Travels of Jori and Betsy

Mariposa Grove / Willow House

2008-04-14T03:01:00.002-07:00

So, in case you haven't figured it out yet, we're settling in the San Francisco Bay area for a while. We found a co-housing community focused on permaculture gardening called Mariposa Grove (In case you're wondering it is not a commune, just a place where people have torn down the fences between their yards and started gardening together. They have a small communal space for shared meals, meetings and socializing and many of them are in the process of buying their individual apartments as condos). We are parked in the driveway of the "Willow House" (there's a large willow in the backyard) and use their bathroom and kitchen, while continuing to use the bus as our bedroom. It's pretty warm here now, so its not a bad arrangement. Mariposa Grove is located in North Oakland (near Berkeley, where people don't get shot as much) and an easy 20 minute BART ride (the BART is like the "T" or "metro") and goes under the bay to San Francisco.

Wine Country and San Francisco

2008-03-17T14:10:00.005-07:00

Once back in good old Fairfield we were surprised to find that my Uncle Bob and Aunt Karen had turned into our own personal resident tour guides. Over the course of a few weeks we went to both Sonoma and Napa to taste at the finest vineyards, we toured great Fairfield establishments such as the Jelly-Belly and Annheiser-Busch factories (both providing free samples of their latest products). We checked out art galleries and sculptures, enjoyed fine dining (Bob's specialties of course), and were given a tour of Oakland, Berkeley, San Francisco and the Marin area. When they brought us up for a view of the bridge, Betsy and I both had the feeling of wow, we finally made it, we're in San Francisco, since this had been a major goal of the trip.

Karen and Bob have been the most wonderful, hospitable, and generous people. Letting us stay in their house for at least a month all together, and even offering up their condo for whenever we want to use it, including when Betsy's mom and sister come in to visit. Not only all that, but they are really fun people to hang out with too. We've already been back to visit since "moving out" and I'm sure we'll be back often. It's been fun to hang out with my cousin Chris and his girlfriend Katie as well. They took the ferry over to visit us in the city last weekend and we checked out Fisherman's Wharf and Haight Ashbury with them. It was alot of fun. Hopefully we'll be able to go out camping with them some time soon too, and try out Chris' new motor bike. . . if he lets us.

Whoo. So we're almost caught up with the blog. Next post, we'll tell you about the place we found to live out here and the job hunt. We need to download some pics first though. Until then, keep those comments coming. We love to read them

Mommy Nic, Daddy James, and Baby Oona

2008-03-10T13:38:00.002-07:00

After Tahoe, my Aunt and Uncle were nice enough to drop Betsy and I off at Betsy's friend, Nicole's house so we could visit with her, her husband James, and their one year old daughter, Oona, who is very, very cute and a pretty mellow baby. She's mastered crawling and is beginning to stand up. She loves hanging out at the park, playing with toys, walks in strollers, and long car rides. Thus, we did a lot of these things and generally hung out with the baby. We also got to spend alot of time with Nic and James and did fun things like go to a local brewery for beer sampling (I liked the stout), walked around a lake at a state park up in the mountains, and had lots of picnics. We spent about a week with them in Placerville before heading back to Karen and Bob's. Here are bunch of pictures of Oona and friends.

Family Fun in Snow and Sun

2008-03-01T12:06:00.009-08:00

The trip from Joshua Tree up to my Aunt Karen and Uncle Bob's house in Fairfield, CA was not very interesting or fun. We hopped from parking lot to road side rest stop for four days as I came down with the flu. Most of the time I spent huddled under the covers shivering and blowing my nose, or when we had to drive for a while, I wrapped up in Betsy's warm sleeping bag and sat in the copilots seat, trying to sleep. The most interesting part was coming through the passes in the sierras and seeing all the windmils. There were thousands of them. See, Californians are smart, they think, hmm. . . wind makes power, wind is free, wind is clean, wind doesn't cause cancer, we should have windmills and they do. Lots of 'em. The picture on the right is just one little section. When we finally arrived at Karen and Bob's it was very nice to have a non-moving bedroom in which to recover. That's pretty much all we did for the first few days we spent with them, for Betsy had come down with the dreaded Joshua Tree campers disease as well. Thus, there aren't really any pictures, cause we mostly layed around and watched golf. In the evenings we mustered up enough energy to eat one of the fabulous meals that Chef Bob created.

By the time Saturday rolled around, Betsy and I were on our feet again. Though still a bit sniffly, we were ready for the much anticipated trip up to Tahoe to meet my parents and brother for a week of skiing in the Sierras. We decided to do this trip instead of christmas presents this year, and none of us had ever skiied anywhere but New England before, so this was a special treat.

When Karen, Bob, Betsy and I arrived in Truckee in a very tightly packed car, it was beginning to lightly snow. By the time we had picked up my cousin Chris and his girlfriend Katie at the train station, gone grocery shopping, and waited for the house we were renting to be ready, there was at least a foot of white powder. Fortunately we only did one 180, and did not go off the road in the process. By the time my parents arrived in the Reno airport that night, a good three feet of snow had fallen. They wisely decided to stay in the airport motel until the next day. The next day it snowed all day as well and by the time the storm blew clear, I think four to five feet had come down. In Tahoe, they don't have plows, they have giant snowblowers.

