20190106 - The Dunes

     I thought that the back of the truck was beginning to smell because of our trash bag. Finding a place to dispose of trash is often problematic in the desert. There aren't many trash cans around and there is no way we're going to dump in the desert. One of the biggest social problems here is people trashing the desert. We're members of a group called Boondockers United who work with Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and other authorities, going out and cleaning up places where people have left trash. 

     As it turned out the smell in the back of the truck was from some fly repellent but we didn't know that until after we went looking for a place to dump our trash.  We found a rest area just down the road near the Buttercup Ranger Station at the Dunes. It had several dumpsters and even free water. Free water in the desert is a treasure. 

     Nitsitapiisinni holds 40 gallons of fresh water. However, no matter how new or good a fresh water tank might be, it will eventually start making the water taste like plastic. We use the freshwater tank for everything except drinking. We keep four two-gallon containers of filtered drinking water. In the desert, they usually cost us twenty-five cents a gallon to fill. 

    We had our newbee friends with us. They have worked so hard their entire lives. We're so happy that they will soon be relatively free and really enjoy watching them experience nomadic life. 

     We stopped at the Imperial Sand Dunes, sometimes called the Algodones Dunes, right by the Buttercup Ranger Station. The    place was filled with big rigs all carrying ATVs to run up and down the dunes. I don't really like this activity, but they weren't doing anything wrong. Even in a sand dune and what may appear as totally bare desert there is life just under the surface. These ATV kill that life. Why must we kill life and exterminate other species for our comfort or pleasure?  Humans definitely have an ego problem. We think we're the most important thing on the globe when we're about the only species that could disappear and not be missed. 

     This evening we had another full house for dinner. We had the five of us who are camping together and a couple of women who are camping nearby. They winter here each year. They were very interesting and shared a lot of information about the area. The commradery and friendliness of the nomad/boondocker community is amazing.