Our next stop was just about 90 minutes down the road and still a part of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, though quite different in feel. Zach found us a free campsite (with toilets even!) called Telephone Cove that was right on the water. We pulled in Sunday mid morning where there were maybe a dozen or so other rigs amply spaced out. This seemed like a beach reward to us having spent the previous week near the water but rarely ever close enough to touch it. The paddleboard was promptly filled and launched and we all generally slowed way down to just take in our surroundings.

This was the first opportunity to socialize (safely of course, we’re all outside and socially distanced) with some other people as we met a family of four from Grand Junction, Colorado who have been traveling and living out of their Skooly (renovated school bus) for the past four (!) years. Their 14yo son took an instant liking to Camden so the boys got to playing and chatting right away.

We sat around a campfire with this family for a couple of the nights and had great conversations about life on the road, similar places we’d been, new suggestions and the like, when the question came up, “So, are you guys full-timers?” We’d never pondered this deeply before but it brought up all kinds of existential feelings. Are we full timers? Well, if we stopped this we don’t have an established home to return to, we don’t have any work pulling us anywhere, we homeschool, so I guess if those are our qualifiers then yes, we are full timers. I’d been having separate but similar thoughts these past few weeks when looking around at some of our fellow campers, especially this week at the free spot. Some of these people are homeless, living out of their vehicles / Some of those people are US! That’s us, we live on the road, granted we chose this, but it puts this lifestyle into perspective and gives a huge dose of humility and compassion for anyone experiencing homelessness, regardless of how they arrived there. Also, we are a scrappy, resourceful bunch. This place felt the most like a community with friendliness and conversation beyond the normal head nod or wave. We rather enjoyed this camaraderie and didn’t really want it to end. When our skooly friends departed two days ahead of us camp felt a lot different, like a piece of something special had moved on.

In addition to the great home vibes here we did manage to venture out for a couple of hikes. The surroundings are definitely transforming more into desert and less mountainous. A hike right by our camp was up an old wash with a lot of scrub oak and cacti, gravel terrain and millions of rocks of all sizes. Our second hike in Grapevine Canyon was filled with petroglyphs, and, surprising to all of us, actual vegetation – grapevines, trees, green shrubs and grasses, all credited to the active water flowing through this canyon.

We knew it was getting close to time to move along when for two days we were caught in another storm system that brought incredibly strong and unrelenting winds. I don’t recall ever feeling so anxious overnight about weather, it was like the wind and endless rattling camper noises were blowing right through my body. I thought we were going to lose everything that was still outside or sustain major damage. What really happened is one of our outdoor rugs flew down the beach but we were able to retrieve it in the morning. We moved up the cove for our last night here to be closer to a natural windbreak. This sweet spot will be remembered for glimpses into community and another unconventional Thanksgiving for the Mashek’s.