So after the family all arrived safely and we weathered the storm, of course there was only one thing to do. . . hit the slopes. The mountains here are pretty awesome. I've never skiied places that are just so open, easily going across an entire mountain and back again before hitting the base. And that's just one mountain face out of nine at that resort. There were also a lot of bowls, which were alot of fun, and of course glade skiing is cool. Even the intermediate trails incorporated alot more trees to give you a more woodsy feel below the tree line. My only complaint was the sticky snow. It warmed up to the fifties after the storm and became quite sunny, so sometimes it was a little mash potatoey, and on one occasion, when jumping into powder, my skis stuck and I did a complete summersault, landing on my feet again. That is not an experience I've ever had in freezing cold New England. We also got to meet up with some more family. My cousin Mike just moved to Reno for a job as a resperitory therapist, and his folks were out for a visit at the same time as us, so we managed to catch up with them and do a few runs as well. Mike is a pretty extreme dude, having his own parachute and claiming domination of the mountains around him by saying, "I've done every chute here." FYI, chutes are scary, and if you mess up, you crash into rocks and then slide down a steep, icy cliff. I did one very mellow chute while in Tahoe, it was scary, but fun and I went very slow.

When we weren't skiing, because our legs would have fallen off if we skiied every day, we were finding other ways to play in the snow. Betsy, Kevin and I dug a twenty foot snow tunnel that doubled as an ice slide. Bob built snow sculptures and Chris, Dad and Kevin went on a very scenic snowmobiling trip. (does anyone else think hybrid snowmobiles are a good idea? very quiet so you don't scare wild life and fuel efficient for longer range in the woods). Anyways, I think it's safe to say we all had a blast and will remember this trip for a long time, plus we don't have a bunch of christmas junk to throw away now, and it was nice to see Kevin and the parents again. Here's some more pictures.

Hot and Cold Deserts

2008-02-15T14:56:00.001-08:00

Ahhhh Phoenix. Phoenix was nice and sunny and warm. We got to see Mary, who kindly let us park the bus and sleep in her cozy apartment, which is actually in Mesa, just outside of Phoenix. We enjoyed meals together, played cards, and generally hung out and talked. Mary was also nice enough to let us ship a new veggie oil pump to her house, which was neccesary since our old one, designed for diesel fuel, was getting warn out by all the cold, thick veggie oil we had been pumping through it.

Mary gave us a bunch of good ideas for things to do. We went hiking out in some state parks, and for a drive down a very scenic and twisty road through the Superstition Mountains, outside of Phoenix. We also went to a ghost town and of course, saw lots and lots of cactii. One day we went out looking for veggie oil and drove all the way from Mesa to downtown Phoenix, checking out all the promising restaurants along the way and back. What we found: lots of disgusting and empty veggie oil dumpsters, and several with locks on them and signs that said, "If you touch our veggie oil we'll hunt you down and kill you and your family." I guess the rendering companies are feeling the crunch of veggie oil and biodiesel fuel. So, needless to say we gots no veggie. But we did get to see a boat show, and some wakeboarders doing jumps in an elongated kiddie-pool, using a tow rope. By the way, Phoenix is the most boring city ever. Almost everything in downtown is open from Monday to Friday, and thus, it being a Saturday, eerthing was closed. The city was so dead, you didn't even need to look both ways before j-walking across a five lane road. I'm serious, and this was in their downtown district. The only thing going on was the boat show, and I've seen bigger crowds at the garden show in Durham. So for your reference. . . warm + boring = Phoenix. Eventually, our pump came and we bid a fond and grateful farewell to Mary after filtering some warm veggie oil in our new (super heavy duty hard to fit in the veggie oil cabinet, needs it's own trunk-size plastic container, but could suck a donut through a burlap sack) pump.

We drove from Phoenix and spent the night in a rest stop on our way to Joshua Tree National park in California. When we arrived at Joshua tree, we were again running pretty low on veggie oil, and thereby stalling the vehicle. (For those of you who don't care about engines / veggie oil, don't read the rest of this paragraph. For those of you who do, and peraps know diesels and are wondering, how are you getting so much air in your system and not having problems? The answer is that if we suck air up from the veggie oil tank, we can purge diesel back to the veggie oil tank for a while, thus pushing any air bubbles out of the engine and fuel lines into the veggie oil tank, and simultaneously flushing our vegie oil filter with diesel, which dissolves waxes and makes it last longer). Anyways, when we got to our campsite we had to filter more veggie oil as it was getting dark, but what's this. Our super-heavy duty, expensive pump isn't working half as well as our old worn out one. Oh no! But the next day we called the guy we bought the pump from and got the okay to put the filter on the more powerfully pressurized side of the pump (to push the oil through the filter, instead of suck it through), and low and behold, our pump rocks as much as a super heavy duty cast iron pump with a 1/2 horsepower electric engine should rock.

Anyways, Joshua tree was really neat, and a place with one of the most unique landscapes I've ever scene. We don't have any really good pictures. But the place just had all these crazy rock formations and boulders stacked on top of eachother, just randomly sticking out of he desert. And of course, Joshua trees everywhere, which we do have a picture of. It was a fun place to walk around, even though it was pretty cold and snowed one day. We also met some interesting people. The first night we had dinner with a hippy couple travelling around in an old Dolphin RV. They were nice but it was a bit strange as the girl was about twenty and the guy was about fifty. They seemed happy though, so to each his own I guess. We also hung out with a triple (as opposed to a couple) from San Diego. We had a lot of fun with them, and they were nice enough to share some drinks, food, and a campfire with us. Unfortunately they shared their germs too and got us miserably sick.

So Where Were We. . .

2008-02-06T19:37:00.000-08:00

. . . Ah yes, Santa Fe. Santa Fe is cold. We arrived in the mountainous city just in time, as we stalled the bus pulling into Beth's neighborhood. We had depleted our filtered veggie oil down too low, due to the difficulty of filtering veggie oil in the cold, and sucked up some air into the veggie oil lines. Lucky for us, the bus also runs on diesel so we switched over for the last half mile and pulled into the driveway weary and cold. Santa Fe is cold.

