Campground Grief

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I have the worst campground stay ever, mostly because of the campground manager’s psychotic wife.

I’m snowbirding again, traveling in Arizona with my truck camper, which I hope to sell. I’d planned to come down here on a much shorter trip in my little Honda S2000. As the weather at home got gloomier and gloomier, I decided to load up the camper and head out early, spending more time with friends and enjoying the desert. My house-sitter was thrilled to be able to check in early; he’s a skier and loves spending winters at my house.

This has been a rocky journey. The first hurdle was serious truck troubles in Kingman, AZ that took time and money to resolve. Fortunately, I had both, although I’d prefer to spend them on other things. Then I had some camper battery issues near Tucson. More money, not much time, got the batteries replaced.

But, in general, the trip has been great so far. I visited a bunch of friends, saw some property for a potential relocation next year, and have been buying the cabochons I need to make jewelry — something I hope to get back to as soon as I return home.

Quartzsite is my current stop and I booked three nights at what I thought was Rice Ranch at the corner of Keuhn and Rte 95, very close to Tyson Wells where my friend Janet has a booth selling her artwork. I’d stayed there before and it was extremely convenient for me, as well as being far enough off the freeway that it was pretty quiet at night.

And that’s where my Quartzsite visit went south.

My Mistake: Booking at Rice Ranch North

You see, it turns out that I didn’t book at Rice Ranch. I booked at Rice Ranch North, which is east of Rice Ranch and completely unaffiliated. So when I turned up at Rice Ranch in the dark after driving 4 1/2 hours from Phoenix in too much traffic — rush hour there, construction near Quartzsite — I couldn’t find the entrance.

I called the number for the place and left a message. A woman called right back and directed me to their place, which I’d driven right past. It was crazy dark and, when I found my way in, she directed me with a flashlight to back into a spot.

I was angry and flustered about being somewhere I didn’t expect to be — somewhere that wasn’t walking distance from Tyson Wells in the dark or with bags of purchases and dogs on leashes. When I mentioned that I might nose in, the woman said I wasn’t allowed to. When I asked her why, she said that “everyone else would want to.” What kind of juvenile nonsense was that? I don’t take kindly to idiotic rules and pushed back. It turned into a bit of a shouting match. Finally, she went away.

I was supposed to visit Janet at Tyson Wells on arrival and there was no way I was going to walk there in the inky blackness. So I backed out, found my way out the exit — after making two wrong turns; I did mention it was dark, didn’t I? — and went to Tyson Wells. I relaxed a little with her. We both agreed that it didn’t matter which way my rig pointed as long as I was parked in my site. After about 45 minutes, I went back to the campground, found my site, and nosed in.

Intimidation and Another Surprise

I was feeding my dogs less than 5 minutes later when someone outside said “knock knock.” It was a man’s voice. He said he was the manager.

Feeling intimidated by the appearance of a stranger in the dark, I opened the door just enough to talk to him. He said I had to back in because that was the rule. When I asked him why, at least he had a decent reason: he was worried about people tripping over my power cable, hose, sewer pipe, etc. I assured him that would not be a problem. I told him I’d had a long drive with a lot of traffic, was very tired, and was someplace I didn’t expect to be. He said that we’d talk about it in the morning and left.

(As Janet wondered the next morning, how could people trip over my cables and hoses if they were contained in my site? What would other people be doing in my site?)

After feeding and walking my dogs, I went out to plug in. There was no 30 amp power at my site, which is what my rig takes. Just 20 amp (household current) and 50 amp. Fortunately, I have an adapter. I plugged in and made a mental note not to run the coffee maker and microwave at the same time.

My Daily Routine

I slept like crap. I hate listening to freeway noise and there’s no escaping it at that campground.

In the morning, I was up as early as usual. At around 7, I unplugged, stored my cable, and left the campsite. Since I couldn’t easily walk from the campsite to Tyson Wells, I figured I’d just park at Tyson Wells every day. The camper has For Sale signs on it and it would be better to be someplace where a possible buyer might see it anyway.

