From A to B without Going Broke

 

In the house we were staying at in Arizona, in the section of the main room that one would probably call the office, sat a novelty I hadn't seen in some time. It looked a bit like a ball with a world map glued to it, perched on a metal stand. It felt familiar, but the prospect of putting it to use without employing a keyboard or mouse seemed foreign to me. I inspected it for a while until I figured out which country was ours, and from that point I could see clearly where we stood, and where we were headed. So it was with this device that my lady and I planned our way from the place we were then to the place we are now.

 

It had been taking me longer that had I expected to stop feeling guilty about leaving behind a good job and a furnished home to go fulfill some carpe diem vision for my life. Granted, I was thoroughly enjoying myself, but something still weighed heavy on me. Upon consideration, I decided that the problem was the same as it had always been; I simply had too much stuff. Too many things were cluttering up my compact little life. Trying to take my world with me everywhere I went just wasn't working. 

 

Thus, once again, I sorted through my bags, boxes, and bins, setting aside those items which I was willing to part with. These things were then stacked into the back closet where they would wait for my eventual return. What remained was one guitar, a short stack of books, a single duffel of clothes and shoes, a bin of my favorite cooking utensils, and a small selection of fresh, canned, and frozen foods—the bare minimum of what we would need to take five days driving from Phoenix, AZ to spend a month in Yaak, Montana.

 

Sedona, AZ: Our first day of being truly homeless was spent just north of Phoenix in this particularly beautiful part of Arizona. The plan was simple, at least on paper: travel with our belongings in the bed of the truck and covered by a tarp, stop to spend the night at a camp site, move all of our belongings into the cab of the truck, then string the tarp over the truck bed and BAM! a free tent to sleep in. Finished off with a thick piece of foam at a few layers of blankets, it was everything we needed. 

Our dinner for the night was equally frugal. After the gas, food and lodging are your major expenses on a road trip, and camping mitigated both of these. The site itself was $16, and the wood for a cooking fire was another $7. This brings me to my first bit of advice: if you don’t already own a set of cast-iron pans, then for the love of God stop reading this and go buy some. Not only are they great in the home kitchen, maintaining even heat and transferring easily from stove to oven, but they remain in good condition even when used outdoors over an open fire. We used our largest to make a cabbage tomato stew. Sure, I’ve prepared fancier dishes, but after a long day of hiking in the sun it was quite relaxing to sit outside as the evening cooled and enjoy a nice warm home-cooked meal together.

 

The Grand Canyon: Day two began with hot coffee made on a small Coleman camping stove. We broke down our camp and packed up the truck, then headed toward the big hole in the ground that locals call simply “The Canyon”, as if there are no others. Honestly, I didn’t expect to be as impressed as I was. Even standing there in front of it, it seemed as if we were staring at a picture.

 

The Grand Canyon has plenty of camping, and we were there early enough in the season that finding a space without a reservation was no trouble at all. After spending so much time out and about, however, we decided that our dinner for the evening should be a simple classic: grilled cheese and tomato soup. It’s an easy thing to fix while camping, since canned tomato soup concentrate takes up little space and cheese keeps well even in a modest soft-sided cooler like ours. We’d picked up some firewood from the local store earlier in the day and noticed they had PBR for $0.79 a bottle, so that became our libation for the evening. 

 

The one hitch was that we hadn’t exactly brought a plethora of cheese options to choose from, just a half-used chunk of parmesan and some string cheese that we’d grabbed for hiking snacks, but we weren’t going to let that stop us. I think we both expected it to be mediocre at best, but instead we discovered how wonderfully string cheese works in a toasted sandwich. With each bite strands of melted cheese drew a line from our hands to our  lips like some kind of over-the-top pizza commercial. The great thing about living on such a tight budget is that even the simplest of pleasures become intensified.

 

Lake Powell, AZ: Obviously, dinner and coffee aren’t the only two meals in a day, and we weren’t about to fork over our limited funds to pay for lunches as we traveled. Instead, we’d brought along several fillets of halibut that we had pilfered from the freezer of the house in Phoenix. Each night we’d poach one, and the next day we’d turn it into fish salad sandwiches.

 

What I’m about to tell you next may shock and offend, but we didn’t bring things like mayonnaise, mustard, or relish with us to make fish salad. We didn’t have any, and we certainly weren’t going to buy any. So, being the resourceful couple that we are, we got some for free… from gas station condiment bars. Mayonnaise and mustard are the easiest to come by, but relish is pretty common too. I was most surprised, however, to find packets of chopped onion and even lemon juice from the coffee/tea station. 

 

Armed with these packets, a loaf of bread, and a bag of poached fish, we stopped for lunch at Lake Powell on our way from The Grand Canyon to Bryce Canyon. We had one beer left, which we shared while enjoying our sandwiches and relaxing by the water. I later did the math and figured that the whole lunch for both of us cost exactly $1.29. Take that, dollar menus!

 

We made it to our campsite late that night, and spent the next morning exploring the strange rock formations of Bryce Canyon before continuing on our journey.

Jackson Hole, WY: After all the camping and driving and fish sandwiches, we decided it was time for an easy evening. It came up sort of by chance, but we just happened to be driving through this cute little town in the early evening and both concluded that we were done traveling for the day, so we found the cheapest motel we could get and decided it was time for someone else to fix us dinner. 

 

Not wanting to spend to much money, but still wanting to relax and enjoy ourselves, we found a proper restaurant to have some cocktails and share an appetizer. The Silver Dollar Bar and Grill took good care of us, and after soaking up some local food and atmosphere we promptly hit the Wendy’s drive thru down the road to quell our dinnertime hunger. It didn’t matter that our motel room was what some might call “dinky” or “dumpy” or “dilapidated” or some other adjective beginning with “d”, and it didn’t matter that dinner came from a bag, it was just nice to sit and watch TV from the comfort of a warm bed for the night.

 

Billings, MT: For our last night on the road my lady wanted to stop and see some of her old friends in Billings. I happily agreed, since we were far North enough that there was no interest in camping overnight out in the cold, and the day had been long enough that I didn’t want to set up the “tent”. I wasn’t really sure what to expect, so I was notably surprised when the place we pulled up to turned out to be a llama farm. 

 

They took us in for the night, fed us, introduced us to their children and pets, and showed us around their farm. I’d never stood so close to a llama before, and I found there appearance to be quite endearing. Watching them move could make anyone feel lighthearted—something between hopping and prancing. It was an interesting life to get to peer through the window at, but honestly after all that time being on the road it just felt good to be in the company of another couple for the evening.

 

We left early the next morning, before anyone else was awake, and began the final leg of our journey from point A to point B.