<--Santa Fe

Beth-->

While in Santa Fe we did many fun and adventurous things, almost all of them indoors, because Santa Fe is cold. We went indoor rockclimbing, watched Beth (remember Beth, she's Betsy's roommate from Scotland, we mentioned her several months ago in the last blog). Anyways we watched her play indoor ultimate frisby, she's very good, she can make frisbies do majical things, and she was nice enough to let us stay in her house, which was warm. Thus, we were able to filter veggie oil, because we put in her house, which was warm, and then in her bathub filled with hot water from our showers, which was very warm. So we were able to filter veggie oil, kind of, because our pump was dying, because it pumped too much veggie oil in the high dessert, which was cold. We also went hiking and it snowed pretty hard while we hiked, because we were in Santa Fe, and Santa Fe is cold. It was the bus's firs experience in the snow, I'm not sure how much it liked it. We also found some more veggie oil in Santa Fe after looking very hard all day and almost giving up and getting very cold, because, well, Santa Fe is cold.

Betsy in the snow & The bus's first snow.

By the way, Santa Fe is in the desert, in the south, in New Mexico. I don't know about you, but when I think desert of New Mexico, cold is not the first thing that comes to mind, neither is snow, which it did alot. In fact, it snowed so much, that we had to stay at Beths for an extra couple of days and her grandmother was late for her own funeral, due to the fact that it was also snowing in Chicago, where her funeral was. In addition to this unfortunate event, Betsy and I could not go to the Grand Canyon, as planned, since the Grand Canyon was officially covered in 3 feet of friggin snow, thus making it cold, and unsuitable for camping in a bus, not to mention a tiny tent.

On the Way to Phoenix (crossing the continental divide).

So we went to Phoenix, which is warm. First though, we had to cross the continental divide, which is cold, and very high, and snowy. So we did that, and the bus protested, because it doesn't like to start when it was -10 the night before, and the filter clogged and we were once again running low on filtered veggie oil, due to the fact that we were in the friggin high desert, which is cold. So we saw some cool canyons, and drove on some treacherous snowy roads and stalled several times, and eventually got to my family's friend, Mary's house, just outside of Phenix, which is warm. And it was very nice to finally be warm.

The Cold Wet Desert

2008-01-29T11:23:00.002-08:00

It seems like a long time ago that we arrived back in Texas and made the journey from San Antonio south to Mission to reunite with our bus. Upon our return we finally met Bob and Dorothy, who had previously only been characters in many stories told by Judy and Bert of St. Louis and Kathy and Roy, who we got to know a bit during our previous visit to Mission. Bob and Dorothy took us in like we were their grandchildren. Bob showed us how to change the oil in the bus and gave us some helpful tips about maintenance and Dorothy made sure we were very well fed. One night we went to watch them square dance and found ourselves in a room of at least one hundred retirees who all made the confusing choreography look easy. If Jori and I had tried to participate we would have tangled up the entire square in a matter of moments, but it looked like a lot of fun.

We were a bit sad to leave Dorothy and Bob and the rest of the friendly people we met at Valle del Sol behind, but were excited to hit the road again. Over the next few days we drove North West, following the Rio Grand. As we went we got more and more out into the middle of nothingness. Occasionally, if watching closely you spot a small RV parked out in the middle of the vast openness, sometimes it has a few cars surrounding it. There are usually not electric lines running to it. If you keep driving for another hundred miles you might come to a small town, often many of the houses and buildings are boarded up. Some of them are ghost towns in the making, maybe some will someday make a come back.

After a lot of driving we arrived at Big Bend National Park, where we met a friendly ranger named Jim, who later showed us his solar panels, wind mill, and the house he is building out of paper crete, a material that resembles concrete, but is remarkably light when you pick it up and is supposed to be great at insulating. Around the time we arrived at Big Bend, a cold front hit Texas and the nights became freezing cold. It was down in the teens a few times, but warmed up enough in the day to make for good hiking. While hiking and driving in Big Bend we saw a lot of deer, a black bear climbing the side of a mountain (Jori was the first to point out that the bear went over the mountain), some javelinas (pigs), and several roadrunners, among other birds. As it is winter and most snakes are hanging out in their dens we avoided any encounters with rattle snakes, though they are supposed to be quite common in the summer months.

During the recent weeks we’ve also learned a few things about veggie oil and our particular system. The first is that if you purge (run off diesel while returning the fuel not burned by the engine to the veggie oil tank) too long when your veggie tank is full you wind up with a most unpleasant mixture of diesel and veggie oil spurting out the top of the tank. The second is that veggie oil expands considerably when you heat it up from being cold (obvious, right). We spent several rather chilly nights sleeping with the doors and windows open as diesel is a difficult smell to get rid of. We eventually managed to eradicate it by flushing hot water and simple green under the veggie tank while parked on a slant so that it would all run out the back of the bus. We have driven over 6,000 miles on veggie oil at this point and are thankful that this is the worst thing that has happened to the bus. Sometime we’ll have to write a bit about our adventures dumpster diving for veggie oil and the art of finding unsuspecting grease dumpsters.

Moving on from Big Bend and veggie oil spills, but unfortunately not the cold nights, we drove north and spent a few days staying with Trevor and Emile parked near the dome they are in the process of building. We met Trevor at a restaurant he was playing at when we stopped in to get out of the cold for a few hours. We discovered that while there are no lines for electricity, you can get Netflix in the desert and spent an evening watching the Simpson’s movie in a metal storage container that serves as a place out of the wind until they finish the dome. The comings and goings of the sun tend to be pretty fantastic in the desert.

