Rainbows

After a rainy and windy day, nature apologizes.

New lights

I did a little more cleaning on my car today but I did not wash the exterior. It was very windy today and I figured it would just get dusty again right away. I may wash it just before we make the trip to Albuquerque or maybe the rain expected tomorrow will wash it for me. 

After finishing with the car, I installed the last of three lights I picked up in Quartzsite.

These are LED lights replacing my fluorescent ones. The new ones are really neat.  I can have just one of three tubes lit which uses very little electricity and puts out almost as much light as the old ones or I can have two tubes lit or go for broke and light all three tubes. Having all three tubes lit still uses less electricity than the old ones.  I now have all the lights I use on a regular basis switched over to LED.

After all that work, I had to sit in my hanging chair and read a book on my Kindle for a while.  I don't want to overdo this work stuff. 

Life is good.

Car cleaning

I got up this morning and wondered what I would like to do today. Yesterday, my brother installed a brake connector so I can tow a trailer with my Honda if I want to so I had taken most of the stuff out of the back to facilitate that and left that stuff in his garage for now. So I thought today would be a good day to vacuum out the car.  I started by washing the windows on the inside then I washed everything else inside. 

We will be taking my car to Albuquerque for Christmas with our brother and his wife so I wanted it all clean. I started to vacuum with my little vacuum and Ken offered his shop vac to finish the job. In no time at all, I had the whole thing spotless. Well, almost spotless.  There are lots of scrapes and dings on the inside because of all the stuff I have transported in the last 8 years.

Tomorrow I will probably wash it and it will be ready to go. Looking forward to the trip. 

That was a lot of work for one day so I sat in my hanging chair for a while to rest. :-)

Life is good

Escapees park to Sahaurita

I moved from my second boondocking site near Cottonwood to the Escapees park near Congress, AZ where I stayed 8 days. The North Ranch as the park is called has lots that are sold to people who want a home base. Some lots had homes built on them and every combination from a home to just a storage shed. It was interesting looking at all the various ways people set up their lots. 

The overnight area was a large gravel area. Lots of room to maneuver and spread out as well as full hookups. Here was my area. 

They had a cactus garden there that was quite extensive with a lot of the plants identified. 

In the middle of my stay near Congress I drove my Honda to Quartzsite and stayed overnight in a tent. I wanted to check out the area but not in January when the hordes are there. I prefer not to be around crowds. This was my campsite on BLM land.

It was very cold there at night but I was bundled up and kept very warm all night. There was frost on my car windows in the morning. I was in the same area where Bob Wells and gang were but a ways away from them. This picture is looking toward where they were. 

Went back to Congress where this greeted me the last morning.  Time to head further south. 

Water had dripped from the faucet overnight and created a tube of ice. 

On Tuesday, the 10th, I headed to my brother Ken's house south of Tucson. There I parked my RV in line with his fifth wheel and truck camper. Looks like a campground. 

Ken is helping me install the led lights I bought in Quartzsite amoung other things. He told me I could set my big inverter to not charge my batteries so my solar will do all the charging. This means only my heater and induction burner are using grid power. My lights, radio, furnace blower and charging of my phone and other toys are using the batteries which are in turn charged by my solar.  Cool. I imagine I will just leave it like that. No need to waste all that free electricity from the sun. If I am unable to keep the batteries charged up because of weather, I can just have the inverter help charge again while I am plugged into the grid. 

Life is good. 

Second boondocking site

I have moved from the Thousand Trails Campground to BLM land close by.  Ground is kind of soft from the rain we had earlier but not bad. Here is what my site looks like. 

I had my awning up for a while in the early afternoon because the sun was hot and I wanted to shade my refrigerator.  

The solar panels will have a rough time charging the batteries I think. The sun is low on the horizon and goes behind some hills around 4:30 or so. I am only going to be here for a couple of days so I shouldn't have any problem. I could tilt the panels, but I don't think it is worth the effort of getting on the roof. I just won't be running my crock pot this time. I cooked up a pot yesterday and I have a couple of meals left from that and lots of soup so I'm good. 

Life is good. 

Snow and an early Christmas gift

After finally venturing out after all the rain we had, I saw this on a nearby hill. 

SNOW!  Yuk, time to leave.  Monday I will be leaving this area and heading south.  Filled up my propane tank so I can keep warm in the days to come. I will be sad to leave this Thousand Trails campground because they have everything I need right here. After this I will need to find things like propane, water, dump stations and garbage disposal. Should be exciting though. 

