Alexandra is a woman on fire. With a soft demeanor, you wouldn’t guess that she is propelled by rocket fuel. In her quest to live her life her way, she faced constant road blocks. But they were continually outmatched by her perpetual determination. Not once did she consider throwing in the towel.
As part of Women’s History Month, we’re sharing stories from the world of female solo RV campers — who break the mold, brave dangers, and experience extraordinary beauty in the world around them.
This is Alexandra’s story.
“Black women just don’t do that.”
Before the start of her journey — long before she became known by the Instagram handle @alexandra_abroad — Alexandra’s mother discouraged her. Her mother’s misgivings about her daughter going all-in to the solo camper lifestyle were partly because of her sex, but also her race. Being a black woman alone, camping in an RV, doesn’t exactly fit the mold. “Black women just don’t do that,” she said to Alexandra. Little did her mother know, she was only putting more gas in the tank. No one was going to tell Alexandra what she couldn’t do.
In July of 2017, Alexandra bought an 1987 Itasca Phasar RV. She loved the layout of it, with its pop-up bathrooms and spacious interior. Alexandra spent three months renovating it. Everything was given a tune up. (Except for the dials on the dash.)
She made it to Illinois from Michigan on her fresh new start in life. Unbeknownst to her, the meters on the dash weren’t functioning. There was no way for her to know that the engine was overheating. That is, until it was too late. The Phasar suffered a massive breakdown and died for good in Illinois. The engine was old, and repairs were estimated to cost more than the value of the RV.
This would have been the end of most people’s camping journey. But for Alexandra, it was just the beginning. She found a teardrop trailer in Grand Junction and made it her own. It was a custom-built “tin can,” around nine by five feet. (About as small as a camper can possibly be.) She towed it with her car and embarked upon her adventures across the Southwest. The small size was a huge asset to her. It was light enough for her to detach and push by hand on her own, which she had to do more than once!
“I may not be by myself.”
Alexandra spent years of her life carving out a career as a photographer. She went to a meeting with HipCamp in San Francisco, to enter into a paid partnership. After the meeting, she walked back to her car, only to find her window busted open. Everything was stolen. Her laptops, modem, hard drive, and camera equipment. All forever gone. As a photographer, there is nothing more devastating than losing a collection of photographs. It is a lifetime of work, visions, and individual artistic license. Gone.
That night, she drove to a Walmart parking lot to try and get some teary-eyed sleep. In the state of California, you aren’t allowed to boondock a camper near any city center, so she was forced to leave not once, but twice. The catch was that she couldn’t actually drive outside of the city with a broken car window without getting pulled over.
Not long after the robbery, Alexandra decided to camp in the Redwoods of California. She was camping alone on a little sandbar, when someone approached her. It was a man, and he started asking her questions:
What are you doing out here?
Are you alone?
A woman camping alone in a quirky little camper invites questions from bystanders pretty frequently. But this seemed to come from a place of bad intentions, not just innocent curiosity.
Her feminine intuition shot off warning after warning: They weren’t on BLM land where it would make sense for other people to be camping — this man had approached her from the bushes, which looked like a hiding place— and he was drunk at 9 a.m. in the morning.
The stranger’s body language and manner gave her all the signals she needed to move along. After she made her move to get out of there, she began to question the validity of camping so far off the beaten path.
“Maybe I shouldn’t be out in the complete middle of nowhere by myself, because I may not be by myself.”
After everything Alexandra had undergone up to that point, I ask her if she ever thought about calling it quits.
“Oh, definitely not,” she says, “It’s hard to have a bad day when the view is so good.”
She considers herself lucky. Not everyone walks away from a situation like that unharmed. Alexandra travels with her dog and with a handgun that she keeps for protection.
“Being outside is where we’re supposed to be.”
So, why suffer through all that misery? What reward can be worth losing a career, a lifetime of photographs, and all your artistic equipment?
Truth be told it can be hard to explain, but the reward is something you experience. When in reality, one accidental moment could be worth a thousand planned ones. You could be looking at the stars in Zion, and the sky might suddenly open — showering fireballs of debris from a Japanese space craft. Alexandra did. She witnessed this with her own eyes in a brief moment of perfect coincidence.
Sometime after her experience with the stranger in the Redwoods, Alexandra had a different kind of experience. One night, she pulled into an off-road hot spring in Nevada. She hadn’t known about it because it wasn’t even on the map. But it was there that she met Ted and his wife. She didn’t know them from before, but that night the three of them got to know each other, share dinner, and celebrate Ted’s fiftieth birthday. Alexandra recalls it was the prettiest evening, all foggy and gloomy. Snow covered the ground so that, “It looked like Iceland in March.” It’s hard to explain, but it was an experience that touched Alexandra deeply.
“If I hadn’t been robbed, or harassed by that guy in the Redwoods, I wouldn’t have met Ted.”
Sure, that kind of reward is not luxurious. Or grand. Or monetary. But it’s little moments of sublime perfection connecting with friends, or one vast moment spent in an open canyon, as Alexandra says, “hearing everything but then also hearing nothing at the same time.”
“There is a quietness that comes with [this life] but also, intensified sounds and experiences … Being outside is where we’re supposed to be. It’s very intense, but it’s also centering to have that intensity around you, and being able to manage it and feel comfort in it.”
Wherever Alexandra is, it’s her own little piece of that place. Her own little piece of Moab, or her own little piece of the Rocky Mountains.It’s also her own moment in time. Whether it’s a perfect view, a mundane daily task, or a challenge, it’s hers — something that she carved out for herself.
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