I needed to get there early to get a good spot. I wound up parking on the main road, backed in so my camper door would be by the walkway and safer to get my pups in and out. That’s one of the benefits of my setup: I can fit in just about any parking space.

I took my pups on a short hike with Janet and her dogs at around 8:30, then stowed my pups in the camper, took out my ebike, and went to the rock show at Desert Gardens. I spent hours there. Then I got back, took my pups for a walk, stowed them again, and walked around the south side of Tyson Wells. Lots to see and buy! Parking at Tyson Wells during the day was working out very well for me.

At around 5 PM, after making dinner arrangements with Janet, I took the camper back to the campground. I passed the manager’s wife as I came in and noted that she was watching me closely. I backed in — it was easier that way since I had to plug in and unplug again in the morning. She didn’t bother me.

Janet came a while later and drove us to dinner at Taco Mio. (Highly recommended. I’m re-heating my leftovers on the stove now as I type this.) She dropped me back off around 7:30. I walked my pups again, then closed up for the night. No one bothered me.

That was Wednesday. On Thursday, I did pretty much the same thing, but took a different parking spot a bit farther down the road at Tyson Wells. This time, after our walk I treated myself to an excellent (but expensive!) cinnamon roll before putting the pups into the camper for the day.

Then I was off to the Pow Wow, which was the main show I’d come to Quartzsite for. It’s on the other side of the freeway, an easy ride from Tyson Wells (or the real Rice Ranch). I spent the whole day walking around looking at rocks.

After lunch and more rocks, I was burned out and went back to Tyson Wells. I told Janet I’d make dinner and she agreed to come to my campsite.

I stopped at RV Pitstop to get my propane bottles filled and Reader’s Oasis (which is sad without Paul) to look for affordable old atlas books. Then back to the campground. It was sometime around 4 PM. I backed in. This time, I plugged in power, connected my hose, and even connected my sewer pipe. I’d be leaving the next day and wanted to dump my waste tanks and top off my water tank before departure. I also wanted a good hot shower to get some of the Quartzsite dust off me. (If you’ve ever been here, you know what a losing battle that is.)

For the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, trucks came and went in a truck yard I hadn’t noticed before between the campground and the freeway. There was some talk over either a loudspeaker or a radio turned way up. This was the first time I’d heard it, since I hadn’t spent much time at the campground during the day. It was pretty annoying at times. Even Janet commented on it after she arrived around 5:30.

We had dinner inside my rig, watching a nice sunset at the end of what had been a cloudy — with even some rain! — afternoon. She stayed until about 7:30. After struggling with Quartzsite’s notoriously bad evening internet service — a topic for another blog post — I retired to my bed with a book and had another fitful night of sleep listening to freeway traffic.

The Psycho Bitch Goes Psycho

I had already decided to take Friday off from rock shopping. I figured I’d have a leisurely morning, dump my waste tanks, fill my water tank, and leave just before 11 AM, which was checkout time. I was looking forward to microwaving that leftover burrito from Taco Mio before unplugging and pulling out.

I dealt with the sewer tank first. That required me to dump everything, lift the hose — because the campground had a sewer port that was idiotically extended at least 10 inches above the ground — and continue lifting until all the waste was out. Then I had to add water to the toilet with the toilet chemical. Then clean the sewer hose. Then hook up the water filter and fill the fresh water tank.

Somewhere during this process, I left the back door of the camper open. My pups had been on the bed in a patch of sunlight. When I was finished with the hoses and had stowed them, I grabbed their leashes, ready to take them for a quick walk before I heated my early lunch. But they were not in the camper.

They were nowhere in sight.

I knew this wouldn’t end well, but I could never imagine just how poorly it would end. I called and called. The manager’s wife was in a golf cart and called out to me, “Are you looking for your dogs?”

