I Think I Figured Another Way to Establish Residency
I’VE SPENT THE PAST FEW MONTHS at a friend’s place in New Mexico, helping look after him while he’s dealing with cancer, heart problems and some less serious ailments. I will be here as long as he needs me. In the meantime, my Arizona license and registration are...
Used Van Prices Might Start Falling
I’VE BEEN CONTEMPLATING what to do about my aging van. New engine or a different van with lower mileage? So the past few months I’ve been checking out various used vehicle sites. Used car prices had been shooting up the past couple of years—about 42% since 2020....
Bob Rebooted: How to Live—and Die—Well
This post originally appeared in 2013. May it still inspire and empower you. IN TODAY’S POST I want to talk about a truly amazing woman who set out to find adventure in an RV and ended up living in that RV for the rest of her life, and along the way became world...
Did I Freeze My Stove?
ALTHOUGH IT WAS THE END OF MAY, and the daytime temperature on the Kiabab Plateau had been almost perfect, it had dropped to nearly freezing by dawn. Not a surprise at that elevation at that time of year. I reluctantly crawled out from under the covers and got out my...
Weekend Photo 21: Lola
Lola loves water — 5 April 2022 — Los Padres National Forest
GOOLOO GP4000 Jump Starter User Review
AS YOU MIGHT KNOW, I LIVE IN AN AMBULANCE. It’s based on a Chevrolet truck with a 6.6 liter Duramax diesel engine. It’s a fantastic engine, but my batteries have died on it. I think they were just old when I got the truck. They were struggling and I was in the middle...
Recalibrate Your Life by Exploring the Extremes
Sometimes it’s easiest to learn the hard way.Our perception of what's “normal” depends largely on the circumstances we were born into: our family's income level, location, religion, ethnicity, profession, and health factors, for example. We can think of this as our...
What Does It Take to Run Air Conditioning with Solar?
UP UNTIL THE LATTER HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY, our ancestors (and some of us old farts who’ve been around since the discovery of dirt) lived without air conditioning. The first air conditioner was probably the one installed in the Rivloi Theater, in New York City, in...
Don’t Be an Old Martian Lander: Keep Your Solar Panels Clean
NASA ANNOUNCED its InSight lander will run out of power in a few months because its solar panels have become covered with many years of Martian dust. Meanwhile, my solar panel is covered with many days of New Mexico dust and fire ash. Cleanliness is next to...
Weekend Photo: Colorado 2
Perfect spot — 4 August 2016 — San Juan Mountains
A Highly Questionable Idea for a Motorhome
IT ALL STARTED with watching a video where a guy bought an old, trashy, mostly-gutted Class A RV just to get its relatively low-mileage engine for a hotrod he was building. The next thing I knew, my brain had set off on a journey to nomad Crazy Town.Let me back up a...
Bob Rebooted: A Desert Rat Comes Home
The following is an excerpt from a longer Cheap RV Living post from October of 2012. Bob had returned to the Lower 48 after visiting Alaska, where he had lived most of his life. But now the desert was his home. TO ME, THERE IS SOMETHING MAGICAL ABOUT THE DESERT. At...