Homeless or Full-Timer?

Back in April I stayed for about a week at a free campground in Clints Well, AZ. The Camp Host (who was pretty over-zealous) told a story about an old guy who arrived in a beat-up old motor home. He was told that if he was homeless, he could only stay one night. I asked the Host what the difference is between a homeless person and a full-timer??  He didn’t give me an answer but went on to tell me that I was obviously a full-timer. “We don’t want people just living in the national forest full-time”, he said. That really bothered me. Does the difference between homeless and a full-timer have something to do with the age and condition of your camper??? And it’s a National Forest, right….doesn’t that mean it belongs to everyone equally, no matter what their financial status?  *I* was living full-time in the national forests…so what?! As long as I followed the rules and only stayed at a campsite for 14 days at a time, that’s all that should matter. Why shouldn’t the same rules apply to everyone?  That whole conversation still bothers me.

It’s been quite hot for the past couple of days, around 81-82. That’s WAY too hot for me if there’s no electricity to run the A/C, but unlike in AZ where you can just run to a higher or lower elevation to change the weather, this was about the best I could do. Most of the places around me were up closer to 90 degrees. So I toughed it out, sweating and cursing. The temperatures inside the camper got up to 86 both days. What’s worse, this campsite is not very good for solar power. There are small patches of sun that move constantly and that usually also have some patchy shade in them. So I have to keep moving the solar panel and even a tiny amount of shade on it, reduces the power down as much as 80%! So I have to be conservative about the battery power I use. No running the Fantastic Fan for long periods of time!  I can’t wait for the cooler temps to hit, starting tomorrow (high 74, yay!)

I bought some chicken that really needs to be cooked but I couldn’t stand the thought of heating the camper up even more! So I had cold cereal for dinner. I won’t eat it for breakfast, but it makes a fine lunch or dinner occasionally.

So far this has been a very quiet and relaxing campsite, except for the mosquitoes. I dug out my Thermacell and lit it up in the screen room, and have had a nice un-buggy past two days. It’s very effective, just pretty expensive to run for hours on end.