When we left Trevor and Emile behind we continued to head north, stopping in Alpine to get the tie rods and a few bushings replaced and to do some laundry. We drove through the Guadalupe Mountains and stopped to take a hike through a canyon before driving towards Carlsbad Caverns. At the caverns we walked a mile down a paved path of switch backs that descends 700 feet into the Earth before opening up into the “Big Room.” The whole cave is filled with stalactites, which hang from the ceiling, stalagmites, which rise up from the floor, and columns, formed when the two join together, along with numerous other interesting features. The pictures, like with so many other places, don’t really do it justice. In this case enlarging , however, enlarging the photo should help. Being in the cave was like visiting another world.
Right now we’re in Santa Fe staying with a friend I met in Scotland. It’s been a few years since I’ve seen her and it’s nice to catch up. Hope all is well with all of you.

South of the Border (Way South)

2007-12-15T07:42:00.000-08:00

So after our 17 hour refridgerated bus ride, we pulled in to Veracruz, and noticed that this part of Mexico was quite warm, which was nice. However, we also decided that we hadn't been on busses nearly enough recently, so we decided to book another overnight bus down to San Cristobal de las Casas, in Chiapas, for that evening. With about ten hours to kill, we went to wander about the port city of Veracruz. There were street performers, live concert bands, traditional dancing, a long pier, pretty architecture and lots of bright lights. This was very entertaining until Betsy started getting a migraine, and there was no place quiet to go. Eventually we were able to get on our bus to San Cristobal, where we both promptly fell asleep in a reasonably temperatured climate.

The next morning we awoke in San Cristobal and found ourselves over 2000 meters (6000 feet) higher in elevation. We spent just over a week staying with a local family, taking some much needed Spanish classes, and wandering around the town and it's markets. One afternoon we visited Chamula, a small town even further up in the mountians than San Cristobal that is home to a large indigenous population. While in San Cristobal we also got to witness some of the festivities associated with the celebration of the Virgin de Guadalupe which include lots of traditional costume, music and dancing, and setting off of lots of fire crackers at all hours. At the end of the week, with our Spanish speaking abilities much improved, we decided to visit Tonola, a small town near the Pacific coast in southern Mexcio.

A Mexican family we met in Texas (remember them?) had family in Tonola that offered to let us stay for a few days and we figured that there is no better way to practice a language than surrounding yourself with people who speak it and no English...and so off we went. We had a wonderful time and stumbled through many conversations and introductions entirely in Spanish. We went to the beach a few times (and later found out that there are a lot of great white sharks off the coast near Tonola), visited Carlos' ranch for a tour on horseback, and spent an evening meeting some other members of the family.

After a few days in Tonola we headed back up into the moutians to visit the Mayan ruins of Palanque. The excavated ruins span several acres and you can still walk in/up most of them. They are surrounded by jungle and we were lucky enough to see and hear some howler monkeys while we were there. The ruins were one of the most amazing things we've seen in our travels.

From Palanque we headed for the coast of the Yucatan Penisula and spent several nights in a little cabana on the beach in a popular tourist town called Tulum. We went swimming, swung in the hanging beds along the beach, cooked and hung out around campfires at night, and met a bunch of traveling students from all over the place during our time there. We also visited some more Mayan ruins that were a bit less impressive and much more crowded than those of Palanque. They did, however, have a nice beach. From Tulum we traveled to Cancun and spent a couple of nights in a hostel before flying home to NH for the holidays.

The Long Road to Texas

2007-11-25T09:48:00.000-08:00

Well, after spending a wonderful week in New Orleans with Faithe, Woody and the dogs we decided to make haste and get to the tip of Texas in time for Thanksgiving, so that we could head into Mexico the next day and have a little more than three full weeks south of the border. Thus, we filled our tanks with po-boy veggie oil and set off, managing to drive almost 800 miles in just under three days along the Gulf Coast of Texas. We spent a night in a state park and a Wal-mart parking lot (no we didn't buy anything from them), before pulling up to El Valle del Sol rv park. Getting veggie oil in Texas proved to be quite difficult, most likely due to the prevalence of bio-diesel production in this area. Good for the environment, bad for hippies trying to save money. Anyways, we spent way too much time looking for decent oil dumpsters and were quite sick of the whole thing by the time we found a couple of good sources. We finally ended up getting about 45 gallons of good looking oil from a chinese buffet. We did however have to pay the restaurant manager $10.00, because the people who regularly emptied his dumpster had begun paying him this amount every time they came to suck it dry. We obliged and snickered at having to pay 20 cents a gallon for fuel, the first time in 4,000 miles we have paid anything for used veggie oil.
Interestingly enough, when we finally arrived at the RV park, it turned out to be a community for "winter texans," mid-western retirees who drive down to southern Texas for the cold months. Erma, the manager, set us up with a nice little place to park our bus at a reasonable rate, and we were even able to make use of the pool and hot tub in the warm Texas sun. The next day we were invited to Thanksgiving dinner with a few hundred of the winter texans. It was like having a holiday with 200 grandparents, which of course, was awesome. It would have been a very lonely Turkey-day in the little blue bus, otherwise. We also ended up having a description of our journey and veggie-bus announced part way through the dinner, so of course there were many interesting questions and conversations after dinner since most of these retirees travelled in huge diesel camper rigs.
As Friday came around, the 90 degree Texas sun decided to hide and allow a chilly 40 degree rain to fall and freeze us, so that we would appreciate the fact that we would be in Mexico for December. During this dreary drizzle we had some unexpected guests drop by the bus. It seems that word had spread around this largely mexican community that there were a couple of kids planning to go down to Chiapas. One local family, made up of Rosie, her husband Jesus, and their son Joshua (don't forget the "J's" are pronounced "H") were so overcome by joy that we were visiting their home that they decided to drop by and let us practice our horrible spanish with them. Before we knew it, Rosie had called her brother in Tonola, Chiapas and gotten the okay from him for us to come down and visit. Also, Josh, who spoke excellent english with absolutely no accent gave us a ride to the bank and then the bus station, where we hopped a crowded shuttle to Reynosa, Mexico, an large industrial city just across the border from Mission, Texas. This family was so nice, we can't wait to see them when we get back to Texas.
Once in Reynosa we had a long wait in a cold bus station for the next bus to Veracruz. We met several nice spanish speaking people, and Betsy practiced her conversation skills, all the while wishing she had a better teacher in college. After 4-5 hours we finally got on our bus, only to find that they had the air conditioning cranked and the bus was even colder than the freezing cold bus station. Thank god we we heading south, because the first several hours of that bus ride sent us into states of hypothermia. Betsy was quite literally curled up in a ball whimpering about how she couldn't feel her feet. After a few hours of this, the outside temperature finally warmed up enough that we were able to stop shivering and fall asleep.

