What I Did This Summer (and so far this fall)

Hello from downtown Mancos, Colorado, where a large crow (or maybe it’s a raven, I can’t tell the difference at a glance) is cawing from atop the baseball backstop at the park, the wind is scattering cottonwood leaves, and the windows of the pizza parlor are decorated with large images of anthropomorphized candy corns.

It’s a perfect time to talk about summer.

From late May through mid-August I was in Maryland, and a lot of the time, I was focused on this:

… which was bunion surgery on my left foot. I’d had surgery on my right foot in 2017, which was a bunionectomy plus two osteotomies (cutting bones and putting them back together) plus a plantar plate repair (cutting ligaments and sewing them back together) plus removal of a big Morton’s neuroma (a non-cancerous growth on the nerve).

Fortunately, my left foot pre-surgery wasn’t nearly as bad as my right, so a lot less needed to be done to it. But it was also crazy how less painful and debilitating of an experience it was. I had surgery in mid-July, and 37 days later, I was back in the van and on my way to Maine, where I was able to walk a mile or two on trails and gravelly sandbars. I’m pretty sure that 37 days after my 2017 surgery, I was still limping around in a protective boot, unable to go anywhere except my desk job and physical therapy.

The thing was that this year’s surgery was not only to correct a less severe issue, but it was a whole different type of surgery, involving three tiny incisions rather than one big one. In a bunionectomy, the bone is cut apart and then screwed back together in a better position. Even though the screws in my left foot are actually much bigger than the ones in my right (think deck screws vs. laptop screws), the pain in my left foot was only a fraction of the pain in my right… like 1/10th.

This time I also took advantage of my one-week post-surgery hydrocodone prescription to quit all caffeine (I’d been drinking a LOT of tea) and start a new diet — and I think that quitting caffeine may have been a more painful experience than the foot surgery, overall.

Coco, my parents’ cat, was very helpful in the recovery process. She came to my parents last winter but had spent most of her life in a barn, where she’d somehow managed to survive despite being totally deaf and having bad eyesight. She was an older cat, though no one knows how old. This summer she started weakening quickly, and she died in September. She is missed, but she seemed to enjoy the ten or so months at the end of her life that she got to spend in a safe, comfortable place with lots of affection.

I stayed in my parents’ guest room until mid-August because a) I had some surgery follow-ups and physical therapy, so I needed to stay in the area and b) it was absolutely disgusting outside and way too hot for me in the van, even at night.

Then in mid-August, it was time to head north.

This doesn’t look like much, but it’s actually the NYC skyline just before sunrise.

On this northern trip, I was accompanying my friends Melissa and Dave and their two kids. When the kids were young, Melissa and Dave decided to visit all the country’s national parks, and they’ve made impressive headway, including some more remote spots like the Dry Tortugas and less impressive-sounding ones like Cuyahoga Falls. Just recently, they got their own campervan. (I am thrilled about this, and also please note and consider that I want all my friends and people I like to get livable vehicles so we can hang out in the woods/mountains/desert/park/wherever.)

I stopped to do some work in a small city in the Hudson Valley (which was really appealing and which I’ll have to check out later), then drove up to our rendezvous point in southern Vermont.

First time I’ve ever seen a porcupine in the wild — it was actually in an old graveyard inside the national forest!

Once Melissa and Dave and their family made it up north, we explored two sets of mountains: Vermont’s Green and New Hampshire’s White. The Green are softer, with denser woods; the White are more rocky and rugged, with some more dramatic dimensions and geology. I’d love to go back to the White Mountains just for hiking at some point.

But one of my biggest motives for writing this blog post is: I need you to know that off Route 11 in rural southern Vermont, there is a hair salon. The name of the hair salon is I’ll Cut You.

That is all.

We drove to Acadia National Park in Maine. Because I’m a lucky asshole, I’d been there twice before. Melissa and Dave had been there once before, but it was the first time for the kids.

There was a snail race.

And we did Maine Things, like eat seafood at a restaurant on a pier.

