Tag: travel writing

Ithaca, New York

~ Elliott

It’s been four whole months since I wrote on this blog. A lot has happened. We are no longer full-timing in our RV. In fact, Serenity is in Florida with Joey’s dad currently. So what happened? Well, after 9 months away, Joey was really missing our friend Erica who lives in Syracuse. I was also feeling lonely and drawn back to the east. I was feeling the desire to settle somewhere, and maybe part-time RV if we could make it financially feasible. We cut our Pacific Northwest exploration short, and hope to get back someday. We cut across the country, from Oregon to Washington to Montana. We pretty much just drove and slept. The Montana mountains and forests were pretty. Then it was on to North Dakota. The Badlands were also visually intriguing. I saw another buffalo when we stopped one night. It was all a blur, because we traveled cross country in about a week. Minnesota turned to Wisconsin to Indiana to Ohio without much excitement. Then we were suddenly back in New York State, and that was weird.

We ended up back on the west side of Syracuse, staying in Erica’s mom’s driveway. It was a stressful few weeks. Joey had to set up his tent and workshop in the front yard. I felt really lost. It was great seeing Erica and other people again, but everything felt really uncertain and I felt a little trapped. I knew very quickly that I didn’t want to be in Syracuse. Joey was starting to get really depressed, and he still is. The constant stress and work of travelling apparently held it off for him, but now it’s front and center. I was also struggling. We were looking for places to live, maybe for 6 months, in the general Syracuse region. I saw my therapist. I vented a lot about the difficulties of RV life and my fears for the future. I casually mentioned how I wished we could move to Ithaca, because that was probably our best option as queer, trans, and aspie people in Central New York, and I had some internet friends who lived there. My therapist asked me why I hadn’t told Joey this, and I realized I should. He was like, “That’s funny, I was thinking the same thing.” So we started searching for apartments.

We’re about an hour and a half south of Syracuse, but it’s a completely different world. It certainly isn’t perfect. It’s a very white, artsy, hippy, liberal college town. It’s still Central New York. But I feel way safer here, and there are resources. I have a new therapist who is queer and great, and an advocate for my disabilities, and it’s all free. I started a queer writer meetup group and I feel like I’m making some friends and slowly building community. Community seems really important to people here. And there are a lot of trans people. Actually, I feel happier here than I did anywhere else so far.

I realized I need people in my life that I see regularly and who I care about. More than just Joey and Drew and the cats. It’s not enough just to meet passing strangers and do readings in cities once a month. If I’m ever going to live my life to the fullest, I have to get close to people. I’m a lot better than I was when we left Syracuse. I feel like I’ve clarified my boundaries. I’m still super anxious around people, but it’s getting better. I think Ithaca is a good fit.

It’s funny, because my original plan was to go to Ithaca College. I was 17 or 18, and I thought it would be perfect for me. My dad communicated that it was too expensive. I was not a great high school student so I didn’t get aid, and this was before he left on disability (or whatever happened. Early retirement? I’m not sure.) Anyway, I got pretty much no financial aid. I was a traumatized kid too focused on trying to survive and transition to really care, so I let my dad handle most my college finances and decisions (for better and mostly worst). I went for SUNY Purchase, and eventually dropped out. And hey, I never would have written my first book if I hadn’t gone there. And I got more familiar with New York City…a little. Beyond that, I’m not sure I got anything positive out the experience. I can’t help wondering what would have happened if I went to Ithaca from the start. The queers I’ve met here have seemed stable. Of course, I’m older now. But it’s interesting to wonder about.

We have a tiny apartment we can’t really afford on the Southside of Ithaca. It’s quite convenient to the Commons/Downtown area, which means I can bike places. We’re near a Wegmans. I can go to cafes, which is where I am today. I signed up and got a scholarship to take two classes a semester at the Community School of Art and Music. The queer writers group meets once a week. I am biking distance to water falls (which are mostly dried up from drought) and a swimming spot on Cayuga Lake. My needs are being better met. Joey’s business is doing better, even if he is really depressed. My book sales are pretty much the same.