To Chuck and Lynn

2007-11-18T09:12:00.001-08:00

Hi Farm Family-
We've been trying to send you emails rather unsuccessfully for the last couple of weeks. We are both very sad to hear about Spike and hope that Gigi has had a quick recovery. What a Hope that the last few weeks have brought you better things. It must be getting rather quiet around the farm as winter approaches. Let us know if you decide to come join us on the road!!

To the flooded jazz land: New Orleans

2007-11-17T18:31:00.000-08:00

Betsy and I wandered further down South, via Missouri and Arkansas’ Ozark mountains. It was pretty dry so their magnificent gorge rivers were low, and the waterfalls were mere trickles, but the mountains, caves and river cliffs were all fantastic. A lot of locals were admiring the nice fall “colors” of browns and yellows; it was pretty, but nothing in comparison to our bonfire of colors in NH. After a few very cold nights in the Ozarks we ended up at the First Eden Baptist Church in Arkansas. We got permission to stay the night from a local parishioner and reaffirmed our permission later when the local sheriffs stopped by for a visit. In the morning we went to the worship service and were greeted by the church-folk with open arms, some real southern hospitality, almost everyone in the church came up and introduced him/herself and shook our hands. They were all quite nice. After a sermon about there being no room for common sense and reason in the Gospel, we were heading further south again (with a minor hornet skirmish just before departure).

The next day proved adventurous. We headed through the northwest corner of Mississippi on our way towards the toe of Louisiana’s boot, New Orleans. Along the way we met some nice folks at restaurants and discussed how veggie oil is pretty cool when diesel prices are at $3.30/gallon. We filled up our tank and reserves on veggie oil from a fried chicken place and drove for several hours, settling down for the night in a National Wildlife Reserve in the bayou of Mississippi. Around ten o’clock we met the park manager, and he told us we couldn’t camp there for the night (the first time this has happened all trip), so we headed out to find another temporary abode. There was a campsite about 15-20 miles away on another highway, so we decided to take a cross road to that highway. The road started out nice enough, and then we started going over some rather rickety bridges, soon enough the pavement turned into a two lane dirt road with some washboards. This twisted through the dark Mississippi woods, past some older shack looking buildings with lots of stuff in the overgrown yards. Eventually the two lane road turned into a one lane road with lots of pot holes and the houses started looking more run down and dark. Scenes from Deliverance and other prejudices about the Deep South swamps crept into our minds as the road started getting rutted and rather affected by erosion. Right around the time that Betsy, who was looking at the map, told us we were heading into a swamp we saw an orange sign signifying that the road was closed. We were only two miles from the highway we wanted to go to, but we had to turn the bus around on the narrow swamp road, being careful not to get caught in the mud on both sides. Otherwise we would have been in a position requiring us to hike through the bayou to go ask for help from one of the unknown creatures living in the shacks (probably very nice people, especially during the light of day). So we eventually made our way all the way back down the dirt path to the dirt road, over the rickety bridges and back onto the highway where we drove around for quite a while more (on paved roads) before finding a nice quiet, well-lit downtown to park the bus in for the night. Needless to say, we’re glad that this doesn’t happen every night.

After the night in bayou hell we made it to New Orleans and the comfort of a rustic little house belonging to my friend Faithe and her friend Woody. Since then we’ve done all the touristy stuff, gone to see some good jazz music, wandered around the French Quarter drinking cheap beer from plastic cups while skirting around drunkards, con-men and scantily clad woman. We’ve had some beignets from Café du Monde and strolled along the Mississippi. New Orleans is slowly recovering after Katrina, mostly due to the tourist district and Tulane coming back on line so quickly. Everywhere you look construction is going on, mostly done by hard working illegal immigrants, who are basically the workforce responsible for rebuilding the city. The return of the St. Charles street car has given a sense of normalcy back to the Big Easy, but all is still not well. The street car only runs halfway down the garden district, after that you have to catch a bus. Many families have moved out of the city, in fact the population is half what it was pre-Katrina. Many who have returned are young people who cannot find jobs in the recovering economy; as a result crime is worse than it has been in a while. East New Orleans was completely decimated by the flood, 19 out of 20 houses were simply bulldozed after the storm. Two years later, perhaps 3 of every 20 houses are there, most people have not bothered to return and rebuild. And why should they, the levees and pump systems are back on line but there is no plan to make them stronger or better. Another hurricane could fill New Orleans up for a second time. There are several signs and protesters around the city shouting out “Make levees, not war.” One wonders what would happen to the future of this city should it be wiped out again.

