Week 9: Adventures in the Deserts of SoCal

This week our time was primarily split between two parks, Joshua Tree National Park and Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. Both parks are in southern California, or as the locals seem to like to call it, SoCal.

Hiking Joshua Tree National Park

On Sunday we decided our plan of action was to go on all of the shorter hikes that piqued our interest, which turned out to be 4 hikes totaling about 6 miles and an overlook. We got to see a lot of the park this way. We both agreed that the park is very beautiful, but maybe in the middle of the pack when it comes to national parks. But our opinion is likely affected by the fact that we had been to the park before, so it didn’t have the wow factor that a brand new place might have.

Day of Chores

As Kendra noted in her latest blog post, we stayed at a free campground not far from the park. It was a big open dirt space with mountains in the background, not much of a campground really, but pretty nonetheless. Monday we spent the whole day here working and catching up on a few chores.

One of our favorite features in our van was what we call our “mood lights.” It is a few strip lights that are hidden away in some wood pieces behind our bed above our heads. These lights are on a dimmer, so we are able to adjust the “mood” of the evening quite nicely. However, the lights haven’t been working for a while. I knew it was an issue with the dimmer switch, so I purchased a new one a while back. Now I was finally getting around to fixing it. The task proved to be fairly difficult. Mostly due to the fact that I don’t have the assortment of tools that I had back at home.

While I worked at that, Kendra thoroughly cleaned our shower and cut some non-slip padding to line the shelving with. A few times while driving down the road we have had cans of food flying out of our upper cabinets, so the pad is meant to keep everything from moving around. It has worked so far. 🤞

A Note About Composting Toilets

Our composting toilet is actually not too bad. We got a lot of “eww,” “yuck,” “ick,” “bleh,” etc. when mentioning how it works. It is those things at times, but for the most part, it’s not bad. To give some context, the toilet is basically two parts, a funnel that directs pee into a jug in the front and a large opening at the back that allows poo to go into a separate bucket. That bucket is lined with a trash bag and filled with a small layer of wood shavings every time we use it. Contrary to what you might think, the pee tends to be the more difficult and nasty thing to work with. The poo is simple and easy as you just pull out the trash bag, tie it up, and throw it into the garbage. The pee on the other hand has to be dumped somewhere and then cleaned off, which has been my job for the duration of the trip. The jug is pretty small and typically only lasts us about 24 hours. I tend to prefer dumping it at a dump station where I can rinse it out with water to get it nice and clean. But, when that’s not available, I resort to dumping in a toilet or, more often, a bush. But at this particular campground, there were no bushes. It was just barren land. I decided I shouldn’t just dump it on the ground since the next campers might not appreciate walking on our waste. So I dug a hole. The ground wasn’t especially easy to dig up, especially with our tiny poop shovel that we had for backpacking. But I ended up digging a pretty large hole – large enough that I decided to empty our gray water in the hole as well. I let the liquids soak into the ground, covered it up and we were on our way. It wasn’t the most ideal situation, but we have learned that van life tends to put you in a lot of situations that aren’t ideal. You just learn to make do.

Seeing the South End of Joshua Tree

Tuesday, after finishing up our work for the day, we headed to the south end of the park. We stopped along the way to do a two and a half mile hike to a mountain peak, called Mastodon Peak. The view here was quite pretty! We then headed to another free campground just outside of the park.

A Day of Shopping

We were staying only an hour or so away from some of our favorite stores and we needed groceries, so we spent our evening on Wednesday shopping for supplies, groceries, and for fun.

Trader Joe’s has become our grocery store of choice on this trip. Their stores are smaller than the big names like Kroger and Meijer, yet they have the healthy and gluten-free options that we are often looking for. So we started the evening here grabbing what we needed for the next few days.

We then had a few supplies that we needed for the van and Kendra wanted to do some clothes shopping, so we also stopped at Lowe’s, Target, and TJ Maxx. And, of course, we stopped for dinner at our favorite chain, Chipotle.

We made sure to get back to the campground in time for Amazing Race (for Kendra) and the Columbus Crew soccer game (for me).

Drain Issues Fixed… Finally

After getting supplies on Wednesday, I was finally ready to tackle the draining issues that we have been having. Ever since we left home, the shower and sink drains have not quite worked as they should. We were often having to empty water out of the gray water tank long before it was full just to get the sitting water in the shower or the sink to drain. The water would drain fine for a bit, but then would just stop until we released some of the gray water.

I had tried and tried to wrap my mind around the whole plumbing system in our van to figure out what the issue might be. I did some plumbing work during my time at Mark Troyer Remodeling, but was no expert by any means, so I was having trouble figuring out the issue. Eventually I came to the conclusion that it was a venting issue but wasn’t real sure how to fix it. After watching many youtube videos and reading some forums on RV and van plumbing, I finally came to the understanding that the vents that I had installed were not sufficient for our setup.

