Mistakes Were Made

I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that I was a ball of nervous energy when I set out from my house. I’d had a bad week, nothing major but trivial things that kept going wrong. It’s the kind of week where you think the universe may be telling you to stay home.

But I had a destination: the San Juan Valley in Southern Colorado, and an old friend waiting for me.

My first stop was to visit my friend Jenn (@offthegridkitchenwitch). We met in the 90’s when she worked for me but our friendship outlasted the corporate world. She is a chef that once taught me how to bake bread - a skill I still have - and since 2017 she’s been hand-building her own off-grid home.

Jenn cooking us yak chili for dinner.

She invited me to spend my first night of van life boondocking on her land, a perfect soft launch. We shared some wine and a pot of yak chili that she made for me and caught up on the years since we’d last seen each other.

The next morning, I headed for the Great Sand Dunes National Park. I’d been here before but turned away by a 45-minute line. This time? The gates were wide open.

Standing at the base of the tallest dunes in North America—750 feet of ancient lakebed sediment piled against the jagged 13,000-foot peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains—was mind-blowing. It felt like standing on another planet.

Great Sand Dunes National Park

Reality was waiting for me as I exited the park, A text from my Harvest Host stay for that night wasn’t actually until tomorrow. It’s here that I made my first mistake. Instead of stopping to see other options, I kept driving towards Taos, believing I could find a boondocking spot pretty easily.

I opened iOverlander near Questa and found a few promising spots. The first, at Rio Grande del Norte, was a mess of deep ruts and slushy mud. I looked at Bob Seeger’s front-wheel drive and thought, “That ain’t happening.”

I then headed to Carson National Forest. This is where I made my second mistake. I turned down a forest road and saw the first significant amount of snow I’d seen on the trip so far. I kept going on a 100% snow-covered road assuming my years of winter driving would keep me on the road. In my hubris, I even recorded a video saying “worst case scenario is I have to put on my chains.”

I navigated the snow just fine at first. But at every marked site I checked, the terrain got worse—fully snow-covered, uneven, and untrustworthy. By the third site, I finally admitted defeat. It was time to head back to town.

The problem - there was no where to turn around. I put Bob Seeger in reverse and backed up for a quarter of a mile, my eyes glued to the mirrors, until I reached a spot that looked just wide enough to pull off a three point turn. I thought I had enough traction. I thought I knew where the road ended and the shoulder began. I was wrong.

The ice pulled me off and down the road. In trying to get out, front tires created ruts. My rear driver side tire and the plumbing system behind it were dug in to the ground where the shoulder met the road. As the sun started to go down, the van could neither move forwards or backwards and Baxter and I spent our second night of van life stuck in a ditch.

Mistakes were made…