And so it begins…The Creeper Cross Trip

This will be my fourth opportunity to cross our wonderful country. The first three times were pretty harried and hurried – the first a true unknown adventure full of break downs and roadside kindnesses in a dilapidated van (I didn’t know it at the time of purchase, but it had a blown head gasket!) which took about a week. A return trip for my oldest daughter’s wedding back in 2021 done in five days as a tag-along rider in a van. The return from home after a month’s visit, in my little Honda Fit which now lives with a young single mother in Lake Havasu, AZ – done in four days. This time, a more leisurely (?) drive that should take about a month to five weeks. I’ll be working the entire time this journey, so I’ve labeled it the Creeper Cross. Get up, work, drive an hour or so after work to the next pit stop. The ability to work depends on cell signal for my work router, so that drives most everything. This will be a different route, further north than the low south traveling I’ve done before, so many things will be brand new to my eyes.

I hope to document by at least one photograph a day a snapshot of the country as seen driving across. When I’ll post those is anybody’s guess, hah!

Traveling and seeing is one of my greatest loves. I’ve been nomadic at heart since I was introduced to my first “house truck”; a self-built tiny house topper for a pickup truck bed that my eccentric grandfather built for his meandering ways. I guess that’s where the seeds of my movability were planted via DNA. That and some Viking history in the bloodline. Where is “home”? Is it inside of us, so that we carry it with us always? I’ve felt home once in my life – at the place that is the title of my blog. Sunflower Solace Farm was the place I wanted to plant roots and grow old. As life would have it, that did not happen, although the little farmette lives on as someone else’s home place. I’ve been back a few times, but it hurts. I paper over that hurt by trying out new places and even another house, which I’m heading towards. But it is not the same as knowing a place by walking it, discovering its hidden treasures, watching it change through all four seasons. Watching the turkey and deer, owls and opossums, seeing when the redbud trees start sporting their buds, the scent of catalpa tree blooms, when the wild blackberries take hold. What I am doing these last four years though, I wouldn’t trade for anything, and I suspect my travels will continue for as long as I am safely able to do so.

The departure point was Winterhaven, CA, a place where nomads swarm for the winter – near a few lakes, a dam, the Yuma Proving Grounds military facilities and smack dab in the Sonoran desert. The area is surrounded for miles and miles by farms growing the lettuces, greens and other food necessities that travel from there to their final plates. While the desert has its own special beauty, it is also dusty, windy, rocky and parched for most of the time. I am ready for trees and water, green in myriads of shades, for grass and hay fields, and all of the things that make up the eastern portion of our country.

A couple of my favorite snaps of my temporary winter home this year…

Human handiwork in the desert

And as a reader, this was one of my favorite haunts, the free ‘liberry’

Library a la Airstream

The first night of the Exodus was in a parking lot by a Tractor Supply, nothing much to see.

Sunset here though, was pretty spectacular despite being between a busy highway and a freight train track. When I am tired, it is amazing what I can sleep through!

Weeping version of some unknown tree species as the sun sets

Date farms, they are everywhere! Date shakes? Kind of like mainlining sugar 🙂

Edge of date farm by the train tracks

And so, if you’d like to travel across the good ol’ USA with me, feel free to follow along. Between work and traveling, I’m not sure how often I can update, but I will make a good effort.

Until next time, safe travels, light hearts and get outside when you can!

~SE running across the country in da bus