Tomorrow I have an appointment my lawyer and advocate to talk about DSS and the stupid internal hearing for “intentional fraud” that I’m going to have to probably go to. They want $3,000. It’s total bullshit and bullying. I did nothing wrong. I will be glad when the meeting is over, and gladder when I just have SSI and don’t have to even deal with this. It’s been super stressful for me. I also have to see about getting foodstamps and temporary assistance while I’m here in Tompkins County. I have a meeting for that tomorrow too, which my advocate is also coming to.

Anyway, we have the apartment for a year. I really don’t know what’s happening. There’s been some talk of moving to Canada. I don’t know how serious that is, or if I really want it. But we are here at least until next summer. We may take a winter RV trip if we can.

I’ll post again when I’ve got something to say. There have been trips to the Adirondacks, New York City, and Buffalo that I have not covered. Oh well. Until next time. Thanks for reading my thoughts.

Sick of SoCal

~ Elliott

I am so ready to move on from Southern California! The AWP Conference and Bookfair is just a few days away, in Los Angeles. If hadn’t already purchased my booth, I don’t think I would have had the patience to wait these past few months. The event ends April 2nd, then we are moving on. We want to be in Oregon. I’m pretty sure we are going to take Route 395 through the Eastern Sierras to get there. It looks amazing. If we went via Santa Cruz and San Francisco, I could visit people again and maybe do some more open mics. But I think I’ll be more in the mood for nature after a 4 day conference of socializing and networking and reading. And I believe it’s what Joey wants, and probably Drew too.

Right now, we are pretty much in a parking lot. It’s an RV park in Antelope Valley, but it’s just pavement. It’s boring, but it’s just a few more days.

I’ve been practicing the guitar a lot and improving. I think I’ve improved more in the past few weeks than I have in like thirteen years of guitar playing. I have no formal training, but I found some lessons on YouTube that have been really fun and helpful. I want to start writing music again soon.

I’m missing New York. It looks like we may be returning in August. That would be really great, actually. I’d love to get up to the Adirondacks with our friend Erica and the dogs. Sometimes I’m very homesick. Sometimes I think I will need to live in upstate New York again eventually. Sometimes I think I never will. I really don’t know. Home is a strange concept.

Catastrophes averted (Southern California)

~ Elliott

This month can best be described as “catastrophes averted.”

First, my reading in San Francisco went great. After that, and a second reading in Oakland, we headed south to Wilderness Trails RV Park, in Menifee. We stayed there for two weeks. The first week we met up with a friend Joey made in Arizona. And then…Mittens went missing.

Mittens is our tortie/calico/polydactly kitty. She is usually more timid and serious than Snowflake. She always looks grumpy, but she is a healer. She is drawn to people in pain and soothes them. She’s also incredibly intelligent. She got off her leash at night and went missing for three nights. We put up flyers and handed the out all over the campground. People were very nice and helpful- we were actually surprised. We made friends with a woman, her 16 year old son, and their dog, who searched as hard, if not harder, than we did. When we finally found her, she was in the RV storage area, hiding under a rig that looked a lot like ours. Same year and model. I’m telling you: smart kitty.

I’m still thrilled to have her back. With all the strays and coyotes around, after all that time I really thought she was gone. It was horrible. She is a member of this family. I couldn’t imagine pulling out of the park without her.

After that, we planned to boondock in the Santa Barbara mountains. First we visited family in Santa Barbara. When we headed into the hills, the roads were not good. The forest ranger website said they were…but they were not. They were steep and covered in rocks, with no way to turn around for miles. Our engine gave out on a particularly steep incline. We managed to get it to start again and up to a safe area, where we left the car and many belongings, to reduce weight. It looked like it might storm, which would have been very hazardous, so we took the RV back down the hill and into Carpinteria. Drew has an aunt there, and we parked on the road by her apartment.

The next week was a mess of getting the RV repaired, retrieving the car, staying at motels, having the cops called on us (long story), dealing with insurance, and general hectic days.

