HypersomniacLive: Hahaha, cheers for the laughs. Funny you should say that about the pre-cooked soups - many years ago, I watched a documentary, and they were examining the ingredients listed on the bags of chips; they concluded that eating the bag would probably be more healthy. XD
Alaska must be quite the experience - watched quite a few documentaries, always strikes me as a world apart from the rest of the US.
Never been to any desert. What do you do when you camp in the desert?
Yeah, I learned from a documentary that in supermarkets generally, all the fresh food is along the perimeter, and everything in the isles in the center is all the processed packaged foods... heh!
Yeah, Alaska is kind of like the end of the road for people who are trying to get away from it all, or put the past behind them, mostly Americans and Canadians. I went up there, to the Fairbanks area one summer about ten years ago for six weeks with some friends. We went as far north as to be inside the edges of the Arctic Circle, into the wilderness and small towns, and down to Valdez to do some fishing, so I got to see a lot of breathtaking scenery, but no Northern Lights.
We’re all low budget, so we go out to the desert just to get away from the big city, and mostly to see the stars. We have a nice spot in a sparsely populated area near Joshua Tree National park, so we have electricity and water if we need it but, we rough it as much as possible, in good comfort. Most of the time we just relax and talk, play with the dogs, and sometimes interesting locals, “desert people”, will come up and introduce themselves too.
Usually we run up there for a day, a night and a day, have a nice bonfire, barbeque food and when it’s cold break out the booze, though I haven’t been properly drunk in years. Sometimes we’ll ride around on quads or a sandrail too.
Going to any desert is always something you prepare for. Where we go is the high desert, which is cooler and more hospitable than the low desert, where you don’t really want to go camping. The low desert has its beauty too, but it’s a place you go where you will struggle to survive, unless you are always headed to some place that is air conditioned.
The Joshua Tree area has a certain feel to it, a good energy, the landscape looks primitive, at night under the stars, especially under the moonlight, the Joshua Trees’ features look a bit exaggerated and cast shadows that play against the landscape and foliage in a mystical fashion. Here is a pic of the forested desert... :)