I called back that I was. She pointed. I headed that way, still calling. The dogs appeared. I put them in the camper and closed the door.

The manager’s wife came up to me and I asked her, “Did they shit anywhere?” There’s one thing I’m very good about and that’s cleaning up after my dogs. So many places forbid dogs because of a few inconsiderate people that let their dogs shit all over the place. I’m not one of those people. I figured she was coming over to me to tell me that they’d made a mess somewhere and I was ready to go clean it up.

But no. She came to lecture me. “I don’t know,” she said. “Your dogs need to be on a leash here.”

“I didn’t even know they’d gotten out,” I said in my defense.

And then she went psycho.

She started screaming at me and kicked me out of the campground.

I had to laugh at her. I had 45 minutes left in my stay and she had decided to kick me out. She started ranting about me coming and going and told me she thought I was going to leave Wednesday and not come back. I said I’d paid for three nights and I wanted to use them. I told her that if she’d offered me a refund, I would have left. She said they had a 7 day refund policy. I said I wasn’t about to leave when I’d paid for the site.

She totally wigged out. It was as if she’d been harboring this anger against me since my arrival on Tuesday night and had used my loose dogs as an excuse to explode. It was crazy weird.

Broken Cable
The cable wasn’t like this before she yanked it out. The yellow thing is the adapter I needed to use because my site didn’t have 30 amp power.

When I told her I wasn’t going to leave until checkout time at 11 AM and went to drop off a poop bag in the nearly overflowing garbage dumpster, she stalked over to the power pedestal, roughly pulled out my power cord, and locked the box. I plugged it into the other side of the pedestal, thinking about the yummy burrito waiting to be heated! She yanked it out again. This time, she broke the cable.

I told her I wasn’t leaving until 11 AM. She threatened to call the police. I told her to call them. She must have told me another 10 times to leave and I just laughed at her. She got more and more angry. It was so funny to watch.

Then I tried to talk to the owner, who other people said was in a motorhome nearby. I spoke to a very nice older woman who seemed nearly as flustered as I was. But then the psycho bitch ran over and started trash talking me to her. I went back inside my camper, not even sure if I’d been speaking to the owner after all.

The psycho bitch came raving back to my rig and yelled at me to leave. I told her to call the police. I told her I’d paid up until 11 AM and that’s when I was leaving.

It was comical to see how crazy she got. She said she’d call 911 — as if I were some sort of emergency. She finally got someone on the phone. She was parked in her golf cart right next to my rig and read someone my license plate. She gave them my first name and when she couldn’t come up with my last name, I opened the window and told her what it was. I think she was extra annoyed when I spelled it for her.

And then she started lying to the cops. She told them that I said I was leaving but instead I was sneaking in and out at night so no one could talk to me. Utter bullshit. I was back at the campsite every single day before dark — she’d even watched me come in on Wednesday! Her lies totally pissed me off, so I called the cops, too. I told them what was going on and that I wanted to set the fact straight. The woman I spoke to said that there was only one officer for Quartzsite — poor woman! — and that she was already backed up on several calls. I gave the woman who answered the phone my name and phone number and told her that I saw no reason to wait around. I asked that the responding officer call me.

And then I loaded my pups into the truck and left. It was 10:45 AM. The psycho bitch was standing at the golf cart with two or three older women watching the road for the police car. It’s nearly 1 PM now and I wouldn’t be surprised if she is still waiting.

Back to the Desert

I drove out to the desert about a mile from there and found a nice spot for the rest of the day and the night. And don’t tell anyone, but my dogs were loose for 15 minutes!

Parked in the Desert
Although the BLM land in the desert around Quartzsite isn’t exactly scenic, it is free, quiet, and lacks psychotic managers.