But, we have our home back and it works fine. The step got busted, beyond repair. Everything else is fine. Now, we are at a park in Acton once more. That’s north of Los Angeles. We are still hanging around here until my conference at the end of March. Then we are getting to Oregon as soon as possible. We are all ready to be done with California for a while.

It’s been 6 months on the road, by the way, and nearly a year since I started this blog. Not bad.

 

So much wildlife in Paicines, CA

~ Elliott

So this week we’ve been staying at an RV park located sort of in the middle of nowhere, inland California. We’re further north, so it’s less drouth-y and that’s a plus. It’s been nice having electricity and water hookups again, and there’s a public shower that’s pretty decent. We recently got a tent room thing and an electric heater, so that’s been pretty awesome too. Joey and I use it as a workspace.

Screen Shot 2016-01-06 at 7.29.06 PM

Joey and I have gotten up every past morning and gotten coffee at the lodge. I’ve just wanted to be around people lately. It’s weird, because it used to be Joey who was so eager to make friends and I was reluctant. Usually it’s just us and some of the workers though. I really want to meet more people. A part of me wishes we went with going to Quartzsite, but I have important writerly things coming up in San Francisco and Los Angeles that I’m excited about. Maybe next year.

It’s kinda dull here, except that there is an abundance of wildlife. We have seen at this park:

  • Two great-horned owls, several times
  • Dozens, possibly 100+ quails, all the time
  • Bobcats, twice
  • Hares, several times
  • Flickers and Woodpeckers, all the time
  • Mule deer, several times.

The following are all pubic domain images, because I was not lucky enough to capture photos of any of them.

 

 

California (Morgan Hill, Ventura) and Arizona (Quartzsite, Mesa)

~ Elliott

When last I wrote an entry, we were just getting to California. That was almost 2 months ago. Most of October we spent back and forth between two RV resorts in southern Silicon Valley. We traveled to the San Francisco Bay area and some other places nearby, like Santa Cruz. Joey had his surgery in San Francisco on the 20th, and we stayed over a few nights in a hotel.

After Joey had healed some from surgery, we stayed further south in Ventura, on the Rincon Beach parkway. This was a bunch of RVs parked on the side of Ventura Highway, with beach and ocean on the other side. This was incredible, to wake up and fall asleep at the ocean for a couple nights. We also visited some of Drew and Joey’s family.

In November, we headed back to Arizona, staying first briefly in Parker, where I swam in the Colorado river. Then we met Joey’s dad at a primitive camp called Burro Creek, which was located near Nothing, Arizona. That’s the actual name. We saw burros and found a small hot spring, in which I built a natural jacuzzi. That was a lot of fun.

After that, Quartzsite. It was way too early in the season. It seemed like the worst place for us. No food we could eat, nothing to really do, nobody around, no water, no wifi, often no data…just lots of rocks, and rock stores. Yes, stores where you can buy rocks, and that was about it. I wouldn’t call them stores either…More like elaborate yard sales. We plan to go back when more people arrive, because apparently it’s a big RV thing in the winter. Thousands and thousands of people migrate there. But it was a very crappy, tiny desert town otherwise. No offense, Quartzsite. We had some fun pretending it was Nightvale and being amused by the local papers, but that was where the fun ended. Then we found out that people camping near us had their generator stolen in the night, and that this was a reoccurring problem. This was right after a gas station clerk actually broke down crying to me the previous evening, saying “I don’t know why I moved to the desert…I hate it here…” Yeah, we didn’t leave Syracuse for this shit. We packed up that morning.

Next was Mesa, Arizona where we have been staying since in various sections of Tonto National Forest. We have stores with food we can eat, and we have been able to stay for mostly free on public land. First we went to Phon D Sutton recreation area, where I went tubing and swimming and exploring in the Salt River. Swimming in November! We saw wild horses and bald eagles. I guess technically they aren’t “real” wild horses, but they were horses who were living without humans in the wilderness, so that sounds like wild horses in my book.

We also stayed at Lost Dutchmen state park, right near the Superstition Mountains. Joey climbed them. I saw a coyote here, and certainly heard lots of them, everywhere. We were careful with the cats and continue to be.

