it? Do you have a particular philosophy of off-grid living? Where do you live off-grid? How do you live off-grid: on a homestead, in a cabin, in the city, or on wheels or water? Have you adopted all the technical advantages of renewable energy, or do you live the way people lived before there was a grid, or is it something in-between? He’d like to know what obstacles and challenges you’ve encountered along the way. Tell your reasons, your means and ways, to Nick for his new book “Off-grid America.” Contact Nick at nick (at) off-grid.net or 877-706-7423.

Always happy to help out public radio I told him I’d post something on my site.

If you’re a Canadian vandweller and are interested send me an email at Jessica at ayearinacar dot com and I’ll forward it on.  If you’re not a Canadian vandweller, but you know one, please forward on this post.

Thanks!

I read all the time on other people’s blogs about how nobody gets it and people are rude to them because they live in a car, but honestly, I can’t think of one time in the last two years I’ve ever gotten this reaction.  I have started to wonder if perhaps vandwellers are too quick to jump upon any slight as being proof that we’re being trod-upon and snubbed by society.  We are generally so proud of our rebel/anti-conformity outlook that maybe it’s easier to justify a “screw you” attitude to society if we can cultivate the belief that society has a “screw you” attitude to us.

Like I said in the earlier post, there’s a small percentage of people who I haven’t managed to convince that I’m doing this because I want to and not because I have to, but I can’t think of a single time I’ve encountered rudeness or snobbery because I live in a car.  I’m sure that eventually I will, but it just doesn’t seem to be as prevalent as someone considering living in their car my get the impression of from surfing the web.  I would hate to think that it would discourage anyone from trying it because it’s just so damn awesome to live this way.

Maybe I’m too wrapped up in myself to notice I’m being snubbed. Maybe I just hang out with the right people. Either way, it’s time I ask this question of all the vandwellers out there.

Who has snubbed you for living in your car?  I’m not talking about people pitying you because they can’t comprehend you’re doing this because you want to.  I’m not talking about people being annoyed that you’re sneaking into a campground to shower.  I am also not talking about communities passing laws that make it more difficult for vandwellers.  I’m talking about personal rudeness or snobbery in a one-on-one situation in which car living or vandwelling is the ‘reason’ for it.

I want to know how often people are being snubbed on a regular basis specifically for living in their car/van.

I’ve been putting off this post because I’ve been trying to figure out how to write it so it doesn’t offend anyone, but here you are.  This is is something I’ve been thinking about for a while and would really like to get a discussion going on it.

That being said, there’s more coming, I promise.  But we’ve only got 7 more days before the KJAZZ pledge drive starts so that’ll will be keeping me busy till the end of the month.  I’ll still be posting, but shorter and less frequently.

A little while back, someone who I don’t know really well, but who I see on a fairly regular basis made reference to my “situation.” It took me a minute to figure out what this person meant. At first I thought they were referring to the fact that I keep coming and going. Spending a month or so in LA and then two months on the road. Then it dawned on me that “my situation” is just that I live my car. As if it’s something too horrible to actually name; it must be hidden behind the phrase “your situation” like it’s the 1950’s and I’m unwed and pregnant.

On the whole, I get mostly positive reactions when I tell people I live in my car. (Many are very amused, but they’re willing to accept it.) This comment made me wonder if perhaps I’m just seeing what I want to see, or people are smiling and humoring me on the outside, but inside are thinking: “That poor, poor girl. How sad it is that she must suffer the horrors of having to shower at the gym. If only there were something I could do so that she could experience the joys of outrageous rent and a 90 minute commute.”

Maybe I haven’t actually been doing a very good job at getting across the point that this is exactly the situation I WANT to be in.

This got me wondering why it is that vandwelling might even need to be defended? When I tell someone with a big smile on my face that I live in a car why might they ever consider that I’m actually miserable and just trying to put a good spin on it?

I want to make it clear that 95% of the people I talk to about vandwelling think it’s awesome even if it’s something they’d never consider doing themselves. In this post though I’m trying to figure out what’s going on in the minds of the other 5%.

Earlier this year my brother spent a month and a half wandering around New Zealand. He carried all he needed in a backpack, hitched rides, slept in campgrounds or on the sofas of people he just met, or sometimes just spent the night the city park. He had no itinerary and no paying job, but it didn’t matter.