I’d wanted to take the day off to do some writing, but never dreamed I’d be writing about nonsense like this. People who can’t keep their cool dealing with guests should not be running campgrounds. I’ll have a peaceful night here, away from the freeway. Tomorrow, I’ll be back at Tyson Wells for my morning hike with Janet and her dogs.

And yes, I’ve learned my lesson: the next time I book a campsite, it won’t be online. It’ll be on the phone where I can verify the location of the campground and the features available at my site.

1000 Words… and books for writers

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In search of something to motivate me to get back to writing regularly, I stumble upon a book that gives me a goal.

I’ll share a secret with you: I have always wanted to be a writer. I started writing when I was about 13 and filled many spiral bound notebooks with my neat printing in ink, building characters and telling stories. Writing was in my blood, something I just felt I had to do.

In my junior year of college, when I somehow found myself as an accounting major, I called my mother and told her I wanted to change my major to journalism. She had a hairy fit and told me I’d never make a living as a writer.

I stuck with accounting and spent the first eight years out of college as an auditor and financial analyst. I was good at my job but miserable. I dreaded going to work every day.

Then I left my very secure job at the corporate headquarters of a Fortune 100 company and became a freelance writer. My mother had another hairy fit but this time I was smart enough to ignore her. And then I proved her wrong.

My writing career revolved around computer how-to books. Back in the early 1990s until about 2010, these books were in high demand and I churned them out, learning pretty quickly that the only way to make a living doing it was to have a bestseller or write a lot of books. So I wrote a lot of books until I had a bestseller. And another bestseller. And I kept writing. By the time people pretty much stopped buying computer how-to books, I’d written more than 80 of them, had gotten training as a helicopter pilot, bought a helicopter, and was ready for my next career.

But that doesn’t mean I stopped writing. I wrote in this blog. I wrote articles about flying and later about boating. For a long while, I worked on fiction — novels for myself; I never intended to try to get them published.

Then I had a disruption in my life that made it difficult for me to write. It was as if a spark had been extinguished and I couldn’t get it relit. Sure, I could still spit out blog posts and the occasional article. But my fiction mojo was gone. And it still is.

Motivation

Every once in a while, I read a book that motivates me to get back to writing, that reminds me the spark once existed and the skills are still there. It’s just a matter of getting back to it, to dedicating the time to a project, to staying focused enough to produce something worth reading.

On Writing

The first book I read that made me feel like that was On Writing by Stephen King. I mentioned this book at least one other place in this blog, in a post from 2009 called “Writing Tips: Soaking Up Creative Energy.” In that post, referring to King’s book, I wrote:

Did you ever go someplace or do something or read something or see something that made you feel almost feverish about writing (or painting or doing something else creative)? It’s as if this place or thing gave you a poke with a creative juice taser. After (or during) the experience, you must create. You’re driven to create.

This was before my disruptive life event. But I remembered the way the book made me feel and I re-read it. Sadly, it didn’t hit me with the same force the second time around.

So I kept looking for other books to motivate me. I suspect I’ve already blogged about this once within the past five years, but I can’t find the post right now. I know I recently tooted about it on Mastodon.

I will mention here — to forestall suggestions — that I tried Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. I didn’t like it the first time I read it. When pressed again and again by folks to read it, I tried again, thinking I’d missed something. I didn’t like it any better. I did not like the author or her voice or her self-pitying attitude. (At least that’s how it seemed to me both times.) I could not identify with her at all; we had nothing in common. I also didn’t like the introduction of religion and God into a book that was supposed to be about writing. So please don’t recommend it. It didn’t do anything for me except make me wonder why so many people were so in love with it.

The First Five Pages

I did read another book a long time ago that motivated me. I have a copy in my library to re-read. That one’s called The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman. I remember that after reading it, I was so enthusiastic about it that I contacted the author to thank him for it. That was probably not long after the book came out in 2000, long before my disruptive event. I’m hoping a re-read will bring some of that feeling back.

