The day has finally arrived – I’m starting my next trip with a drive to Alaska. Or, at least I hope so. Cross fingers no early snowstorms or I’ll turn left and head down to warmer weather like a giant chicken.
I don’t really remember how Alaska popped into my head, but I do recall one day telling a couple coworkers that I’d like to drive there someday. Then someone different had heard and asked me when I’m going to Alaska, then all of a sudden it seemed like a done deal without giving it the proper consideration that such a long drive deserves.
So I considered it. Not so much the length of time or the road conditions, but all the amazing things I could see along the way: moose, bears, eagles, bison, so much incredible scenery – how could I not go? Then I actually started looking at maps and realized I better pack the big-girl panties.
To prepare Little Red, my fantastic Promaster, I cut a giant hole in the roof and installed a fan. That was terrifying. I’ve never purposely put a hole in a car. A complete tuneup, a new actuator so I’ll have heat, and new all-terrain tires, plus about a thousand pounds of food and water and books and we’re ready to roll.
We’re currently sitting at a rest area in Paw Paw, Illinois, waiting out a massive storm. Lucy is not happy. But it’s a good time to make sure the new roof vent doesn’t leak. The van is getting pummeled by wind and hopefully the “brief tornadoes” don’t come our way.
Since I have nothing exciting to report, I’ll throw in my last summer photos from Cleveland and update more later.
Also, my Etsy shop is currently all digital while I travel. Photos are available for purchase, but only as downloads for now. When I have some space to matte again, I’ll change it back to a normal shop.
I chose Bimini somewhat randomly, mostly because a hammerhead shark dive was offered. Hammerheads migrate, and are near the island November through April each year. We stayed at the Big Game Club in Alice Town, which is connected with Neil Watson’s Bimini Scuba Center. It was named for Princess Alice, the daughter of Queen Victoria, and became popular as a rum-smuggling island during prohibition. Travel was fairly easy, fly to Fort Lauderdale and catch the 2-hour Balearia ferry to Bimini.
The sunrise view from the docks at the resort is amazing. The view from the back side of the resort is a crumbling bar, long since overgrown with weeds and trees on the inside, and a parking lot full of garbage and rusting cars. The streets are a bit sketchy, since they are not quite wide enough for passing traffic, mostly golf carts, and pedestrians.
The resort itself is not kept up to the standard that the word “resort” calls to mind – kind of dirty, some mold, lots of rust, basically many years of use in a hard environment. That said, it has a charming feel to it. Nurse and bull sharks, along with other marine life, can be seen from the docks at any time of the day. Not a recommended snorkel spot.
The food is good, the drinks and the wifi are strong, and the people are amazingly friendly. The above photo of the fish fry was taken by Clare. My fish had eyeballs, and it was delicious (No, I did not eat the eyes).
My first dive was the hammerhead safari. One divemaster fed the hammerheads (and fended off the nurse sharks), two divemasters kept watch for tiger sharks, scuba diver issues, or other potential problems, and a semicircle of divers knelt on the bottom to watch or take photos.
Each diver had a length of PVC pipe used to lean against in the current, and as a shark-poker if one swam too close. I only witnessed a couple of nurse shark pokes, very gentle, so don’t get the idea that everyone had to continually fend off danger. I didn’t felt like I was in danger at any point. The only downside to this tour was the amount of people in the water. It was nearly impossible to get a photo of a hammerhead without parts of other people in the frame.
As you can see in the photo, multiple nurse sharks hung out on the bottom. Every so often they’d get bold and swarm the bait container, causing great havoc. One shark had learned to open the latch keeping the bait box closed, and that was when shark pokes were administered.
The following day we did a dolphin snorkel, and luckily happened upon a group of 14 or so Bottlenose dolphins feeding in the sand. They allowed us to swim with them for an hour while they played, dug food from the bottom, and harassed passing nurse sharks.
Each time a nurse shark swam near, the dolphins pursued, taking turns biting its tail fin. Quite funny.
I have roughly a million photos of dolphins, so it’ll take a while to go through them all.
