If you’d asked me in 2019, I’d have told you that no, I can’t spend two weeks in a camper in the national forest because I have a real job, thank you very much. Life and work have changed a lot since then, and this grove of Jeffery pines in the Inyo National Forest was my office for a week and then base camp for a week of vacation.
Yes, all the familiarly awkward things about spending hours packed into a winged aluminum tube with several hundred other humans are still awkward. Not that much has changed— there’s still a cool view of the harbor islands when you take off from Boston, it’s still immensely reassuring when you spot your distinctive luggage being loaded onto the plane just below your window, and even if it’s a dry heat, it’s still approximately 100,000 degrees in Las Vegas at sunset.
Las Vegas is no place for a summer vacation unless you really want to spend the entire time indoors (which we didn’t), so our destination was 300 miles away and 6000’ higher just outside Mammoth Lakes, at the foot of the Sierras
It’s not entirely awesome to have two professionals both working remotely from the same 19 foot camper when we’re keeping East Coast work hours which include 7AM phone calls. It’s amazingly awesome though when your office is a folding table in a pine grove, and when the work day wraps up at 2PM local time you’re surrounded by mountains. I live at sea level, so it’s enormously helpful for me to have the week of remote work to acclimate to the elevation before it was time to go out and play in it!
I believe that ocean views and mountain views transform ones world view,