9 Ideas from SkooliePalooza 2: Exploring Alternative Living on the Road

In this episode of the Less House More Moola podcast, Laura shares her experiences traveling from Northern New Mexico to Quartzsite, Arizona, and back. She reflects on the diverse lifestyles she encountered along the way, particularly in alternative living scenarios. The conversation highlights the importance of water resilience, the socioeconomic spectrum of alternative living, and the insights gained from attending Schoolie Palooza. Laura emphasizes the significance of thoughtful planning and design in creating a comfortable home that aligns with one's lifestyle choices.

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Transcript

Hey everybody, welcome to Less House, More Moola podcast. Laura here, just back from a couple of days in Quartzsite, Arizona for Schoolie Palooza, or I guess we were at Schoolie 2 because there had been a Schoolie 1 before. And I wanted to share with you nine things that I noticed while driving from Northern New Mexico and spending time in Quartzsite, Arizona, and then on the way back.

If you have never driven across the country or if your lens was always focused on your arrival to Vegas or LA or the Grand Canyon, you may have missed all the people living differently on the way across the Western part of the U S we drove Southwest from where we are here in Northern New Mexico and routed on the I 40.

through Gallup and Flagstaff and then headed south around the west side of Phoenix.

I noticed a number of things while we were traveling.

I noticed that the developmental sprawl in that western part of Phoenix just went on for miles and miles with new home developments, sandwiching massive fulfillment centers.

We also saw the monumental Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company with its own water plant next door. A little Google will tell you that the Taiwanese semiconductor company TSMC's Phoenix facility is expected to use more than 17 million gallons of water per day. This is enough water to supply about 57,000 households. This was really notable as we weredriving in that area of Phoenix because it is clearly very dry there, a lot drier than it is where we are here in northern New Mexico. We also saw vast amounts of cheap land. We saw just huge signs advertising, really cheap plots of land. It was really interesting because it made me think about who might buy those cheap.

large expanses of land. They're very flat, don't have a lot of privacy, not a lot of resources. It was interesting.

I saw a lot of vegetation miracles. I saw the Arizona State tree, the Palo Verde.

The Palo Verde tree is very noticeable because it has green bark and that is due to the fact that the Palo Verde tree performs photosynthesis through its bark as well as its leaves. This adaptation allows the tree to survive and thrive in those harsh desert conditions where water is scarce. The leaves are also shed to reduce water loss. I saw a lot of these green bark trees. It was fascinating.

Of course we saw a lot of mesquite trees and we saw a lot of saguaro cactus, especially as we were coming into North Phoenix. Those cactuses were just so stunning and beautiful. And then when we got down into Quartzite where we were, those saguaro cactuses were less healthy. There were fewer of them and you could definitely see the difference there between what we saw north of Phoenix and what we saw there further to the southwest.

One of the things that really stood out to me is that when one buys cheap land in the West, water is definitely something that you have to figure out. Unlike when you buy an already established home or a home in a subdivision, a home with a well, it's really one of the things that you keep track of the most. When we arrived at our campsite with 15 gallons of drinking water and our campers holding tank full,

It was very clear to me that the length of our stay and our ability to continue boondocking was really based on how much water we had, how long it would last and where we would get it next. So definitely something that you think a lot more about in an alternative living scenario than you do when you just buy a house that has all the utilities. Of course, power is another one, but as we are 80 % water, it is really a key part of how we survive.

I noticed that aside from the developments around Phoenix and Flagstaff, we mostly saw examples of alternative living. So once you got out of those metro areas, you would see mostly dots of scattered homesteads set up that were something different than what you saw, say, around the city. And

I also noticed that in all of the alternative living that we saw along the roadways and when we reached Quartzsite and on the way home, the full range of America is represented in alternative living. Maybe it feels like a little bit of a fringe lifestyle for folks, but really what we saw was just vast amounts of baby boomers with significant savings living.

in their six-figure RV rigs with their new trucks and their off-highway vehicles in Quartzsite. Clearly that was a retirement community where a lot of folks came to the South for warmer weather and they lived in their RV rigs. But their RV rigs were nothing to sneeze at. They were very luxe, many of them.