Talking about our travels with other people, he and I might get the some questions about logistics or safety, but his travels are not something that would be discussed in hushed and secretive tones. Part of it, of course, is just the portrayal in the media of people who live in vans or cars. (Cue Chris Farley.)

I suppose that does make some sense, backpacking around the world is not something that people are often “forced” to do, while moving into a car or a van is more often than not something done out of economic necessity. Not for me, but usually.

So I suppose backpacking around the world is not really a fair comparison.

Well, what about an RV then? If I were traveling the country in an RV I doubt I would get this reaction. I would argue that traveling in my car isn’t all that different than traveling RV. What is it about the existence of a bathroom that makes that type of travel more acceptable?

Perhaps it’s because I’m not traveling full-time yet. The person who’s comment started me off on this train of thought only sees me while I’m in LA working. During that time I’m staying put. Maybe this is the big difference between traveling in a van/car and living in a van/car. Traveling is acceptable, living is not.

Because as we all know, (from tv shows and such), people who are living in vehicles do so only because they have no other choice. And so of course some people will assume that must be the case for me as well.

Inexplicably, this has not translated into people offering to buy me lunch. Perhaps they think I’d be insulted. (Really, it’s ok. Insult away.)

I spent three years saving, planning, and waiting until the time I’d be able to do this. I work only five months a year at a job I enjoy and spend the other seven months traveling. I am not touching a dollar of my savings. In fact, over the course of last year I’ve still been putting money away into savings. I’m visiting old friends, meeting new people. I have the time to read books, work on my own projects, or do absolutely nothing at all if I feel like it.

That is my situation.

And that is precisely why I talk to everyone I meet about living and traveling in my car. There’s nothing so bad about it that it needs to be discussed in those hushed tones.

The problem I always have is that I can’t bear to just throw things away. If I want to get rid of something I feel the need to either use it up or find a home for it. And books, of course must be read before I can even consider getting rid of them. I don’t buy many books anymore, but I’m still working my way through all that I got when I volunteered an NPR and picked up 4-5 books each week from the shelves where the reporters left the ones they got from publishers.

Anyway, progress made this last week. Being far away from my stuff certainly helps me realize how little I actually need/want around me. Moving from the van to the prius, even more so. Just got to figure out what I can get rid of completely. Every little bit I do here will make the boxes of stuff easier to deal with once I decide to settle down.

I am constantly astounded by the number of people who make comments about beds when I tell them I’m at my parent’s place.  “Must be happy to sleep in a real bed for a change.”  I always get the same comments about hostels as well.  Come on people, What do you think I have in my car?  It may not be a “real” bed, but I assure you it’s pretty darn comfortable.  Certainly more comfortable than any hostel bed I’ve ever had.

/rant

One of my projects for this weekend down in San Diego was to take my car to the dealership and have them reset my airbags.  When I took out the front passenger seat I had to unhook the cables that run between the weight censor in the seat and the airbags.  Unfortunately, it turns out that doing so disables the airbags.  I thought they’d just be able to reset them, but apparently it creates an open circuit and it can’t be done.  So, thanks to the fact that I have no front passenger seat, I also have no air bags and Toyota can’t do anything about it.

The guy at Toyota did make a suggestion for finding someone who can fix it though.  When I get back to LA I’m going to try to find a company that makes modifications to cars for the handicapped.  Since they take out seats all the time they may have a solution.  In the meantime, I’ll just have to hope I don’t need them.

Now you can have both!*

A Year in a Car For No Apparent Reason is now syndicated on LiveJournal.  If you already have a LiveJournal account it’s easy to add the feed to your friend’s page.

Special thanks go out to Dominic for setting this up.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about you probably don’t have a LiveJournal account and can ignore this post.

*Ok, technically you could always have both, but now you can have both in the same browser window.

It was the 4th of July weekend so I didn’t stay long.  Spent one night up in the mountains and then enjoyed spending a couple hours driving out of the park stopping and taking lots of pictures.  This was a chance for me to play around with my camera a lot.  I learned I really needed a tripod if I expected any of my early morning shots to come out nicely.

This was taken while standing right off of the continental divide.  This picture faces West to the Pacific.

Tomorrow is the start of the New Media Expo here in Vegas.  I’ll be hanging out at the OC Podcaster’s booth, hopefully recording some interviews for a super-cool project I’m working on.

No, you’re not going to get any more details beyond “super-cool” just yet.  Stay tuned!

Both these pictures were taken from a rest stop in Utah. I believe I was on highway 70 at this point, though it might still have been the 15.

