Prescott National Forest serves as a brief gathering place for Linda May and the Rubber Tramp tribe: a cooler, more spacious camp where friendship and practical help take shape, but where the fourteen-day camping limit soon sets the group in motion again.

Setting and Arrival

As the weather grew uncomfortably hot in Ehrenberg, the group moved to Prescott National Forest near Cottonwood, roughly three thousand feet higher and about ten degrees cooler. Campers spread across the forest rather than forming one dense encampment. Some parked on an open hill overlooking sunlit mesas; others tucked their vehicles into a wooded, wind-sheltered patch. Bob Wells, LaVonne Ellis, Silvianne Delmars, and several of Linda May’s new friends were among those gathered there.

The setting offered a change of climate and room to choose how visible or sheltered to be. Its openness did not make the stay permanent: the forest was a stop in a mobile circuit, shaped by weather as well as camping rules.

A Camp Becomes a Community

Linda arrived in Cottonwood in late March, just after selling the contents of a storage unit she had rented for four years. She reached camp in time for a pizza party. Bob Wells fed eleven people for $28 with Little Caesars pies; afterward, the group walked together beneath sunset-pink skies. The gathering was an ordinary meal and an act of welcome, turning a scattered set of vehicles into a shared social space.

The campers present were mostly women: seven women, three men, and a teenage boy. Bob later remarked on the significance of that balance in a culture that had long discouraged female independence. The forest’s temporary community thus offered not only companionship but a visible contrast to expectations about who could travel and live independently.

Camping Limits and the Next Move

The following day, a forest ranger came into camp. He asked whether the group was a club, and Sameer Ali answered that it apparently was; the ranger also asked how long they had stayed. Bob told him they had been there four days, although the group had actually been there just over two weeks. The ranger recorded their license plate numbers and left.

The visit made the fourteen-day limit on free camping immediate. With the clock now running, the group had to choose where to go next. They settled on Kaibab National Forest near Flagstaff, at an elevation of seven thousand feet, where the weather would be cooler. Prescott was therefore both a refuge and a temporary holding place: its campers could make a home-like camp, but not remain indefinitely.

Repair, Mobility, and Significance

The move also depended on the condition of Linda’s RV. Its roof was in poor shape, and she hoped to patch and reseal it before leaving, while warmer temperatures would help the liquid rubber cure. Wayne, another member of the gathering and a professional painter, climbed onto the roof and spread the sealant with a long-handled roller. The repair was completed just in time for the group’s departure.

That practical episode captures the forest’s role in the book’s account of mobile life. The camp offered fellowship and temporary shelter, but staying depended on obeying a time limit, anticipating the next destination, and keeping a vehicle fit to travel. Prescott National Forest is not presented as a permanent home; it is a place where people could assemble, help one another, and prepare to move on.