Yes it does, and I'm gonna have a good time summerbumming from town to town around the mountains on these state-operated buses.
>but you can't get around the city without a carAlso wrong. See all the red lines, they are bus routes. City bus transport is excellent in even a podunk wornout city like Pueblo, Colorado. $3.75 to ride around all day in the A/C.
Forgot pic. Just saw a strung out shirtless tweaker walking his little tweaker bike right behi d an ugly old woman, she told him to stop following her but he kept at it. I moved to intervene, but she ducked into the bus station (where security is posted) and tweakerdude pedaled away. Nobody messes with me of course, because I look like a square. Most of my interactions so far in USA have been very positive. One guy did ask if I was a gangstalker. Had a great chat with a small town grandma on the bus to Pueblo this morning. Also met a crazy woman who claimed to be from Tasmania.
Filled out my first job app as a homeless guy. The greenskeeper was a great guy, but he didn't need any help at the moment. Pueblo is sunny and warm and dry, but I just don't feel like it's the right place for me to settle down. Riding to Walsenburg this afternoon. Gonna stop at the downtown Safeway for some vittles before roughing it for my first full night as a 100% free man. Food on this trip is for nutrition and energy only. I've stopped caring about flavor.Picrel from the trip across northern New Mexico
Everyone knows the USA has relatively okay public transportation and has known for some time. Small town in midwest probably has some bus service of some kind even like Joplin or even North Dakota of all places has buses. Most Americans when they say "no public transport" what they mean is no 5 minute walk to a subway like they had in Europe or Japan the one time they went and booked a hotel right outside station. They also mean "transportation without niggers" by the people who "aren't racist just careful" white women who can't fathom taking the bus.The worst part of the US public transport system is just the lack of caring for who gets on and what they do once on the bus/lightrail/train. If you gave every bus driver a gun and told them they can kick anyone off being disruptive for any reason, made that the law and enforce it. People would probably start taking public transport. Unfortunately we have people who will scream about no HSR and how not allowing the dindunuffun crackhead on the bus be racist so the system faulters. Even if we got Japan level train systems tomorrow in every major city, most people would stop using it after 5 tries because of the utter shittfication of them overnight.
>>2897692US also has upwards mobility, so most people don't have to use it unlike Gayrope where most people are basically stuck in their parents socio-economic class. Sorry, Piotr, mommy is a cashier and daddy works at the stroyka, here's your montly bus talon, get used to it.
kek, this LARPing tard is talking to russians now, is your bullshit going to turn into some pro-ukie screed now, Saul?
>>2897706Ive never met a Russian i didnt like but I can assure you public transportation in America is not better than a 2 out of 10. It goes nowhere you want to be
>>2897744Look at the map I posted you tard. You can quite literally bus your vagabond ass all over rural Colorado. Granted, some states are shittier. Don't ride the bus in Arkansas or Alabama, it's nothing more than inter-ghetto transport for the trashiest poors and felons.Picrel my campsite last night in pretty little Walsenburg. I only have a mini blanket, so it did get a little cool as temps dropped from 85° at sunset to 60° by dawn. BTW traveling India has drastically reduced my sensitivity to discomfort. Only a plastic rain poncho underneath to keep the dried grass from pricking me. I used my duffel as a pillow.
Saw this extremely cute bat half the length of my finger snoozing on a garage door on Main Street
>>2897805>Picrel my campsite last night in pretty little Walsenburg. I only have a mini blanket, so it did get a little cool as temps dropped from 85° at sunset to 60° by dawn. BTW traveling India has drastically reduced my sensitivity to discomfort. Only a plastic rain poncho underneath to keep the dried grass from pricking me. I used my duffel as a pillow.>no tentdidnt you get raped by mosquitoes? or there werent really many?and cant you get raped by state troopers?
Small town USA. So many parks, benches, libraries, senior centers, plazas and other public amenities available for usage. You'd think the people would hate bums, but everyone is friendly, much more so than when I traveled by car. My luggage is compact, my clothing is neat, I am sane, sober and optimistic, looking for opportunities and conversations with anyone I encounter. Basically the ideal vagabond in the eyes of Americans. A Native American guy also headed to Walsenburg on the bus gave me some pointers. This morning I hitched a ride 15 miles to La Veta in a veteran biker's pickup truck. We had a great /pol/ tier conversation about modern women and social decay. He said people are very fucked up here, despite the lovely surroundings, and the owner of the golf course I was looking to work at is a horrible bitch who screwed him over on pay, promising 20 then paying 15. Time will tell what happens to me here. Worst case I trudge the 15 miles back to Walsenburg. For once my travels feel completely dynamic and unpredictable. Nothing at all mundane about being a vagabond in America. And it's so comfy. Blue skies, mild summer temps, low humidity, no mosquitoes, a sack of food and a jug of water ensuring my self-reliance.
>>2897809sounds kino. having working rights while traveling is OP af. how do you shower though? are the libraries actually decent in terms of books?
>>2897589Seattle public transit is absolutely fucking amazing. Same with the weather. Lock me up in this 15 minute city idgaf. I can walk a block to get beer, walk 2 blocks to get a pizza, walk 3 blocks to get donuts and coffee and then half a block to my cigarette smoking park with comfy benches that overlooks the city.
>>2897808Police couldn't care less about a guy living free, minding his business and paying his own way in libertarian Colorado. I had to dip into Safeway to fill my bottle at the water fountain. Public water sources are only found indoors in America, it seems. One guy passed my camp on a bicycle at dusk, said hi and kept going; nobody else came by. It was an unimproved nature preserve area next to the dried-up Cucharas River behind the town baseball fields. Severe drought means no pest insects, only swarms of ants in some grassy areas. Horrible wildfire is currently decimating the once cool and shady forests of the Wet Mountains. Very sad to see, but I'm glad to not get rained on or damped by morning dew.Travel budget is ideally a $66.6 per day average, or $2000 per month equivalent. Yeah it's awfully high for being 75% homeless. Twice as high as my van travels, even when accounting for van purchase cost divided by length of ownership period. Today I have no food or transport expenses, so I can get a room. Hopefully I can find a room tonight for $70 or thereabouts. Walsenburg had some cheapish motels in that price range, but La Veta has fewer options and they seem more boutique. Lots of outside money coming in, my biker friend said. People have gotten pretentious, a town full of Karens. Whatever. I'll sleep rough again tonight before I pay $140 for bed access. In a dry climate it doesn't feel as gross to be unshowered. Showering with my 1.5 liter water bottle is also an option, if I can find both a place to fill it up and also a wooded thicket where I can strip down and then towel off with my microfiber mini towel. Laundromat had free bath towels, but my bags are already stuffed to the max. If I get a job I'll want a full week's worth of clothes, so I'm reluctant to throw anything away.
>>2897818>Travel budget is ideally a $66.6 per day average, or $2000 per month equivalent. Yeah it's awfully high for being 75% homeless.*record scratching noise*HOW MUCH??? Nah fuck that lol
In Thailand I threw away my sandals for a $2 pair of walking shoes, in case my current shoes wear through, get soaked, or get used in some filthy jobsite. A second pair of shoes is a significant amount of weight, however. All these choices to hold onto items really add up. That stupid Anker Bluetooth speaker really has to go, it's dead weight with zero practical use, but I still haven't chucked it because I will want music to start my workday. Free WiFi and also outlets for phone charging in this town park? Hardly believable. No other country would have such great public amenities in a literal middle of nowhere town.
>>2897821>That stupid Anker Bluetooth speaker really has to go, it's dead weight with zero practical use, but I still haven't chucked it because I will want music to start my workday.Get a radio and rechargeable batteries instead of listening to algorithm slop. Radio always plays local stations and greatly enhances my travel. It makes each place actually feel different>Free WiFi and also outlets for phone charging in this town park? Hardly believable. No other country would have such great public amenities in a literal middle of nowhere town.Damn didnt know that. I have to update my opinion on shitsville, USA now
>>2897820Anon I live in a 123sqft micro apt in Seattle and I don’t even spend 2k a month on the entirety of my living expenses. >>2897821Are you seriously puttering around in Nakhon Nowhere blaring music? Why not use headphones? You’re gonna get somchai’d
>>2897824All you need are wired headphones to access FM radio on any smartphone.>>2897826But you never seem happy, you never have adventure. All you do is sit like a bug in a box and pine away for the touch of a 19 year old disco dancing hooker on the other side of the world. Whereas I'm living the kind of American vagabond life I've dreamed of for so many years...but was always too chickenshit, unwilling to deliberately throw away job/house/car, unwilling to set out with minimal savings knowing how much USA travel costs. But now at last I have the opportunity, and the money. Eight months overseas didn't even eat up 25% of my funds. That frugality - and the discomfort endured by being cheap, in India no less - now enables me to genuinely enjoy being adrift in rural America, and to even feel passably comfortable doing so.
Americans are such pussies when it comes to heat. Yesterday it was a dry sunny 95° in Pueblo and so many people were bitching. I felt perfectly comfy in the shade.
>>2897810Many libraries have books for sale for very cheap. If you already have a book, you can ask to exchange it with one from the sale rack. Most bums phonerot on library WiFi tho, they never read because their homeless condition is a product of retardation, not choice.Public showers are very rare in the USA. Some private businesses have showers. During my van days I used to sneak into state park campgrounds for a hot shower, but state parks are rarely accessible to a foot traveler. Pouring water over your head in a public bathroom makes a mess and is frowned upon, but it works in a pinch if there is no secluded forest thicket like picrel to hide away in.
>>2897814So you are a homebody with zero interest in going places. Okay, got it. Why are you even posting on this board?
I spent $0 on this hitchhiking daytrip to La Veta. It was scenic and tranquil, but a dry hole. No room available, no need for help at the parched golf course, no public transport, no real supermarket in town either. Decided to start walking back to Walsenburg and see what happens. 3½ miles down the highway in the 88° breeze, a Mexican doing 80 in his work truck slams on the brakes, throws it in reverse, then guns it backwards for a quarter mile. I crammed into the front seat with my bags and off we went. First Spanish conversation of my trip - part Spanish at least. His wife lives in Guadalajara, and he had worked all over the US from Dakota to California and everywhere in between. I literally started singing after being dropped off in town, that's how good the serendipity on this trip is feeling. The motel lady was friendly and knocked $11 off her $77 room rate after I asked. We chatted a few minutes about the drought, fires, travel and so on. Her husband works on the local golf course, which also has no need of help. Another benefit of traveling India - it evidently has worked wonders for my social skills. Now I can have a good chat with just about anybody who is not an attractive young female. The Safeway checkout girl was young, white, pretty, slim, green-eyed, etc. She really wanted my attention, giving me about a dozen second glances, but I was indifferently impersonal with her. Not gonna play foid games. The biker dude who picked me up was also on a pussy boycott with all these childless roasties demanding royal treatment. "Treat her like a queen, and she will treat you like a pawn." He couldn't have said it better.
Hardly worth $77, but evidently that's what they're charging these days. WiFi is atrocious. I still haven't gotten a US phone plan, because even a cheap phone + plan from Walmart would be a day's spending. Here are the stats so far for seven nights of vagabond life in the US. The first travel day started at 10:30 pm.>Total spend: $395.11 ($56.44 per travel day)>Lodging: $173.38 ($24.77 per travel day)Only three nights out of 7 in a bed...>Food: $83.64 ($11.95 per day)Needful groceries from Safeway only, no treats, no restaurants. This figure is actually skewed upwards as I am ending the week with a sack full of food. Walmart prices would've been lower, but I haven't encountered a Walmart yet.>Transport: $132.25 spent for 1274 miles covered>Misc: $5.84Six places visited in two states.