I haven’t been to all the states yet, but Utah just might have the best views from their rest stops. They are the sort of views that always make me grateful for the interstate highway system and glad I’m not traveling in a covered wagon across the deserts.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t yet bought a tripod so even though I was there a little later during a great sunset the low light pictures I took didn’t really come out very well. I guess I’ll just have to go back someday… What a shame.

I’ve been getting the chance to play around with my new camera on this trip and hopefully as I continue I’ll be able to up that ratio of 50 decent pictures out of every 2500.

More pictures coming as I get them sorted.

This means that I’ll finally get all the pictures I’ve been taking sorted through and the good ones posted here. For now though I have a couple pictures I took earlier this evening while waiting for the AAA guy to come bring me some gas because I’d run out on Highway 93 in Nevada. Yes, that’s right, my little Prius ran out of gas.

In my defense I don’t think that’s completely true. According to the odometer I should have been able to make it another 80 miles or so. I should have had another 2 gallons left. I think it must have been that the gas was so low that for some reason it wasn’t getting to the engine. I don’t know what the outtake set up is on the gas tank, but that’s my current theory.

At any rate, I got stuck on the side of the highway and luckily had cell phone reception and a free trial version of the AAA “Plus” membership that includes a couple (in this case 5) gallons of gas brought out to you if you’re a dumbass and didn’t fill up in the last gas station for the next 90 miles.

The second picture should give you a good idea of exactly where in the middle of nowhere I was. It was empty pretty much the entire 90 miles between Ash Springs and Vegas. While talking to the dispatcher I had to walk about ten minutes to find a marker that would give a good idea of where I was. Even after walking that far I didn’t actually make it to a sign (though I could see one way off in the distance) but someone pulled over and was able to give me directions to pass on.

So I ate my dinner and took pictures, and now I’ve learned my lesson. Don’t try to go more than 450 miles on one tank even if I technically should have enough gas to do it. Here is my favorite picture of the evening:

At any rate, here’s pictures of the skirt I just finished sewing tatting on to.  Still haven’t actually worn it though.  As you can see, it’s a bit wrinkled and could probably use a washing.

The front:

The back (There is another strip on the right.  It’s hard to see because it’s red):

Close up of the design:

Close up of the pattern for the tatters who want to see how it’s made:

I think the pattern came from the web.  I’ll have to look through my printouts and figure out where I got it.  I liked that pattern a lot and think it’s the one I’ll modify for a tablecloth.

Not very exciting for the non-crafters out there, but since I figure it took me about 70 hours for the whole project I’m happy to have finally finished it.

But Yellowstone has been awesome.  As my article will describe I’ve been completely taken by the geyser area.  Been spending the last 5 days exploring the area, watching geysers, and (the most fun of all), waiting for the geysers to erupt while talking to the people around me and working on sewing a bunch of tatting on to my skirt.  I’m almost done with the skirt and will post pictures when I do finish it.  I figured it out the other day and I think there’ll be about 70 hours into it when I’m done.

I’m rather enjoying working on the absurdly large and tedious projects.  I have plans to start two tablecloths soon one of which will be at least a hundred hours and the other a couple hundred.

But here I am rambling on about tatting and you’re more curious about the travel.  Unfortunately as much fun as I’m having here in Yellowstone it’s not the sort of fun that really translates to the (web)page.  Mostly a lot of sitting around waiting for geysers to erupt.  What’s made it fun is all the great people I’ve met from all over the country (and world, got to practice my Japanese the other night).  Been getting lots of suggestions for places to check out while I’m traveling as well, and hopefully those people will come and leave comments here, because of course, I haven’t been writing them down and have probably forgotten a bunch already.

(The picture, by the way, is Castle Geyser.)

Thinking that it was due on the second Monday of the month and not the third I spent most of the day writing my next article for the Indie Travel Podcast website.  So I didn’t get to all the other stuff I’d wanted to, (including sorting through all the pictures I’ve taken over the last couple weeks).  I have only this one pictures for you now because the library is going to close soon and I’m getting hungry for dinner.

Before heading into Rocky Mountain National Park I stopped at a turn out to get a picture of the road and the mountains.  There were chipmucks everywhere!  They were there, of course, because people were feeding them absurd amounts of snacks.  (I was surprised that the chipmucks rejected outright all the processed foods like chips and Cheetios and would only eat nuts and seeds).  So I ended up spending at least an hour and a half there playing around with my new camera and snapping pictures of the chipmucks.