I received something like an early Christmas present today. I have read all the books by Lee Child except for his latest release.  Never Go Back was priced at $10.99 as a Kindle book. I won't pay that much for a book so I put it on eReaderIQ way back when it first came out.  eReaderIQ.com is a service that keeps an eye on Amazon prices and will send an email when the book price drops to whatever you set as an acceptable price.  So the price went all the way down to $3.49!  I don't know if this is just a short time thing or not, but I jumped on it right away.  Can't wait to start reading it but I have to finish the one I am on first. Should be done tomorrow sometime. Guess I won't be getting much else done for a while. 

Life is good. 

Rain, rain and more rain

It has been raining almost constantly for about three days.  Yesterday it started clearing up for the first time in a long time.

Sure is nice to see some blue sky again. I have been spoiled since I came to Arizona since this is the first time there has been any amount of rain. 

My afternoon walks were done in the rain and I felt like I was back in Oregon again. In Oregon, I would have to wait until July to see the end of the rain whereas here the weather should clear up this week. 

Not much else happening here, I have been doing inside cleanup and rearranging things. I have been involved in a spirited email thread going with my family about the weather. The Wisconsin group bragging about their ability to withstand bitter cold and calling the southwest group wimps while the southwest group claims superior intelligence for moving where the weather is better.  All in fun of course. 

I can well remember the snowstorm we had in Oregon in the winter of 2008-2009 when my poor Born Free was covered in snow for almost a week. Fortunately I was able to keep nice and warm inside.

Here is a picture of that. 

I hope I won't have to live in my RV in that kind of winter again.  This was when I was still working and couldn't follow warmer weather. Usually it just rained all winter. 

Just checked the weather.  Today the high was listed as 41, tomorrow it should be 63. Nice!

Life is good.

Dinner is done

Dinner in my new Thermos Nissan Thermal Cooker turned out great. Very similar to cooking it in my crock pot but using less energy. 

Here are the two units after I pulled the inner pot out of the thermos.  The inner pot can be used with an induction cooktop. 

What the end result looks like. It tasted much better than it looks here. 

Here is my portion for tonight. It made 4 generous meals for me. 

It is definitely a keeper.  Anyone want a small crock pot?

Life is good. 

Cabin pictures and thermal cooking

Here are the pictures of the cabin I am staying in this week. 

I am getting spoiled living in this luxury!  At the same time I am looking forward to getting back in my RV on Friday because I miss it. It is always good to get back home. 

I ordered a Nissan Thermal Cooker and it came today so I had to cook my dinner for today in it to see how well it works. Here it is cooking my dinner.

No electricity needed. I put what I normally put in my crock pot in the inner pot and put it on the range to bring it to a boil. After it boiled for a couple of minutes, I put the inner pot into the outer thermos and will let it set for 3 or 4 hours.  At that point it should be ready to eat. So I only need energy to get it to the boiling point and then I put it in the thermos to continue the cooking. If it works, I will not need to have my crock pot using electricity for 3 to 4 hours. This type of cooking has been used in Japan for quite a while so I know it works, I just need to figure out the optimal procedure for what I usually cook. Tonight's dinner is barley, black beans, corn, tomatoes, green beans, celery and a few spices. 

I will try to remember to take photos of the final result and post them later tonight. 

Life is good. 

Cabin life

Moved into a cabin last night. I get a free week a year with my Thousand Trails membership and figured I better take advantage of it before the end of the year when I would lose this years week. The cabin is nice in some ways because I have a comfortable recliner and a working microwave for popcorn. The bed was more comfortable than I expected. However, the furnace is right next to the bed and it sounds like a jet taking off right next to me. Needless to say, I turned the heat way down for the night. 

I have some pictures but they are on my phone and are not loading on my iPad very fast. Since I am back down in a valley again, my internet is slow. I will post the pictures when I can. 

Life is good. 

Meeting bloggers I follow

There are several blogs I follow religiously and I have been able to meet up with the owners of two of those blogs this year.

I met Sue of rvsueandcrew when I was in Montana. A wonderful lady and a joy to visit with.

This week I met with Bob Wells of cheaprvliving.com at his campsite near me. It was great visiting with him as I have followed his blog for a long time and picked up lots of info from the blog on outfitting a van for camping and how to prepare for boondocking.