>>2897861Hitchhiking is amazing and is one of my best travel experiences. You get a free ride, they get entertainment. And you get to meaningfully connect with local people. More people should do it.>Another benefit of traveling India - it evidently has worked wonders for my social skills. Now I can have a good chat with just about anybody who is not an attractive young female.You'll get their eventually>The Safeway checkout girl was young, white, pretty, slim, green-eyed, etc. She really wanted my attention, giving me about a dozen second glances, but I was indifferently impersonal with her. Not gonna play foid games. Cope, you fumbled>The biker dude who picked me up was also on a pussy boycott with all these childless roasties demanding royal treatment. "Treat her like a queen, and she will treat you like a pawn." He couldn't have said it better.Just be anti-meta. That guy told you the meta, all of the normies act like him and try to larp as disinterested towards girls. You probably could have fucked the cashier if you complimented her on her eyes and got her number then took her out and told your stories>>2897867>I still haven't gotten a US phone plan, because even a cheap phone + plan from Walmart would be a day's spending.Your best bet is to buy a used phone off craigslist (ebay is better but you dont have an address)For plans, Tello was about $6 a month for me. Just get whatever MVNOYou're probably going to need to get one eventually to get a job
this isn't your creative writing class notebook, OP, if you have no real travel experiences to relay then take it to /lit/
>>2897874Woah so bluepilled. "Just spoil pretty women bro, it's totally worth it bro". Dude was anything but a normie, he was a very angry and plain-spoken man with a long white beard, he dispensed with the NPC pleasantries and went straight to real talk. It was like we barely started conversing and the 20 minute ride was over already. Next time I entered the store she called me sir. Women have more respect for guys who aren't suckered by their physical charms.Good to hear about Tello. Seems you'd need an eSIM compatible phone to take advantage of their low monthly rates. There doesn't seem to be any place in rural America to buy a physical SIM card apart from Walmart. The Lyca Mobile shop on Venice Beach is the only phone store I've encountered in a week of traveling.Jesus, Amtrak going east from Denver is a fucking ripoff if you buy a few days in advance. It's only 540 miles, should be fifty bucks but it's $200+ for most travel days. Likewise for buses to the more obscure parts of America, like the Denver to Buffalo, WY route. But at least you feel like you're having an adventure for your money riding to obscure Wyoming towns. Sadly, buses on that route often get cancelled due to lack of ridership.Greyhound is generally less of a price-gouge, but it always forces you to take routes between major cities, with seats as hard and cramped as Spirit Airlines. I really don't want to go freaking Denver to Omaha, that kind of intercity travel is a tiresome slog on a bus full of losers, not a scenic adventure to a remote place.
>>2897955>Next time I entered the store she called me sir.ah so then u fucked?
Ugh, now I feel so stupid for sleeping on the hard ground yesterday night when 300 yards up the river somebody dumped this super comfy sofa in a vacant and ressonably secluded clearing. Been so dry this year that it's not even gross, only a little dusty with leaves and a few birdshit stains on the back. Lesson learned: always explore the area around your vagabond site thoroughly before settling in. I might return to Walsenburg just to spend a night on that sofa. The cushions are like 8 inches of soft foam, as soft as the motel bed.
>>2898042wake up with vermin in your ass
>>2898043This town is at 6000' elevation. Like most high altitude semi-arid places, it's almost completely devoid of pestilence. Temps are still approaching 100° in the afternoon. I don't mind the heat desu, it's a dry heat and the breeze blows frequently. There's always a shade tree somewhere, and warm nights mean bulky blankets are not needed.>how bout riding the railsNot really doable with two bulky bags. Plus, you need to know where the trains halt for crew changes. Trying to climb aboard a moving train is how you get fucked up...and all the freight trains I've seen were moving.
>>2898064>Trying to climb aboard a moving train is how you get fucked up...and all the freight trains I've seen were moving.In India I used to board moving buses like it was nothing while looking at my phone
A golfer at the Trinidad golf course offered me a job painting. $300 for a few hours of work sounds too good to be true. Only prob is, he wants to do it this Friday. That would mean two nights' waiting around here in Trinidad, then the job, then three more nights stuck in this town of druggie nutcases because the Bustang driver is off on weekends. Maybe next week...I drew up this document on my laptop in case he gets back to me, asking a much smaller rate. Anyway I booked a $45 hostel in Salida for Friday evening, so maybe I'll come back next week. It's $33 in bus fare from Salida to Trinidad, and it requires a night's layover in Pueblo (which sucks). But Trinidad does have an Amtrak station for trips to Kansas if I decide to quit Colorado - unlikely because it's one of my all-time favorite states. The guy I met on the train already made it to Williston. Probably went all the way to Chicago and then back west on the far northern line in an enormous sideways V. With a railpass it costs him nothing to cover all that distance, and in fact saves him many nights of sleeping on the street.>>2898069Freight trains are a completely different animal bro. They're not built for easy passenger access.
Monsoon moisture means roiling clouds have begun filling the sky overhead. I love Colorado summer rain, it rarely stays wet long especially in such a dry summer.
>>2898120$70/day budget, the job is +$300 but minus 5 days so minus $350Even worse if you cuck yourself and take less. He will deny the contract because he thinks you will try to scam him by billing him for 900 hours btw
>>2897814Looks like the rail lines expanded greatly since I left.Congratu-goddamn-lations.That would have made living there less shitty than it needed to be. There are some places I actually kind of somewhat liked being in that are now way more accessible than they were.
>>2898142This second week is shaping up to cost significantly less. Additionally, Amtrak is going to refund my $108 train ticket due to the 16 hour delay, so that will bring down my daily average further.Last night I found the neatest freaking vagabond site next to the barely used river trail here in Trinidad, about a mile walk from downtown. A huge comfy horse blanket and mosquito tent were both available. Cottonwood forest all around, one neighbor 100 yards away so quiet I don't even know if his tent was occupied. Felt like one of those vidyas where you pick up supplies that are just laying around. There were some pesty mosquitoes, so I was very happy for the tent. Last night was extremely warm, probably one of the warmest nights on record for Trinidad. Dehydration is a problem; 1.5 L is not enough water for my active vagabond life. Guess I'll have to start carrying a gallon jug everywhere. There are no outdoor drinking water sources in any of these Colorado towns; the dog park had working dog fountains, but all the human fountains I've come across have been turned off. I always have to use indoor fountains or ask wagies for a refill at foodservice sinks.Today is supposed to bring a rainstorm. I should've left the blanket and tent in the impromptu rain shelter tunnel. Oh well. Hopefully the rain is over by dusk. It usually is in Colorado.
Trinidad has a cool historic downtown. Not as many bums as I remember there being in 2020. For a decade it was a cannabis boomtown, but since New Mexico legalized weed, all the Texans go there now. Many dispensaries here have shut down, and the business district has subsided into sleepy neglect again. There are a lot of nasty crime stories here from the boomtown days - I chatted with a guy from Aguilar on the bus yesterday and he had some tales to tell. But the gang graffiti is faded, and the illegal activities have become much more discreet. People don't seem insecure or on edge. I think I will spend another night here, choosing this spot over the Walsenburg sofa, and then cover 200 miles to my hostel in Salida tomorrow.
Being able to freshen up in the river on a bright sunny morning was a great start to the day. How to bathe in a shallow river? Take off shirt, splash water on face and hair, underarms, then a little bit on chest and back. Then wipe off excess water with a bandana, comb hair, put shirt on, squat like you're pooping in the river, and splash the nether regions. With humidity at 30%, everything dries out very quickly. Seriously. Every time I visit Colorado in summertime, I don't see a reason to go anywhere else in the USA. Colorado in summer gigamogs.
>>2898273>slept in some random nigga's tentyour lucky you didnt wake up with spooning with a new friend>>2898274>my hostel in Salida tomorrow.how far ahead are you booked? how are you deciding where to go?
>>2898278The campsite was clearly abandoned by the alcoholic who lived there - over a dozen cardboard cases of beer were torn up and left behind. Of course I was still on guard for anyone approaching. Good thing the bad characters hate long walks and rarely stray far from concrete. One mile down a trail is enough to find peaceful seclusion. No I don't have any pocketknife or other weapons with me, only a bright flashlight.Homeless people abandon sites all the time, leaving behind the shit people give them. Somebody else usually comes along and puts it to use. This was a remarkably clean site. Not a shred of plastic litter anywhere, only beercans. The blanket was strung up as a sunshade, so it was remarkably clean and odorless for something abandoned in a homeless camp. There was even a broom on hand to sweep the patio. The concrete does soak up the hot afternoon sun, staying warm late into the night. It wasn't anywhere near as warm last night as I thought it was.>>2898278Just that one night's booking has been lined up. I was surprised and interested to see that Salida had a hostel downtown. Hostels are very rare in small town USA. The golf course I worked at for seven seasons is a $5 bus ride north of Salida, with departure the next day at either 10 AM or 4 PM. Gonna swing by and say hi to a couple folks. Afterwards, who knows.
$18 for this rich spread of Italian food. No tipping; order at the counter and get served at your table. The alfredo was served in a literal lake of butter. Now I'll be thirsty as a camel for hours. Might as well buy that gallon jug now... The restaurant seating area was as tiny as any Asian street food joint, with three small tables. So cute. They were only looking for part-time help though. Americans are very emotionally responsive people, MUCH more so than Asians who respond to you based on your perceived value to them. If you react positively to Americans, they nearly always reciprocate, appreciating you for who you are even in passing on the street. And if you openly loathe Americans, their faces also become hideous with negative emotions. It's really shocking how pleasant all my interactions have been in America. I always thought Colorado was unfriendly, but I was just being an anti-social, insecure pothead. Now so many white women smile when they meet my eyes. I was expecting to be treated like trash for being visibly homeless, but it hasn't happened. Everyone respects my choice to see America on foot. Asians and Latinas OTOH treat me like rubbish unless I'm piquing their curiosity or benefitting them in some way. Theirs is a much more dog eat dog world, where naked self-interest predominates over kindness and positivity. Yeah okay I've crossed paths with 4 or 5 grumps in a week of traveling the USA, and seen some seriously fucked up mental cases. It's like they are stuck in a negative emotional feedback loop and haven't the first clue how to escape it. I can relate because I used to be one of them through most of my 20s. But I stripped my persona down to nothing and started anew.
>>2898357>stuck in a negative emotional feedback loopStory of my life.>stripped my persona down to nothing and started anew.What does this mean?
>>2898372IDK what it means, it simply happened and now my mind feels clean and fresh instead of cluttered with years worth of junk and debris. Maybe a triple dose of 4-AcO-DMT with my brother played a role. It was the most powerful experience of my life. First trip was awful misery, second was dreamy, and the third was revelatory enough to restore my faith in existence as a human.This dude's spot in the town forest near the railroad looked so cool. I went back to the site used last night; the blanket had been unfolded and returned to use as a sunshade. So the camp wasn't abandoned; the guy just didn't see or hear me because he was sleeping off another 12 pack of Budweiser. Now that he knew someone had been sleeping in his day drinking spot, I wasn't about to stay another night. So I had to lay down on the hard dirt, swatting at mosquitoes with my mini blanket every few minutes. Damn if I didn't wish I had returned to Walsenburg on the 1:40 pm bus to sleep on that cushy sofa. But a deep pool in the river looked so inviting for a skinny dip in the afternoon heat, so I chose to linger here. A short-haired black lady asked a question about clearing up Gmail storage outside the library which led to her pouring forth a long story of all her life's trials. I was happy to stand and listen with the occasional insight. Talking to people is the point of this trip after all. Hardly a day goes by without at least one lengthy conversation. That sure didn't happen in Europe or Asia. Even in India everyone only wanted me to talk about myself, my life and my experiences.
It's 67° this morning, but when you are skinny and don't eat properly, the dry breeze pulls all the heat out of your body. In the mountain interior valleys it will be chillier. Historically temps have dropped to the high 40s most nights in midsummer. I've even seen 39° in Telluride during an August "heat wave". (Extreme dryness means temps plunging as much as 45° F every night). Even if I do retrieve a big fluffy comforter from my old workplace, such cold may be intolerable. Going down the Arkansas River to Kansas is still an option for summer swelter, as is going down the Platte River to Nebraska. Supposedly a bus goes north from Denver to Buffalo, Wyoming and Billing, MT. And Bustang of course goes west from Denver into the northern Colorado mountains, which has some very charming towns. So I have the freedom to go in all directions...
While Trinidad does have beautiful riparian forests, I can't wait to get out of earshot of that goddamn interstate. The constant background noise of traffic even half a mile away at 3 AM is quite annoying.
>>2898442When I was in NYC stacking I was eyeing the fuck out of Helena, MT. I traveled all of the PNW in the summer on a camping trip before. Camped in upstate Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana. Montana was my favorite because of the scenery. The low light pollution in rural Idaho made the night sky breathtaking too. Weather was fine everywhere, but it varies a lot based on elevation. This region is growing a lot economically, that's why I was looking at it https://milkeninstitute.org/content-hub/research-and-reports/research-and-data-tools/best-performing-cities-2026-resilience-cooling-economy
>>2898464Winter comes so much earlier in Montana than it does for Colorado, a state which has seen pleasantly dry and warm autumns in recent years (with only an occasional cold snap). Public transit up in Montana seems limited to regional private bus lines which run overnight and charge a pretty penny ($0.50 per mile seems standard bus fare). But Helena does seem like a great small city with a mountain backyard. Fewer parks and urban greenways than I'd like...Montana is overall a sparsely developed state. Asked a tenant about these studios in downtown Trinidad next to the bus stop. Rent is $650 per month including utilities. The landlord is a good person. Safeway is a 5 minute walk. But the area is blighted, with a big boarded-up building across the street. Gonna think about it as I continue my travels...