Let me mention two other books that I recently ordered and hope will motivate me. (With luck, my housesitter will have brought them in and left them on the countertop for me when I get home from my current trip.) The Writer’s Notebook I and The Writer’s Notebook II are two books full of writing essays from the writers of the highly regarded literary magazine Tin House. I’ll admit that I had never heard of these books (or the magazine) until I watched a YouTube video that explored topics covered in one of the essays.

1000 Words

1000 Words

The book that triggered this post — and a New Year’s resolution — is called 1000 Words, edited by Jami Attenberg. The book’s backstory is this: Jami and another writer friend (who happened to be a teacher) wanted to motivate themselves and each other to work on their various projects. They decided that they would each write 1000 words a day (minimum) for two weeks straight as a sort of “boot camp.” They felt that they could stick to it because they’d be cheering each other on. A buddy system. (I have found this extremely effective for a lot of goals.) They’d do it in the summer when the teacher was off from work. Jami has a social media presence and shared info about it on various social networks. The next thing she knew, it had a hashtag and hundreds or thousands of people were participating in the “1000 Words of Summer.”

Once the thing took off and she started getting feedback about it, she was also able to get short essays from writers to include in this book. So that’s basically what the book is: a bunch of very short essays by writers about writing.

Is it good? Well, it’s not as good as I hoped it might be. Some essays are good and very helpful to me. Others ring flat, like a self-help book written by a new age guru. It’s a library book, so I can’t annotate the pages to highlight the helpful passages I might want to return to. I’m getting through it slowly. The main problem is that I tend to read in bed and most books put me to sleep.

But it did do something for me: it triggered a New Year’s resolution to write at least 1000 words a day. That’s going to force me to sit down at a keyboard and write something, either for an existing project, such as my Great Loop book, or a new project, such as the mystery novel I began years ago and lost in a hard disk crash. (That was a different disruptive event in my life. Back up your files, folks!) Or even a blog post.

NaNoWriMo vs 1000 Words of Summer

If you follow writer’s forums and the like, you probably know about the recently disgraced NaNoWriMo. This is an annual event held in November, National Novel Writing Month. It’s been around for at least 20 years and apparently some participants have had some measure of success with it. The goal is to knock out a complete novel of at least 50,000 words in one month.

Too Many Words?

There’s a scene in the movie Amadeus when Mozart is told that one of his works has “too many notes.” As a writer, that always hit me hard. I believe that a creator will make something just as long or as short as it needs to be. I’d rather read a short novel that moves along without a lot of repetition than a longer one that seems obviously padded to meet word count requirements. Every word should count.

Yes, that’s more than 1,000 words a day. The average adult novel is 50,000 to 100,000 words, depending on what resource you look at. Even if you shoot for the low end, that’s still more than 1,600 words a day.

The goal of NaNoWriMo is to force you to complete a book project in a month. If you’re the kind of person who always seems to have a reason to not work on a project — like me these days — the camaraderie of the NaNoWriMo crowd might be just what you need.

But I think 1,000 words a day is just as good a goal, provided that you keep it up until you’re finished.

(November is a dumb month to write a novel anyway. Who can find time with the holidays coming up? Why couldn’t it be January or February?)

My New Year’s Resolution

Like most folks, I have more than one New Year’s resolution. The one that matters here is the goal of writing 1,000 words a day. I think I can do it at least 5 days out of 7 for the whole year.

What do you think?

(I’ll be honest with you: I wrote this post on January 1 right after writing another post. I’m up to 3300 words so far today and I have yet one more topic I want to explore for tomorrow.)

And yes, I’ll ask this question: What writing book have you read that fired you up about writing and made you want to get right to it?

Constant Complaining Is a Total Turn-Off

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I befriend a temporary neighbor only to discover that I really don’t want to be her friend.

I’m stuck in a Kingman, AZ trailer park, waiting for repairs to the suspension on my truck. I’ve been here since Saturday and, with luck, my truck will be done before the end of business today, five days later. Sunday and New Year’s Day really screwed up the work schedule.

