Cortez

After the desert and the monuments and the canyons and the dirt roads, life went back to pavement and making tracks. We had plans to camp outside Cortez Colorado for the night, 90 minutes from the Valley of the Gods. And Layne had a date with some Mexican food which was more than my life is worth to miss. 

iOverlander, the traveler’s app opens some interesting doors from time to time and some appear to be unbelievable. Free water at a Christian mission? Go pound sand liar! 

You know how you feel optimistically stupid when you are going to ask for a favor you just know isn’t going to be granted. We had about nine gallons in our thirty gallon water tank so with more wild camping ahead it was time for a refill, and that maybe was why I pushed myself to test out the theory that there was free water for the taking! 

I saw a notice saying there is a weekly food bank here and addiction counseling too every Thursday. Oh and free water 7 am to 7pm. Well I’ll be…I guess iOverlander wasn’t lying after all. 

I saw no one and heard no one. We took our twenty odd gallons in a few minutes and loaded Rusty back up and took off. No donation box, nothing, and I’d have left some money had they suggested it. That water faucet was a lovely gesture.  

Smart tiny housing too. I’d rather see homeless in tiny houses than cluttering up the sidewalks staring off into space unemployable and unapproachable but I’m pretty much alone in that theory of better living. Seeing these homes at the mission awoke my curiosity but not enough to go knock on a door to ask intrusive questions about the homes.   

We were back  on the road in ten minutes with just a little bit more of a hurry pushing us. Layne had found a Mexican market in Cortez with interesting food and the trouble was it closed at five and Google Maps said we’d get there at 4:40 Mountain Daylight Time. No dawdling then in our 9300 pound heffalump.  

Legal dope! Yay! Except I don’t touch the stuff as it puts me to sleep and doesn’t taste as good as alcohol. More important to us was the presence of high altitude wild camping on public land. Hot summer air in the valley becomes cool sleeping weather at 8,000 feet. A different kind of high. 

Cortez is an okay little town with all the usual useful services. We got the Mexican food to go which turned out later to be  not quite as good as the reviews promised, and then we did laundry. See? Van life is like being a starving student again using public facilities and hanging out in parking lots. It’s not as romantic as some people pretend but I enjoy being a nomad.  I feel care free on the road and as I joked to another camper at the laundromat the best thing is I don’t have to fix the machines when they break. Then the wind blasted town rocking GANNET2 while I tried to put my laundry away. No washing machines  to fix but for a few minutes it looked like my home was going to be whirled away to the land of Oz in a tornado.  

We found our spot out of town on public land with the thunder head chasing us out of Cortez which was where we finally ate the rather peculiar Mexican stewed meat flavored with cinnamon. Then the rain started and hammered our little tin box. We went to bed listening to the rain and Rusty started snoring first. It had been a long day.