>>2898521>Asked a tenant about these studios in downtown Trinidad next to the bus stop. Rent is $650 per month including utilities. The landlord is a good person. Safeway is a 5 minute walk. But the area is blighted, with a big boarded-up building across the street. Gonna think about it as I continue my travels...Not much to think about here. Hard pass lol. $650 for standalone sounds good on paper, but if you rent a unit like that it's harder to move out, a room in a sharehouse is better. The contract switches to monthly after only 3 months or so, and the kitchen already has all the cooking equipment you need so you don't need to buy anything. Even in the most expensive cities the rooms start at $800, for Trinidad to be worth it there better be ample jobs with $18/hr+ wages and I doubt there areWhen I was looking at Helena there were rooms for rent (shared common areas) in the $400-500 range and wages were competitive with big cities
>>2898554OP here, I rented a $300 unfurnished room in a shared house once in Lake Havasu City. It was utterly filthy and smelled like death mixed with diarrhea and vomit. Two boxes of carpet cleaner were needed to make it livable. The roommates were a bunch of disgusting women always squabbling. Kitchen was okay. Job kept cutting my shifts at the last second. Despite strict sobriety, it was one of the bleakest, least hopeful times in my life. Surrounded by nagging, resentful losers everywhere I went. Fuck that. Besides, all you need to cook is a saucepan, a lid, a spoon and a scouring pad.$400 room in Helena sounds like a deposit harvesting scam.
>>2898444Trinidad has an interstate?
Salida is touristy, and I feel invisible on the busy downtown streets for a change. Lots of pedestrians and relatively few cars has it feeling almost European. Same with the inhibited behavior of the people here, who are 95% white as can be. They avoid eye contact and act like you don't exist, nothing like the freely social mutts of southern Colorado. The bus driver and I had a long chat, then I Met some friendly thru hikers in the hostel from New Mexico. No foreigners here, it seems. Tomorrow I'll go to Gunnison or Moffat. Probably Gunnison. Wait until Monday to visit my old workplace, seeing as the crew and boss are off on weekends. Rainy conditions have set in, which may make outdoor sleeping tougher. Daily spending average for this trip is now sitting at $53.60. That will drop to $42.80 after the Amtrak refund.
>>2898588Yep, I-25 goes from El Paso to Denver, basically dividing the plains from the mountains.
Today was the first $100+ spending day of this trip (again not including the soon to be refunded Amtrak ticket).
>>2898589>humans wont look at the stinky bum,,,,because they are 'inhibited and white'Its because they are smart and know parasites target white people for cash. Parasites are very good about sniffing out who they can scam and we are on to your behavior, don't make eye contact with the parasite, keep moving dont want to hear your sob story about needing bus fare
>>2898587>I had a bad experience working once so never gonna work againYour fault for choosing a bad place
>>2898618Rich people on vacation are soulless NPC touristcattle who are only interested in pursuing their own pleasure. They aren't "on to" anything. They simply don't care. Vacation = vacate = to make empty. There's nothing going on upstairs. If you make any pertinent remark to them you'll only get the quizzical, uncomprehending stare of the heavily fluoridated NPC along with a programmed response that has no meaning. I had a dream that my money bag fell from a very very high hostel bunk and spilled bills everywhere on the floor, which was teeming with people. Some of the money got stolen, and I was going around grabbing people's shirts demanding my money. They were all acting infuriatingly like retards and denying everything, which made me more and more violent. Then I woke up.>>2898619It's all the luck of the draw, which connections you make along the way. Pursuing work through temp agencies is worth considering, especially in this shitty Trump economy where nobody can afford to take a chance on a full-time hire. But first, a little more travel...
>>2898660I said we don't want to hear your sob story and you told us anyway. Get a job if you need bus fare. I give cash to old guys and old women not lazy young able bodied lying punks or breeders using their kids to elicit sympathy
>>2897589Last 3 beggars I stiffed, a young guy with alcohol on his breath sob story about being an orphan, a young guy needed food money didn't look hungry, a young guy yesterday a student needed bus fare and food had functional arms and legs that would carry him anywhere, they always target me the white guy ignoring all the locals, did give an 80 yearold woman selling berries on the curb and an old guy quietly being homeless a days wage each for not being a bothersome shithead cuz I'm rich and a heckin good person
>>2898660>It's all the luck of the draw, which connections you make along the way. Pursuing work through temp agencies is worth considering, especially in this shitty Trump economy where nobody can afford to take a chance on a full-time hire. But first, a little more travel...In cities the housing and job markets are so liquid you don't really need connections. When I moved to Seattle I got housing my first day and a job within two days. And I just kept monkey branching jobs until I felt like I had enough to fuck off for a few years. At any given point in time there are hundreds of housing options and jobs to choose from, if one doesn't look good you can comfortably turn it down, or if one turns out shitty you can always find the next one easily. In small towns your landlord and employer might be literally the only option in a 50 mile radius and basically has a monopoly over you. imo only owning your own property and being a sole proprietor is viable in that kind of environment
>>2898660I hate normie NPCs as much as anyone, but if you work a full time job, vacations are a must every 2-3 years. Especially if you don't live in some big city where you're having lots of novel experiences.A solid week of novel experiences and not thinking about work/home/responsibilities gives you a mental reset that keeps momentum going. Otherwise the days will blend together and five years of your life will slip by where you realize you've wasted it in some routine that doesn't progress.
>>2898709>days will blend together and five years of your life will slip by where you realize you've wasted it in some routine that doesn't progress.Literally me
>>2898709>>2898715*sigh*I’ve been rotting in overnight security for 4 years and I’m 35 now. I might have to engage in some self-created brinksmanship.>brinksmanshipPretty much I mean just quit my job. It’s so comfy tho. I sit at a desk and listen to kick/music and I’m never bothered by anyone
>>2898715Pick something novel and do it. I'm in a similar boat. In this thread checking out OP's comments because I'm thinking of pulling the trigger on a CO road trip from NH, hitting Badlands National Park, maybe Devil's Tower, then turning south towards Denver / CO Springs area.Nervous about it, but sick of New England, sick of my routine, and going south, nothing would be novel until I start hitting southern Appalachia since I'm from the mid-atlantic. So instead, I'm going west for the first time.Might die, might brake down, I just don't care anymore.
>>2898725It's an oven all across the Midwest states right now. Make sure your car A/C and coolant system are in good working order, then gopher it. Get a motel if you can't sleep in 88° ambient temp with no breeze.>>2898709I don't hate NPCs, I just feel alienated around them, and they seem less than human because of that.>>2898666Yeah but you're gonna be in a big city around big city people, who IME are much more fluoridated than the country folk of America. >>2898662Where are you getting the impression that I'm strapped for cash or asking for any handouts? I've been on the move for eight months, flying literally around the entire world, and have burned through only 25% of my savings. What I want is an opportunity to live someplace small and pleasant in America with good nature, great climate, an affordable cute little apartment, and people who smile and say "good morning" when you look at them with a pleasant face. Forget being an antisocial rotter in an antisocial big city like insecurity guard. Saving a few grand over a few months is of course the goal of settling down, but I'm not such a greedy fucker that I will prioritize money over everything else in life.>>2898709Travel as a cope for your wagecage, versus wagecage as a means to enable travel. Very different approaches to the work-travel balance.
>>2898725That feeling of nervous anticipation prior to setting out on a new journey is the best part of travel IMO. But I also like the easy flow of wandering around at leisure, feeling confident in my ability to make my way across the map, meet people and find cool places. This USA vagabond trip has been remarkably stress-free. You'll get that same feeling too once you've figured out how to travel your own way.
>>2898741Appreciate the heads up.. I have a small coolant leak in my vehicle. Hasn't been a problem for the year since I had it and have topped off coolant before. This is my only major hesitation. Can't get it fixed first because there isn't enough time before my week off.
>>2898741>Yeah but you're gonna be in a big city around big city people, who IME are much more fluoridated than the country folk of America.>What I want is an opportunity to live someplace small and pleasant in America with good nature, great climate, an affordable cute little apartment, and people who smile and say "good morning" when you look at them with a pleasant face. Too many preconceptions about city people vs rural people. It's the same people. Only the background scenery is different>Forget being an antisocial rotter in an antisocial big city like insecurity guard. Was LA really that bad? Shitsville is inherently more antisocial>Saving a few grand over a few months is of course the goal of settling down, but I'm not such a greedy fucker that I will prioritize money over everything else in life.Wagecucks misunderstand the point of "time is money" so they devote every second of their entire lives to pointlessly farming shekels. Money is time. For $2k I'd rather have 4-5 months in a cheap country than 1 month in the US, the US isn't 4-5x better and is in fact slightly worse. You dont have passive income and you are inefficient at saving so it might take you 2-3 months of waging to save enough to cover 1 month of US travel, not a good ratio at all
>>2898741You were crying that white people don't want to look at you and treat you like a subhuman and also said you are are visibly a dirty homelessness looking guy. I just explained why they don't want to look at you. That you aren't asking for money is irrelevant. It's pattern recognition don't be butthurt because you did the same thing but worse by disparaging respectable people who are higher class and better than you
>>2898775I've had a small leak turn into a major leak when gaining elevation after adding water instead of 50/50 coolant. The entire system literally boiled dry on the climb out of Denver.>>2898792>it's the same peopleWay to out yourself as a typical self-absorbed normiebot. Human diversity is fucking incredible, even from town to town in a single state. Every place leaves its mark on the people who live there. >inherently more anti-socialYou're just not interested in anybody's life besides your own. So of course they won't open up to you. You're the product of your antisocial, elitist, conniving, uncaring urban environment. You only prefer poor countries because they place more value on your money. Peak consoomer mindset. I love America vagabonding because spending money here is merely incidental and does not form the basis of my interactions with Americans, which are far more in-depth and meaningful than the desultory chatter that passed for socializing in the Third World.Salida locals are kind enough. It's the tourists with their consoomer-centric mindset which barely even seem sentient to me. No wonder people the world over see vacationers as nothing more than walking wallets. They really are.
This fragrant meadow next to a cow pasture was soft as a cheap hotel bed. Temps dropped to a damp 54° by morning, tough with no real blanket. Dozing off after sunrise with the gradually warming air was peak comfy. Woke up to a couple white ladies walking by and talking about the legality of high-powered e-bikes. The path was about 20 yards from where I slept on my raincoat.
Eating cherries on a bench behind the Walmart, some curious cows came up to say hi. So many birds and wildlife in the rich irrigated meadows. Bright moon but no mosquitoes. Salida has a footpath accessible Walmart, beautiful parks with huge shade trees, tons of benches and picnic tables. Today I cross over to the Western Slope to visit Gunnison.
$11 for a scenic bus ride up a forested pass and then across the wide-open expanses on the Western Slope to Gunnison. From here, free buses connect to the gorgeous mountain resort of Crested Butte. More amazing American mountain towns full of beauty and friendly people. Definitely feeling a sense of American exceptionalism in these places...
Met a bicycle camper in the town park, started chatting my asking him to take a picture of his setup. He looked rough, but it was only an extreme case of freckles. That's a lot of stuff required to be self-sufficient outdoors in the changeable mountain climate. He seemed to be wearing out his welcome in town, but he refused to be moved along. Besides, every onward direction involved a grueling mountain-pass climb.
>>2899033>I love America vagabonding because spending money here is merely incidental and does not form the basis of my interactions with Americans, which are far more in-depth and meaningful than the desultory chatter that passed for socializing in the Third World.monolingual copium>>2898741>Yeah but you're gonna be in a big city around big city people, who IME are much more fluoridated than the country folk of America.You're just not interested in anybody's life besides your own. So of course they won't open up to you. You're the product of your antisocial, elitist, conniving, uncaring rural environment. You only prefer poor counties because they place more value on your money. Peak consoomer mindset.
The billowing clouds over distdnt mountains in the background sparked a wildfire which was contained a couple hours later. At the hostel I met a staffer who had fled his Mexican dad in Guadalajara after cartel violence and his dad's sociopathic behavior became intolerable. Unlike Thirdies, nobody I talk to in America wants anything from me besides on-the-spot, face-to-face social engagement. We have great unfiltered conversations, each speaking our minds frankly as we wrestle with complex problems or interwoven life stories. It's stimulating and rewarding in a way that travel in Thirdie countries rarely was. No longer is "woah this nice room was only seven dollars, X is so cheap!" the basis of my travel enjoyment. Consumerism is so lame no matter the budget.