Now we are staying on the Verde River. It’s greener (duh) and fast moving. I achieved a lifelong goal of swinging on a rope swing into the water! I also went tubing and nearly died. I lost my tube and had to use all my might to keep from getting pulled under a fallen tree in the rapids, and then to get from that tree to the shore. We are thinking kayaks and lifejackets for the future. Still, I will miss you, tube. Good times.

Joey is working on his prosthetic business, and I’ve been writing a lot. Drew is really interested in primitive skills and spends hours lately smashing rocks against other rocks. I take the cats on cat walks. We’ve met some people, and I’ve been really shy, but I’m getting better at it. Sometimes figuring out where we’ve going next and survival can be stressful, but I still rate RV life an A+ so far.

 

California at last

~ Elliott

Currently camping/staying in: Morgan Hill, Paicines, soon San Francisco…it’s complicated. But we are in California! Yes.

I started writing this entry as a reflection on my life since I’ve been with Joey. We realized early in our relationship that we wanted to move out west. So did his son, Drew. I wanted to give you a sense of what we had to get away from in Syracuse…but I’m realizing that would take another whole book on my part. Suffice to say, Syracuse was slowly killing us for multiple reasons. We had our best friend and family-by-choice, Erica. And while that was huge…we still had to leave. The original plan was to get to California. The idea for the RV came later (though it had been a longtime dream of Joey’s, one that he had almost actualized in his previous marriage).

And so, here we finally are, in California. I suppose I could say “back in California.” I spent a lot of my childhood school breaks in San Diego, because my dad traveled for work. I also lived out here a few years ago, on my own (see my most recent book, Show Trans). But for the most part I’ve been an upstate New Yorker all my life. We travelled from coast to coast. Within a week I swam in the Atlantic and Pacific ocean. It’s pretty mind boggling.

There’s an Instagram feed on the side of my blog now, if you want to see pictures. I’m finding that’s way less hassle then trying to insert them in these text entries.

Since I’m not going to reflect on how we got here– not at this time– I am going to focus on the here and now, and just what that is. Well, first actually, I will give a brief list of what has occurred the past week or so. We traveled to Jerome, AZ one evening, briefly: an artist colony in the hills. We stayed at a Cracker Barrel en route. We spent one night off of Ventura Highway, waking up to an empty beach on a weekday for sunrise. That was amazing. That’s when it all really hit me that I am here and this is life.

There has been a lot of low times. A lot of stress. I still feel depressed, often. This has been hard work. It is not a full-time vacation. And we are not rich, or even really secure yet…

But the cats seem happy. Drew has wi-fi. I’m in California. Joey’s about to have surgery in San Francisco on the 20th, which is both stressful as hell but going to be so good for him in the long run and make his life easier.

And I’m sippin’ coffee and vaping in my camp chair, putting off a little longer my plans to make today productive if possible. It’s 9 am here, and skies are blue and the air is perfect. Yep. This is the life for me.

Crossing the Mason-Dixon Line (Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia)

~ Elliott

Alright, so we finally left New York State! Wednesday night we slept in a Walmart parking lot in St. Clair, Pennsylvania. Then we drove about 200 more miles on a bunch of backroads, trying to avoid tolls. Not a good idea in retrospect. Bumpy as hell and very stressful for Joey, the captain. We stayed over at Cedarville State Park in Brandywine, Maryland. It was nice, but unfortunately we received alerts on our phone that the air in the general D.C. area was fucked up and people were advised not to go outside. So…we moved on pretty quick, and drove another 150 miles to Hampton, Virginia. We’re staying over at a small state park. We’ll be here a few days, because I have a book reading in Norfolk on Saturday.

I haven’t been to the south since I was a kid, and I have virtually no experience in southern states. Joey and Drew lived in North Carolina and Florida for a while. I’ve practically lived in upstate New York all my life. So this is pretty exciting to me to be somewhere very different, even if we haven’t done or seen much yet. Here is a small sampling of what I have seen so far.

