Category Archives: Adventure

Something’s happening at Slab City

Posted on June 10, 2013 by | 13 comments

Back when I posted the thing about Slab City, CA, I eventually decided despite my curiosity about the place I just have too many things left I want to do in my life to get out there and check it out:

Slab City, California – An Impromptu Community

The place is so hot summertime only about 100 people stay there during the scorching months.  And winter months there just seemed to be too many other ways to spend the time to justify a visit out there. 

Now they’ve formed some sort of an organization willing to pay someone $400 per month to sweat through the summer months doing some sort of maintenance on Salvation Mountain.  Likely they’ll get a lot of interest in the $400 per month and the fervor among the interested will dwindle rapidly as the thermometer climbs.

But the last RV Workers on Wheels newsletter had this:

CA: Camp Host at Art Preservation Site in Slab City

by Salvation Mountain Inc. – Slab City, California, USA
(Nin-Profit Volunteer Site Manager with Site and Stipend)

Leonard Knight's Salvation Mountain

Leonard Knight’s Salvation Mountain

 

Salvation Mountain is an “outsider art” monument at the entrance to Slab City, created over 30 years by Leonard Knight. Leonard’s unique and enduring vision is one of universal love.

Leonard painted his vision on the cliffs at Slab City over a period of 30 years. He can no longer maintain his monument, due to declining health, so a charitable corporation was formed. The Salvation Mountain Inc. Board of Directors has the responsibility of continuing to preserve Leonard’s dream.

We are looking for a camp host and site manager to work with our board of directors at this monument in the desert. This is a volunteer contract position, where we provide a living space for an RV, a small stipend of $400 per month, plus solar electricity, water, trash removal, and internet access. We also have a park model trailer on the site.

You can learn more about Salvation Mountain at http://www.salvationmountaininc.org.

Slab City is a boondocking “off the grid” community in the desert in Southeast California, just east of the Salton Sea. For information about Slab City, go to this website: http://www.slab-city.com.

Salvation Mountain Inc. is a registered charitable non-profit company charged with preservation of Leonard Knight’s art site called Salvation Mountain. Leonard Knight starting building Salvation Mountain almost 30 years ago. While I, a board member, am not a particularly religious person, I do appreciate Leonard’s dedication and vision, especially his message of universal love. This is not a religious charity, it is an art preservation charity.

We are trying to find a site manger (aka a camp host) to live at the Salvation Mountain site 24/7. It’s a contract position, and there is a stipend of $400 per month to help with expenses. We provide water, solar power, internet and trash removal. We are asking for a one year commitment (with a 90 day probation period to see if the fit is good with our Board of Directors).

We welcome your application and inquiries for this position. We will do a background check (criminal and credit), as this is a position of responsibility.

You can request an application at salvationmountaininc31@gmail.com. Be sure to let us know that you saw our Help Wanted ad on Coleen’s Workers On Wheels website when you contact us about this site manager job. Salvation Mountain Inc. – Slab City, California. Posted June 2013.

I’m mulling it over.  Given my current situation and the violence $400 a month would do to my series of debt responsibilities it might be I could stand the heat.  Going to have a long prayer meeting with the cats to find out whether they’re willing to allow having a look.

13 Comments

Posted in 2013, Adventure, America, Human Behavior, Senior Citizens, Solitude

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Damned fool dogs that didn’t hunt – Risk taking and priorities

Posted on June 10, 2013 by | 4 comments

wind sock columbus2

If you happen to be one of those people who goes through life making decisions about the dogs you’ve considered buying and they always hunted you probably believe it’s because you’ve been wise and prudent.  Or purely from ‘hard work’.  It’s certainly tempting for the person with that body of experience to believe it’s true, and maybe it is. 

Who the hell wants to believe, having spent his life scrambling with the only goal being ending up eventually with more money than you can spend, that it was because it’s just how it went?  That successfully accumulating a lot of money through a lifetime isn’t a hell of a lot different from just inheriting money?  That when the kids inherit what you accumulated but didn’t spend, the only favor you did them was giving them a leg up to being dirty rich kids turned adult?  Robbed them of the experience of scrambling and making the hard decisions and compromises you made, learned from, and consider vital to your life?

Alternatively, for people who muddle along staying in the middle of the bell shaped curve, or those who buy dogs that didn’t hunt tend to blame it on someone else, or outside factors.  The government, rich people, or just lousy luck.

Seems to me the problem with all this is the measuring stick, and it’s a disease of modern life.  Something we condition ourselves to early and never do enough thinking about to examine carefully.  So we fret about whether the chips on the table are $1 chips, or $100 ones and let the place they occupy on the value system influence whether we stay, or raise, nevermind the cards we’re holding.

I’m writing this because the game I’m in at the moment seems to be a high stakes one where I’m sitting.  People nearby ain’t saying so, but they believe I’m a damned fool for the buying the Toyota RV, believing what the guy who sold it to me told me about it, not knowing enough to assure it was the truth.

I’m not denying it’s true.  I thought the guy was honest and maybe he was.  He never checked a lot of it out because the guy who sold it to him was a good Christian in his church and he believed what he’d been told.

So I borrowed the money to buy it from a close friend and I’ll be paying him back for a longish time at $100 per month, whether that RV is in a junk yard, or has the coach stripped off and is earning its keep as a hauling cargo vehicle.  The buck stops here.  I’m not going to lie or misrepresent what that truck is and put some other poor bastard into the same position I’m in.  I’ll junk it first and swallow the loss, screw all the yardsticks.

So now I’ve got another RV staring me in the face, all my mistrusting sense organs fired up from the last time I trusted anyone.  Stakes being roughly the same as before, but seeming higher because I borrowed money from another friend I’m going to be paying back $100 per month for a couple of years, win, lose, or draw.

And knowing no matter how much checking I do, how clever I try to be, there’s a better-than-even chance the guy’s lying about something important I won’t be smart enough to catch.  Or maybe he’s telling the truth and buying the thing will be the smartest thing I ever did.

Either way, I’ll still be the damned fool I was before, the only difference being whether I think I was smart, or blame the government, or rich people, or Lady Luck.

Hell of a deal.

4 Comments

Posted in 2013, Adventure, America, Gambling, Government, Human Behavior, Transportation, Trucks

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Solar Shower – Overdesigned under-utilized

Posted on June 9, 2013 by | 4 comments

Shower

This was briefly my smartassed solar shower.  Lasted through one, count’em: 1 each of those 8 gallon water jugs.  Getting 60 pounds of water up there in a way so’s it will stay decided me the showering I got wasn’t worth the hernia I almost got.

So next time in town I went to Walmart and bought a 2 gallon insecticide sprayer.

4 Comments

Posted in 2013, Adventure, Nature, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Science, Senior Citizens, Survival, Texas

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Boundary issues

Posted on June 9, 2013 by | 11 comments

I stepped out of the RV to pee around 4:00 am and since it was too dark to read while I stood there pondering life to pass the time.  Tried to anticipate whether, late as it was, I’d be able to get back to sleep, or should I come indoors and do some work on the computer I’d been putting off doing.

So when I finished I’d decided to go up to the cabin and get some coffee, maybe do the comp thing.  But I noticed the wind had blown over a chair where I’d left a pinch bar and it was on the ground.  Picked it up and headed for the cabin porch.

Suddenly I was proud to have the pinchbar because one of the bigger coons I’ve ever encountered met me at the head of the steps, teeth bared.  I leaned backward to begin a step and the coon leaned forward suggesting he/she’d be following while I reared the pinchbar back to strike if needed.

Coon came down the top step with its front legs looking me straight in the eye when I spang hit it with the pinchbar and knocked it backward onto the porch.  This was beginning to tick me off.

I came up the first step while the coon turned around to face me again baring teeth and sort of whine/growling, not much of a pause before it came fast and I whacked hell out of it again upside the head.

Stunned it enough to give me time to think a moment and decide I wasn’t crazy about how this was all going, so as the coon struggled up and turned to face me I hit it again, this time with all the force I could muster.  Took it down again, but not dead, not unconscious.

So I stepped into the cabin and dragged out a .22 pistol inside the door, turned back around just in time to have the coon turning on me again.

Lousy way to start a day.

11 Comments

Posted in 2013, Adventure, Animals, Nature, Texas, Wildlife

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From Jeanne: It’s a blog!

Posted on June 5, 2013 by | 7 comments

Img_8684Jeanne Kasten Studio

Thanks to everyone who has shown interest in my drawings. I will continue to update the categories that I’ve started, and anticipate posting there about once a week. Your comments are welcome!

 

 

7 Comments

Posted in Adventure

The Lost Adams Diggings Revisited

Posted on June 5, 2013 by | 4 comments

Lost Adams Diggings Number 2297

I probably shouldn’t be telling you this because some of you might still think I have good sense.  But I’m going to anyway because I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t care whether you do or not.

What you are seeing in that Google map is the Lost Adams Diggings.  The line wandering along the lower right corner is the continental divide.  The areas with snow on the surface are shaded part of the day so’s not to have melted yet, the dark areas are lower, now in shadow.  The tiny short lines all over the place are deadfall left by a forest fire that swept the area in the 1990s.

Elevation’s around 9000 feet, the trails are all blocked with deadfall from the fire, but even back in the day the area never saw much human traffic.  It’s one of the more remote, tougher places to get to in the continental US.

Which is the reason those three dark lines you see running diagonally in the upper center have no business whatever being there.  Those are artifacts of human activity.  Those, and the lower left-of-center dark spot resembling an arrow.  The dark lines at the top, unless I miss my guess as I’ve done frequently before, are what is known in legend as ‘The Zig Zag Trail”.

A person wanting a closer look would have to go in on foot, crawling over deadfall.  Or a person 70 years old would probably have to have a donkey or pack goat or three.

I decided over the years this is the place after I’d already published the Lost Adams Diggings book because of various pieces of information acquired after the book was published. 

Soooooo.

I just happened to notice on Coleen’s Workers on Wheels Newsletter:

NM: Seasonal Camp Hosting and Mini Storage
by Mountain Spirits RV Park – Mimbres, New Mexico 88049
(Work Camping with Stipend in the Historic Mimbres Valley)

Mountain Spirits RV Park in Mimbres, New Mexico, needs camp host couples for the 2013/14 season. Our campground consists of 20 RV sites and 52 self storage units.

The park is located 25 miles east of Silver City, New Mexico, at an elevation of 5800 feet. We are in the historic Mimbres Valley, which is the gateway to the Gila Wilderness.

Couples share duties for this position. They include cleaning and maintaining a neat appearance of the office and two modern restrooms, waiting on customers and residents during 8-5 business hours, and checking in guests. Yard work includes weeding and watering of landscaping and yard areas.

Couples will work the same three days and same shift.

We offer a 30amp space, free WiFi, and $100.00 a month credit towards electric and propane use. We also offer a $100.00 cash stipend per month to help with expenses.

We would appreciate at least a three month commitment, if possible.

The nearest shopping is in Silver City.

Cell phone coverage is either Verizon or TracPhone.

If interested in camp hosting with us, please call 575-574-7000 or email coveroadnm@yahoo.com. Be sure to let us know that you saw our Help Wanted ad on Coleen’s Workers On Wheels website when you contact us about this campground job. Bill and Wanda, Managers. Mountain Spirits RV Park – Mimbres, New Mexico 88049. Posted June 2013.

Any of you who think you might be interested in being the other half of a couple to apply for that, I’d be obliged if you contact me.  josephusminimus@hotmail.com and we can discuss it.  I’d hope if you’re the other half of a couple with me you’ll look after my cats on my days off while I go trekking up into the high canyons.

4 Comments

Posted in Adventure, History, New Mexico, Prospecting

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Mongolian Yahooan Wildfire Treasures

Posted on June 5, 2013 by | 5 comments

Okala

Now that Yahoo’s decided to protect us by making us agree to let them read, store, and use all of our emails any way they want to there’s not much point going over there.  Except to find out whether the sky’s going to drop some moisture.  But when a person finishes looking at drawings of clouds on maps it’s difficult not to peek at what’s going on in Mongolia, or Bongobongoland.

For what it’s worth, things appear to be okay in Mongolia.

But there’s a huge fire or two raging in upstate New Mexico.  As nearly as I can figure the Jemez Mountains might be getting another round of flames.  They mentioned Valle Caldera and some ancient sites threatened, which might mean it’s threatening the western end of Frijole Canyon upstream from Bandera National Somethingorother. 

That old guy in Santa Fe, wossname, Fenn, who hid a box worth some money if he’s to be believed, probably has those mountains crawling with people who believe him.  From Santa Fe north to Alaska.  The ones who know it’s in Colorado and New Mexico should be able to accidently start a few fires for their troubles.

If I find the time I might swing up that way and pluck the box right out from under them just to keep the townies out of the mountains for their own good.  I was going to have Jeanne’s kids swing by where it’s hidden and snag it when they go that way this summer, but it’s looking as though they mightn’t make the trip.

I can’t swear to it, but I’m fearful I’ve drifted a bit from my original intent with this post, whatever that might have been.

5 Comments

Posted in Adventure, Human Behavior, Los Alamos, Native American, Native Americans, New Mexico, NM, Outdoors

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Daily Doomsday Injections

Posted on June 3, 2013 by | 7 comments

Went over to Yahoo weather to see what a person might expect in the way of tornadoes or hurricanes etc around here today and noticed the world’s probably going to end today instead of having any weather.

Fairly interesting how interesting a lot of people find the idea of the world ending instead of them just dying the natural way in some car wreck or intensive care unit of a hospital, or strapped slumped into a wheel chair in a nursing home watching a rolling TV screen drooling.

Briefly wondered whether people sneakily think they won’t die without  the world ending with them, everyone going at once.

Top of the list seems to still be ‘global warming’.  Which is the short term view of the world recovering from the last ice age and blaming it on ourselves that it’s doing it.

Doomsday: 9 Real Ways the Earth Could End

LiveScience.com

http://weather.yahoo.com/doomsday-9-real-ways-earth-could-end-134549020.html;_ylt=AqSbPFCMcaev_fC4xB.HgkmLYDIB;_ylu=X3oDMTNxc2xrNTY1BG1pdANXZWF0aGVyIE5ld3MgVVMEcGtnAzcwZTlmMjc4LTVhOGMtMzk4NS1iYTk0LTU5OGNiZDE5YjNlNgRwb3MDMTgEc2VjA3RvcF9zdG9yeQR2ZXIDMGU4MGFkZDItYzlmOS0xMWUyLWJkZWMtMDQ5Y2M0OTlhOTNm;_ylg=X3oDMTI2bnBiOGpqBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDBHBzdGNhdAMEcHQDZm9yZWNhc3RwYWdlBHRlc3QDYnVja2V0X3JlbW92ZWQ-;_ylv=3

7 Comments

Posted in Adventure

Come in and get me, coppers!

Posted on June 1, 2013 by | 7 comments

I’m thinking I’m going to have to start sending more interesting emails to people on my Yahoo account, or quit using it. Mainly all I get on there are daily digests from a few dozen Yahoo groups about raising chickens, sensor technology, recovering micron gold, and vintage Toyota RVs. I need to get into sex, guns and shoot’em ups with the cops if I want to keep Yahoo people from being bored.

https://www.startpage.com/eng/press/yahoo-reads-your-mails.html

Dark suit: “Old Jules, we saw on one of your emails that you think chickens are smarter than human beings. Could we come inside and talk with you a few minutes? We’d like you to answer a few questions.” Me: “Come in and get me coppers! You’ll never take me alive!”

 Dark suit: “Old Jules, one of your emails commented that you never see women wearing dresses anymore when you go to town. You said the only people wearing dresses nowdays are men. We believe this might be a hate crime. Could we come inside and ask you a few questions?” Me: “Come in and get me coppers! etc.”

Dark suit: “Old Jules, one of your Yahoo emails contained the statement, “The president is nothing but a white multinational banker with a full body tattoo, big investments in the weaponry and chemical companies, and a private army of mercenaries disguised as the US military and Homeland Security. Are these your own conclusions? How did you find out about the tattoo?”

7 Comments

Posted in Adventure

Okay, here’s the plan for now (from Jeanne):

Posted on May 27, 2013 by | 8 comments

For a little while at least, Old Jules is going to keep posting short entries on Facebook as the mood hits him. He’s not focused on blogging here at the moment, although he’s excited about the prospect of blogging more often when he’s on the road later on. So, as I have time, I’m going to transfer those posts over here for the benefit of readers who miss seeing his writing and aren’t on Facebook.
For those of you watching both places, sorry for any duplication. It can’t be helped.

 Those of you who want to keep an eye on my art work, take a look at Jeanne Kasten, Mandala Dreamer on Facebook. I intend to start a WordPress blog dedicated to my art work within the next couple of weeks, and I’ll announce and provide a link to that here so you can continue to follow that if you wish.

If you post a comment here, we’ll both get the message, so you can give us feedback if you wish.

So here is the Memorial Day entry from Old Jules:

Memorial Day would probably be a good time for a person to ask himself whether all those undeclared presidential wars since WWII were worth a single life.  Worth one dollar.  Whether they accomplished anything at all, aside from increasing the power of the US President and undermining the US Constitution.

8 Comments

Posted in Adventure