Tovala

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My experiences with a meal kit service.

This winter, I spent some time with my friends Jan and Tiff in their Arizona home. I’ve known them since 2013 when I swapped my old golf cart for a towable helicopter landing platform. Back then, they owned a helicopter flight school in Mesa AZ. I got to be good friends with them and their partner, Woody. In those days, Jan and Woody were airline pilots for America West, which was eventually gobbled up and merged into US Air. Now they’re both retired and still living in Arizona. They sold the flight school a few years ago.

Enter Tovala

Anyway, neither Jan or Tiff cook so they basically eat out or order in all the time. I’ve become used to it when I visit with them and often pick up the tab (when I’m fast enough) when we eat out. But this time was a little different. I noticed that they had a fancy toaster oven on their countertop. Long story short: they’d signed up for a meal kit program and the oven had come with it.

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Boating: My Unexpected Fifth Career

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I am pleasantly surprised that my boat experience and captain’s license are paying off with some fun, often challenging gigs.

A lot of folks criticize me for (or are in awe of) the number of “irons I keep in the fire.” Simply said, I have a lot of interests and when something really strikes my fancy, I dive in headfirst and do what I need to do to become an “expert.”

That’s how teaching myself how to use computers in the early 1990s paid off with a career as a computer how-to book author, speaker, and educator, freeing me, once and for all (at age 29), from the 9 to 5 grind of corporate America.

That’s how learning to fly helicopters and eventually jumping through the hoops required to get a charter (AKA Part 135) certificate got me a third career as a helicopter pilot, which started climbing to its peak in 2012, right around the time people stopped buying computer how-to books.

That’s how accumulating cabochons at rock shows led to making jewelry which led to getting good silversmith training and setting up my own fully-equipped studio and making/selling sterling silver jewelry at art shows. When I sold the helicopter and my two helicopter businesses, I really thought silversmithing would be my fourth career (and first retirement career) and I suppose I can still count it as that.

But I never expected my boating activities to lead to paying gigs on both coasts, bringing in retirement income just as silver prices skyrocketed and the economy led to people not spending much money on things they didn’t need. After a dismal winter art show season in Seattle and the Phoenix area, I’ve pretty much set my silversmithing activities aside to better explore this fifth career as a boat captain.

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A Look Back at this Winter 2025/26 Travels

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I take a quick look back at the nearly three month trip I took to Arizona, New Mexico, and California.

As regular readers know, I go south every winter. I love my home but I don’t like winters here. It isn’t the cold as much as it’s the dreariness. So I go south, usually to Arizona and the desert southwest, although I did spend two winters on my boat on the Great Loop in mostly Florida a few years ago.

This year, I left on November 27, 2025 (Thanksgiving Day) and returned home on February 12, 2026. I have an excellent winter housesitter, which takes a lot of the worries out of leaving home for so long. He’s a skier and he likes the proximity of Mission Ridge and Steven’s Pass, two local ski resorts. He was not happy about the lack of real winter weather this year. But that lack of winter weather is what got me home early; I was supposed to come home at the end of February.

I thought I’d take a few minutes to write up a summary of my trip’s expenses. I think I managed to do it quite affordably this year. You be the judge.

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Another Stay at the Hot Springs

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I spend another two weeks boondocking at the Holtville Hot Spring. My last visit here?

I’m writing this from my very comfortable campsite at the Holtville Hot Spring, a BLM managed long-term visitor area. This is probably my seventh or eighth visit and I’m planning on staying for about two weeks. That’s why I took the effort to find a campsite that clicked all my boxes — privacy, quiet, space for my pups to run off leash, close (but not too close) to the hot spring tubs — and position my equipment in a way that makes everything easy to access. This is also the third time on this winter trip that I’ve taken the camper off the truck, giving me a little bit more flexibility when it comes to running errands in town.

Drone Photo of Campsite
My campsite, which has two driveways, is tucked in among bare salt cedar trees just off the campground’s main road.

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Boondocking

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If you’re properly prepared and have the right approach, it’s a surprisingly affordable way to travel in the southwest and beyond.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I got a request from one of my YouTube subscribers for more information about boondocking in an RV. This is a topic near and dear to me, as I spend a good portion of every winter camping for free on public land in Arizona and California. It’s a nice, inexpensive way to enjoy nature and solitude. Kind of like having your own mobile Walden Pond.

Boondocking Defined

Boondocking — at least the way I see it — is camping without any RV hookups or conveniences. Although this is usually done in parking lots (think Walmart) or on public land, you can be boondocking in a campground if that campground has no services. It basically means relying on your own equipment for power, water, sanitation (toilet), and food storage/prep. It usually refers to staying in a vehicle or RV, although I suppose you can do it with a tent, too. (I’ve already had enough tent camping in my life, so I won’t address that here.)

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