Elliott's Tire and RedNex Guns and Ammo, somewhere in Virginia
Elliott’s Tire and RedNex Guns and Ammo, somewhere in Virginia
Trees at Cedarville State Park in Brandywine, MD
Trees at Cedarville State Park in Brandywine, MD
Truck for, um, Kegel…fruit. Lancaster, PA
Truck for, um, Kegel…fruit. Lancaster, PA
Surprisingly beautiful scenery I woke up to in a Walmart parking lot in St. Clair, PA.
Surprisingly beautiful scenery I woke up to in a Walmart parking lot in St. Clair, PA.

Buffalo, NY

~ Elliott

We are now staying in Western New York, not far from Buffalo. This RV park we ended up at is kinda awesome. I definitely prefer this to the last state park we stayed at. It’s definitely kitschy, but unpretentious. There is a petting zoo, and a small lake with swimming and canoe rentals, a mini golf course. It’s been an amusing stay, with the background sounds of the occasional goat or donkey. We are also near a firing range, so the occasional gunshot goes off.

Quick quote: “I just realized something. Goats are kind of like dogs that don’t lick you.” -Drew

People here drive weird old trucks and golf carts around. There’s a redneck vibe, and I definitely got a weird looks from people when Joey and I walked the cats this morning. But no one has been outright hostile.

I have wifi! I worked most of the morning. I’ll probably go skateboarding and for a dip in the lake again soon. I’m feeling pretty content. This is still a big adjustment, but so far I am happy.

1000 Islands and a Walmart Parking Lot: Northern NY Journey

~ Elliott

So we are officially living full-time in the RV now. We stayed up at a state park in the 1000 Islands. Highlights include

  • No wi-fi for several days
  • My phone is dead, forever
  • First time I saw a praying mantis
  • First time in a 30-foot canoe

Now we are in a Walmart parking lot in Northern New York State. It’s been a bit of a rough start, but everyone’s doing pretty good, including the cats. Lack of cell phone means lack of easily accessible camera, and thus, I don’t have any pictures just yet. Brain is also tired, so I am short on amusing anecdotes at the moment. Stay tuned.

Oh, and apparently I can write three books before age 27 but I can’t put away macaroni and cheese leftovers in a bag. Somehow the bag ended up inside out and there is cheese everywhere. I…don’t know what happened… But the others had a good laugh.

Salmon River Reservoir: Richland, NY

~ Elliott

We’ve been spending some time up in the Tug Hill region. This place is really beautiful. Rocky beaches, great for swimming. We’ll be staying up here for a week or so eventually, so I’ll have more to say then. Right now I’m honestly thinking about some upsetting news stories I just read- about yet more trans women, of color, being murdered. I’m feeling very privileged to be able to do this, particularly as a trans person. Life has been really hard for very long. It’s kinda stupid how meeting the right person has improved so much for me. Not that it fixes everything…It just bothers me that people can’t get unstuck in this country (world?). I was stuck for so long. I still don’t have much money. But I have relative freedom now. I have support. Anyway. I’m feeling very privileged, and a bit sad, and scared. I still feel unsafe, often. A part of me doesn’t want to reveal where I am on things like this blog. A big part of me would rather just disappear. But I do think it’s important that all different types of (trans) people write their stories. And I also can’t help writing and sharing. I could just do it in a notebook, but that’s less satisfying for me than it used to be. So I keep writing. In other arenas, I’ve been sharing more about my mental health, and past, and family of origin. It’s…scary. It’s hard to shake off the feeling that something bad is going to happen. But that’s life.

Anyway, here are some pictures.

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I’ve been feeling like the region around here is haunted. I know that sounds silly. Sometimes a part of my brain opens up and I find myself believing in the supernatural. It’s usually when my brain is seriously processing past trauma. Anyway, we were driving home the other night, through the country, and I saw three figures in the road. I was about to yell out to Joey to look out, when they disappeared. it was a man, a woman, and a child.

Joey’s currently hard at work with all the practical aspects of making this motorhome thing happen. I want to be more helpful in that area. My brain is in the clouds. It’s going to be ridiculously hot today. Lately I only really feel good when I’m under water. I should…work on that.