From here we head on to Texas to store the bus, and then to southern Mexico for a few weeks. We won’t be bringing the computer, so we probably won’t be updating the blog a whole lot, but we’ll still check e-mail occasionally, so keep in touch everyone. We’ll be home on Dec. 15th for Christmas, so hope to see some of you then. In the meantime, we love you all, and don’t worry, we’ll be safe.

Further Down the Mississippi

2007-11-05T09:14:00.000-08:00

The title for this blog is a bit misleading as we spent most of the drive between Chicago and St. Louis along the banks of the Illinois River and joined up with the Mississippi shortly before jumping across it (not literally of course- our bus is not much of a jumper) to enter the city. As it's gotten a bit colder the biggest challenge with veggie oil hasn't been acquiring it, but rather getting it warm enough that we can pump it through our filter without blowing our pump's fuse. We've had enough sunny weather that we can usually just let our oil do a bit of sun bathing before filtering. In between visits with family, friends, and friends of the two we still spend some nights parked just the two of us and the bus. Jori cooked us some dinner on the coleman inside the bus one chilly evening. We usually eat right out of the pot to save cleaning additional dishes when we don't have easy access to water or even sometimes when we do.

Right now we're preparing to leave St. Louis after spending several nights in the secured parking lot of Judy and Bert's apartment complex. Judyand Bert lent us their bikes for a few days and that has been our main mode for exporing the city. (Rat- I've thought of you may times in the last several days as we've visited familiar places.) We visited the botanical gardens, a sculpture park, the art museum, and the Arch.

We also spent a day at a place called the City Museum, which is like a giant playground for adults. It is four stories (inside and outside of the building) of caves, slides, tunnels, ball pits, and any number of other things that you can climb, swing, or slide on. You can climb four stories up through wire tunnels, tubes, and occasional stairs to the cockpit of an airplane and then climb higher to slide down a few stories. Needless to say, this is probably not the best place for those

afraid of heights or small spaces.

Into The Windy City

2007-10-28T09:34:00.000-07:00

After saying our goodbyes to the Michigan Argues, we drove for at least an hour and a half (haha) before stopping in Ann Arbor to drop by the Black Elk Co-op, a big house inhabited by just over 20 environmentally/politcally minded vegetarians who share chores, meals, the cost of living, and ideas. We ended up spending a few days wandering around Ann Arbor and hanging out at the coop. Special thanks to Kevin who made sure that we made it to the best live music around during our stay.

From Ann Arbor we headed west toward Lake Michigan. We did a bit of hiking in the woods of a local park and discovered a vine hanging from the branches of a great old tree. It dangled about 75 feet down, all the way to the forest floor. We spent the next half an hour swinging on it before heading back to the bus to make bean burritos and then venturing off in search of a place to watch the first World Series game.

The following day we visited Warren Dunes State Park where we climbed some dunes (who knew Michigan had sand dunes??) and took a brief stroll along the coast of Lake Michigan before heading to Chicago. Chicago is the first big city we've stayed over night in with the bus. Finding a suitable place to park it, where we would not get towed away while sleeping was a bit of a challenge. With a bit of advice from a local "meter maid" we managed to find a place to pull in just a few miles from downtown and quite near to a metro line.

We've done a bunch of wandering around the city over the last few days to see sites like the Sears Tower, Millenium Park and all of its sculptures and gardens, and the Navy Pier. Halloween celebrations have been in full swing and we've noticed some crazy costumes, and been able to hear some scary stories from an assortment of story tellers. We also decided to celebrate our 3rd Anniversary by enjoying some of the deep dish pizza Chicago is famous for.

Niagra Falls: Slowly I Turn

2007-10-20T06:45:00.000-07:00

After a spending a week w/ Mikey and Sara we headed off for Niagara Falls. We had a bus full of clean laundry and crossed the border into Canada after reassuring them that we weren't harboring any firewood cleverly stashed away in our little blue bus. It was my first visit to "The Falls" and I have to say, they're pretty impressive. We wandered around the waters edge and surrounding sprawl for much of the day and went into the casino to watch the poker and black jack players. We walked back by the falls in the evening to see the lights and caught the first Red Sox vs. Cleveland playoff game in a local bar before driving the bus into a near by nature park to spend the night. We've been spectacularly lucky when looking for places to camp and haven't had any 3 am wake up calls from the local police telling us to move on. Hopefully this trend will continue as we head south.

From Niagara Falls we stopped by the Butterfly Conservatory before driving west through Ontario and spending a few nights on or near Lake Erie. We took some wonderful walks along the shores and had a driftwood fire on the beach one evening. In Port Dover we met Vince Rossi, owner of Rossi's Place and fellow veggie oil-ite. He was kind enough to share some of his already filtered oil as well as some tea, coffee, pie, and conversation with us. We had a bit of delay coming back over the border as the guards brought the dogs aboard the bus to sniff it out. They were even kind enough to leave an abundance of hair scattered about the bus.

We've spent the last several days visiting with Shelia, Dan, Elizabeth, James, and Joey (of the Argue clan) who live in a quiet neighborhood about an hour from Detroit. One of our main activities here has been eating, though we have ventured out to do some bike riding, exploring, and site seeing at the zoo. We're about to pick up some pizza and settle in to watch the Sox game. Tomorrow we'll say hi to Elliot, back from Notre Dame to visit, and then start heading

towards Chicago. Hope all is well for all of you in the non-vagabond world.

