The people you meet while camping

Jodi found herself a Tilley this week. I knew my hats were fashionable. Total trend setter!

One of my favorite parts of travel is meeting new people.  Every time I take the Airstream out on the road I meet new people.  And 9 times out of 10 they’re pretty cool, and always nice.  Sure you’ll run across the rare curmudgeon, but they are rare.

This week we’ve met a great group of folks.  Of course, Bert & Janie Gildart are here.  I haven’t seen them in 2 years.  So it’s wonderful to catch up with them.  And over the years of dry camping in Borrego they’ve met some pretty cool people.  Mike, Randy (and his dog Jack), Chuck, Ted, Renata…..and a few more folks who I can’t remember names for (I’m bad with names).

We’ve also met Mike & Melissa.  They’re camping out here near us, and at first I didn’t know what to make of them.  Mike was out in the sun all day looking at rocks on the ground.  I thought he was prospecting so I didn’t want to bother him.  But that’s not what he was doing at all.

Near Peg Leg (where we are camped) many hiking trails are available.  One trail leads to a stone snake in the hills.  It’s made of many small stones to create quite the mosaic. To read about the snake and see some photos, pop over to Bert’s blog and see for yourself.  That snake in the desert inspired Mike to do something different on his vacation.  He started making a mosaic of their cat that travels with them!

So, while I thought he was prospecting it turned out he was making rock art in camp.  Neat!  Not something I would have thought to do, but just goes to show you there are many ways to wind down while traveling.

Last night we did a quick 5 minute photo shoot with Mike and Melissa to memorialize the completion of the mosaic of their cat Woody.  They’ll be moving along soon and leaving Mike’s rock art behind.  How long will it remain here?  Will people think it’s a memorial to a long lost pet?  Who knows, but they’ve left something interesting that will start conversations for some time to come.

Like I said, a favorite part of traveling with the Airstream is meeting other people on the road!

Mike, Melissa, & Woody the cat all behind Mike’s art work.