>>2898801Who said it has to do with me alone? I can see how tourists treat each other, with complete indifference to anything which is not offering them some transactional stimulation or social media bragging points. And there's nothing dirty about sleeping in Colorado's beautiful meadows. Literally not a speck of dirt on my raincoat after being used as ground cover. I get dirtier on a single open-air bus ride in India.>>2899039At this point you're clearly outed as a trolltard. Not a single travel experience shared to refute my points, only low-effort baitposting.
>>2899050>At this point you're clearly outed as a trolltard. Not a single travel experience shared to refute my points, only low-effort baitposting.You believe it like a religion even though it's self-refuting
>>2899055Post your USA adventures, nigga. Let's see what you got. You're too chickenshit to live my life, to plunge on foot into the vast scenic expanses of America with a few hundred bucks to spend, trusting in your toughness and optimism and 10+ years of long-term travel experience to have the best trip of your life. So all you can do is snark from the sidelines of your sheltered, privileged prison of a life.
>>2899057I'm in Taiwan paying $145 in rent because I have a triple digit IQ. Already did the US. Lived in Rhode Island, Florida, Oregon, Seattle, NYC. Traveled all of the PNW, New England, and from Florida to Tennessee. There's no mental stimulation there. It's just "how are you doing" and a bunch of superficial bullshit. Once you see through the social scripts you can predict what everyone is going to say already. All you have to do is listen to their intonation and you know what types of people they hangout with and what their entire brainrot algorithm that gets pumped into their brain is about. I'm good at Chinese now. Urban or rural, amerimutts arr rook same now.I can't post a travel blog because my experiences are mostly about dating/sex and that's banned here
>>2899059Like I said earlier, Americans are very emotionally responsive people. If you come off as a generic car-traveling tourist bored 15 minutes after arrival and already thinking of the next place down the road, why would anyone try to engage with you? A tap of the gas pedal and you're gone. They're gonna give you as little of themselves as you are giving them.>$145 per monthHow much greenery you can see from your bugbox? Bet you haven't felt a fresh breeze through your open window in months, or seen cute birds flit through the trees outside. I learned that lesson the hard way on arrival to the Philippines, where I chose a cheap room in a dense urban environment thinking it would be thrilling to be immersed in the hive of humanity. It was soul destroying, the indifferent or blankly appraising faces of ten thousand randoms passing by every time I stepped outside. I'd rather sleep under the Milky Way in a pasture and talk for a long time to 2 or 3 Americans (of widely varying appearance and mannerisms) than tuck myself into bed in one of those air-conditioned concrete cells surrounded by a maze of narrow streets. I'm all about frugal travel, but never would a desire to pinch pennies compel me to remand myself night after night to the same cell like a convicted prisoner. No wonder you throw yourself obsessively into the wooing of sterile, worn-out, rejected women as an escape from the deadening monotony.
>>2899057>Your too chickenshit to be a broke homeless retardWhy would anyone want to be poor? Or even larp as a poor. Lmao
>>2899081Why do white people climb steep mountains in the cold rain when they could've stayed rotting in comfort at home? It's always been a mystery to your kind why we whites choose to challenge ourselves with hardships instead of luxuriating in our privilege. To put it simple, it feels good, like we are re-establishing a connection with our primitive nature. Forget the poverty of squalid slums, cramped rooms, filth and indolence. That's YOUR kind of poverty. Not ours.
>>2899093Homeless retards aren't climbing Mt Everest, you aren't a hero or a rebel just because you are a lazy loser, cope all you want brokie you cant even fool yourself with that bs
>>2899033Soonest I can check with the garage if they can take a look and figure it out on Tuesday, but my time off is next week, so if I can't fix it in time this might kill the trip. Don't think I can reasonably make it out there and back with less than 10-11 days, and financially, it's already a little foolish. If my car breaks down states away, let alone engine damage, I'm finished.If by some miracle they can get it in, replace a hose or something, and tell me I'm good, then South Dakota / Colorado it is.
>>28990681. Taiwan isn't the Philippines, it's a high IQ civilized country, clean and orderly2. The advantages of cities are greatly nullified if you have the psychology of a 4th grader and are still terrified of women3. A house is a place to sleep and maybe study. You should be outside for 8+ hours a day anyway>>2899093>Why did white people sleep in cramped squalor in boats sailing the world when they could've stayed rotting in comfort at home? To get foreign pussy. It's always been a mystery to your kind why we whites choose to challenge ourselves with hardships instead of luxuriating in our privilege. To put it simple, it feels good, like we are re-establishing a connection with our primitive nature. Forget the comfort of open spaces, big rooms, clean air and nature. That's YOUR kind of poverty, jeet. Not ours. Nice cow pics. Does it remind you of India?
>>2899136Third party onlooker here. This was a fun post and made me feel more motivated to actually be out and interacting with people instead of the hermit shit I've been doing. Why else am I here?
>>2899136What is with this constant shilling of miscegenation on this website? It gets tiresome, especially the meaningless variety where you're not even settling down to start a mutt family. You're just on an endless roll of flattery and pumping up women's egos, making them believe that remaining a single, looks-obsessed childless feminist is the best life choice they could've possibly made. And then they pump up your ego in return by letting you have a go at their hole a few times.>>2899114Any mountain or hill will do. Bet you don't climb anything besides a staircase.>>2899136City dwelling (and frivolous non-procreative sex with casual acquaintances) is the prevailing trend among modern humanity. Unlike you I'm not a trend follower, I chart my own path that cuts across a wide cross-section of non-trending human experiences. Laughable that you pretend it's some kind of meaningful life challenge to walk the city streets as a two-bit Lothario and ingratiate yourself with every slut you see. All it requires is a complete lack of moral principles. Taiwan is one of the most feminist country on earth based on birthrates, so of course your little games would easily sway muh independent empowered TW women into thinking about her sexual pleasure alone, damn everything else.And don't delude me. Taiwanese nature is beautiful, especially on the north and east coasts, but their cities are hideous hyper-dense rat mazes of grimy old buildings. I have heard that Kaohsiung has remarkably cheap rent, but it's cheap for a reason. The place is a dump, and unlike the Philippines there aren't hordes of laughing kids to brighten everyone's day. There's only the perpetually dissatisfied faces of the urban strivers who always want more no matter how much they got. >>2899118You can always leave the car behind and fly out to Denver. Some airports offer cheap flights. Especially for such a short trip. Six days of that will be spent on the interstate if you drive.
Met a lady relocating from Salida, CO to Pinedale, WY toretire from work and be with her grandbabies. She said she was paying $1550/month for a cramped 2bd apartment in Salida. In Pinedale she will be paying $1000/month for a house with a spacious fenced backyard. I'd never move to Pinedale as a single guy though. There's rural small town USA, with everything you need in a town of 5-15K, and then there's desolate 100 miles from anywhere outland USA. Pinedale is the latter. People drive 1½ hours one way every day to go work in Jackson Hole. Pinedale does have a beautiful mountain backyard however, not quite as pretty as Salida's all-encompassing mountains. The climate is colder and harsher too.
>>2899196>kvetching and clutching pearls about muh judeo-christian values when everyone knows he's larping as a tradcuck just because he's scared to say hi to a woman>thinks the sex is non-procreative>let me tell you about [place I've never been]>it's easy to have sex from cold approach... i just don't because uh... whatever! i dont want it!>likes kids more than womenspiritually jewish post
$8 of ingredients to cook up this hostel lunch.You sex-obsessed coomers are disgusting, plain and simple. A whole big world out there to explore, and your paragon of adventure is hiding in some squalid budget room porking a series of wet holes. The only "challenge" you face is catering to a woman's whims; unlike you I have self-respect and refuse to engage in such slimy manipulative behavior. And yes I have been to Taiwan. Visited several spots between Keelung, Yilan and Hualien. It was gray and drizzly and depressing in April. Food was gross. Few interactions were enjoyable; everyone was in a glum mood. Only the rainforest mountain terrain impressed me. This USA trip barely costs more ($48 per day versus $43 in TW) and is much more enjoyable.>only interested in teenage virgin bridesAt last something you got right about me.Nepal would be my chosen destination for wife hunting, based on what I've seen of Asia. BTW Hindus are not Abrahamic, but they also value marriage and childbearing while abhorring casual promiscuity. Much as like any guy I enjoy seeing half-naked white girls prancing around with no bras under their shirts, I'd never waste my attentions on such sluttish creatures.
Just heard some tourists in beautiful Almont remarking that they've never seen it so slow here in July. My hopes deflated once again; the resort manager then confirmed they recently hired new employees and are fully staffed. No staff shortage in peak season would be unthinkable in past years, but now it's the norm. With on-site employee housing and free bus service up and down the valley, this is really a great place to work for the summer.
(((>>2899259)))(On Nepal, average IQ 43) >Nepal would be my chosen destination for wife hunting, based on what I've seen of Asia. BTW Hindus are not Abrahamic, but they also value marriage and childbearing while abhorring casual promiscuity. Much as like any guy I enjoy seeing half-naked white girls prancing around with no bras under their shirts, I'd never waste my attentions on such sluttish creatures. Racemixx with the Nepalese retards goy instead of those nasty sluttish white women goy white according to the Septuagint Chapter 8:4 it is permissible for a Chosen to racemixx as long as the mother is not Abrahamic(On Taiwan, average IQ 106)>What is with this constant shilling of miscegenation on this website? It gets tiresome, oy vey you better not racemixx with those looks-obsessed bugs goy racemixxing is degenerate and violates Chapter 8 Verse 17 of the Torah and you will go to HELL if you racemixx goy how fucking dare you try to racemixx! only with Nepalese or Liberians or Guatemalans is it permissible!!>poster is a (((nomad)))>poster hates work>poster obsessively counts shekels every posts and plays gematria with the numbersPost nose you disgusting beady eyed kike.
>>2899299IQ is a measure of how good a goyslave you are. Nothing more. High IQ societies are all socially engineered to the nth degree because their decade plus of education has structured their brains to think in modernist thought patterns.Here in Crested Butte, the sheer beauty of the surroundings makes me indifferent to the highly programmed behavior of the affluent residents. They are all white liberals, so they can't be mean to me because that would be discrimination. It's a very high-trust society. I saw a teardrop camper trailer sitting in a parking lot, possibly unlocked, and wondered if I could sneak inside to sleep. But I chose to respect the high level of trust which ensures bicycles never need to be locked up.
Lots of different habitats here. I walked about a mile out of town up the Kebler Pass road and across various meadows with rocky poor soil before finding this spot where the grass grew thick and tall, indicating soft rich soil underneath. Evidently the deer also sleep here in the soft grass, they kept approaching during the night and then huffing in alarm when they detected my presence. Temps only dropped to 54°, much warmer than expected. A little drizzle fell around 11 PM; I flipped the raincoat up over my bags to protect them. No way to keep myself dry in the unlikely event of a nighttime downpour at this 9000' altitude. (By contrast, violent thunderstorms frequently pass through at night out on the plains.)Cost to visit and spend a night near one of Colorado's most expensive towns? $0
Sunrise at Peanut Lake, also about a mile from town. Once again, people who say America is not walkable are liars, plain and simple. Every single Colorado town I've visited has been eminently walkable.
$24 + tax + tip for a pub burger on the main street of Crested Butte. It's cute, but would be much nicer if they closed it to cars (like Hunter S. Thompson wanted to do for Aspen). Of course the nearby residential streets don't want a constant stream of traffic, so they will never agree to a car-free main street. Why people have to drive around so much in such a compact little town baffles me. The town even operates a free shuttle from 7 AM to midnight connecting all the outlying areas, but most people still drive. Noteworthy is the complete lack of luxury cars in such a wealthy place. Despite everyone here being millionaires, they all drive ordinary SUVs, pickups and crossovers just like any other Americans. They also don't seem anywhere near as pretentious as Aspenites or even SoCal coast dwellers.
There might be a job offer in the wings for facility maintenance up here, with housing available down in Almont. They'd probably want somebody to stay on through the bitter subzero cold of the ski season though. Fuck that.
>>2899489>IQ is a measure of how good a goyslave you are. Nothing more.Niggerloving kike.