When I arrived I took my pups for a walk in a neighboring empty lot. Along the way, my next door neighbor came out and gave me her card. She seemed friendly. Inside her trailer, her dogs were barking and I was on my way to get my pups some relief so we didn’t have time to chat.

Yesterday, while I was hooking up the sewer hose to dump my camper’s tanks, she came out to chat. I was my usual talk-to-strangers self, giving her advice on how to connect her sewer pipe so it would drain properly. (She had it set up with the hose making a roller coaster of ups and downs which is probably the worst way to set it up.) She thanked me profusely but then started in on a litany of personal problems which included a restraining order on her ex, a truck she was making payments on but couldn’t drive because of some health issue, more health issues, medication issues, family issues, drug problems, alcohol problems, the handyman who ripped her off, the Facebook Marketplace buyer who tried to come after dark, the neighbor who teases her dogs, the 11 dead relatives in one year — the list went on and on, spewing out in a one-sided conversation while I stood there politely, holding an RV sewer hose in one hand, totally unable to get a word in other than stunned acknowledgement, and wishing she’d shut up so I could finish my task and go back inside. It only took a few minutes for me to realize that she was crazy or very near to it. Her telling me that everyone in the trailer park thought she was crazy kind of confirmed it.

Numb feet (?) was the health problem that finally got her to leave me alone and go back into her camper. I took care of my sewer hose and I took a few minutes to fix the roller coaster in hers since it was right beside mine. (It should work a lot better now.) Her dogs barked through the thin camper walls most of the time. Then I went back inside my camper, leaving the outer door open for fresh air.

She was back a few hours later, waiting near my door for the Walmart delivery person to bring her groceries. She wanted to see my pups so I showed her, opening the door so they could go out and get petted. She oohed and aahed. They didn’t stick around with her, though. Maybe they knew she was crazy, too. They ran back into the camper and I — well, I never came out.

Her dogs, by the way, are rescues, each of which are large — a Great Dane and a German Shepherd, I think — and have serious behavioral problems. It’s great that someone would literally rescue dogs that are going to be put down otherwise, but maybe someone with so many of her own problems should get a smaller, calmer companion pet?

The grocery delivery arrived and I thought I was spared. But she was back a few minutes later. It was New Year’s Eve and she’d gotten it into her head that I’d come over and drink with her. But only two drinks for her, she told me. That’s all she was allowed.

It would be zero drinks for me. There was no way I was going to go into her trailer with the giant dogs formerly on death row and listen to more of her problems while she got drunk. It was mid-afternoon and I told her I was going to take a nap. When she left, I closed my outer door.

I don’t know if she got the message (not likely) or just forgot about me because she didn’t return. I spent most of the day indoors today, writing. I didn’t want to run into her and it’s not as if I could drive somewhere with my truck in pieces at the Ford dealer.

I just want to assure readers here that I’m not making this up. It’s all true. The trailer park I’m in is funky, but it’s safe and relatively clean and certainly cheap enough. (Heck, I’m paying enough for the truck repair!) No one has bothered me. One neighbor came by with a big wrench to get the sewer cap off for me. And when dogs belonging to folks on the other side of me left three dog turds right outside my door, they cleaned it up as soon as I politely asked them to. (And no more since.)

Anyway, there is a point to this story and it’s this:

Everyone has their own problems and most folks don’t want to hear about yours. Yes, it’s okay to make one or two complaints. A sore back, an annoying neighbor. But stop right there. If all you can do is run off at the mouth about all the woes in your life, you’re not going to make any friends.

I feel sorry for her and I don’t think there’s really anything funny about her situation — despite how I might have written it up here. But I’m not going to sacrifice my own mental health and well being to give her companionship. I just don’t want to hear any more of her complaints.

And I honestly don’t see any reason why anyone should — other than maybe a professional therapist.