The next day we took a boat to see the Sapona, a concrete-hulled ship that is partially sunk inside the Bermuda Triangle. It was originally commissioned by Woodrow Wilson and designed by Henry Ford for troop transport during WWI, but was not finished in time. I’ll never understand why anyone thought a concrete boat was a good idea. It was used as a casino, then oil storage, then a hub for rum smuggling. In 1926, a hurricane ran it aground and it became a target for U.S. bomber practice, then an artificial reef.
While I was diving the Sapona (in the Bermuda Triangle), my dive watch malfunctioned and lost two hours, and I can’t find any of the photos I took. Kind of odd.
We then boated a short distance away and visited a large population of Caribbean reef sharks, all of whom behaved nicely toward the divers and snorkelers.
I did reef dives, with one night dive, for the next two days, and found every imaginable type of fish you’d find in the Bahamas. I also dove three additional wrecks, one of which had only been intentionally sunk 9 months previously and was just beginning to grow its marine life.
A coral nursery was located at my last dive, and it had been recently battered by a storm. Still, it had some nice growth of Staghorn coral, which is very sensitive to climate change and is no longer abundant.
The final ocean day was a Stingray snorkel, which was fun but not great. The wind had been howling for a couple days and the shallow water was being pounded by waves. The visibility was terrible, but the rays absolutely stormed us when we got out of the boat. It was impossible to count how many there might have been, but they were all adorably cute and tried to suck our fingers into their mouths.
I do not have great photos of the rays because they tended to swim up and cover my camera lens looking for food.
It was a pretty fun trip, but very exhausting since I have not been diving much recently. I tried conch, which was good but could live without, and a few of the local beers. Kalik was the favorite.
Hope you enjoyed this, and thanks for reading!
Check out my Etsy page for new photo products – coming soon!
My van’s name is Little Red, and she’s a Ram Promaster. I haven’t written a thing since my car accident, so telling her story is my first attempt at getting my brain back in gear.
Lucy and I are currently camped in the woods in Big South Fork NP at the Blue Heron campgrounds in Kentucky, close to the Tennessee border. My intention is to start my next book, which has been on my mind for a couple years now, and a change of scenery seemed like it was needed to get back to work.
In March of 2021 I was sitting at a red light near downtown Cleveland and a guy (on his phone) smashed into the back of my pickup truck. He didn’t even attempt to brake, resulting in two demolished vehicles, years of doctors visits (for me), and stranding me in Ohio. That’s all I’ll say about the accident, since anyone who knows me already knows the details. The worst part for me has been the inability to do anything creative with my brain, being fogged from so much medication.
I only had a few weeks of rental car insurance and was under pressure to buy a vehicle, so I got a Subaru Forester, thinking it could be a nice adventure car. The main problem was how low it was to the ground, and every time someone got too close behind me I had panic attacks and had to pull over. Lucy and I had spent most of the covid time driving around the country in my pickup, and I wanted to continue by visiting my sister in New Orleans. I made it just over the Ohio/Kentucky border when I had to stop and turn around. Driving had become far too stressful. I hadn’t been working due to chronic headaches, so I went back to Cleveland and got a part-time job at a grocery store that was an easy 3-minute drive. And that was the rut I got stuck in for far too long.
I’m sure everyone saw pics and videos of people working remotely from vans and RVs during covid, and that’s where the idea of Little Red came from. If I was too low to the ground for comfort, I’d get a giant van. If I was super stressed from driving, I’d throw a bed in the back so I could pull over and relax whenever I needed to. I traded out the Subaru and bought a used, empty cargo van, and then it started to snowball. Why not install a refrigerator so I don’t have to keep stopping for food and ice? And how will I power that refrigerator? Let’s add some solar panels and lithium batteries. Since I’m adding power, I’ll get a microwave for cooking. Now I need to raise the bed off the floor and build cabinets for food storage, and give Lucy a place to sleep. A sink for washing dishes, and shelves for clothes and books and all the day-to-day necessities.
Insulation
Besides making bird houses, I have never built anything. I searched Youtube to see how other people had designed their mobile living spaces, and with a table saw and cordless drill, I got to work.
