Endless Fall.....

As I ponder about what to convey about Friday I can't help but reflect on my life in general these past few years and the origination of the inspiration to become nomadic.  There was a movie released in 1966 called "Endless Summer" written and directed by Bruce Brown.  Bruce followed two young surfers around the world for a year in search of the perfect wave, and this movie was about that experience.  The title captivated me from the very beginning.  In the summer of 1966 I was fast approaching my 17th birthday, and the thought of living a life where you chased summer around the world for a year so intrigued me.  Back then summer stood for freedom from schedules....school was out, and you had three months of sleeping in, staying up late, going to the beach, the mountains, the desert (I lived in Southern California), swimming in someone's pool, working on the perfect tan.  The idea that you could do that all year long seemed so unreal, but so alluring at the same time.  

1966 was the summer I spent the entire summer in a small, out of the way town in northern Minnesota called Orr.  Our church had a summer camp there.....I have written about SEP before (Summer Educational Program).  Orr was about an hour's drive from International Falls (the Canadian border).  The daylight portion of each day went from about 4:30 am to after 11 pm.....that's how far north we were.  I worked in the student dinning hall that summer as a 'bus boy'.....my best friend, Tom Carrozzo, and I had that job, and we were inseparable that summer.  We worked the breakfast shift from 6 am to 9 am every day, and then spent the next 3 hours down at the swimming docks working on the perfect tan.  Next we worked the lunch shift from Noon to 3 pm, and then spent the afternoon water skiing on Pelican Lake.  At 6 pm we would return to the kitchen for the dinner shift which ended at 9 pm.....we didn't go back to the dorm to go to bed.....we went fishing pretty much every night until after 11 pm....we caught and ate a lot of Northern Pike that summer.  Tom and I got by on about 5 hours of sleep a night the whole summer.....and it was the best summer of my life.  That was the last carefree summer for many years......

The next summer I graduated from high school and was going off to college in September so I spent the entire summer working as a plumber's assistant digging ditches, bending pipe, cutting pipe, threading pipe in order to stockpile a little extra money for my first year in college.  Once again Tom and I worked together that summer......it was some of the hardest work I have ever done and would hold that distinction until TLE and I worked at the sugar beet harvest in October of 2013.

All during college, all through the time we were raising 5 children I continued to think about living the kind of 'nomadic' life those two young surfers lived, only by the time I was in my late 50's I had decided that I would prefer seeking out the 'Endless Fall'......living in SoCal I had had my fill of hot summers, and really preferred the climate and temperatures of the Fall.  It was then that the dream was reborn, only now it would involve living in an RV and traveling here and there seeking Fall like weather and 70 degree temps.

Obviously, if you have read my blog for any period of time you know that we do not always achieve our goal of Fall weather and temps, but that is by choice.  Sometimes the temp jobs we take on keep us in an area longer than we would normally wish, and we end up with some cold temps.

So, Friday, March 20th we find ourselves living in Fall like weather with clear blue skies, big horizons, long views.....sure it gets down into the low 40's at night, but during the day it is in the 70's.  We run the heater a little bit first thing in the morning, but there is no A/C in use here....in fact we have not run the A/C  in our coach since early September.

Friday looked a lot like Thursday, Wednesday, and Tuesday......we took a hike up in the bluffs overlooking Lake Powell logging a little over 3 miles, then spent the rest of the day watching more March Madness games using our inverter, and reading.

I utilized the 'outdoor' TV to watch my games so I could enjoy the weather and views at the same time......while I was sitting there I noticed a roadrunner sitting in the nearby firepit......

 Our visitor

The outdoor TV....life is good.

Around 5:30 I started up another fire in our portable fireplace, and TLE provided the Margaritas while we watched the evening shadows lengthen, and the distant rock formations change colors for a little over an hour.....then it was time to fire up the BBQ again to grill some pollo asado for our pollo fajitas....they were sooooo scrumptious! 

After dinner we watched a recorded 'Blacklist', then the finish of a couple of 'March Madness' games before heading off to bed about 10 (TLE was in bed by 9 pm).......ah yes....the 'Endless Fall'!

Thanks for stopping by!