I have to admit it was a bit of a strange day. After all, it is not every day that someone comes into my office and says he is dying and asking if I would like to write a story about it.

I also have to admit that I was intrigued.

It was late May and my visitor was Eldon Steele. I had known him just a little bit, having run into him over the years, but I did not know him well.

He proceeded to tell me that he had cancer, and he only had a little bit of time left before it would be the end.

He told me how his wife, Reta, had died in June of 2023. And how a month later, in July of 2023, he was diagnosed with cancer.

Doctors gave him two months to live, he said. He made it two years, not just two months.

Eldon told me that he gained those two years by taking special medicines and herbal supplements that he got from a company in Tijuana, Mexico called Hoxsey.

I was skeptical, but he said they had cured many people of cancer, but that his cancer was just too far advanced.

He was happy to get two more years, none the less.

He told me about his life. You can read some about it in his obituary. But he also told me about many of the things he did, which you won’t read in the obit.

Things like buying his house and fixing it up. Putting on a big front area with windows, jacking up the house to put a basement under it, things like that. And doing it himself, not hiring it done.

But it was the camping and boondocking that really got my interest. Eldon and I shared a lot of the same types of views about camping.

Boondocking, you see, is when you camp with your camper without any hookups for electric, water or sewer.

Eldon and Reta did it for 22 years when they went to Arizona for the winter. Most years they would spend the first month at an RV park or campground, but then the next four months they were out in the desert area wihout water and electricial hookups. Of course the camper had a water tank they filled up, and there was a sewer tank they would eventually empty, but there was no electricity. Just some batteries.

Eldon says they both loved it.

I could totally understand what he meant. You see, my wife, Pam, and I have been boondocking for nearly all of our 50-plus years of marriage.

For years we were on the Whitewater River near St. Charles, and now we are on a little lake – all alone – near Elysian.

No hookups. No water or electricity. So no TV, microwave, etc. Now, however, we have solar panels that charge our marine batteries to run our lights. Still no electrical or water hookups.

We formed a common bond, Eldon and me. We shared a lot of stories, but mainly I just listened to his. It was pretty easy, since he had a lot of interesting stories, and as you have probably guessed, I love listening to interesting stories.

He told me about all his adventures bouncing around the deserts in his side-by-side. He collected animal skulls he found in Arizona and elsewhere. He even had some decorating a garden space at his home near Blue Earth.

He also was creative. Always making things, often using old materials – like old bottles.

He liked to build things, fix things, help others with their fix-it needs.

He told me that not only did he love to go boondocking, he was actually a member of the Boondockers Welcome group.

Yes, that’s right. There is a group of people who do boondocking. But not only that, they let others boondock at their homes.

The way it works, Eldon said, was that you pay a membership fee and then you can call up a fellow member and see if you can stay at their place as you travel around the country.

Staying at a fellow member’s place is free, but you can be charged if you want to hook up to electricity – or not.

In fact, one day in June when I was at Eldon’s house in the country, he was expecting some boondockers to show up that evening and park their RV on his land.

He kept a journal of each and every boondocker who stayed at his place over the years, with complete information. He said that way if they called again, he could look them up, and see what kind of comments he had written about them.

Eldon added that he had met a lot of interesting people that way. Same goes for him and Reta staying with some of them.

Back to when Eldon first visited me. He wanted to see if I wanted to write a story about his choice of coffin and his choice of transporting that coffin.

I told him I did.

But he did say that he did not want me to print the story until after he was dead. I tried to talk him out of it, but he said that I needed to get a photo of the side-by-side “hearse” to run with the story.

He was right. I promised that I would do just that. You can see the results of my efforts on page 16 of this week’s Register.

I think it might be just what Eldon had in mind when he wandered into my office that day in May.