Monongahela National Forest

If you listen real hard to rumor mongers they’ll tell you there is no free camping, wild camping, or boondocking, whatever you want to call it, east of the Mississippi.

They are wrong and no surprise there I suppose as what some people equate to “difficult” for others comes out as “impossible.”  But if ye seek ye shall find as the good book has been insisting for thousands of years. It’s good advice as free camping is simple when you know where to look. On Google Maps the dark patches of green are often a hint indicating public land of some sort. 

Another app I use is Free Roam which doesn’t show many boondocking spots individually like iOverlander, but it does show rest areas which we sleep at very often when traveling, and it also has green and brown overlays for National Forest and Bureau of Land Management land respectively. 

And you can imagine when we finally figure out the spot Rusty gives it his seal of approval.  

Our back up camera had started acting up shortly after we got going due south, so Layne called Kip the Promaster guru back in Barberton and we ended up returning three hours for a quick lesson in radio removal from the dashboard. It’s actually quite simple prodding a spike into four holes to release the retaining clips. 

I’ve ordered a lightly used replacement on eBay for a hundred bucks and it’s scheduled to arrive at Gary’s place in Tennessee next week just to cheer him up because he likes being kind and helpful. I’m hoping a replacement will solve the problem and get us through South America with a functioning back up camera and radio. If we were staying in the US I’d just put up with the glitch till the whole thing implodes. The cost of stupidly ambitious travel! 

Meanwhile we arrived a day late at “our” spot in the national forest and thus will only get to spend one night here but we are making the most of it. 

Hot tea, sunshine, cool temperatures and my eReader. I’m as easy to please in my own way as is Rusty. Layne has been cooking up some road food and in the background we have some traffic noise from state highway 39. We’re parked on the North Fork of the Cherry River so that’s also the local name for the highway. It’s a pretty stream too at this time of year. 

I guess at other times of year it can get boisterous.

There are only three spots here but up the road iOverlander shows a forest road with several boondocking spots. We are out of season so we didn’t expect to find this place full but if it hadn’t worked out for any reason we’d have driven a couple of miles further for more choices. Back up plans are important when living and sleeping on the road! The town of Richwood:

And what roads these are in West Virginia…I-79 towards Charleston:

State Highway 39 is getting paved bit by bit so the highway tar snakes which are ribbed and extremely annoying are slowly getting covered over:

West Virginia was created by the Civil War when the western piece of the state composed of hills and valleys wanted to separate from the land owning more populated side. Happily for their leaders this plan coincided with the President’s need to keep the confederacy away from his capital so the deed was completed in two years, by June 1863. 

I think about that sleight of political hand when I drive through this beautiful but impoverished state. I am reassured when I look at the state of the contemporary nation and remember that some pretty weird shenanigans have gone down in history and the union has survived. 

The constitution requires the residents of any state to vote to split their entity and I guess in the middle of the civil war when most of the state didn’t recognize Federal authority it must have been easy to get a majority vote from those that did! 

I see grumbly residents of remote Northern California pushing for the creation of “Jefferson State” but I can’t imagine the population of say Los Angeles voting to let them go. Ownership of territory is a weird thing and people get real fussy real fast about it.

I don’t suppose West Virginia would rush to vote itself back into prosperous Virginia but when I look around I see poverty that reminds me of Belize or Chiapas and I wonder where that pride of place comes from, speaking as a nomad. The state motto is mountaineers are always free and I guess that must ring true. Not wealthy necessarily but free and freedom is a catchphrase that means everything and requires no explanation, I’m told. 

All that aside West Virginia is stunning. After a few miles of winding mountain roads through perfect lush greenery she remarked on the astonishing diversity of the countryside we’ve seen. Can’t fault her on that observation! 

It isn’t our first visit to the Mountain State but each time we see more we like. And Rusty does too. 

Trucks roll by close to our camp site but somehow they don’t bother us. The peace of the mountains forgives all sins. 

Just as well really as there’s a church hiding behind each and every tree. 

It’s not the south properly but it is the country.  Men went to war to make this state free 160 years ago so I guess it’s up to us to show our appreciation by not forgetting and enjoying what they left behind. 

We’ve done our best. 

Too bad we have to rush off to do some moochdocking in Asheville with the family. I can’t wait to come back. 

Barberton Ohio

We did a bunch of moochdocking in Chicago, Layne got around the dinner table with her cousins and I got to have lunch with Webb and we saw Ernie and Graciela, who moved from California, for the first time in years and all that stuff that nomads get to do on the road from time to time. So we took a drive and an overnight stop on the Ohio Turnpike, a splendid toll road with comfortable rest areas on our way to the Promasters Only mechanic’s shop. 

A haul out in the life of a boat is when it gets pulled up in the boatyard to get the normally underwater parts cleaned and maintained, which can be a stressful time in a sailor’s life. So it was in Barberton watching GANNET2 come apart at the seams. 

The crazy thing here is our Sunpass Pro works on toll roads just like it does in Florida - Illinois, Michigan, Ohio- and all points east in something like 18 states we just drive through like we do at home. Fantastic. 

Some of the rest areas on the Ohio Turnpike have special RV areas with electrical hookups, dump stations and water for twenty dollars a night. But all the rest areas have free showers which I find really enjoyable after a day driving. 

Barberton was founded at the end of the 19th century by an industrialist called Barber who as was usual in those days had all sorts of modern and personal ideas about how to run industries, and manage housing and workers lives in a planned city. They manufactured matches of all things and hired migrants from Eastern Europe passing through Ellis Island. Barberton grew so fast they called it Magic City. 

There are 25,000 residents in the city today and I was only slightly surprised all of them weren’t lined up at the bakery. 

