It was the middle of winter, January 2009, and we were boondocking behind the Totsoh Trading Post on the Navajo Nation. We had driven up, after more than a month on the San Carlos Apache Reservation in Arizona, north through the White Mountains of the Fort Apache Reservation, where it first came to our attention, to our rutted-road, high-altitude switchback dismay, that GPS doesn’t know you’re a 37-foot motorhome with a hydraulic lift and two Yamaha motor scooters tied down on the back. We could have chosen better, broader roads, but I wanted to see Fort Apache.
In San Carlos, we had lived plugged to the grid in the RV park that co-exists in the large parking lot of the Apache Gold Casino. The casino, no great moneymaker, no lives transformed, no Apaches rollin’ in dough and livin’ high on the gambling-privileged hog, sits off the reservation, so we had to drive a bit to do our work each day. And only one person ever saw the motor home.
Before we departed for our year on the road, with …
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