Circle B to Mikey's

2007-10-07T11:05:00.000-07:00

After leaving Circle B, we finally made it to wine country and tried some tasty organic wines, some of which are flavored with Chuck and Lynn’s pears and apples. We continued down Seneca Lake to Watkins Glenn State Park and actually spent $19.75 on our nights stay. We have been travelling for over two weeks and this was the only time we have had to pay for a place to stay. It’s amazing how hospitable and generous people have been on this trip. Americans really are nice people. The next morning we checked out Watkins Glen Gorge and its many waterfalls, tunnels, and pathways. We had a picnic in the park and then went to a natural food store to get soap and laundry detergent. Jyll, who runs “Good Grocceries,” runs her VW off of veggie oil, so she told us where to get some. We went and sucked up 3-4 gallon, but blew the fuse on our pump a few times because the oil was too cold. Fortunately we had filled up pretty close to capacity at one of the vineyard’s restaurants the day before.

(Betsy on a bridge in Watkin's Glen Gorge)

We left Watkins Glen around 5pm and drove three hours (quite a stint for us given the slow paced tone of our trip thus far) to get to Betsy’s friend Mikey’s house. He lives in Orchard Park, which is right outside of Buffalo. Betsy lived with Mikey in Scotland four years ago when they were both doing a semester abroad at Findhorn, an intentional community in Scottland. Mikey was out celebrating his younger sister’s 21st birthday in Buffalo when we arrived, but encouraged us to make ourselves at home. We made some dinner and drank some wonderful white wine given to us by Ron. Mikey’s friend Dave and his older sister Sarah came home and we had a fire before heading to bed. Mikey lives in a beautiful farm house that overlooks Buffalo, so you can see all the lights of the city from their living room, and on a clear day you can see the mists of Niagra falls.

The next day we went swimming at this really cool waterfall with Sarah and her dog Sasha. The water was surprisingly warm for October and it was a beautiful day (it’s a bit freaky how warm it still is, but it makes traveling much easier and more enjoyable). We jumped off the water fall and slid down the rocks for a while and then dried of in the sun. After we were back home for a while, Mikey arrived with his younger sister Becca and a bunch of food, including lobster. We made some dinner and an exhausted Mikey promptly fell asleep. We feasted on delicious eggplant parmesan and then followed Mikey’s example.

(Betsy going for a slide)

Saturday we awoke early and went with Mikey and Sarah to their friend Dave’s bakery. We helped bag and label the fresh bread he had been cooking all night (we may have eaten a bite or two here and there) and then brought it to the farmer’s market in downtown Buffalo and helped to sell it. It rained for the first time in days while we were at the market, resulting in a small amount of chaos with the bread and what to do with it. We eventually got everything sorted out and headed back home for a nap, a walk, and an awesome dinner, including homemade pumpkin pie made from a pumpkin from the Circle B farm. We went to bed pretty late after a pretty awesome day. (Mikey and Jori enjoying some pumpkin pie)

Today we spent the morning sleeping in a bit, planting ginseng seeds with Mikey, and mowing his field in preparation for the football game we will be having this afternoon. The sun is back out after a wicked thunder and lightning storm last night (which is quite an experience in the bus). Fortunately our roof hatch did not leak very much this time. Hopefully we will have an injury-free football game and everyone will have a good time. We will probably be heading out tomorrow or Tuesday to go to Niagara Falls and head into Ontario on our way to see my Uncle Dan and Aunt Sheila and their kids in Michigan. It’s funny; I told Dan that we’d be there in about a week, nine days ago. We have definitely been taking our time going through NY, but there’s really no need to hurry or anywhere to be. It’s nice to have a flexible schedule, because then you don’t miss out on experiences or meeting cool people, due to feeling pressured by time. Also, we don’t have to try to get veggie oil constantly since we’re not burning ten or twenty gallons each day.

Anyways we want you all to know that we love you and we appreciate so much everything everyone has done to help us before we left and while we travel. All the good wishes have definitely been following us on our travels. I have said it before, and it is still true: if everyone was as blessed to have friends and family like us, world peace would be attainable and brotherhood of mankind would be a reality. Thank you all for everything you have done for us, we are some of the luckiest people on earth. (sorry for the sapiness)

Until next time, lots of love,

-Jori & Betsy

Goshen to Circle B Organic Farm

2007-10-02T10:01:00.000-07:00

So here's our first blog entry on the road. We haven't had prolonged Internet access, so we've taken a bit longer than we would have hoped to post it. We started our journey on the first day of fall, heading to Anne and Bill's house in Unity to pick up some veggie oil they had snagged from the dump for us. When we arrived it had been warming up in the sun so we were able to filter about four "cubies" worth (almost 20 gallons), which gave us an 80 gallon supply to leave with on our trip. After some goodbyes, we headed up to the Great North Woods of New Hampshire to meet our good friends Mike and Jen at the Deer Mountain Campground. It was a long drive up in the dark and we almost hit a doe on Route 3 that ran out in front of the bus, but an alert Betsy stomped on or newly fixed breaks (thanks Kevin) and avoided her, literally, by inches. We arrived late at the campground, where Mike and Jen (and fred) awaited with fire lit. After stoking the fire and enjoying some burgers and burnt squash cooked on the coals and some nice company from our fellow campers, we retired to the bus, which has the comfiest bed we've slept on in years.

The next morning we awoke to the brilliant colors of fall in New Hampshire. (Betsy and I were quite excited to enjoy a little bit of early New England foliage in Northern NH, VT, and NY's Adirondacks during the first week of our trip). We bode farewell to our friends, trying to grasp the weirdness of not knowing when we would see them next. We spent the day walking around on the quiet paths and dirt roads around the camping area, hoping to spot a moose (with no luck) and marveling at how small the Connecticut River is up there. After the rain chased us back to our campsite, we cooked dinner on our little camping stove, made a small smoky fire, and went to bed early.