One week of budget tier Colorado travel cost me $327, or $47 per day. Three nights in hostels cost a steep $146; food expenses also came in high at $110. Visiting seven different Colorado towns covered 345 miles and cost $50 in bus fare. Overall I still remain happy with this trip, but sleeping on the ground with no blanket remains tough. Lots of wakefulness in the early morning chill. Chronic sleep deprivation is very demotivational, and helps explain why so many bums make no efforts to get their life together, preferring instead to lounge in the shade. Picrel the beautiful wildlife area along the Gunnison River. This is the end of the Bustang route. From here I either hitch a ride over to Montrose to explore the Grand Junction to Durango route. The Western Slope towns and Colorado River valley are on track to see temps up to 106° by the weekend. There is good bus service along the I-70 corridor and also south to Durango, but the broiling heat and inescapable traffic noise may be unpleasant. Hotel prices all throughout northern Colorado may be too high to justify staying indoors for days on end.Or else I return east the way I came, taking the overnight train to Topeka Kansas after a final mountain-valley excursion down the San Luis Valley to Alamosa. Train tickets on that stretch are cheap, and I just might quit the vagabond life to settle somewhere in Kansas. Temps have gotten mild out on the plains after a fierce heatwave. Housing is much cheaper in Kansas than in these mountain towns; it should be easy to find monthly housing in a town of my choice along the rail route.
Really cute cabins tucked away in the shadow of the rocky spires. Today started off hot, then the rains swept through. You never really stay wet in Colorado; I pedaled through the storm and still was almost dry by the time I got back to the hostel.
Beautiful as Crested Butte was, I couldn't picture myself living there as a laborer. Gunnison, maybe. But not just yet. I'd rather live in a cheap spacious apartment in some boring Kansas town with warm lovely autumns and placid farm folk than try to finagle some tiny space up here and freeze my ass off going to work every day, serving wealthy hyper-fit people with demeanors as cold as the mountains.
Glad I decided to come on down to the vast open space of the San Luis Valley. The cold demeanor of people in Gunnison was beginning to get me down. But down here, people are simple farmers who showed friendliness from the moment I stepped off the bus - empty apart from one autist who rides it every day to & from work. A cute and bubbly girl at the farmer's market made casual friendly chatter with me and gave me an extra pack of her apple fritter muffins for free after I bought one for $2. Next to her was a giant glowering hambeast. Were they a couple? It seemed hard to believe, everything about them was so opposite. Some Hispanics in a pickup truck waved to me as they were leaving the farm park where the market was being held. What happened to all the snootiness and indifference? Alamosa is not very prosperous, but like the other poorer towns I've visited in Colorado, everyone views my presence as a foot traveler positively. Only downside to here, the motels are all $80+ and with pretty bad reviews as well. But who needs a motel when the flat earth is a bed stretching to the jagged mountain horizon?
Dramatic storms over the mountains gave way to a bright clear sunset down by the network of river trails stretching for miles away from downtown. The birdlife is cool to look at, but the marshes hatch a lot of mosquitoes. Once the breeze quits blowing, I'll probably be swarmed. With the waterside cottonwoods and the dry plains beyond it's almost like central Kansas at 8000' elevation.
For $49 + $7 taxes and fees you can go to any American Walmart and set yourself up with a Family Mobile moto g phone and a 4.5 GB monthly high speed data plan. 46 hour runtime on this phone, no battery bank needed. It takes decent pics as well. Beats the hell out of the overpriced secondhand phones on offer in Asian market districts.
>>2899663You are living the box life fren. A tiny wooden box with a curtain for a door inside a larger smelly wooden box you share with 7 other men inside rented boxes of their own, all in a larger box of other boxes of lower cast wagies in service of the normies and elite. All the while seething that others have more than you because they worked harder and smarter.Maybe one day you will graduate to your own rented box in Kansas where no Richey Riches want to be. Safe travels!
>>2900007Most American hostels don't have curtains. Yesterday one fat creepy South Asian looking dude checked in, boxed off his bed with curtains, then rotted inside for the next 15 hours before checking out and disappearing. A pretty but very quiet girl was assigned a dorm in our room, but I think she asked to leave in the evening because he was creeping her out. The staff were pretty grumpy as well. But no, the house wasn't a generic suburban box; it was old and wooden and sovlful, with a lovingly built interior, big shade trees and a green lawn.Tonight I'm sleeping with the deers in Alamosa by the Rio Grande. They are always so curious and nervous, repeatedly approaching and then snorting in fright. Had to stay 200 yards from the houses across the river because they spray for mosquitoes in the neighborhood. Otherwise I'd be up all night slapping their fat stupid bodies dead. BTW Kansas is comfy. Neither filthy rich nor dirt poor. Most people are in between and content to stay that way.
>>2900033No one who lives in Kansas would call it comfy. It's a place you endure. Like a hostel or a tick filled field you sleep in because the $10 hostel is out of if reach
>>2900035A big city like Bangkok is a place you endure if you come from the countryside. Traffic, pollution, overcrowding, uncaring attitudes, scams, ripoffs, degeneracy, etc. Kansas is a place where you can actually live a healthy comfortable life surrounded by greenery and pursue knowledge at your well-stocked local library instead of running around an urban hellscape intoxicated with consooming. Got a lead on a job here in Alamosa. Gonna see if anything comes of it. I like this town; it is an oasis in the desert valley, placid, agrarian and wholly without pretense. If nothing comes of it, I will board the overnight train to Topeka on August 4th. $44 for the fully refundable ticket. One other idea is to go live with my born-again Christian younger brother in his spacious house deep in the Piney Woods of east Texas. His fiance just left him, they were together for a few years but he became too religious for her evidently. Of course jobs are also scarce out there, and ten miles to town is a considerable distance without my own wheels. Half of that is on dirt roads. I'm sure he has a motorbike laying around that he would let me borrow as long as I helped with the mortgage. But I'd definitely prefer the cool sunshine of the San Luis Valley if I can make a go of it here.
My lenovo laptop survived the wear and tear of three extended overseas trips, albeit with severe abrasion marks on the screen, keyboard and the outside edges. But these last two weeks of USA travel with a crammed-full backpack have done it in. It's a brick now, completely dead. A nice new pair of Skechers gifted by my dad are coming apart at the seams after eight months and about to wear a hole in the sole. Anyone who says foot travel is low effort has no idea what they are talking about. In fact, foot travel only gets MORE difficult than this when you start trekking overland. Colorado Trail through hikers are carrying 45 pounds of gear up thousands of feet of elevation gain. They literally can't eat enough food to stave off weight loss, that's how many calories they burn.
HR roasties evidently have 3½ day work weeks in America these days. Despite property management confirming they are looking for help, she neglected to add the job I was looking for to the city's website. When I stopped by the office to clarify things, I was informed that she had already begun her weekend - at 1 PM on a Thursday! Now I have to wait until Monday just for her to notice the sticky note I left with the office and look at my application. Dammit. At the other courses the superintendent (always a white male at every course I've ever seen) would've shook hands and offered me a job right then and there. But because this course is city-owned, I'm stuck at a bureaucratic bottleneck. Hopes dashed once again...
Not really feeling the beauty of the open American space on this nasty strip of commercial sprawl. Walmart is like 4 miles from downtown on the very farthest edge of the developed area. Nearby is a Super 8 with a jeet manager who is charging $135 + tax for a room. Jesus Christ, that's what I paid for a suite in downtown Denver. And here in Alamosa a budget chain hotel in a shitty farflung area with no sidewalks is charging $150+. Now I see why people go crazy living on the streets in these endless expanses of commercial buildings and traffic. It's a landscape wholly unfit for human habitation.
Close to the slightly more appealing but still traffic-ridden downtown is this boardinghouse offering rooms for rent. If I do decide to work the autumn in this windblasted valley, it would be a good place to live for three months. South of the tracks is kinda ghetto, lots of mean dogs behind chainlink fences. The north and east part of town is pleasant and full of nature trails, though.
Living here next to the perpetual revving and traffic noise seems a little hellish. The tenants of these cheap apartments all look like people who have made a LOT of bad decisions in their lives.
>>2900176>Waaaaaah why are hotels serving racist bums like me who don't respect private property so expensive waaaaaaah
>>2900194Jeet businessmen always gaslight customers into thinking their ripoffs are perfectly sane and reasonably priced, and that you have some kind of mental issue for noticing the price is double what it should be and raising an objection. This happened many times in my India travels.For all its challenges, I find the evenings to be particularly delightful here in the San Luis Valley. Such plays of light and shadow across the land and sky. Out here in the nature park, it's very peaceful. Traffic noise a distant hum amidst the soft chattering of the birds. A bit of river bathing leaves me freshened. Couldn't wash the nether regions with all the people passing by, though.
>>2900207>the price is double what it should beThen open a hotel crybaby,,,, lmao you aren't entitled to free hotel rooms wherever you go
>>2900180>The tenants of these cheap apartments all look like people who have made a LOT of bad decisions in their lives.Like you
With a backpack full of food, it's time to venture off the beaten path to the tiny town of Crestone, 12 miles from the bus stop in Moffat. I had to get up at 4:30 AM and walk 2½ miles to catch the Bustang on the deserted university campus. >>2900212Do you have anything to contribute besides an endless parade of snarky one-liners? This is a travel board, dummy. Going places is the whole point of its existence - and mine as well. You're a smug, complacent lounger-at-home who has not contributed a single iota of travel info or advice to this thread. Deep down inside, you're jealous that somebody else has the balls to do what you would never dare to do. Your snarking is a cope for your timidity. But it's all right; sullen penned sheep like you keep the world functioning while the rest of us chase our dreams across the face of the earth.
>>2900307Do you have anything to contribute besides an endless parade of snarky one-liners and low IQ racism? This is a travel board, dummy. Going places is the whole point of its existence - and mine as well. You're a smug, complacent lounger-in-ditches who has not contributed a single iota of travel info or advice to this thread. Deep down inside, you're jealous that you live in homeless camps and can't afford hotel rooms because indian entrepreneurs charge a fair price and they have the balls to do what you would never dare to do, work. Your snarking is a cope for your timidity. But it's all right; sullen penned sheep like you keep the world functioning while the rest of us chase our dreams across the face of the earth.
>stop liking what I don't like>stop doing things I don't like>what do you mean different people have different lives and interests nooooo you can't do thatGet a bivy slumbo. I did a bit of what you're doing and it helps greatly though a good one is expensive.A cheaper alternative I also used before the bivy when I had less than 50 bucks to my name was a $25 little tent from Walmart. Don't need to bother putting it up if you need more stealth so you use it like a bivy and it still helps keep bugs and snakes and shit away from you.Depending on the tree situation in your locations you could also use a tent hammock, but it was another expensive item. I used one as well at one point and it was very nice.
>>2900314If someone ever relies on empty buzzwords as a crutch you can always just abuse copy and paste and rape them with it. Works every timeAlso herbs in all fields in this 44IQ kike's thread
No I'm not going to stop covering country and sharing my real life traveler experiences regardless of how much you loser trolls shit up the thread out of sheer hateful jealousy. 150 different towns visited since December and still counting. Just booked a trip to a tiny town in east Texas; my brother lives in a cabin on a good-sized spread 14 miles out of town when he's not on the road. $335 for lodging and transport on this four-night trip is a pretty good deal. One night on the train and three hotel stays in cities I've never explored before: Topeka, Oklahoma City and Dallas. >>2900321Some kind of shelter would enhance comfort, but I like the low profile of sleeping flat in a tall meadow. Very stealthy, people can pass nearby and not see anything.
Even after eight years here, I still think Colorado is one of the most beautiful places on Earth. The interplay of sun and wind and rain during the summer storms is natural perfection. One moment I'm walking up a dirt forest road through rocky open expanses of pinyon; the next I've turned down a little trail that enters a dense riparian forest of shady glens and rustling foliage, with a tiny creek running down through the heart of the forest fed by water which springs up from deep valleys hidden between the craggy peaks. A few miles downsteam, water and forest alike vanish into the desolate expanse of the San Luis Valley. But up here in this grassy glen, I feel sheltered amongst the towering trees as the golden light fades in the western sky.This is the grand finale of my rough camping excursions in rural Colorado. 14 miles from the highway at the base of the Sangre de Cristo range; there is no traffic or human noise up here, only the soughing wind, the rushing rill, and the patter of drizzle from the cloud tatters overhead.
Crestone is weird and friendly and hospitable. The perfect ending to this trip. There are many, many more great places to visit in Colorado, but family beckons me to the humid buggy swelter of east Texas in August.
>verifiable income required to rent a shitty worker bedTypical usa I remember coming back from abroad trying to rent a place and even with a huge amount of assets and crypto and plenty in the bank, these type of pitiful fucks wouldnt rent to me.I truly despise the USA and the banal inhumanity around every corner. No amount of natural beauty or earning potential forgives it, imo.Humans need places to live. They need to be able to quickly and easily and cheaply rent simple shelter. Its just a requirement, and yet in the USA its this series of hoops everyone has to jump through. Fuck that, and fuck every single person from the top to the bottom who enables and participates in it.
