Springs Foundation

Last month we had our two year anniversary of being full time on the road. That got me to thinking about how far we’ve come. In miles. And otherwise.

Question is, how do we determine how many miles we’ve traveled. The truck odometer says we’re at 111000 miles. If memory serves it had about 80,000 when we took off, so it’s gone about 30,000 miles. But the fifth wheel trailer has been only about half that, considering that it’s been sitting much of the time in various places.

Then there are human miles, in excess of truck miles, to account for walking and riding bicycles. Add a few tens of miles there. And don’t forget miles ridden by pets. Max has been with us for just over a year, so he’s logged quite a few miles tucked away underneath the bed slide out.

Wylie has the same number of miles as Sundance, the fifth wheel. But all things considered, he’s only been awake for a few of those–just enough to drag himself out of the sleep sack, use his litterbox, grab a bite to eat, something to drink and get back into his traveling coma. Ferrets are great travelers, but mostly on account of sleeping through everything. Helena says in spirit he’s ranging around up to a hundred yards from his body as we drive, so he’s not missing anything.

What brought up this consideration of miles traveled are the other critters who’ve tagged along. When we began there was a black widow web under the read bumper that kept being rebuilt whenever I wiped it away. And the satellite dish often has webs in various locations. The bikes and spare tire have spider webs as well. So we’d have to consider spider miles when making an equation for distance traveled. Inadvertantly, we have contributed to migrations of spiders and perhaps other insects (not counting the ones spattered on the trailer nose and windshield) to habitats to which they are unaccustomed. Some desert dwellers may have ended up in coastline environments, and high mountain species translocated into lowland settings.

Then there are the states we’ve been in and through: Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and now Texas. We are camped for a couple of nights in Palo Duro Canyon, south of Amarillo, Texas to visit with a friend from Lubbock. This is touted as second only in size to the Grand Canyon, apparently because it’s 127 miles long. But at 800 ft deep it’s a distant second. The Black Canyon of the Gunnison is far deeper, if only a quarter of a mile wide. The deep red soil does present some fine views, and there are beautiful campgrounds, too. We could include Oklahoma because we drove through the panhandle and parked for the night in a vacant lot at Boise City between a couple of 18 wheelers idling their diesel engines.

This is as far east as we’ve lived in Sundance, but plan on going at least to the far end of Oklahoma tomorrow or the next day. Our destination is a few miles from Tahlequah, the Cherokee Nation capitol, in the Ozark Mountains. And we may winter on the Gulf coast instead of the Salton Sea. Helena, Pisces that she is, wants more water. And lakes, even huge reservoirs simply will not do. Texas is big enough we won’t have to to leave the state for ocean and several other tyes of environments as well–like the Chihuahua Desert.

Happy Trails, Gary