We also saw the other extreme people who maybe can only scrape together a worn out camper and some pallets and an IBC tote for water. And that's the other range of our American socioeconomic divide. There are folks that have a lot and folks that don't have so much. And alternative living can serve in both of those and the full spectrum of different lifestyles.

We spent some time trying to figure out while at Schoolie Palooza, like who was the typical example of folks that were there? But we really just saw all types of people there. We saw all types of rigs there. It was a pretty large gathering of folks. They were relatively spread out. There were some congregations of folks or more densely.

populated zones and then there were people that were a little further out and more dispersed. But we saw people in RVs, we saw people with truck campers like us, we saw converted buses, we saw people in tents, we saw of course a lot of converted buses or skoolies.

People were dancing, they were vending, they were working, they were leading talks. We saw people that had clearly strong opinions about government taxes as they had written about it on their bus. We saw professional looking families who are clearly paying those taxes with kids making dirt pies. We saw all the dogs.

Frankly, there seemed to be a little bit of barrier to conversation because of dogs. I took two of my dogs and the nose-to-nose interaction of dogs meeting and greeting kind of created distance between the humans, kind of like it was a proxy for human beings being so uncertain about each other in such a mixed group. So very interesting dynamic there with.

so many different types of people and everyone with their dog.

Like everywhere else in society, we saw a lot of subgroups who had existing connections and relationships kind of clustered about. We, of course, were first timers and somewhat outsiders, and so definitely felt a little bit of that.

So we headed back out and continued our journey heading north. We went through Lake Havasu City, which is quite an interesting place with the barren rock desert, running right up to that lake that has been created there. Very interesting feel when you go through that city. Another wealth collection in that town, a lot of beautiful developments and golf course communities and likely a lot of retirees in that area. Then we drove through Kingman and stayed the night at the gateway to the Grand Canyon. We've been to the Grand Canyon before, so it wasn't really an intention of ours to go to the Grand Canyon, but that seemed like a good place to stop. We were there with the large trees and back in what we're used to from a tree perspective and higher elevation.

I noticed there's a definite difference to the types of homes. Once you reach land that has trees or bodies of water, definitely that difference is clear in the price of land with shade or water is higher than the price of land where there is no shade and no water. So once we got back up a little bit further north, we noticed a lot of distributed home sites, a lot of

homesteading type setups in terms of being away from metro centers, lot of ranching. So definitely back in the agricultural focused areas with cattle. And that was different, of course, from the land that we saw in the expanse between Phoenix and Quartzsite, which didn't have a lot of resources to offer and clearly not sustainable for cattle.

So we headed back landing back on the I-40. We passed through the native and tribal lands that we always pass through whenever you travel in New Mexico. There's a lot of native and tribal lands with amazing places to know about in these areas of canyons that are full of Pueblo communities built.

a thousand years ago and it's very fascinating and I wish we had had more time, but alas, we were getting a lot of wind and we have snow coming and cold temperatures. So we returned home to our cozy tiny house and our container shop dominium, glad for our shelter from the wind, our warm floors and our water

Also very grateful that our planning allowed us to avoid both the corporate grind and the high cost of housing, as well as uncertainty about our water. We've struck that balance for our lifestyle where we don't feel quite as much pressure from the typical American dream in that we are at this place where we have a little bit more financial resilience.

But on the other hand, we also have water resilience and we have created a home site that's comfortable and works for all of our needs.

As I said before, all versions of life are hard and we get to pick our hard. And I'm glad that we picked this version of hard, having seen so many different versions of alternative living in the last couple of days. We have security where we need it and we have freedom from some of the pressures of life.

So in seeing all of those different folks and all of those various ways to live an alternative life, I'm reminded that good planning and thoughtful design can make any version of home a perfect fit. It's really just about figuring out what is best for you and what aligns with the life that you wanna live.

Thanks so much for joining me on my little mental reflection of our couple of days headed out even further west and seeing some different versions of what folks are doing for their housing. It was very insightful and I have great guests coming up so make sure that you stick with me to hear more good ideas on how to live an unconventional life.