December 3rd, 2024
It is cold here in Boise. Really cold. Thanksgiving with the family was great, but I have a house on wheels for a reason. Time to use it!
The plan is to head to Lake Mead in Nevada, just east of Las Vegas, and basically just spend some time alone with God. This is going to be a fairly short trip. Christmas is right around the corner and I want to spend it with my family in Boise… so the goal here is to find some nice weather and let God show me around some of this beautiful Earth He has given us to enjoy.
It always feels good to get back on the road… something activates inside of me when I embark on a new adventure. I was never really like this during most of my life. Throughout my young adulthood, I tended to be a bit of a homebody. Much of this may have been due to my alcoholism that was constantly hamstringing me in place, unable to drive… but regardless, I often found myself at home. Things were different in my childhood. Adventure was everything. On the weekends, after a bowl of cereal and morning cartoons, I would leave the house and not return until dinner time. My friends and I explored every inch of our neighborhood and surrounding areas… always venturing further and further away from home seeking the unknown.
At some point in my teen years, I lost that. I still find myself searching my heart with God trying to root out the moment it happened, and I may never know. But at some point something inside me changed. I became lazy and self conscious… jealous and judgmental… isolated and fearful. I allowed myself to grow fat and angry. I still functioned well in society, and I had many friends… but as I look back on my behavior I see so many failures. Arguments with friends would be used to end friendships with no chance of reconciliation. Unfair judgements led to pointless power struggles. Isolation became preferred over fellowship. Something inside me was hurting, badly. I did my best to hide it from everyone, and mostly successfully at that.
Despite my depression I still found myself socially active with a good group of friends, but something inside was always off. In college, I found relief in alcohol. It was like a magic potion that took all the pain away… but I didn’t realize it was slowly taking everything else away as well. All of my desires and passions began to slip away as the years went by. Eventually I found myself alone with a bottle trying to race the clock to the grave.
When God saved me, He didn’t just save me from death… He gave me life. Life beyond anything I ever had before. I remember the moment I realized I could have it all back. I was sitting in my apartment one evening about two weeks after taking my last drink. My phone dinged on the table next to me as I received a text message from my neighbor downstairs. His girlfriend was stuck stranded at a bar on the edge of town with a car that wouldn’t start. My neighbor had been drinking and was unable to drive to pick her up, so he asked me for a ride to her location. My first instinct was to say “No” because, by now, I was used to being drunk by this point in the evening and able to drive myself. It hit me like a lightening bolt… Yes… Yes I can give you a ride out there! I can do that! It was at that moment that I realized the chains around my legs had been broken. I was no longer going to be sick every morning, and crippled in the evening. The possibilities began rushing in and life suddenly seemed much more tangible and exciting. That’s when desires long dead began to reawaken inside of me.
So anyways, yeah, I was excited to get back on the road and see where it took me. The way down south to Lake Mead is a long drive, over 600 miles. I am not the biggest fan of driving all day, especially not in a 30ft long RV. It’s a bit stressful. You can’t really ever relax when driving one of these things (ask my Dad about that). That being the case, I typically like to move very slowly to any given destination… no more than 200 miles in a day if I can help it.
Using one of my apps, I found a large parking lot located in Wells Nevada where I could camp out over night for free. Wells is a little over 200 miles away from Boise so that makes for a reasonably short trip. The parking lot is nothing special, it sits across the street from a casino near the freeway and acts as a catch all for truckers and RVer alike to park and rest for the night. I would much prefer a campsite, but it doesn’t really make much sense to travel way off the path for a spot to camp for just one night… and with how cold it was here, one night was going to be all I could handle. I used about 1/4 of my 14 gallon propane tank that night battling the bitter 18 degree temperature outside trying to make its way in.
The next day I got up early to continue south through Ely toward Las Vegas. Lake Mead was still around 450 miles away… much further than I wanted to travel in a single day. Unfortunately, I couldn’t really find any good stops near the halfway point to stop and camp. The best solution I found was a tiny dirt patch that acted as a rest stop near the junction of highway 318, 375 and I93. It was kindof a bummer, where’s the adventure in camping right next to the highway over and over? I suppose I could have checked into an RV park, but that’s just not my bag. Ultimately, the rest stop was better than nothing so I made my way there.
