With the frequency and range of diocesan travel I'm doing nowadays, it's time to set the van back up for boondocking. Several parishes I will be visiting have already offered space as well as a spare key to the parish hall (coffeepot, toidy), and this week-- after using our pop-up for years for regular summer camping-- I'll be making a trial overnighter close to home, with the van, in case I'm not all tweaked up yet. The pop-up is overkill for a one-nighter.
I liked the twin box spring and mattress I used to have in the van, but it makes it hard to ALSO use the van for anything else. Plus this time I am adding the summer portapotty which would be a tight squeeze with the twin box spring. So-- I'm taking up a padded rug that keeps the factory carpeting protected till the eventual trade-in, to insert 6 army surplus camping pads in a double-bed sized config, and then over top of that the rug will go back down. Nice flat, compressed-foam matting that allows cargo carrying, too. This way if Hardi can come along there's room for him, and an insulated sleeping space in case he can't and I pack a dog for company.
In a large duffel, I have a double-wide sleeping bag I stitched out of two nice single bags whose zippers didn't match enough to marry up, and chemical heatpacks endorsed by local hunting pals to warm the sleeping bag, especially the toe-end. Another bag contains 3 kingsize flat sheets, one flannel, to add/modify as needed. Another bag holds a stash of pillows, miniaturized in recent years.
A nice folding recliner is on board in case I need to use that in the van or elsewhere. It's heavy enough to stash well under the van and not blow around, but light enough to set it up front if it's a wet night.
Another refinement will be a beach umbrella. It's big and light-blocking, to set over my head to block the inevitable street lamp. One of these short-poled thingies-- it's meant to lay on the ground at the head end of a reclining sunbather.
Because all these items are containerized, some in rolling bags, I can adapt any indoor sleeping offer to work for me, or just boondock it if whatever is offered isn't worktable. I'm finding that the work I am doing requires a lot of quiet time as prep and for post-work processing and decompressing, and "I Vahnt to be Alone" is not an unusual need in my activities, that people do understand.
My travels are all to the south end of the diocese and it's a lot warmer down there, year-round. I've scoped out the workable campgrounds along the route too, in case I actually need to PAY to sleep-- always the last choice, but they do have showers and truckstops with showers on this route are rare. At the south end however I did score some guest pool passes-- nice showers there, too.
As far as the prejudice against homeless folks (or people perceived to be in the middle of a domestic dispute) that people are scared to harbor-- it's all in the body language. When approached, one sticks out the hand for a handshake and introduces oneself. "Hi, I'm traveling with my mini-camper on Diocesan business, and my! what a lovely town you have here!" seems to work well.
Driving home yesterday I got the idea to organize a mail list of potential house or driveway hosts in our diocese, to call the "Upper Room Railroad." One of my activities is the Anti-Racism Commission, which meets monthly at the other end of the diocese. So the name for the idea is a spin on the secret, underground railroad that once ran the same route down the middle of our diocese, to point up the positives we now can exercise. Guidelines for people who want to offer this kind of hosting will reflect what Hardi and I enjoyed so much about hosting MudGathers, based on the summer camps my family had when I was a kid. A kind of traveling Mudcat.