I won't be sad to be leaving these absurdly high lodging prices behind. By contrast, good quality conveniently located hotel rooms in Dallas and Topeka cost me $70 per night. Canon City I paid $75.
>>2900445>Typical usa>I remember coming back from abroad trying to rent a place and even with a huge amount of assets and crypto and plenty in the bank, these type of pitiful fucks wouldnt rent to me.That's a you problem. I moved back to USA with zero references or income and easily rented. You are not entitled to rent a property. Stop being a scumbag scammer
>>2900445Indeed. That same bullshit is what is currently keeping me from coming back yet. I even wanted to, for like the last year, come back for a month or two and explore some new places I might want to live. It's just not worth it though because of the high ridiculous prices and low quality of short term accomodations and the difficulty of getting a short term apartment while not having a job.I was seething about it again just yesterday about how it's like I'm stuck in exile.I'm thinking it's opportunity though to further change my mindset and continue pushing myself to see and experience more and grow personally. Because in a lot of ways I'm still just holding on to old ways of thinking about and doing things and taking my bubble with me.I need to do more and being in America would make such personal liberties and novelties more difficult.
>>2900447How did you do it then? Small mom and pop listings or what?Don't tell me Airbnb. It's an option, but not one I'm willing to resort to yet.
>>2900451>huge amount of assets and crypto and plenty in the bankIt's obvious you are lying
>>2900452That wasn't my post.But still, yes, I have some of those and my networth is nearly a million. I've still been turned down because they want regular stable monthly income. It's paperwork bullshit. I could buy the place but I'm still not allowed a short term rental with it.
>>2900454>>2900450It depends on the state. Every state has their own strategy to keep out N's and druggies who don't pay. But you are better off going for a room that has shared kitchen/bath than you are renting your own apartment. Apartments are run by property managers and the people that rent out rooms rent it out themselves and use their own discretionIn Washington state it is very hard to evict someone. But it is legal for the landlord to ask for your credit score, so credit score is usually the determining factor. In one case I was below the threshold that they had, but I offered to pay two months rent deposit instead of one and showed them a screenshot of my assets and they let me in.In NY state they can't check your credit score. So what they do is sign you to a short lease, like 3 months, and if they don't like you they let it expire and kick you out that way. If you are good you get to move on to month-to-month early thoughThese were in big cities, Seattle and NYC. When I was in Eugene trying to rent an apartment they were being autistic and demanding references and cosigners and proof of income because they were all run by property managers instead of the landlords
>>2900474Life A a rentoid sounds grim
>>2900482Great they are the ones causing all these problems let them pay. Im sick of them demanding handouts from the middle class
>>2900482thats what he wanted advice forhouseniggers dont have it so good either
Only one more night of sleeping outside, then it's back to looking up at a ceiling every night instead of the moon and stars. This is why I didn't want to buy camping gear like bivy and sleeping bag. Not only is it bulky as fuck and makes you look like a homeless, but it becomes useless dead weight as soon as you return to on-grid living.Tip: if you are sleeping rough and wake up feeling chilled, you've run out of calories. Eat some 2 AM snacks and go back to bed: you'll be warm the rest of the night as they metabolize.>>2900445I like the idea of affordable housing in the USA being reserved for workers. Otherwise it would fill up with welfare leeches who do drugs, order delivery and bedrot all day long while turning the place into a filthy smelly roach-infested mess.>>2900447What was the process of finding a place to live for you? Some cities like Las Vegas offer monthly "residency" hotel suites for an ID check and a credit card swipe. Your own entrance and a noisy A/C means you can not give a single hoot about your awful neighbors because their doings are entirely irrelevant to your life. I'd hate living in such an anti-social setting surrounded by scumbags, though. It's a last resort option, definitely not a first choice.>>2900454Register a corporation, hire yourself and pay yourself $3000 per month. Easy peasy. Lots of benefits to having your own corporation in America.>>2900482It's still much less responsibility (and unexpected expenses) than buying a cheap home and making it livable. Renting is for people who move regularly. My sister has moved a dozen times in as many years of adulthood. Just yesterday she relocated to a coastal city with a great beach because that has always been her dream. $1100/month for a 1 bd apartment on the third floor surrounded by natural beauty.
>>2900566>yourself and pay yourself $3000 per month. Easy peaYou really are dumb
A kind Mississippi dad traveling with his wife and three blond children turned around to offer me a ride for the last five miles of the 13 mile walk out of Crestone. Along the way was a public park with running water and a lockable restroom, perfect for a jug shower and a fresh change of clothes. Walking around Moffat I found this abandoned lot with two huge trees next to the school. Only downside is the mosquitoes; they've been a real bother lately at all these forested meadow sites. They're fat and stupid and easy to kill, but still annoying. Yeah there's a huge expanse of open plain, but it's mostly dirt with bunches of weeds...so far I've avoided sleeping on dirt because it's, well, dirty. Especially with the morning dampness.
Three storms passed along the mountains today. First was a brief shower, second was a downpour with hail, and third (picrel) was a windstorm with a few sprinkles. By the time I started my walk, the weather had returned to typical San Luis Valley summertime: 80° sunshine with a dry breeze.Tomorrow's destination: Canon City on the edge of the mountains. After stocking up on food for my upcoming trip, I want to hike up the Arkansas River gorge trail, which starts on the edge of town.
Interesting to see a road that is built for non-motorized traffic only. Would be great if they could build roads like these in every American town. That windstorm swept out the warm airmass which had been keeping nighttime temps as much as 15° F above normal. Last night's bed of fragrant wild tarragon got awfully damp and cold under the brilliant moon. Cold has always been my greatest enemy while traveling the USA. Low bodyfat problems, you burn so many calories to stay warm due to lack of an insulating fat layer. Of course there are hot states like Texas and Florida where cold is less of a concern...both are notoriously hostile to homeless, but I don't use drugs, cook food or sleep in publicly visible places, so it shouldn't be a problem for me. Florida or Central America? Tough choice. Might take a break from airplanes this next winter. It sucks having to lock in your departure flights months in advance just to get a reasonable price. With buses you can book a trip three days out for the normal price.
during the wc i visited the west coast. they do have competent public transportation. the problem is the us is fucking huge so its a pain in the ass to travel
>>2898357literal slop
>>2900780Do they let bikepackers load up their touring bikes for no extra charge on the buses out there like they do here in Colorado?Going up the West Coast from LA to the Pacific Northwest should've been my first choice desu.
>>2900445Are you brown?All those loopholes exist to keep undesirables out in a country where its illegal to discriminate against them.
The Tunnel Drive trail was neat in the heat. I even got to see the tourist train emerge from the gorge; it was shockingly empty for a weekend in August. A coach ticket starts at $109 per the website, too expensive for the families on vacation to consider. At the turnaround point it was a 4.5 mile walk to my motel room on the other end of town. High temp today 100°. Such is the ordeal of the foot travel life. Yes I brought my bags along for most of the way, only dropping them for the last half mile. Transit schedules, check-in times, bus/train station locations and lodging locations rarely align perfectly, despite your best planning efforts. In this case I stepped off the bus at 8:45 AM, and even if the reception did agree to hold my bags, the motel was a mile in the opposite direction of the trail.
What looked like a large burrow at the base of a cliff was actually the entrance to a spooky underground pipeline corridor.
Downtown Canon City is not too remarkable, though the Main Street is preserved as a historic district...fossilized you could say, because all the traffic goes to the big businesses sprawled out for miles along US-50 in typical Amerislop fashion. The natural setting at the back of a V-shaped valley with a backdrop of crazily tilted slabs of rock rising thousands of feet is what makes this city worth visiting. There are numerous trails to explore in the area, both by 4x4 and on foot or bicycle.
Upcoming arrival and (next day) departure times for this trip...La Junta: arrive 5:30 pm depart 7 pm on trainTopeka: arrive 4:30 am (yikes!) depart 10:30 am on busOKC: arrive 3:30 pm depart 8:20 am on trainDallas: arrive 2 pm depart 6:50 am on busMosquitoes here so stupid they try to bite my phone screen. Recent rains have hatched swarms of them and turned the river muddy as well.
Okay, Main Street is facelifted and very clean, with tall buildings shading the sidewalk even at 1 pm. But it's still eerily quiet. The crafts fair in the town park had no shoppers at all. I guess that's the appeal of rural America. Sunshine, neatness, ample public spaces and low ambient noise even one block from the highway. Most people greet me in passing, especially on the trail. The younger women who aren't fat are so buttoned-up in public. The only time they laugh is when they've been drinking. I bet a lot of them are medheads, they have that zoned-out expression.
Cheap American rooms and hostels are not known for scenic window views. This is the best view I've gotten on this trip...it's also the most expensive room. Second story and end of the block, so no people walking past the window when I'm naked. I hated having to keep the curtains always drawn in those first floor motel rooms facing the walkway.
>>2900804we were fine with our rolling luggage i also saw peeps with their bikes. i dont see howd youd get charged for something basic
>>2900945Which was your favorite part of the coast? Oregon seems very doable as a hybrid coastal destination. If you could flag down a bus at 101 points in the 101, that really opens up the whole coastline to exploration on foot or bicycle with no forced exertion of covering the whole distance under your own power.If I didn't have other plans I probably would've headed from Los Angeles up to Marin County and then worked my way north up the coast from there. The dampness and fog can be yucky for camping because everything gets wet and dirty; but if you hate heat it's the best place to be all summer long.
2 bedroom apartment on Canon City's Main Street for $925, not too bad of a deal in [current year].Food expenses have been on the rise lately after realizing how many delicious American flavors I've been missing out on in Asia. Thai night markets no longer hit the spot on my last visit. Basically the only strong point Asia has in my view is the affordability of nightly lodging. Everything else, pfft. I'm liking it better in America. Just saw a tall blue-eyed girl in a crop top walking into the City Market with her mom who naturally mogged any painted-up, face-whitened Asian "beauty". She looked right through me and kept on going. Outside was a shirtless negro talking to himself in aggressive negrospeak...the first such scary black man I've seen on this whole trip.
>>2900980>one year leasePathetic
Goodbye to the Rocky mountains. Today will reach 106° in La Junta, but I'll be going straight from the bus to my room a quarter mile away. Tomorrow I will have eight hours minimum from checkout until train departure, but it will only reach 85°. I'm looking forward to Topeka. Buy a bus pass for $4 and ride all over the city from 6:30 AM until check-in time. There's a riverside state park accessible by city bus, plus the Shunganuga Creek greenway to the south. Topeka has a ton of sizable parks full of walking trails. Weather will be 80s and cloudy with a chance of light rain. The 24 hour city bus pass will be expired by the time I depart for the bus station, so it's gonna be a 1.6 mile walk.Oklahoma City will be 95°, but my shitty $43 room is right outside the bus station; 1.3 miles walk to downtown is okay. The Amtrak Heartland Express departs from downtown OKC.Amtrak arrives in Fort Worth, so I will need to pay $9 for a DART regional daypass to get to my metro stop near Love Field airport. Once there I will have to walk 1.5 miles in the 99° midday heat to my room. Hotels near the airport & bus station are mainly located in the middle of a freeway spaghetti bowl that looked extremely unwalkable; I picked one of the few that was accessible by walking surface streets from the metro station. After checking in, a visit to downtown Dallas in the evening via metro is on the agenda.1.5 miles walk to the Dallas Greyhound station for that 6:50 AM departure to Crockett will be the end of my USA vagabond travels - for now.
>>2900980Are you the Seasonal Colorado Anon or is this Slumbo Returns Home?
>>2901126Slumbo Returns HomeHe's copeposting as a homeless pov from random towns in flyover and trying to make it seem like he's still a traveler
>>2901126That job & housing arrangement is kaput, so I am doing some summer travel around the US with no idea where I'll end up. Never spent time in the piney woods of east Texas before, so visiting my brother's newly purchased place out there recently occurred to me. His ex fiance and her fifty pets vacated the place a few days ago...perfect timing.>>2901137>waaah you can't just live independently on your savings waaahYou've been crying about my fully independent freedom of movement since Day 1 of this trip hahaha. It's how I've always operated. Like a coyote I go wherever I please, and like a chained-up house dog you won't stop barking at me.
>>2901189You've been crying about your fully freedom of poverty since Day 1 of this trip hahaha while acting like laziness makes you superior. It's how youve always operated. Like a racoon you go wherever you can find garbage, and like a chained-up house dog you won't stop barking at the world.