The poorly maintained roads in Nevada on highway 318 are not great in an 18,000 pound RV. It’s pretty much white knuckle the whole way as the impossibly straight road bumps and rumbles the entire coach for hours on end. Eventually the miles whittled away as the navigation alerted me to my ever nearing destination. As I pulled into the spot my heart immediately sank. It wasn’t all the bad, but it was literally just a dirt patch between a few highways meeting. There were no redeeming qualities… not even a bathroom. This is not what I had in mind for this trip at all. What was I even doing out here? I spent a fortune in gas money to leave a comfortable bed in a warm house to come camp in a dirt lot between highways? Am I crazy? God why did you bring me out here?
I was then that I got that good old feeling, the pull. Open up your super secret maps app from Wayne and check one more time. So I did… and there it was. 15 miles away. A state park just south of Alamo with free camping and half a dozen sites right next to Lake Pahranagat. The long washboard road into the park camping area was threatening to rattle my coach to pieces, but it was all worth it when I finally found my stop.
Now this was more like it. Beautiful views, cool clear water, and sandy beaches perfect for dog’s who love frizbee. I decided to post up here for a few days and just relax and explore. It was very peaceful, there were no bugs around this time of year… nothing even remotely like what I was dealing with during the summer in central Idaho. The temperatures were near perfect with just a slight chill during a few days in the mid-60’s. The lake had a well groomed path that ran 3 miles around it… perfect for my morning run and afternoon Danny walk.
I will admit, I did get in some trouble here. If you ever come out to Lake Pahranagat with your dog make sure you keep them on a leash. This park is a wildlife preserve and they are very serious about it. The second day I was there I took Danny for a walk around the lake. Danny has pretty much grown up as an off leash dog. He is very loyal and obedient to me and never wanders far without returning to my side. He knows what he is allowed to have (sticks, twigs, etc) and what he’s not (random birds, my dinner, etc). I didn’t give a second thought to him being off leash here, heck, I didn’t even bring one on our walk. And, of course, he was well behaved the whole 3 mile trip around the lake as expected… but right before we got back the camp host stopped us and gave me quite the earful. I can’t blame her… she doesn’t know me, doesn’t know my dog or his temperament, she just knows what her job is and how to do it well. I’m not very good at taking a scolding, but I did my best to be respectful as I attempted to deescalate the situation. I apologized several times and we returned a little humbler to our campsite.
The rest of the visit here was peaceful. I did a lot of reading, praying, and playing frizbee with Danny on the beach. I am currently on my second read through Mere Christianity by CS Lewis. If you have never read this book, I highly recommend it. Lewis breaks everything down to the most basic fundamentals of belief and faith in general. He perfectly explains not only what we believe, but why belief is a part of us in the first place. Lewis was himself a long-time agnostic that was drawn to Christianity through the study of various religions. He compares them in detail and shows how he came to the undeniable truths that Christianity offers above all.
After a few days at the park I could see my weather app predicting things were going to be cooling off here. Things were looking much more promising in the Lake Mead area about 150 miles south so I started scouting my apps for the perfect spot. I decided to shoot for an area in the northern part of the lake call Stewarts Bay just south of Overton. It looked pretty decent based on the satellite imagery. The imagery showed many RVs camped out on the high cliffs surrounding the water. There probably wouldn’t be any direct lake access here for kayaking, but the weather and views should be incredible.
I wasn’t too concerned on this trip with finding a lot of “high adventure”. It’s easy for me to forget at this point that I am still pretty new to this. I have never “gone south” for winter before. This trip is more about just practicing doing it… getting out of the cold into some beautiful weather to live in for a while. I’m sizing up what it takes to make it happen… the cost of gas, the climates available along the way, and the quality of camp site I can expect to be in.
As far as quality is concerned, Stewarts Bay did not disappoint. It won’t be much good to those who need service like power and water, but for a self contained rig like mine, Stewarts Bay is perfect. Another relentlessly washboard road winds through the desert for several miles and then eventually opens up to the massive lake before you with endless mountains in the distance.
This is a panoramic view I took from my campsite. There were several other RVers camped out in the area, but there was plenty of room in between giving everyone a comfortable amount of privacy. I won’t lie, many of these campsites looked like they had been here for quite a while. Nothing run down or dangerous, it’s just you could tell they had probably gone beyond the two week stay limit. Regardless, I was able to pick myself out a cozy little spot on the cliffside overlooking the water and it may have been the best one in the whole place.