In the morning, after cleaning and packing up, we gathered some water from a nearby spring and headed back down Rte 3. We stopped at one of the Connecticut Lakes and walked around on the rocky shore, admiring the colors of the mountains. After that we headed into Northern Vermont, spent the night at a wayside outside of Newport, and then continued on towards Lake Champlain. We checked out a few potential camp areas and went swimming in the Lake before finding a very peaceful and beautiful spot on Isle LaMotte. We stayed two nights at St. Anne’s Shrine, in their camping area and ended up not having to pay. We volunteered a little the morning we left by helping Louisette (this wonderfully nice French-Canadian woman who gave us some veggies from her garden) chop up a bunch of squash (including a 25lb. Blue Albert from her garden). While on the Island we saw some ancient fossils at a quarry and hung out on the quiet beach near the shrine. We made our first veggie oil score at a golf club just off the island.

The next few days were spent in the Adirondacks of New York. We have spent way more time in NY than we thought we would, but we keep finding cool places to go, and meeting really interesting, nice people. In the Adirondacks, we parked our bus on trail heads at night, and went hiking, checked out the awesome scenery, and gathered veggie oil during the day. So far our pump and filter system works alright as long as the oil is warm. Otherwise the pump will blow its fuse trying to push the viscous oil though the filter. We’ve only had to change the pump filter once, and that was after it filtered about 900 miles worth of veggie oil, and we’re still running on our original primary filter (the one hooked up to the veggie oil tank that’s wrapped in copper piping), which has over 1500 miles on it. Our only problem was when we accidentally overflowed our tank trying to flush out the veggie oil lines with diesel. There was a small geyser coming out of our tank’s vent, but we sopped most of it up, and the bus doesn’t reek of diesel anymore (we had to sleep with the veggie oil door open for a few nights to let it air out). We have talked to quite a few people about the pros and cons associated with veggie oil, and are waiting to hear that Bob and Lynn, who were kind enough to share their campfire with us one night, have purchased their own school bus.

(Our first major veggie oil score):

After the Adirondacks we ended up spending a night out in the country of New York in a rural pub called the Hayloft. We spent the evening chatting with the Hayloft family and managed to sleep through a late night pub brawl. As recommended by the owners of the Hayloft, we headed toward the Seneca Lake wine country the next day. Along the way we stopped at the Circle B Organic Farm in Lyons, New York to buy some apples and eggs. Three nights later we pulled out of the farm’s drivewayafter getting to know Chuck and Lynn Brucato, Lynn’s mother Jeanette, and all their cats, dogs, horse, goats, cows, and chickens. We got a full tour of the farm, ate a bunch of apples and home cooked meals (including seafood chowder with Maine lobster in it), watched a bin of apples get pressed into 62 gallons of cider, Betsy rode Lynn’s horse, we milked a goat, got licked by a bull, picked pints of raspberries, went swimming, collected eggs from the chickens, helped pack apples, and got a sense of the challenges associated with running an organic farm. I think I can safely say that Chuck, Lynn, and Jeanette have shown us the greatest amount of hospitality, kindness, and companionship thus far on the trip. I hope we get to see them again some day.

(Chuck & Lynn w/ us at Circle B Organic Farm):

Moedown

2007-09-12T06:11:00.001-07:00

After a lot more working on the bus than we originally thought we'd need to do, we finally took our first voyage on Labor Day weekend. We had a few hitches on the way over while trying to devise a method of getting veggie oil into our veggie tank and eventually ended up in a parking lot in Manchester, VT with a three-foot piece of hose attached to the end of a funnel and a cubie (the large plastic container veggie oil often comes in). Jori especially was relieved to have a full tank. After roughly 330 miles of road and 27 gallons of fry oil we made it to Moedown held in Turin, NY.

Moedown is essentially a big party. Everyone gets together for three days and nights of music, dancing, camping, frisbee playing, etc. Among the bands we heard were: Strangefolk, Medeski,Martin, Wood ,and Schofield, Perry Farrel (formerly of Janes Addiction and a rather interesting character), Meat Puppets, Moon Boot Lover, and of course Moe. We had a great time and were happy to return to our bus and get warm each night after the music.

The trip home was pleasantly uneventful and the route offered exactly the sort of scenic drive that we hope to be doing lots of on our trip. We stopped at a few restaurants along the way in attempt to gather some oil and discovered that they all save it for someone already. This confirmed some of our suspicions that the veggie oil thing may have caught on a bit since we started discussing this trip a couple of years ago. We might have to be a bit more creative and spend a bit more time looking for fuel....or maybe we'll just start selling french fries out the side door of the bus!!

Workin' on the Bus

2007-08-28T14:06:00.000-07:00

We're still working!! Converting our bus from a rusty, yellow, student-toting, deisel into a blue camper with a bed, emergency hatch that doesn't leak, and veggie oil fuel system has taken a bit longer than we first expected. This was mainly due to the painting process, though not the actual painting itself, which we did in one long day. It was the rust grinding, fiberglassing, bondoing, sticker pealing and scrubbing, sanding, resanding, washing, masking, removing of grills, lights, mud flaps, reflectors, etc. that occupied us for most of July. We've also been working on a bunch of smaller projects like building and intsalling a bed and cabinets, making screens for the windows, rigging the tank up for the veggie oil, and installing door locks.

We just spent a day and a half with a mechanic who helped us complete the veggie oil conversion and he introduced us to everyone at D'Acres, a beautiful organic farm run by a group of people who were kind enough to share their campfire and sleeping accomodations with us for a night. The conversion was on of the last projects we needed to complete before takingoff. We should be headed out on our voyage within the week.

Check out some of the pictures below.

The bus in it's original form:

Working on the bus:

The Bus ready for traveling: