A guest blog by SD: Silent Dave; some lessons learned living on the road.

Pancho and Lefty
Song by Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard

Livin on the road my friend, is gonna keep you free and clean
Now you wear your skin like iron
Your breath as hard as kerosene

A guest blog by SD: Silent Dave.

Well our skin is quite tanned living outdoors most days, maybe after a few years it'll be like iron, but I doubt it.  Our breath is not that bad, we do brush and floss regularly.  But living on the road does have it's peculiarities.  We've been on the road for a bit more than two weeks now, here are some things we've discovered, I'm sure as time passes we'll be faced with more.

Camping is great, and we've stayed in some great places, but the best were not in national Parks.  The National Parks tend to get filled with mega campers with lots of kids.  Not our scene at all.  We've discovered National Grasslands and National Forests to be the best so far.  As we get further out west we will be checking out BLM land.  All of these are generally primitive, meaning there might be a pit toilet and water, or nothing at all.  Great places to camp but you need the right equipment.

A good tent is essential.  It doesn't need to be large, ours is a 6 person dome tent, but it does need to stand up to wind and rain, and bugs.  Our tent has some issues.  We will be looking to replace it some time soon.  After more than a decade of use the poles are failing and the floor leaks.  Not good, but it has given a good decade of use.

Bugs.  There are more bugs in the world than any other animal (The phylum Arthropoda (“jointed foot”) has the largest number of species. In fact, about 85 percent of known species are arthropods, and insects alone make up about 75 percent of known species. Other arthropods include the centipedes and millipedes; the arachnids (spiders, scorpions, ticks, mites); and the crustaceans (barnacles, crabs, crayfish, lobsters, shrimp, water fleas).) and they all seem to want to bite you.  Get used to scratching, and bug juice. Deet is the only thing that works so far.

Keeping clean is another essential.  Smelling like a 6 day old sock is Ok when you're backpacking, everyone else you meet will smell the same.  But when camping then driving into the nearest town you don't want people gagging when you walk by.  The need for warm water is met with a solar shower.  It is amazing to think how much water we used to use when showering.  Now two of us can shower, and feel clean, sharing a 2.5 gallon solar shower.  We are still needing to get used to our smell.  You can't keep as clean and good smelling as we used to when working in an office.  In a crowded camp ground we've done the old sponge bath, might not be optimal but it sure makes you feel better.  Back to basics I guess.

http://www.theinertia.com/surf/permanent-impermanence-7-lessons-from-a-year-on-the-road/

Eating is a bit different too.  The Coleman white gas stove has performed exceptionally well.  But you need to think of things that not only will keep for days without refrigeration, but will also be healthy.  We're getting older so we need our roughage.  hard to get, maybe we ought to be doing a Euell Gibbons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euell_Gibbons) see this plant, many parts are edible.  Otherwise its canned and dried stuff.  We just got some dried veggies from an organic health food store, we'll let you know how that works.

That's about it for now.  As we get better at this I'll add to it.

Happy trails!