MY NEW TRAILER!

New to me, anyways. Made in 1974, one of my favorite years. Just in time -- see the snow on Mt. Tom in the background? Fourteen feet long (includes hitch), nine windows and a door. Dinette, bunk, closet, stove, ice box. No bath, no toilet, no running water, no electricity.  Plenty propane for heat and light in cold dark winter. Vintage. SpamCanCute. Price $750.00 plus $25 to tow to Horton Creek and level. I love it!!

Shady Rest Trailer Heaven sold it to me off their storage lot. On the way out of Bishop on 395 the old tires ripped to shreds on the rims and Jimmy and Winford in their giant 4x4 double axel diesel pickup truck swerved into Chevron/Firestone where the rims got repaired and I bought two new tires. Then the interior closet door pulled out its hinge screws due to a large heavy industrial mirror that had been bolted onto it--a 20 pound  5/8 inch thick glass with steel case! I couldn't get a match on the hinges but a very helpful hardware store clerk hammered the twisted hinges in a vise to straighten them and sold me putties with instructions to fill the holes -- I reinstalled the light, hollow, veneer-on-a-frame door and it now swings sweetly open and shut. I bought a fire extinguisher and screwed it to an overhead kitchen cubby. I reconstructed the strangely arranged bunk bed system to be one bottom twin bed and one large top storage shelf.  Now I need to mastic the ceiling vent and rebrace the front window storm cover (note bungee bandaid). Etc, etc. 

And so I am initiated into Trailer Life, which is Trailer-Fixing-Life. Even with its limitations and repair demands, it is so comfortable after just a crate, a picnic table, and the great outdoors. I still have the great outdoors, but now it really is outdoors, and I am indoors: cozy, comfy, sheltered from the wind. Yippee!

Duck and Cover Snag and Fall Color

First weekend in October opens to clouds, rain and cool, balmy air in Bishop. Friday by cellphone I killed my chances of renting a trailer in the Elms Trailer Park (cheapest rent in town) by complaining to an Owens Valley Slumlord that I was worried about an industrial-strength chemical odor lingering in one trailer and a burnt-black stove and crud-black shower stall in another.  She told me I'd probably be happier in a an apartment, wouldn't I?  I think her tone meant that I had failed the tenement-material test and could just sashay my snooty self off to Mammoth Mountain Resort and rent a ski condo if I thought I could afford it so there.

Oh well, I will have to sashay myself out of Horton Creek by November first and possibly into Pleasant Valley, a county campground open all year down by the Owens River, or boost off to Tecopa Hot Springs on the other side of Death Valley for the winter ... meanwhile it is gorgeous out here, clouds dusting snow on Mt. Tom, canyon creeks blazing gold with quaking aspen, and the Round Valley pastures glowing in the early evening light.

A fellow camper at the Wellness Center instructed me on how to insulate a tent for the dry cold of high desert winter:  Set up one big tent, stake, tie, and weight it down to earth. Set up a smaller tent inside of it. Both tents must have somewhat congruent mesh ceilings. Stuff old sleeping bags and comforters into the air space between the tent walls and on the floor of the inner tent. Keep the air-flow area in the mesh "chimney" clear of insulation at the top, then cover the whole thing with a sturdy rain fly. Place a portable propane heater in the tent and fire it up for a few minutes, shut it off, and zip up tight for the night. A sort of Pillow Igloo.

So, blog re-namers, I might be led back to "InnaTenting395" by the end of the season!