Sometimes people are surprised when I tell them I don’t go to national parks very often. They’re amazing places, but they’re generally not super livable for nomadic folks. Cell phone/data coverage for work can be nonexistent or spotty. The campgrounds are often full, they can feel quite busy compared to a middle-of-nowhere dispersed spot in a national forest, and they require reservations and advance planning. Plus, they’re expensive by my standards ($30+ per night), and then there’s a park entrance fee on top of that. (This year, since I knew I was going to several national parks, I got the annual pass to cover entrance fees, which at $80 is a pretty good deal — and the same price, I think, as when I took my first cross-country road trip in 2002!)

So when I do go to a national park, it definitely feels like I’m on vacation. And I really liked the campground at Acadia, which felt a little more spacious and relaxed despite being absolutely huge with hundreds of spots. But probably the best thing about staying inside the national park is that it gives you night access. Melissa came up with a brilliant idea for seeing Thunder Hole, a narrow crevice in the rocks where the waves go BOOM about an hour before high tide if the wind and waves are intense enough. Thunder Hole is wonderful but it’s one of the most heavily visited spots in the park, with crowds of people jostling around so you can barely see the Thunder Hole itself. Often, during the time/tide window when the Thunder Hole might be thundering, the parking lot is full.

So we just went at night! For something like Thunder Hole, where so much of the experience is sensory but not necessarily visual, this was awesome. We turned our headlamps off to stand there with the waves and the dark for a minute, then turned them on to spotlight Thunder Hole as the water sucked back and crashed over the rocks. And there was absolutely no one else there — no pressure to move over, move on.

It does sadden me to report that one of my favorite ever road signs, the one that said “THUNDER HOLE RESTROOMS,” has been removed. It has been replaced with a sign that simply has the restroom graphic and is thus much less satisfying to make stupid jokes about. R.I.P., Thunder Hole Restrooms sign.

Normally, on a trip like this, I would’ve wanted to do a Big Hike, but since my foot still wasn’t ready for that, we went sea kayaking instead. This was wonderful. We didn’t go super far, only a few miles, but I really loved being out there on a beautiful day, especially when we got into the channel between the islands, where there were some gentle but large swells. I’ve paddled in Chesapeake Bay rivers when they were kind of choppy, but never in any actual waves, and I liked the feeling of it.

On our last morning in the park, we drove up Cadillac Mountain to watch the sun rise. Melissa and Dave had to go back to Maryland so the kids could start school the following week, but I was able to stay in Maine for a couple more days. So I drove up the coast to Machias. This was the farthest north I’ve ever been in Maine, and I really liked the area. It’s less trafficky, less busy, but the coast is still absolutely beautiful. Plus the town of Machias itself seems pretty nomad-friendly, with two town-owned parking lots that are set next to a lovely river and where overnight parking is explicitly allowed. I’d taken time off of work for the Acadia trip, so in Machias I did just work a lot, but I’d love to revisit this area and stay longer.

This is Jasper Beach. It’s known for its pebbles that make a wonderful sizzling noise as the waves roll in and recede. These pebbles are not actually jasper, but rhyolite.

Rock lobster!

On my last morning in Machias I went to this coastal preserve on the beach to do some work. When I got there, it was low tide, and folks were digging for clams on the exposed muddy flats, hundreds of feet below the high tide line. After a couple hours, it was time for me to go. I’d driven onto the beach, just below the highest high-tide line, on what looked like a strip of well-used, hard-packed sand and gravel. I’d had no problems getting onto the beach, but instead of putting the van in reverse for a hundred or so feet, I went to turn around — and backed off the hard-packed strip and into sandy gravel that was much softer than it looked.

Yes, I got my dumb ass stuck. Very stuck.

This was quite stressful since by this time the tide was coming in. Of course it was a Sunday and all the towing places were closed. My insurance’s roadside assistance was sending someone, but they were about an hour and a half away, maybe two.

There were two lines of seaweed on the shore, and I was in between them. A couple passing locals told me that the highest line represented a storm tide, and I would probably be out of the reach of the normal high tide, but this still did not feel reassuring. I tried to dig myself out, and I used the traction strips that I’d ordered for just this situation… but each time I tried to get out, the van just went in deeper. I couldn’t quite see what was going underneath, but I suspected the rear differential and/or the spare tire were actually resting on the ground, which would be… very not good.

