My test of the truck and camping gear was done at Middle Santa Ynez Campground in the Los Padres National Forest near Pendola Station and Caliente Hot Springs. I was alone in the campground for the three days although there were two campers in a small campground near Big Caliente, the largest of the hot springs.
Middle Santa Ynez is an old oak grove by the creek and Rocinante was parked beneath an oak of at least twenty feet around the base, so old that portions were already dead and inhabited by animals. On the way home from the hot springs I came across a family of grey foxes, parents and two pups, who stared until I came within a hundred feet. I think I hear them at night when I lay in the truck. I spend the early morning in the hot springs before the deer flies come out from the cool nights. Other pests, like the drunks that sometimes drive up are also absent in the morning. The oak grove is a paradise for birds with several varieties of warblers and wrens, bluebirds, doves and scrub jays. Coopers hawks stalk them in the treetops. Does with fawns foraged in the campground.
The journey to the Veterans For Peace convention in Portland, Maine begins with a trip to Carrizo Plain National Monument and then continues to Bakersfield and Porterville where I will try to find some peace vets to help me at the local VFW hall in the Depleted Uranium outreach.
This will continue as I cross the nation visiting national parks and monuments as well as VFW halls and VFP members. My 1979 Chevy Luv truck with camper gets about 25 miles per gallon at fifty five miles an hour but about eighteen at seventy so I drive fifty five to keep our earth alive. I find it relaxing to drive fifty or fifty five in the slow lane on the turnpikes and freeways as you can enjoy the scenery and don’t come up behind anyone.
After Carrizo I will head for Lassen, Crater Lake and Glacier.
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