I’m the little black blob in the lower left… so you can see we aren’t exactly crammed in here on top of one another. It’s pretty comfortable. I spent the next week here pretty much just… living. I worked out a lot, went for runs in the mornings with my faithful dog jogging along beside me. I tried to figure out how to fly my drone, read, watched a few movies… just lived. I enjoyed taking to God during beautiful morning sunrises and breathtaking sunsets.
We explored all along the coast and just generally enjoyed a peaceful stay. The weather was a perfect 70 degrees during the day but did tend to cool off significantly during the night. Most nights were hitting the mid 40’s which necessitated the use of the the onboard propane furnace. That would be about the only thing from keeping someone with my set up out here for extended periods of time. The propane goes pretty fast when the nights get that cold, and I use propane for everything. After about a week here I was running pretty much on empty. Thankfully, Overton was just a short 15 miles north where I could refill my tank and get some grocery shopping done.
I pulled anchor, packed everything up for a trip into town, and started making my way out of my perfect spot. There was plenty of room here to make a wide forward pull out, so I didn’t bother backing out the way I came. Then, just as I was making my way over the gravel toward the road I felt the coach struggling beneath me. I could feel myself slowing down despite the wheels still spinning. My heart skipped a few beats as I stepped on the gas to try to power through whatever loose ground I had encountered beneath. Bad move. The wheels continued to spin as the coach came to a halt. I was stuck. Great. The sweat came almost immediately.
I hopped out to assess the situation. My rear wheels were digging down into the loose gravel like quicksand, my front wheels were already buried about 4 inches. It wasn’t too bad yet, I thought, I can dig a trench out of this. I grabbed my shovel and some leveling blocks to try to give my back wheels a gentle slop and a solid surface to climb up. It actually seemed like a pretty solid idea:
From the look of the pictures, it doesn’t really seem that bad, does it? That’s what I thought as well. I was sure that my clever planning, and a little help from God, would get me out of this. I fired the engine back up and hit the gas. Not only did the coach not move forward, I could actually feel it moving downwards. I attempted the throw in the reverse and then lurch forward in drive, no good. Every time I touched the gas pedal the rear end sunk deeper into the quicksand. Eventually I found the chassis completely resting on the gravel, no purchase left to be had for a rear wheels. The leveling blocks I had tried to use were gone, lost in the depths of the rubble for all time. I was not just stuck… I was really stuck.
At this point, panic kind of took over and I forgot to take anymore pictures, my apologies to those reading. As I surveyed the surroundings trying to decide what to do, I realized I was going to have to ask someone for help. There was another camper nearby with a big ford truck parked next to his rig. I secured Danny inside and ran to ask for help. The owner, Jeff, said he would be happy to help me but he didn’t have a tow rope. He had, however, witnessed another nearby camper extracting a big rig from a similar situation a few months back. He pointed me in his direction and off I ran.
A younger guy, probably mid 30’s answered the door in sweats and a Dethklok shirt and introduced himself as Rick. I told him the situation and he laughed as he reminisced about the recent similar situation. He agreed to help and met me back over by my rig shortly after.
As he drove up in his old dodge truck a crowd had already started to form of other campers come to enjoy the circus I was putting on. We wrapped a tow rope around the front axle and, after a little trial and error, his little truck began to extract my reluctant coach from its gravelly resting place. The crowd cheered as the earth gave way and my 30 foot RV made its way back on to solid earth. I thanked Rick profusely and gave him the only thing I could think of to thank him: A copy of Wild at Heart. We all chatted together for about an hour before final thank yous were made, hands were shook, and we all parted ways.
I made my way to town that day a little wiser, and a lot more humble. I have been pushing my luck quite a bit with this rig so far, and I have gotten away with a lot. But if today taught me anything its that I need to be a little more careful in what I’m doing… that, and that I need people. We all need people. No matter how many times I come out in the wilderness to be alone with God, He always finds a way to bring me together with others. Because we need each other, all of us. We weren’t meant to be alone, we’re not built that way. We need each other, and we need God. I too often forget this, but He always has a way of reminding me.
This trip was about escaping the cold. I set out to escape the cold weather of Boise… but maybe it was really about escaping the cold in my heart. I pray God will continue to heal me here, and help me reclaim some of that childlike love that I forgot so long ago.
“As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.”
Proverbs 27:17