I don't know blogging at all

I don’t really know what blogging is all about. My granddaughters, who are thirteen and eleven years old, have started their own summer blogs and my oldest daughter (33) started one last year. I have looked at each one of these and my granddaughter’s are cute and cuddly as you would expect from young girls and my daughter’s is centered around her life, one in which I do not play a central part. If you continue to read my blog I am sure you will find out more on that subject at some point but for now I will not elaborate. The only other blog I am familiar with is the one that inspired the book and then the movie, Julie & Julia. To tell you the truth I tried to read the blog after I saw the movie but I couldn’t figure out how to get to the first blog entry so I gave up and when I couldn’t get into reading the last entry my reading of Julie Powell’s blog ended there and then.

At this moment in my life I am on a journey, literally and metaphorically. At the time of this writing I am traveling with my somewhat estranged partner (more on him later), my youngest daughter, her husband, their six kids, a friend of theirs, two dogs, and one cat. Our caravan includes one 1996 Fleetwood Flair Motor home, a 2000 Ford Excursion pulling a 1971 vintage travel trailer, and a 2000 Chevy Tahoe. We had packed up and stored all our belongings, turned in the key to our rental house to Coldwell Banker, and left South Lake Tahoe, California the evening of June 30, 2010 traveling east over Highway 50 into Nevada. The plan was to spend the night up King’s Canyon in Carson City, Nevada and then head north toward Idaho to visit my partner’s father for a week or so.

I suppose that making a plan was the first mistake. I have heard that if you want to hear God laugh just tell her your plans. Well, God must have had been rofl that evening. Halfway up the hill to the campsite the Flair decided it didn’t want to go any further. It chugged and chugged, and coughed and coughed, and would not go any further up that incline. No more than 50 yards from our destination we were forced to turn around and after an hour of driving through the city we found free RV parking behind the Nugget Casino. Not an auspicious beginning. For four blistering days and cool asphalt nights we stayed parked behind the Nugget while we considered our next move. We walked to the park, we hiked up the canyon, the big boys went scuba diving in the lake, the cat napped, and the dogs barked. We barbequed tri-tip on the 4^th of July and watched fireworks over the park. And yesterday, the 5^th of July we packed up our rigs and made our way down the road to Motel 6 to take much needed showers and a place to stay while the Flair had needed repairs done to it.

So, where will we head now? The plan, tentative, is to head north on 395 through Reno and then hit Highway 70 and go along the Feather River. We are going to be boondocking for the summer. What is boondocking you ask? Boondocking is the art of independent living. It is finding places to camp for free in a world that charges motel prices for a piece of dirt in a publicly owned forest. There are plenty of places that you can camp free where it is perfectly legal if you are willing to forego the usual campground frills like a pit toilet and a fire pit with a grill. After the Feather River? Well, I will keep you posted.

The other journey I spoke of at the beginning of this opening blog is the journey to the center of my soul. It is also a journey toward a meaning of “home.” Perhaps they are one and the same. Who knows. I once read a book by Joan Anderson, A Year By The Sea: Thoughts of an Unfinished Woman, and in the book there is a line: “All is ripely quiet, and I lift my glass to me, a woman turned inside out, no longer wanting to become happy because, finally, I am.” That is the woman I want to be, a woman turned inside out. When I am then I will be home, and I will have found my soul.