The proper way to vent would have been to run a pipe from the gray water tank to the exterior of the van somewhere, typically on the side or on the roof. However, it would be very difficult to achieve that now that things are all built. Instead, I came up with a solution that involves basically cutting a hole in the gray water tank and sticking a small pipe in there with a rubber gasket. The hole is at the very top of the tank, so water should only come out when it is full, preventing backup in the pipes. The pipe allows air to exit the tank as water enters the tank. It is not an elegant solution, but so far has solved the issue without any major repercussions. It has been nice not to have to empty gray water on the ground at our campsite.

Out of Place Palm Trees and Our First Rattle Snake 🐍

In the afternoon we headed toward Palm Springs area as soon as we could after finishing our work for the day to do a hike. The hike was a 4.5 mile hike to an area called Pushwalla Palms. It was a neat area with a lot of pretty palm trees. There was not much else in terms of vegetation in the area or along the way – we were in the desert after all. We both agreed that the palms felt a bit out place. Then again, we saw palms at various places in the region and everywhere they seemed to feel out of place. Maybe that is just because we are used to the palm trees in Florida that have a much different feel to them.

On this hike we encountered our first rattle snake! It had both of our hearts racing (especially Kendra’s). We were just chatting as we were going along the trail and suddenly heard a loud rattling sound. We quickly stepped back and let the big ol’ thing retreat back to his rock. It was cool to see, but we would have appreciated it a bit more if we were not caught by surprise and were a bit further away. We decided we could stay on the trail as long as we kept our distance as much as possible and kept on eye on it. I grabbed a large rock… just in case…

We then headed to our next destination that evening, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, where we set up camp at a nearby free campsite.

Laundry and Table Fixes

Friday was a relatively slow day. We worked in the morning, then went to the small town nearby, Borrego Springs, to do some laundry at the local laundromat. Kendra took care of laundry while I worked at getting a couple of things in the van fixed. Our table has been rattling, so I attached some felt pads where the tabletop meets the wall and the ledge that it sits on. I also attached some new edge banding along one side of the table where the previous edge banding had been peeling off. I made use of what we had, a hair straightener, to “iron” the pre-glued wood veneer onto the edge. Both fixes have held up nicely thus far.

Exploring Anza-Borrego Desert State Park

Saturday was our day that we set aside to travel the park. Now, this park is massive, the largest state park in California and the third largest state park in the country. So, we didn’t get to see nearly all of it. Instead we opted for a few trails that were relatively close and looked most interesting to us. But first we drove through an area called Galleta Meadows, which featured an assortment of large metal sculptures that lined the road. We drive through and stopped at several of them to get a few photos.

We started our hiking with Borrego Palm Canyon Trail, a 3 mile trail through a beautiful canyon lined with a variety of flowering plants. It was a hot and dry day. I believe it was in the mid-90s so we were tired after only our first hike.

We then took a scenic drive through the mountains to our next hike, a short 1 mile hike called Cactus Loop. Kendra was pretty wore out and opted to stay back and take a nap while I did the hike. This doesn’t happen often. In fact I believe this was the first hike on this trip that I have done a trail alone (though I suspect there were a number of other times she would have liked to stay back but was too nice to say anything). So, of course, without Kendra there to keep me in line, I had to hurt myself on the trail. I was just trying to get creative and get a good picture of the beautiful purple flowers on the cactus. In order to get that shot, I had to kneel down to get the right perspective. Unfortunately I chose the wrong place to kneel. I said a few choice words as many needles of a cactus pierced my knee. A couple “arms” of the cactus were well attached to me. I couldn’t move much without feeling a lot of pain. So, I grabbed a couple of rocks and smashed them against the cactus piece and rapidly pulled them away from me, peeling the cactus off my skin like a resilient piece of Velcro, causing me to say a few more choice words. There were a lot of needles left in my knee, so I pulled out what I could on the trail and then used tweezers to get the rest of them upon returning to the van. It was not a pleasant experience, but the views, honestly, were worth it.

Finally, we finished the day doing a 2 mile hike called The Slot. It was a neat hike that took you through some slot canyons on the park. It had some really pretty views, but we wished we turned around about a quarter of the way through after we had seen the slots, because the rest of the trail was pretty barren and took you up a steep hill and then along a dirt road.

We headed back to camp very tired and ready for a restful evening.

Some Personal Thoughts About Van Life

We have been having a great time out here and feel incredibly blessed to have the opportunity. I feel like I can’t emphasize that enough. However, some days, it can be hard to feel that way. Living in a small space brings some trouble with it. Especially when it comes to being “trapped” together nearly all of the time. We are finding ourselves butting heads more often than we have before. Whether that is due to disagreements about how or when to do the dishes, disagreements about plans for the week, or otherwise. We are having to make a lot more decisions together and having to do just about everything together. That’s not a bad thing by any means, but it does create more friction than a “normal” lifestyle would. We are learning and finding ways to work through the issues as they come. The reality is, marriage is hard no matter how you slice it. But it is incredibly worth it! We are optimistic about the strength that comes through a marriage enduring a variety of challenges.

Thanks for reading y’all! We are truly grateful for your support.

Next up, Los Angeles.