I started doing that copy paste with very small edits to show how empty and flawed the logic of some retarded posters were like the guy frothing at the mouth about how terrible Muslims are and Jews are our greatest allies.You are misusing this approach, using it too frequently, and making it just look stupid and lazy.
A rainless front arrives to bring some cooler air for a couple days. I've come to prefer being outdoors even in 100+ degree heat. Only downside of this trip has been reduced sociability. As the novelty of wandering America has worn off, I have less and less to talk about with those I encounter.>2901192Speaking of garbage, heartland America mogs any Asian bughive garbage dump of a city. Fuck all the conniving /trv/ propaganda shilling those filthy, shoddy bug cities as somehow better than the grandeur and beauty of America. Over the years I've faced all the challenges of living free in the vast landscapes of this Land of the Free, and I've overcome them. Any tard can imitate herd behaviors, plop down in an urban apartment and accept his dependence on a landlord for the comfortable cocoon of safety he can't envision living without. >>"but you're poor!"The metrosexual's cope. He can't accept that some men deliberately eschew pleasure for a rough life. Theodore Roosevelt is a role model for such men. Born into wealth and privilege as a frail sheltered child, he chose to toughen himself up by adventuring all over the world, sleeping rough and braving the elements. He could've easily become a dandy chasing women while indulging in pampered luxury in some privileged European setting. But such an effete life held no appeal to him. Why? Because he was a real man, not a faggy weak-chinned lover of finery and soft pleasures.
Woah. Small town kids hanging out around their cars in the park on a hot summer night like it was 1986. This shit still happens? Police pulled up to give everybody a hard time. I saw a soft drink cup get thrown shortly before they pulled up. A big group of kids came over to talk to the police. Something something assault, IDK. The police blipped their sirens and lights, then a snarky kid told the police to go home. Land of the Free, but you can't hang out in the park? Eventually the police left, but the mood remained subdued. No more blaring music and driving shitboxes around the traffic circle. One guy did say "they're here for you bro!" as I was walking up to the cops, but I couldn't think of anything to say to anybody so I kept walking.Damn if I can understand a single word of the "English" these Gen A speak with each other. They might as well be speaking a foreign language. They're pretty well-behaved for their age desu. No alcohol consumption in evidence. Poor music tastes, but that's expected.
>>2901251Lmao the hobo is crying about cops now
Cops haven't bothered me yet on this trip. Only one female cop got testy with me when I walked into a thrift store in Trinidad and came upon a bunch of cats trapped in tiny live traps, with her standing nearby. I said why are those cats inside squirrel traps, she was like it's not a squirrel trap, they are being neutered, where are you from and what are you doing here. White women and their love of clipping nuts. Male virility in anything but the finest breeding specimens bothers them immensely for some reason.Leaving the mountains I've noticed a sharp change in how the people value nature. Instead of vast spreads of lovingly preserved land surrounding each town, here there are only scraps which have been raped of their resources and abandoned. Greed for water sucks entire rivers dry; where there should be a shady forest of cottonwoods along the bank, there is only a thicket of weeds and shrubs. La Junta has a nice town park, true, but it's not nature. It's just a big lawn with some big trees surrounded by houses. Many of the houses in these towns are historical and cute, dating back to boomtown days. Vacancies and rentals seem scarce. It's rare to encounter great properties for rent in these small, less-than-prospering towns. Usually rentals are shitty old houses that were bought for cheap, patched up and then offered to tenant families. Singles leave these places because not only are the jobs hodge-podge and dreary, but the predominance of single family homes means that everything on the rental market is geared toward couples and families, not singles.
Satellite View can be very useful for finding paths to explore in open terrain, where they are clearly visible from above. The area around an arroyo on the west end of La Junta is supposed to be a disc golf course, but nobody comes back here except for deer. I followed their trail along the arroyo with its variety of habitats. Erosion prone uplands were desertlike, rocky and barren, while deposition prone bottomlands were rich with greenery despite the severe chronic drought. The cattail marshes were dry and firm, but giant piles of flood debris spoke of the power of rain events in the past. Hopping over a mangled fence gate I entered a landscape of in-between: dry meadow dotted with numerous trees. Tucked away in a grove was a spooky playground and campsite. No signs of usage any time recently. The tree swing was hung from a huge dead branch which sagged alarmingly when I sat on the board. I heard a loud crackle and called out like in a horror movie, but it was only a nervous deer. The area is completely isolated from houses and devoid of any signage. But there's a full set of nice wooden camp furniture and a giant stack of firewood on hand. Maybe it's a hunting camp?
In Third World countries, nature always is a curated experience with fees and guides and transport shuttling you along a tourist route. But in much of America, nature is everywhere. Other than "don't burn the forest down", there are very few rules that a foot traveler needs to concern himself with. You can do as you please, and nobody is going to interfere with you in any way. Stash your bags in the bushes and go wander around. It's so easy to find seclusion and rest. Any unraped watercourse will have shade trees and grassy meadows to rest in. Only the laziest, most disheartened bums sleep under a bridge or on the sidewalk. If you're fit, healthy and sober, so much more of the country's wild places open up to you. Even more than in a van - vehicle access and overnight parking is so limited in the good areas, but as a foot traveler you can go anywhere, trail or no trail. Besides, vehicles rape the environment, turning verdant meadows into bare dirt and gentle pathways into rutted tracks. I'm all for land managers blocking lazy fuckers from driving their campers into the woods, especially near watercourses. Even if they don't leave a speck of trash behind, their rolling wheels still destroy sensitive habitats.
Three weeks of USA vagabond life are complete as I wait for the 2 hr delayed train out of Colorado.>Total spend: $1032 or $49 per day>Lodging: $458...4 nights hostel, 4 nights motel, 3 nights on the train, 10 nights outdoors - $57 per night in a bed>Food: $296 or $14 per day>Transport: $185 spent to cover 2530 miles total... $137 on Bustang tickets to cover 915 miles in Colorado. Thanks Amtrak for refunding the $108 fare to Colorado.>Cellular: $57 ... $32 for the phone and $25 for the "$19.88” monthly plan>Miscellaneous: $35Pretty happy with these figures. At this point I'm hoping to continue my US vagabond travels after the family visit. North Dakota? New York? Quebec? It's all on the table.
Quite a cast of characters boarding at this stop for the overnight ride across the plains...smelly hobos, awkward autists, grannies with roller carts.
Ah, the beauty of the American Midwest!The countryside is a lovely mix of field and forest all lush with bountiful summer rains, but Topeka's old railyard district is peak Rust Belt. Early check-in costs $20 at the convention center hotel, so I will wander around until the designated 4 PM check-in time.
Once again, America's public transit shines through. Half an hour after stepping off the train, I'm walking in a beautiful 500+ acre nature preserve / state park on the banks of the big muddy Kansas River. The bus stop was right next to the 6th Street trailhead.
Some creepy old guy followed me down a little trail along the riverbank and then came sneaking up on me with his hand down his pants. I reprimanded him and then followed him back to his car to get a picture of the license plate. Makes sense why pretty girls are so snobbish. Say hi to the wrong guy and next thing he's following you into the woods playing with himself. A cute college girl wearing a skimpy outfit did say good morning when she jogged past me though. Seems in Kansas I am hansum man...
>>2901542>guy followed me down a little trail along the riverbank and then came sneaking up on me with his hand down his pants. I reprimanded him and then followed him back to his carNaughty. Not sure who is the top or the bottom here. I guess the old guy is a sneaky switch who tried to backdoor you
Some other dad came around looking for two little girls on bicycles who had gone missing? Creepy shit all around. Even though it's a beautiful cool summer day, there are no kids anywhere in the parks. It's not safe for them to be outside without mom AND dad accompanying them. And man, half the people who ride buses here are literal goblin ogres. I like the ginormous leafy trees though. The sweet gum next to this bus stop is 6 feet thick. Endless lawns to cut out here, unlike parched Colorado. Makes me want to hire on and drive a mower around all day.
>>2901586>Creepy pervert bum realizes he's surrounded by people like himself
Here's a shot of the old creep getting in his car. Might go down to the police station later to file a report of lewd behavior. Having a bus pass revolutionizes getting around the city. You can go anywhere all day long, walking only where you want to walk like parks and greenway trails. Already my $4 pass has covered 3x its value in bus fares, and I haven't even checked in to my hotel yet. Ten minutes until check-in time and the rain has started...talk about good timing. This is going to be the nicest hotel of the trip.
$58 plus tax to stay in the four star Hotel Topeka next to the convention center. It's not quite downtown, despite the "City Center" in the hotel name. It's 1½ miles from downtown and ½ mile from the nearest bus stop. The elevator has a glass wall with a view of the stately atrium. Nobody in America actually treats me like a homeless person, because my bags are neat and compact. Most homeless' luggage is as messy as the rest of their lives, and they get stuck in one place because moving their stuff is too difficult.
Inside of the room. Even in Asia such a room would cost $35-70 USD.
Heading out on the main boulevard toward downtown is disheartening. This is what conventiongoers see when they step out for a night on the town. A landscape of appalling blight and desolate space. No city buses run after 6 pm either, so you must walk the seven blocks to the edge of the historic downtown.
The seven blocks of Kansas Street near the majestic Capitol building are beautifully renovated, but despite the millions of dollars expended to build these spaces, so few townspeople choose to spend their leisure time out in public. Wagie burnout syndrome, all they want to do after work is scarf down some junk food and rot on the sofa. Then they complain about how lonely and depressed they feel. Here's some meds, the doctor says. Not a word about eating better, taking a stroll in the park and meeting up with friends on a daily basis. The only people hanging out in all the hundreds of acres of public space in Topeka were the firemen; they had their firetrucks parked downtown and were standing around chatting after their training exercise. The scattered loners of Topeka (housed or otherwise) can be as nervous as stray cats when I come walking by. Like they think I am a psycho prowling the streets for a hapless victim. Sometimes they say "hi" back, other times they are too shy.
>>2901615He knew bums like you often take cash in exchange for getting buggered. Use this experience to clean up your act and find G_d
The geriatric groundhog grazing next to the Shunga bikeway didn't smell me until I was four feet away. I began talking to her and she ambled off into the weeds. The creekside forest was tropically verdant and beautiful with happy singing cardinals, a little muddy but there's plenty of wet grass around to brush your shoes clean. So few people enjoying the balmy 72° morning; 99% of the people out at 8 AM are grouchy wagies driving to work or welfare recipients running errands on the bus. It was nice to use my buspass one last time to get to the trailhead and then follow the trail back to my hotel. Seven rides in 24 hours put it to good use.>>2901684I have more spending cash laying around than 75% of the people in this city. I chose my own path in life and now I enjoy the results of freedom, health, happiness and confidence in my abilities.
Saw this beautiful moth in the forest, worth waking up early from a super comfy sleep. Bedrotting ruins your vitality; rise with the morning light instead.Now it's onward to 100° Oklahoma City on the flixbus. Slightly overpriced at $51, but the schedule was good.
Wichita made more sense than Topeka as a stopover for this trip. I had to ride the train two extra hours to get to Topeka, then retrace the same distance on the way south. But Topeka is much greener and prettier; I am glad I went out of the way to enjoy its abundance of green spaces. Wichita is dry and scrubby, with no hills and no giant trees. It also lacks the stately centerpiece of the State Capitol, having only a collection of old ratty buildings. This little grocery shop across from the Wichita bus stop was cute, however. The friendly owners have been serving customers at the door for 52 years...you ask for what you want and they retrieve it for you. They sold me a 6" turkey cheese sub, chips, ice-cold pop and an ice cream sandwich for only $5.50. It was good cheap slop.
Reading this thread is conflicting because I can see the merits of enjoying simple and free life drifting from town to town aimlessly.... but at the same time, it sounds extremely boring and uneventful. This guy keeps a record of how much he spends everywhere and is barely scraping by with meager accommodation and cheap food. I'm just saying this hardly seems to be "living life to the fullest" and comes across as being a homeless person with a personal blog. Are these really the "adventures" that /trv/ has to offer? This is no less boring than the recounting of a wageslave NPC.
>>2901809>Are these really the "adventures" that /trv/ has to offer? This is no less boring than the recounting of a wageslave NPC.the fun adventures can't really be posted because of no sex clause
>>2901809Its a bum who thinks hes Jack Kerouac but his adventures are only sleeping in abandoned homeless camps, complaining that normgroids dont want to look at him because hes a smelly bum and having gay sex in the weeds with boomers for bus fare because hes a jobless bum who takes it up the bum. 6/10 because while its mostly incel whining and self pity at least hes not crying from his basement (because hes a homeless bum)
I'm a taxpaying traveler who spends roughly $100 of my hard earned money in every city I visit. This makes wagies seethe, because I was supposed to tuck tail and settle into the grind as soon as I returned to America, lamenting about how much I miss Thailand or whatever. But instead I continued exploring and discovering in my home country. The trip is now coast to coast across America; soon it may extend up through the Northeast cities into Quebec. Oklahoma City impressed me a lot. All the races living together peacefully, enjoying the hot summer night in their own way. I saw more pretty, fun-loving teenies walking around here in OKC than any other place I've been in a long long time.