Yet another reminder to stop whenever you get the chance.  You never know what you’ll find.

For along time I have been wishing we would get rid of the penny.  Australia and New Zealand have both done it and are somehow managing quite well (actually New Zealand has gotten rid of their 5 cent piece as well, the smallest denomination is the 10 cent piece).  Unfortunately, there’s soon to be four new designs for the back of the penny coming out in honor of Lincoln’s 200th birthday so it doesn’t look like we’ll be getting rid of it anytime soon.

One more thing.  The rim on coins?  It’s there for two reasons.  First is to keep the coin from wearing out so quickly and secondly to make it possible to stack coins.

The tour guide also mentioned the average lifetime for a coin.  I think it was twenty years, but don’t quote me on that.

ahh well. It’s not as if I had any particlar plans for today beyond reading and reorganizing the car anyway. I even began sorting through some of the hundreds of pictures I’ve taken in the last week. Though I’m typing this on my phone so posting those will have to wait.

I spent the last two days at Dinosaur National Monument. Two days was enough for now but I already want to go back sometime and do more exploring on the Green River. Preferably sometime when the mosquitos aren’t so bad. I got eaten alive by them, a red ant and something else I never sawM but must have been a spider because it left a bite mark 3 or 4 times the size of a mosquito’s that still itches today.

Spent the day in Boulder, Colorado which is a very nice town.  Thanks Adam for the suggestion of Big City Burritos.  I went there for lunch and then since I stopped later in the same shopping center for my helmet went there again for dinner to try the potato burrito.  Very tasty.  I’m still quite attached to the rice at Chipotle, but I’d say that everything else at Big City was at least as good or better.

In between lunch and dinner at Big City Burritos I went to the Redstone Meadery and had a nice little tour and tasting.  They said there were about 100 companies in the US making mead.  I may have to set aside an hour or so sometime to do a bit of internet searching and put some of the others on my map of places to go while touring around the country.

Sitting at the ugent care facility waiting for the doctor to see me took up most of the rest of the day so I still have one or two things I want to see in Boulder before heading out to Rocky Mountain National Park.

If nothing else at least it was a good excuse to just sit around and read.  I’ve been working through a couple of books on American history, most notably one called “The River of Doubt: Theodore Rosevelt’s Darkest Journey”. (Did you know he hated to be called Teddy?)  It’s about some exploring in South America that he did after being defeated for a third term as president.  Before reading this I also read a quick biography of him called a “Lion in the White House”.  I didn’t realize how little I knew about him before.  I’d highly recommend River of Doubt.  I didn’t intend to read the whole thing yesterday but stayed up until 2:00am to finish it (which I think sort of bothered the security guard since I was just sitting in the front seat of my car reading from 8pm till 2am).

Did some other sightseeing while I was in Denver as well.  Toured the state capitol, the US Mint, and the National Renewable Energy Labs (yes, I am a nerd).  Made a pilgrimage to the first Chipotle restaurant.  I don’t like to go to chain restaurants while I’m traveling, but Chipotle is one of the few I’ll make an exception for so of course I had to visit the original.

The prius has been preforming admirably though will take some rearranging.  I haven’t been moving easily enough this last week to take care of that.  I also need to find a better set up for the front seat.  Right now I have large drawer underneath the board that extends from the bed in the bad.  Keeps everything out of the way, but the problem is the drawer is too damn heavy.  Not sure yet what will put there instead.  May move the drawer to sit on top of the board since I can bolt it down there and right now everything I put there ends up sliding down into a pile on the floor.

Next Boulder and Rocky Mountain National Park.

Thanks for the emails asking where I was and why I haven’t been posting.  I’m moving slowly, but very happily, and loving my helmet right now (4 cracks on the helmet and nothing on my head except a scrap on my chin)  I got a ride today back to my car and I’m about to head out now to rejoin the group.  Tomorrow is actually the last day of the trip.  I’m going to spend it leap frogging them in my car as they ride and taking some action photography in the beautiful Colorado Rockies.

Thanks mom and dad!

Next came building a support for the bed. I pulled the main board of the bed out of the van and was just plopping it down in the prius. In the back it just rests part way down on the “floor” of the trunk, but in the front it needed something to hold it up.

It’s hard to tell in this picture, but the bar is is attached to the car through the same holes where the seat was attached. One of them is at a strange angle so it was a bit of a pain to make it work, but this way there’s no damage done to the car. In the van the supports were also attached to frame this way as well. The only “damange” I’ve left on the van is the sticky stuff all over the walls from the Velcro that held up the curtains.

