Mountain Hermit

There is a special kind of freedom in a mobile lifestyle. You don't have to stick around and deal with the fallout from bad public policy when your house has wheels. You also don't have to make excuses when your boss crosses the line and wants you to come with into breaking laws that will see you in jail. Just say no, give notice, and move on. This is the sane response, especially here in the West where the evidence of failed or expired towns are all around us. Poor civic policy or exploited resources are the cause of most of the ghost towns.
I need a house on wheels to avoid getting nailed down to a community doomed to failure. Ever since I left home I was an outsider, and everywhere I go I see the insiders getting a pass on breaking laws, but the outsiders get exploited and discarded like trash. That's just how people are. Its always been an Us vs Them paradigm. So I want a house with wheels to avoid those problems.

If I had the money I would probably own one of these. This is an Airstream Land Yacht. It is pure luxury inside, and they cost around $148K. They are mostly trailer park queens, as they are known, hauled into place and parked for years at a time. They need a seriously powerful truck to haul them. Because of the weight they don't get moved often, so while this is the most luxurious, it doesn't actually make sense for a truly mobile life. And I like the high mountain passes. I like mountains. They have lots of peace and quiet. The lowlander color gangs mostly don't go there.

I think I might enjoy life with the right view, but I keep thinking about certain dirt roads climbing to remote mountain tops, where you get serious peace and quiet.

While I might be able to make a smaller Winnebago work for me, they're really expensive for being a van that sleeps more people than I want, and their kitchen is really too small for my needs. Also, their ground clearance is fine for paved roads but I can't help observing that roads aren't what they used to be. The best mountains do not have paved roads. Quite a few really nice places to visit are on gravel or dirt. For that you sort of need a 6-wheel-drive RV with knobby offroad tires, and a suspension capable of powering up largely non-maintained roads, most of which were made by logging companies for cutting down trees, then turned over to the national forest service. They only keep the roads they can afford, and that's based on budget limitations. The headquarters for the Tahoe National Forest is in Nevada City, down the street from the library where I volunteer. It has a couple satellite offices, one in Sierraville, a town I would love to live in for a summer.

While these really expensive options exist, I'm more inclined towards this shorter Airstream. I think I could pull that much easier, and park in way more kinds of campgrounds. I could also pull it with a bigger SUV (or smaller truck) rather than a huge truck with a loud diesel engine. I realize that diesels have great torque, but very poor torque range, which means they can pull things over mountains at one speed, which isn't so great when you need to speed up and slow down for the curves and hills, etc. From what I have seen, it makes more sense to use either a V8 or a V6 twin turbo powered pickup truck. They have the torque and power to accomplish pulling one of these trailers when it is time to move to a new town, a new campground, or new park. As I said above, I don't want to help people who hurt me, and the surest way to avoid harm is to avoid engagement in the lives of those who pay you. Do your job, get paid, move on.