Catching up to the present, today marks our official 6-month anniversary, having launched from Amherst, Massachusetts on October 30th, a day that seems very long ago and far away. Today also marks 26 weeks on the road, and 8 months of living full-time in our rig!
Yesterday afternoon, following a spectacular ride up Route 77 from Tucson, we arrived to the Wind Spirit community. Our trip from Tucson was almost uneventful until we stopped to help two “damsels in distress” from Miami change a tire, and we were almost sideswiped in the process of pulling over to the side of the road.
Wind Spirit is a lush oasis amidst the desert landscape, with hundreds of fruit and nut trees planted throughout their land. Lemon, orange, grapefruit, pomegranate, kumquat, loquat, almond, fig, peach and other trees can be found along the winding paths through the forest that is alive with birdsong. Hummingbirds hummed around Mary’s head during her yoga session on the outdoor yoga platform this morning, and Keith saw an enormous white owl when he arrived for his yoga session an hour earlier. The gardens are cultivated during the two desert growing seasons (winter and summer), and we were duly warned about the presence of scorpions, rattlesnakes, gila monsters and javelinas (wild pigs). Oh my!
Our first evening was made special by a lovely communal Middle Eastern meal followed by a wood-fired sauna to warm our bones in the cool desert night. The temperature can easily drop from 80 degrees to 40 degrees in a matter of hours, and summers can readily reach 110 to 115 degrees in July and August when only a skeleton crew remains on the land. A 24-foot above-ground swimming pool was just purchased last week via Craigs List and will be erected very soon before the weather begins to considerably heat up.
Wind Spirit has a small “bus village” of livable school buses where guests and visitors can stay, and we are cozily parked alongside several other mobile homes and vans.
People here at Wind Spirit are very warm and welcoming, and we were encouraged to help ourselves to hot showers, the kitchen, and a plethora of communal food. We’ll be here for a few days before heading north to Sedona and the Grand Canyon, and will post more photos as we are able.
Here’s to 6 months and 30 weeks of adventure, fun and community!
Wow! Can it really be true that you've been on the road for over six months? The time has flown by.
ReplyDeleteI haven't been reading long enough to see you visit any community that isn't living in the desert, but I notice a certain self-similarity between the desert communities you have visited. I wonder if this is also true of non-desert communities, or whether there is some shared theme that desert communities seem to develop.
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