I settled for a cherry Danish but there were all sorts of old world foods on offer. 

I feel pretty lucky to get GANNET2 checked out by Kip Amore. He has a reputation as a Promaster guru among van owners and I made my appointment months ago to show up here on Monday. 

With 84,000 miles under her belt the van needed a few worn parts replaced, the front brakes, the spark plugs and the various fluids. 

Kip checked the van with a computer code reader and everything came up green which cheered me up. The transmission fluid showed no wear in the gearbox, the brake rotors were like new and only the front brakes needed new pads. 

An ultra violet light showed no coolant leaks except for one loose clamp, easily fixed. A known weak point is the plastic expansion chamber above the radiator and mine showed signs of cracking do we got a new one! 

Paul, Kips assistant, installed a new starter battery for us. Most people Kip told me, wait for the battery to go bad but ours was almost four years old and I wanted to start our South American journey with no obvious weak points. We might be gone two years and forty thousand miles so I’m hoping to anticipate possible failures.  

We spent the day waiting which is a strangely tiring pastime. Kip offered us the use of his car but there wasn’t really anywhere to go in this Akron suburb. Then we got the test drive and all is well. A few more details to check this Tuesday morning in a return visit and we’ll be done. 

We caught Barberton in a good month, cool bright sunny days and crisp cold nights. There’s lots of greenery and summer feels like it’s in full swing but before long it’ll be winter. 

It’s the industrial part of the country known as the rust belt but for me it has a certain romantic charm. You see movies set in these quiet brick cities, and as I’ve never had any experience of living here so I don’t have bad memories. I don’t have any reality to match to my imaginative view of these places. 

Walking Rusty I looked around.  

And so back to the Turnpike for a shower and a rest. Ohio works me. 

How I Live Aboard

Usually the consideration of how to live in a vehicle revolves around the type of vehicle required and a great many people who ponder becoming van dwellers, voluntarily at least, ponder the machinery of this way of life. Imagine sticking this Lance 650 on the back of your four wheel drive pick up, for $35,000 you could go anywhere. 

Or if you would like to set up camp in the wilderness and drive your four by four into town for supplies you might prefer this:

Pretty cool eh? The variations are endless and in summer you’ll see a thousand identical all wheel drive Sprinter vans trundling down the highways to the hip locations, quarter million dollar machines factory built to feed the imagination of young wealthy new generation campers. You can spend a lifetime watching YouTube and going to Overland shows figuring out what you need, or want or wish you could afford. Or you can get on with it. Go to South America and buy a van for $12,000 ready to go in Chile:

Our van was designed by us to do two things, be a home and take us on the road avoiding campgrounds and plug ins most of the time. We knew our goal was Patagonia but we also knew we weren’t looking for a vehicle dedicated to just one journey. 

This meant we had to plan ahead to live and travel in places where RV facilities are rare or non existent and where repairs could at best be bodged. So we skipped hot running water, a built in toilet and complex electronics. 

We wanted a separate toilet compartment. A home isn’t a home if it doesn’t have a toilet, or worse yet if you have to pull the toilet into the middle of the living room floor to take a shit. Even married couples need time alone. And I am not going to join the composting toilet fad because it is complex and to my mind unsatisfactory. 

We put baking soda, cheap and found everywhere in the world,  in the toilet for the smell as RV fancy chemicals aren’t available in Latin America. We put our used toilet paper in a separate trash can so our chemical-free sewage can be emptied anywhere, pit toilets, public baños, cat holes without fear of ruining enzymes and cesspools and so forth. Or leaving a toilet paper trail in pristine woods. Don’t like dealing with your waste? You’ll get used to it which is easy for me to say as it doesn’t bother me at all and never has. 

RV shows will display the latest fancy inline water filters and ultra violet water cleaning systems but you better believe they don’t sell them or repair them south of the Rio Grande…

…so we use a Berkey filter which is said to be good for years and thousands of gallons. Naturally their proprietary filters were copied and sold online for a fraction of the price (and this system isn’t cheap) and smart alecs who saved money found they were cheated and sued Berkey! We carry a spare set of filters and buy purified water for our tank when we can which is always in Latin America and even Layne’s compromised immune system has had no problems. But again, it isn’t automatic and you have to be prepared to go through the steps to use it. 

In Mexico we siphon purified water but in the US we plug in our hose which is too easy.

I have become so used to traveling in GANNET2 I find myself wondering where my amenities are when I’m in a car. In the van I can make a cup of tea waiting for Layne to shop, I can use the toilet parked on a street and I do, and as we cruise the freeway my co-pilot can bring me a cold drink from the fridge or make a sandwich. With a comfortable range of 350 miles on a tank full of regular I have been known to drive half a day without stopping. Alternatively we pull over and take a nap on our queen sized bed.

I suppose the question is do I miss the roominess of a house or the convenience of unlimited instant hot running water and the answer must be obvious. The freedom from maintenance and repair, the absence of bills the ease of using a laundromat and leaving it far behind works for me. 

In my opinion the true measure of whether or not an RV is a home is when the weather turns bad and a day indoors makes you crazy or not. RV life is weather dependent it when that goes wrong your tin box has to be a capable space to live without driving you mad. So far we pass that test. 

The fashion nowadays is to describe driving in dirt as “overlanding” where I think of that term describing foreign travel. I can’t imagine living in a tent and making that home with a wife and dog. Some adventurers do it and enjoy it. To me the thing is to be on the road.  As a callow youth I took a motorcycle and a tent and went to Africa and felt like I was fully equipped. All it takes is wanting to go and the rest will follow along. The years of sitting at a desk and working overtime were all part of the plan which sees us now living debt free and saving money every month. 

I do not feel deprived.