Despite Machias’s frequent appearances in Stephen King novels, where the scariest thing is not actually the monster but the people, my experience with the people of Machias was bizarrely positive. Everyone who passed by seemed to offer help of some kind — they’d call their husband, who was probably out in the garden right now, but if he did answer the phone, might know someone who could help. Or they could call their friend not too far away who had a farm tractor, and maybe the tractor could lift the van out of its hole. With the tide rising quickly and the tow company still hours away, I did take someone up on their offer — a young couple who’d come to the beach to walk their dogs. The guy’s father lived a few minutes up the road and had a big truck.

Even with the big truck, it took a while (and a couple of calls to the guy’s high school buddy’s dad Timmy, who owned a towing company) to figure out how to get me out. There actually aren’t any good points on the front end of my van to attach a tow hook (which seems like a big oversight), and I was worried that if they tried to pull me out backwards, it would just pull the rear axle/spare tire/exhaust system/bumper into the gravel. Plus if that towing attempt failed, it would put me much closer to the incoming water.

Finally I got desperate enough to say OK to being pulled out backwards. And… it worked. There were a couple of scuff marks on the rear differential and a bunch on the spare tire, but the van seemed undamaged. There were high fives all around, and even though I will never willingly repeat this experience, I’ve gotta say that the adrenaline rush of having your home threatened by an inexorably incoming tide, and then getting away from it, is really something else.

Once I was safely above the highest high tide line, my rescuers and I (native Mainers whose names are Riley and Joelle; Riley is an actual lobster fisherman) stood around and chatted for a while. Then I filled in the big holes I’d made in the beach and was on my way. I plan never to drive onto a beach again.

This pic was taken from about the same spot as the earlier photo on the beach; note how much closer the water is!

I had a doctor’s appointment in Maryland and a bunch of work to do, so I made my way south over two days: the first evening I stopped at my friend Sarah’s in the Finger Lakes region of New York, and the next at my friend Sasha’s in South Jersey. I wish I could’ve stayed longer in both cases, but it was great to be able to catch up a little bit.

I spent another week in Maryland, full of logistics, medical appointments, and way too much dental work. (One of my old root canals failed, which cost over $2300 to fix and my dental insurance covered none of it. The fact that dental work is so expensive and that teeth are considered luxury bones that are not covered by insurance in any meaningful way is very upsetting to me, and I think that the next time I need a root canal or re-root canal or new crown or anything like that, I’ll just have the tooth pulled and then go to Mexico and get it replaced with an implant.)

It was a stressful week, but I did get to do some Maryland Things: make air fryer crab cakes, hang out in my friend Meg’s hot tub/on her porch, and go paddling with my mom on the bay.

In early September, I got on the road again, this time headed south. I met up with my friend Ron in South Carolina and we visited Mepkin Abbey, a Trappist monastery.

Ron stayed at the abbey for the full residential retreat experience, while I camped nearby with his dog Puck and just came to the monastery in the daytime.

The live oaks at this monastery are some of the most incredible trees I have ever seen.

After Mepkin, Ron headed back south to Florida and I turned west, where I got to spend a couple nights with my brother and his family at Lake Oconee in north Georgia and at their home in Atlanta.

Then, I headed west…

And now I’m in the San Juans, in southwestern Colorado. I missed being out here this summer, and it’s been a busy October so far, with tons of work — but I’m glad I’ve gotten to spend at least a couple weeks out here before it gets too cold. Already I’ve had one below-freezing night, up at about 9,200 feet in the West Dolores River valley.

But it was absolutely worth getting up in the cold to be able to go out hiking and watch the sun hit the peaks.

And the trees… I just can’t even deal with it.

How is this real???

1917, 1947, or 1941?

And yes, my phone is about 90% photos of trees and mountains.

I need to head back into the woods now, but sometime soon I hope to post about staying warm when living in a van — a topic that I’ll need to give more thought to in just the next couple of weeks!