I won’t say that the outcome will win any design or workmanship awards, but it gets the job done. I started with insulation, which was probably the most time-consuming part of the project. And in retrospect, I wish I had done a bit more. But with the addition of a floor and a ceiling, I wanted to be able to stand up straight in the back, so I kept it minimal. The only real mishap was the shelving above the foot of the bed, which came crashing down on an unexpected and very deep pothole on a trip to New Orleans (which I completed, unlike the last attempt). Thankfully, it only crashed on top of the bed, but I had to spend the next couple weeks sleeping with shelves occupying the space where my feet should have been. My microwave became load-bearing, since my cooking shelf sagged just enough in the middle to rest on top of it. When I got back to Cleveland, I reinstalled the shelf and added support brackets to everything, just in case.
I spent about a year building, with short trips to test everything out and get used to driving again. Lucy and I have recently been to all the Great Lakes, Canada, and oceans on both sides of the country, with visits to family and friends along the way. I’ve had trouble with the solar, and had to spend a day at a rest area in North Dakota taking it all apart to find the problem (which means taking apart a section of the bed since I thought I’d be clever and stash the inverter and batteries in an out-of-the-way spot). The solar has been the biggest issue since it has so many moving parts. After an initial successful installation with my friend Craig, I found myself without power on several occasions during trips, and at least now I can service it blindfolded. Considering I almost burned down the van a couple times when starting out, that’s impressive to me. I added an extra inverter powered by the cigarette lighter to charge the batteries after some time in Portland with very little sun. When I first installed the solar panels on top of the roof I didn’t drive on the highway for weeks for fear they’d fly off, and now I’m finally confident that I’m not as bad at building things as I thought.
Solar panels
Little Red isn’t finished, though. Project burnout and lack of extra money have delayed the final two items I want to install – a ceiling vent fan and a side window in the sliding door. The window should be easy enough, and cutting a giant hole in the van roof doesn’t scare me (after ripping out my beautiful wood ceiling). Looking through the schematics of wiring the fan, it somehow seems more complicated than the entire solar system, so maybe when I’m stuck inside this winter I’ll give it a go.
Messy travel van
That’s the condensed version of the story of Little Red. I could go into a lot more detail on the build and the side trips, but I’ve accomplished my goal of sitting and writing, and for now I’m happy. Lucy and I are heading out now for a hike, and maybe a nap later. It’ll be a good day. I do wish we were at the ocean, maybe with some scuba diving, but that’ll have to be the next trip. PS – I have very little reception so I’m writing as quickly as I can – please excuse the typos for now 🙂
Haven’t seen many butterflies yet, but plenty of hummingbirds
A brief visit by a Monarch butterfly and a couple Swallowtail sightings is all we’ve had. Hopefully we’ll get more soon, and maybe the milkweed will get some use.
The Vermillionaire Cuphea is the preferred hummingbird flower, by far.
Head over to the Etsy Store to see the newly added digital photos. These make great last-minute gifts – no shipping delays, just download and print! If you see a photo on any of the socials (or here) that you’d like printed, just send me a message!
I do, so here are some photos to take your mind off the holidays and the cold.
Most of these are from my last trip back to Kauai, nearly a year ago now.
Hope these make you feel a little warmer.
Head over to the Etsy Store for the digital photo sale, good til the holidays. These make great last-minute gifts – no shipping delays, just download and print!
Get a jump on your holiday shopping with a weekend sale at the Hawaii Ocean Photos Etsy Shop. All items – printed photos, digital photos, and books – are 25% off all weekend.
I was pretty sad that we didn’t have many monarch butterflies this year, and no caterpillars on the milkweed.
From everything I’ve read lately, the number of monarchs in Ohio were less than half the amount of last year.
If you have a little garden space, no matter where you live, find your native milkweed species and plant some in the spring. The main reason for the decline in monarchs is a loss of breeding habitat.
(Your other pollinators will love it, too.)
Monarch butterflies are now an endangered species, and hopefully we can help them before it’s too late.
Head over to the Etsy Store for both prints and digital downloads. Any butterfly photo can be ordered, just let me know if one you want isn’t listed.
This is just a quick download of some summer photos. Not a lot of butterflies yet, and still holding out hope that a monarch will utilize the milkweed for her babies.
Head over to the Etsy store for both prints and digital downloads. Any matted photo can now be ordered in either black or white matting – just specify when you order.
Hope your summer is going well!
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