Also at Bob's campsite were Forrest and Beth who own Alpine Tour Company in Ridgway, Colorado and had taken Bob on a Jeep tour.  They are a young couple enjoying life while they still can and you can follow their adventures at 3upadventures.com   Their company website is alpinetourco.com

It is really neat to meet up with people you feel you know after following their blogs for so long.

Success!

Today is day 7 of my first boondocking experiment and it was a piece of cake. I knew I could go for one week on my tanks because I do it all the time in campgrounds. This was more a test of the solar and to see if I could use only half of my resources in case I want to go 2 weeks.

The results are:

I used about 1/4 of my tank of propane.  A lot of that was probably my furnace and I can easily cut back on that. I turned my furnace back to barely on last night and I was comfortable. I think the low was in the low 30's last night but the Born Free is well insulated so it holds on to the heat of the day. 

I used less than half of the fresh water tank and half of the water I use for drinking and cooking.  That was without drastic conservation, just using my usual methods of conserving water. 

My grey and black tanks are a little over half full I think. Hard to tell with those guys!  I can easily solve that by using a portable toilet some or all the time and dumping some grey water into the black tank. 

I have all the power I need from the solar. I had one cloudy day and that was no problem. As long as most days are sunny, I have no need to conserve on power based on my lifestyle.  

As far as food goes, based on my Whole Food, Plant Based eating I can have enough food to go for months. I just need to stock up on things like potatoes, rice and barley to be good for a long time. I also like to get some fresh vegetables and fruit to last the first week. If I run out, it's okay because I have a large amount of dehydrated vegetables to live off of.  I get dehydrated vegetables and beans online from Harmony House and since they are compact and lightweight, I can have a large stock on hand. 

So based on the last week, I can easily go 2 weeks or more off grid. 

Life is good. 

Cloudy day

Actually had a somewhat cloudy day today. First one in a long time. I decided not to do a crockpot meal today because I was not sure how long it would be cloudy and I didn't know how well the solar system would work. It was charging the battery well even with the clouds and I may have been okay but decided not to chance it.

Here were the morning clouds.

The afternoon clouds. 

The evening clouds with the hills in the distance lit up.

The batteries were charged up to 100% just slightly later than normal. 

Life is good.

Hikes and sunsets

Not much going on here. I am just relaxing and enjoying the peace and quiet of the area. Got back to my knitting again. It has been a while since I have done any serious knitting and I had a desire to knit something today. I turned on my XM radio and sat back and knitted most of the day. 

In the late afternoon I went for a walk on the roads to get some exercise before dinner. 

Yesterday I walked Forest road 361 for a mile or so. Here are some pictures I took on the way back.

You can see my Born Free just to the right of the middle. Just a white spot. 

Here are some pictures of the terrain in the area. 

Some sunset pictures taken from my site. 

My solar is working great, easily keeping up with my electrical usage. So far, the batteries have never gone below 82% used.  Fortunately, the weather has been sunny with just one day of clouds in the afternoon.  Tomorrow it will be time to cook up another batch of meals in my crockpot. 

Life is good. 

Solar report

It was really cold here last night so I had the furnace running a bit last night. I like to keep it at around 55 for good sleeping so the furnace didn't run too much.  This morning the batteries were at 85% and were already charging a bit even though the sun was hardly up.

By 10 AM the batteries were at 93%.  I had been online for a couple of hours with the Jetpack charging the whole time. I decided to start up my crock pot for the day. The batteries showed +6A before I started cooking. I started the built in 2000 Watt inverter and turned the crock pot to high, looked at the remote monitor and it dipped down a bit then right back to +6A again.  I checked the solar input and it had jumped up to 14A coming in. Cool!  The solar is handling the inverter, crock pot, and the Jetpack as well as still charging the batteries!

Now at 12:00, the batteries are at 100% and dinner smells really good. 

Life is good.

Sedona again, Slide Rock SP and first boondocking site

I drove to Sedona again and found a section that had a lot of quaint stores to go through so I spent half the day browsing.  Bought a few t-shirts to replace some old ones but not much else.

I continued on 89A until I got to Slide Rock State Park.  This was originally the 43-acre Pendley Homestead.  Frank L. Pendley arrived in the canyon in 1907, acquired the land in 1910 and planted an apple orchard.  He established a unique irrigation system still in use by the park today.  There is a stretch of slippery creek bottom here that the park is named after.  I didn't wade in the creek but there was a short trail along a cliff and through the apple orchard that I walked.

Here are some pictures I took along the trail.

