into ARIZONA

A few more thoughts on my time spent with Dakota.....   As we sat in the shade of the desert scrub brush near the van, I shared with him my guilt. I was raised Catholic, so I still have a handful of leftover guilty baggage.... In this case, my main point of contention is the guilt that I feel for using petroleum to propel my travels. Dakota made the point that if I was in a home, I would be using electricity and natural gas. And as I reflect on it now, more water as well.  It's hard for me to calculate which is truly best, but his thoughts gave me a needed new perspective on my travels. Freedom of the road has the potential to be less resource intensive than sedentary life in a house. My guilt is slowly fading away......... I welcome your thoughts....


Back to the story...... I slept really well that night in the van.....The van being parked illegally too close to the springs, but we rationalized that if a ranger hassled me in the night, it would be obvious that i wasn't CAMPING and had just fallen asleep after soaking.... I slept soundly and hassle free and awoke at 4:30am and drove out of the middle of the desert....en route to HOLTVIlLLE for dawn patrol in those hallowed waters. Arrived to find no one around in the pitch black. Ate a grapefruit and headed to the springs. I soaked until 7am when a BLM employee roused me out of the pool for the weekly cleaning.... I'd heard about it, but now I witnessed it. CHLORINE tablets and bleach being used on the natural environment all in the name of safety and bureaucracy.   Stoked I got my soaking in before he arrived!

1st stop in ARIZONA was the Yuma Nature's Express

Evolution in San Diego used to be called Nature's Express. I'd heard about a branch in YUMA but had never stopped to find it on drives to PHX. This time I made the effort. I started chatting up Karl and it turns out he's the owner and former partner of Mitch and the SD location. He filled me in on HEALTHY YUMA 2011 and other prevention measures he's involved with....

Karl and my gluten free bean patty over greens and rice.

I stopped at DATELAND a bit further into AZ and was highly disappointed and didn't buy anything. THEY advertise world famous DATE SHAKEs and I didn't really expect them to have a non dairy alternative. And upon further inspection, they didn't and really had no clue what I was talking about. The dates themselves were dry and way overpriced and all packaged in plastic.

The date lady at the farmer's market's in SD has the best DATES that I've ever encountered!