May 9, 2026. Last morning here. I'm going to miss it.
Yesterday hit about 100 degrees in the van and I didn't tolerate it well. I've been lower energy the past few days, likely the sodium deficiency, and the heat made it worse. I drank three times my normal water intake. UV index 9, little to no shade, the sun relentless if you stepped into it at all. The van was running ten degrees hotter than outside. I wasn't in a frame of mind to tackle much of anything. It was all I could do to bear it.
More intense wind is coming tonight. We both voted to move on to somewhere boring and temperate for a few days of what Shannon calls admin days. That sounds exactly right. The elements out here are no joke.
One thing I did accomplish yesterday: I found that adapter I was looking for. I began my search in the front of the van. I looked everywhere in the cab, the doors, the dashboard, over the visors, I took every single item out of the headliner shelf compartment, I went through my drawers item by item, I went through each of my small overhead bins, the cabinet under my microwave. Then it was time to search the back half of the van. I went through all the bins under the bed. Then I lifted up the mattress. That's when I found it. It had fallen down the side of the mattress in about the middle zone.
I'm so glad to have found it, but this contains an important lesson about van life. These fishing expeditions, as I call them, are intensely costly. I've needed this thing for a week. It cost me time, work, and energy disproportionate to the little device. In a regular life I would have just had Amazon deliver another one. In Nashville it would have probably arrived the same day. Out here, it's a big problem. Often when people get in my van they tell me I am so organized. This is why. You have to be. Otherwise it's too frustrating and too costly.
I did manage to finish building a little game. It's called Signal. It's a two-player game you play on your phones. Check it out.
The road out of here, particularly the mile from our spot to where Greg was camped, is rough. I watched two men in a 4x4 truck begin it last night and turn around when they reached the difficult section. It's steep, deep irregular holes, loose dirt and gravel, top-heavy vehicles. Shannon has real concern about it but has been putting off thinking about it until she has to. She's walked it several more times since we've been here, strategizing how she'll navigate each section. She comforts herself by acknowledging that, in her words, she's done much stupider shit than this in her van. The more I've gotten to know her, the more I've realized she really is kind of a badass. Yesterday she went off on a 20 mile bike ride to an intense hike and rock scramble and was gone all day.
Meanwhile I was back at camp melting. Naked all day, dripping sweat, guzzling salt water, not a soul in sight. No other campers, zero people as far as the eye could see in any direction. At some point I rode about five miles around the canyon rim completely naked on the OneWheel and got drone footage of it. That felt like an awful lot of freedom in one act.
After I finish writing this, I'll be packing up camp. We'll be driving roughly an hour down the road toward the Grand Canyon and looking for a place to camp for a few days. If we like it we'll stay a week. We're waiting for the Grand Canyon and surrounding roads to open on May 15.