California’s Kirkwood Mountain Resort near Lake Tahoe is a wonderful place to ski and ride with top-notch views, lots of room on the mountain, nonexistent lift lines during the week and sometimes even on the weekend. Located in the lovely Sierra Nevada Mountains, it offers lots of open runs and big, gorgeous juniper trees.

Think how difficult it would be to go RVing in a Third World country. You could probably dismiss the shortage of campgrounds, since RVs are self-sufficient and with their built-in systems, you could camp just about anywhere. Clean fuel could be problematic, but the most difficult aspect of Third World RVing might be finding clean drinking water.

Cruising through the Southwest in an air-conditioned RV with all its modern conveniences brings to mind the hardships endured by sturdy pioneers who slowly navigated across this arid land in covered wagons more than a century ago. What may not occur to us, however, is that long before the pioneers came along, this was the home of vibrant prehistoric communities that learned to survive in such a harsh environment by coexisting in harmony with nature.

Naturalight Torch Lamp
The Torch Lamp from the Naturalight division of The Daylight Company is both a desk lamp and a flashlight. Folded up, it works as a flashlight; unfolded it becomes a lamp that provides strong light from 28 LEDs.

Naturalight Torch Lamp
The Torch Lamp from the Naturalight division of The Daylight Company is both a desk lamp and a flashlight.  Folded up, it works as a flashlight; unfolded it becomes a lamp that provides strong light from 28 LEDs.

I started full-time RVing in 1986, and was without TV or other communication much of the time, so I was only vaguely aware of the news created in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Biosphere 2.  But this year a visiting Indiana friend accompanied me northeast from Tucson to the base of the Santa Catalina Mountains to see this unique project.

The Anza-Borrego Desert 75 miles east of San Diego is one of the driest places on earth, but it once was a tropical oasis with lush rain forests.

Two hundred miles south of Reno on the eastern side of California’s Sierra Nevada range is the little village of Mammoth Lakes, a center for fishing in summer and skiing in winter that in mid-July is filled with the sounds of hot, cool, swinging and jumping jazz.

The professional travel photographer speaking before us at the travel writers conference made a startling statement: “You don’t need a fancy or expensive camera to take good travel photos.”

He went on to explain how the eye is more important than the equipment.