Bricktown and the manicured city parks nearby are full of life even on a Thursday night. Live music, dining, and simple strolling around with friends and family. Something that so much of white America has forgotten how to do. Topeka was much prettier, but OKC is much more fun and buoyant with newfound prosperity. The oldsters are all fat, but there is a huge fitness culture among the youth.
>b-but OKC is unwalkable! you need a car!False again. I walked the ugly but serviceable Oklahoma River trail from my bargain-priced hotel near the bus station to the Brickfields district.
No it doesn't bother me that 70+% of people out on the town are brown. Most of the whites stay indoors in the A/C because a 92° F evening is evidently too hot for them to enjoy being active. But the nonwhites thrive in the heat, it makes them joyous. Everyone is well-behaved if a little exuberant, revving and blaring music or clowning with each other on the sidewalk. Friendly people chatted with me both times I rode the free downtown streetcar. The hot weather is lovely. Give me 90° over 60° any day.
(((>>2901890)))>No it doesn't bother me that 70+% of people out on the town are brown.
>>2901911He hates whites because they don't want to make eye contact with a smelly homeless creeper
>visit usa to see parents>go outside>all niggers and beaners >look at dad>he looks back at me with this mutual understanding and resignation >leave back to asiaIm sure there are white people somewhere. Probably working or tucked away at home. Public spaces are just filthy though. Imagine going outside and seeing niggers and you arent in Africa.
>>2901947>in the old neighborhood to see my dad again for first time in a long time>more mexican than is used to be>they're playing that fucking mariachi or whatever shit music so loud it's throughout the whole neighborhood>dad keeps having to make noise complaints to the police who just come, park, then tell him to turn it down>they just start again later>...unfortunately short time later...>dad dies>can't delete his phone number yet>one day I notice the icon by his number changes>literally a negroMy neighborhood was replaced with mexicans and my father's phone number went to an african.Never forget.
>>2901950>>2901947Anti-social resentment of society is nothing to be proud of. The real reason you hate America is because you don't get laid here, but you project this personal grudge onto the black men you porn-addled coomer cucks fetishize. And that's why you love Japan so much; it's basically one big whorehouse dressed up nice on the surface, with shrimpdick men who would never lay a hand on you for disrespecting them.
>>2901958Quite the assumptions you're making here. You started off with potential with the first sentence and then just blew the fuck up and went full clown. Probably projecting. At least I got a little chuckle out of reading it.Thanks.
>>2901958>And that's why you love Japan so much; it's basically one big whorehouse dressed up nice on the surface, with shrimpdick menfuck you
Mostly boring scenery on this Heartland Flyer route, apart from this little stretch where the train followed a rocky riverbed through the Arbuckle hills. It must be private property because no roads go through here. You'd never see it riding the bus down I-35. A/C is not working on the train, thankfully the summer weather is normal - 90° at 10 AM - and not infernal heatwave tier.>>2901961>be noticer>tell people what I notice>they get screechy and butthurt>"how dare you" etc etc instead of actually providing a rebuttalEvery single time.
Hello Texas. This dumpy river marks the northern boundary of the state. Texas is where I first experienced the grandeur of the American West, first traveled to a foreign country on my own, first smoked weed, first tried LSD, first jammed out with the musicbros, first got chased by a horny hambeast, got a chance to cuck a guy literally named Chad (but didn't do it), walked off the job after an argument with the manager, had a girl fall in love with me, lost my virginity to her in the back of my Explorer, got into a fight with a coworker, crossed the border illegally, drove 110 mph, etc. Lots of memories here. No other place in the world before or since has come close.
>>2901947The whole aisle of this train is full of quiet, flexen-haired Mennonite babies and children clambering around. They keep spilling out of the seats. So adorable, I don't mind the inconvenience one bit. It's only the wealthy childless hedonist assholes that I dislike for their insufferable better-than-you elitism.
Bro WTh seriously? I didnt know!!!
Lately I've been using more obscure booking platforms which are listed on Google Maps and offer a substantial discount from the standard booking sites for many budget properties. At first I was concerned that there would be problems with the reservations at check-in, but they've been seamless so far. Most other properties I've stayed in the USA jack up their rates as the date approaches, making advance bookings far preferable - buses and trains also are best booked at least several days out. Defying the trend, this Comfort Inn in a lousy commercial/industrial neighborhood near Love Field and the Greyhound depot actually bottomed out. $100+ per night to book this king suite for next Friday, but today the rate is $64 if booked direct. The owner is a Gujarati Indian; he waived the deposit requirement for me.
Texas sure knows how to rape the land of all its trees and build the most hideous sprawl you can imagine. Trash strewn everywhere on the roadsides, sidewalks randomly ending with only bare dirt or brown roadside grass to walk on. There are a fair number of homeless people too, disproportionately black men. Nobody starts trouble with anybody else; this is Texas after all. Yet for all its shoddiness and aesthetic neglect outside the wealthy areas, the DFW metro boasts one of the most extensive light rail systems in the USA. $9 for a daypass including intercity transport across the metroplex, but instead of giving you 24 hours validity they cut you off at 3 AM. Fare checks are random; I bet most of the homeless riding the trains to cool off didn't have a fare card.Temps are not as hot as expected. Barely 100°, humidity 37% or so. Farther south it will get more oppressive.
Even with a public transit pass, it requires a fuckton of walking to explore even a tiny bit of Dallas on foot. The hard soles of my new shoes seemed fine for the first few days, but relentless walking has formed blisters on the bottoms of my feet. While uncomfortable to walk on, the blisters don't actually impede my movement...but I sure am looking forward to kicking back and taking a weeklong break from travel at my brother's house.
Dallas lacks the down-home liveliness and exuberance of Oklahoma City. So many dead-eyed looks from passing strangers in the street. Unlike the proud native-admixed peoples of OKC, Dallas is full of street trash loitering around and being obnoxious. And thanks to the metro rail, they can disperse to all the outlying neighborhoods... laying shirtless outside the senior center, being a complete fruit wearing no pants at all, smoking on the train, harassing women, etc. Ridership on the Dallas metro lines is about 80% black. That's how negrofied the city is. Tejano (Hispanic) influence and culture is strangely absent. At the Dallas fairgrounds they have the African-American museum, but not a word about the indigenous peoples.
Lots of filthy tattered bums, wary normies walking hurriedly along, Asian tourists soaking in the strange American sights...one old guy asked me to pour water in his hands so he could quench his thirst. On the way back to my hotel I passed two black strippers, one in glittery high heels and a Mexican flag bikini, hurrying along the grassy roadside in the dark. Escaping a police bust?At least I got to see a little nature around dusk at one of the widely scattered greenway trails near the UNT campus. Even out there, black men were loafing around leaving strewn trash behind and cluttering the peaceful soundscape with their music & noises. Nope, Texas big city life is not for me. The vast public investments in alternative transit and recreation are laudable, but Dallas still has so much social and infrastructure neglect. Tiny clusters of trees in low spots are about all that remains of natural habitat across most of the metroplex.
The lack of life in so many public spaces was disheartening. Nobody wants to bring their kids downtown; the pavements are grimy, litter is everywhere and the street people can be unpredictable - though I didn't see anyone being dangerous, only stupidity and obnoxiousness. Texas is a police state with cameras watching your every move: you can be a loud fat dirty pig, but you can't menace others and get away with it.
While I don't regret visiting for the first time, I see no reason to ever return to Dallas or any of its satellite cities.
>>2902039>While I don't regret visiting for the first time, I see no reason to ever return to Dallas or any of its satellite cities.The wfh real estate cuck shilling for anons to buy a house in the ghetto suburbs in Dallas in shambles rn
>>2902041The imaginary circus freaks who occupy your empty skull dont ever shut up yo?
On the way to the bus station at 6 AM I saw a car stopped in the highway ahead. When it drove off, a hooker in a tight short dress was walking in the middle of the empty road. One thing you can say, the hookers of Dallas are in shape. No fatties. But every single one of them is black to some degree. Big sign says "Unlawful Sexual Crimes are Illegal". Unlawful crimes are illegal? Thanks, Captain Obvious.
>>2902041They have some nice residential towers tho. Not many places in America you can live on the 15th floor. It was shocking how empty half of the downtown restaurants were at 7 pm on a lovely Friday night. Nobody at all dining alfresco in the 92° evening. Of all the joints I walked past, only the Italian place in the Main Street district had a good turnout. Versus OKC they had a live one-man jam band for the food truck court, with every table filled and happy voices babbling away.
East Texas has thick beautiful forests; it's like you cross an invisible line heading south around Athens and suddenly you're surrounded by big shady trees. Sadly, my attempt at riding my brother's 250 cc dirtbike as a two wheel newbie ended with a bruised foot and a bent shifter after forgetting the clutch and slamming on the brake when approaching an unexpected gate in the road. Motorbikes just don't do it for me. Too fast, too loud, too bulky, too risky. You need licenses and tags and gasoline and oil changes. You need to learn to shift with your foot and clutch with your hand instead of the other way round. If you can roll with it, great. Tons of people go on motorbike tours of the western states every summer. But a motorbike doesn't really take me anywhere I couldn't have gone in my old 4x4 camper, nor does it provide any shelter from the elements like a car does. So I fail to see the upside beyond feeling the wind in your hair and the bugs in your teeth.
Typical rural American mancave. The toolkits have a nice collection of giant switchblades too
>>2902242I bet it smells like bacon shitfart in there
This part of east Texas definitely has rural character. Lots of wild creatures, sandy roads for miles through a mix of pasture and woodland with scattered habitations. It's pretty high trust, most people leave their gates open out here. But at the same time, everybody minds their own business and doesn't make trouble with their neighbors. It's not as hot or humid as I expected for Texas in August. But the main pastimes are watching TV on the sofa or riding dirtbikes around. Social life is limited to the occasional beer and burger at the local joint, and even then you only get five minutes' flirting with the buxom waitresses (who have dozens of other single men jestering for her attention with the severe dearth of nubile females in rural Texas). And these cheap old American homes, they have problems upon problems. Everywhere you look you see something that needs work, and most of those projects require sizable investments in materials even if you can figure out how to do all the labor yourself. Mortgage, property tax and mandatory homeowner's insurance on a $150K property come out to $1500 per month - not to mention utilities, trash, upkeep and repairs. Living in the woods sounds like a dream until you start walking around and see that most of the lot is overgrown brush strewn with a disheartening amount of old rubbish that requires a huge investment to make into a neat desirable habitation.Yes, owning your own piece of dirt does provide a feeling of empowerment and security that a rentcuck or traveling vagabond can never enjoy. You don't really have to answer to anyone for what you do on your property out in the backwoods. But don't let anyone tell you it's cheap to live in the American countryside in a decaying old home. Even if you are fine with the messiness, there will still be a constant backlog of deferred maintenance costs. And even somebody as much of a skilled DIY handyman as my brother struggles hard with some of the challenges he faces.
Most Texans will kill any venemous creature they encounter within a hundred yards of their home. Spraying quarts of bug poison is a necessity to keep out pests when you have a million cracks they can enter through. All the same, my bro caught a centipede crawling on his bed blanket in the morning. The bugger was extremely tough, spraying venom out when he was flung to the floor and stepped on with a croc sandal. It took a stomp and grind motion before he finally got crushed. If you should try to smash one by reflex when it crawls on you in your sleep, it will give you the most nightmarish awakening of your life.
Time to wrap up this thread at the four weeks mark with a friendly salamander. $1446 has been spent to cover 3200 miles and visit twenty towns in five states. Ten out of 28 nights were spent outdoors; the rest were spend in hotels (7), hostels (4), trains (3), and family homes (4). Lodging spend averaged $22.63 per travel day or 44% of the total. Supermarket food cost me $14 per travel day, 27% of the total, and I was eating some pretty good stuff. Covering the vast distances of America does run up a big transport bill, with 114 miles per day covered on average; $313 or 22% of spending is definitely a reasonable price for covering such a distance by train and bus. That's an average of $16 spent for every town town visited. It's worth noting that on most rides I did not have somebody sitting next to me. Miscellaneous spending totaled $103.Peace out, faggots
>>2902589wagey wagey get in cagey