Now that the bottom of the support was secured the rest of it could be put in. This is a piece a plywood attached to the bar on the bottom. Attached to this are the two L shaped metal bars that are then screwed in to the bottom of the bed. I realize now I should have taken another picture between this one and the next one to better show how far up the bed comes.

The board sticks out in front about as far as the seat would be but it’s a bit higher up. It goes back far enough to rest on the “floor” of the trunk, but not all the way to the back. There’s about a five/six inch space between the bed and the seat in the back where I’ve stuffed a small blanket and my jackets.

There’s a bunch of space at the feet back passenger seat. I’ve got a couple boxes and small drawer there. My large drawer (the one that I used to stuff all my clothes in, is now in the front on the floor. I haven’t decided how I like it there yet. It’s so large and so full of stuff that it’s kind of difficult to open, but it does fit nicely in the space. I’ll just have to try it out for a while and see how I like it in the long run.

The pad, (and therefore also me when I’m sleeping) is half on the board and half on the floor of the trunk. The board itself is sticking out about a foot and a half past the curtain you can see in this picture separating the front and back of the car. The intention is to screw down a box or something on the front part of the board so I can put stuff on it that I’d want to get to easily. I didn’t really have time to consider what exactly I want there so I’ve left that as just the board for now. I basically can’t put anything there while I’m driving though because after a couple turns it ends up on the floor.

I didn’t think to take a picture of the curtain and how it’s attached. Dad figured out that for me (as well as figuring out how to do the bed support without damaging the car. Basically there’s space in the paneling on either side of the car above where the seatbelt attaches. He cut and bent the ends of a curtain rod so that they slid into those spaces. Then I took the same black cloth from the van and threw it over this rod.

As a side note, if anyone out there is picking out fabric for curtains let me highly, highly recommend you go with black. Even during the daylight if you’re standing in front of the car looking through the windshield it’s hard to tell the curtains are even there. It just looks black and someone walking by isn’t going to even think there’s curtains there, they’re just going to think it’s dark in the back. Actually, that’s not true. They’re not going to think about it at all. I’ve seen light colored curtains and I feel like they really stand out. Sure they block the view to the back, but they also draw attention to the fact that you’re blocking the view to the back.

On the left of the above picture you can see the space I had to work with for the easily accessible storage. There’s also space under the bed that I can get from the inside as well, but it’s slightly more difficult. I knew I wanted my two drawers of clothing to sit on the front of that space so they would open over the area where the passenger would be sitting in the back seat. Then I could put a couple bags (the large grocery tote bags which have become one of my favorite organizing containers) between the drawers and the back of the hatch without worrying about those flying around.

So I knew that’s where I wanted them, but the tricky thing was figuring out how to secure them so they don’t go flying around while I’m driving.

First came the latches to keep the drawers from opening. these are the same kind I have on the large drawer. Just a piece of wood (half of a dowel) cut down and screwed into the plastic below the drawer.

Next I had to figure out a way to keep the drawers themselves from sliding around when dad had the great idea of checking to see if Velcro sticks to the fabric on the floor. It does. So there’s Velcro on the bottom of the lower drawer keeping it attached to the floor and then a set of Velcro between the two drawers keeping the top one attached to the bottom one.

I neglected to take another set of pictures of the “finished” product, but I’ll be tweaking it as I go anyway. Also, I spend a lot of time doing the first half of all the packing, carefully stowing things away in well-thought out spots, but by the end of the evening I end up just tossing things on the floor of the front seat. I’m sure I’ll spend the next couple days sorting through that and actually putting things away where they ‘belong’.

The most pressing project at the moment is figuring out a way to make some curtains. The windows are tinted, but (especially in a space this small) I really want some curtains. But this is my car and my little baby and I don’t want to end up with sticky stuff from the back of Velcro all over the walls and would prefer not to screw anything into them either. Hopefully I will figure it out within a day or two.

Pictures of the prius conversion have been taken and uploaded. I’ll be posting a complete run down of the process soon. I don’t have curtains yet, but that’s something I’ll be doing within a day or two. I hadn’t realized how much I really, REALLY liked having the curtains on the van. The velcro left a lot of sticky residue on the van (that I forgot to scrape off before I left, Sorry dad!) and I’d rather not have that on the prius.