After the trip to Sedona I stuck around home pretty much and did mundane things like washing, grocery shopping and filling my propane tank.  I was about at the end of my stay and the Thousand Trail Campground and preparing for my first week boondocking on National Forest land.

Today I left the campground and drove to a Ford dealership just down the road a bit to get my oil changed on my Born Free.  That just took a little bit of time and I was coming back toward Thousand Trail Road again and my boondocking site across the road.

I found a pretty nice site not too far off the road and settled in. 

I am not really on a slope.  Just didn't have the camera level.

In the picture below, you can see my closest, and only, neighbor.

Another picture of my site.

Hopefully there won't be a lot of people in here on the weekend.

Friday of next week I will be heading back to Thousand Trails to spend a week in a Getaway Cabin which I get free once a year.  That will be a change of pace.  I can park my Born Free next to the cabin and I may be spending more time in it than the cabin.  We shall see.  I will let you know how it works out.

It is getting chillier here.  Only getting up to the low 70's during the day and down near freezing at night.  Feels good during the day and I have my furnace to keep me warm and cozy at night. 

I have much better internet speed here than I had in the campground.  Maybe because I am up on top instead of down in the valley.  I can see what I think are some towers on top of a hill near here so they may be the reason. 

Watching the sun go down while I am snug in my little Born Free.

Life is good.














No neighbors close by.  I can see a motorhome off in the distance.

28 floors

For a total today with the Raptor Hill Trail included I walked 4.56 miles, 28 floors and 11,109 steps.

After all that, I sat in my air chair and relaxed my poor feet for a while.

My Merrell's are getting dusty!

Life is good.

Clear Creek Campground, Cornville and Dead Horse Ranch State Park

I have been doing some driving around just to see what there is to see lately. 

Yesterday I east on 260 past I17 to check out Clear Creek Campground. Not impressed. OK for tent camping, not good for the RV. I wandered around on some gravel roads around there then went to the Verde Ranger Station. A very helpful lady there gave me lots of information on places to check out. I then went home for the day to digest and figure out daily trips.

Today I started early in the morning and drove the road to Cherry (75) so I could check out Powell Springs Campground, a National Forest Service (NFS) campground.  I turned off 260 on to 75 even though the Ranger Lady said to come in from the other end because this way was winding and steep. But I had the Honda CRV and it can handle any road so off I went. The road was in good condition so no problem, so what if the left edge of the road drops straight down a couple of miles. I was hugging the right side and fortunately there was a nice comfortable bank there for me the entire way. Whew, glad I wasn't coming the other way. So anyway, I didn't look to the left so I missed a lot of beautiful scenery. So sue me!  There were no good places to get off the road to take pictures and I didn't really want to see how high up I was so no pictures. Trust me, I was waaay up there!

I finally made it to Powell Springs Campground and it was a pretty nice place with picnic tables at every site and some I could even get my RV into but they were all shaded. Not good for the solar and, of course these were all primitive sites with no hookups. There were pit toilets, not sure about water. Good for tents again but I will pass with the RV. 

Continued out the other end of 75 to 169 and then on to I17 and north to Cornville road. I just wanted to see Cornville. Nice little town but I didn't see any corn. 

Cornville Road comes out on 89A so I turned right to go into Cottonwood and kept going until I got to the turnoff for Dead Horse Ranch State Park. Checked out the campgrounds and they were nice with paved sites and water and electric at the sites.  Cost $25 a night though for the 2 campgrounds with not much shade, $30 for the one with shade. I wish they would have primitive sites for RVs for less money.  Oh well, such is life. 

There are a lot of trails here so I went to the end of Flycatcher Road where there was a parking lot with river access. This is the Verde River.

I was wishing I had my inflatable kayak with me but I left that with my son this summer. 

So I took a hike.

The Raptor Hill Trail went up and up and up. I am not sure which hill was Raptor Hill but it was a beautiful hike. 

This is where I stopped. I only had two bottles of water with me and I had finished one and started on the other so figured it was time to call it a day. It was a total of 3 miles and getting late in the day so I turned around.  I plan on coming back again and spending a whole day here doing some more hiking. I have an annual State Park Pass so I can come as often as I want and it is only a few miles from home.  

Life is good.

My first rattlesnake

Saw my first rattlesnake today. I was walking around the campground and the road went through a dry wash. The area beside the road was a mixture of concrete and rocks to keep the road from washing away I guess. The snake was curled up in a hole right by the road. 

Here is a cropped picture so you can see it better.

It was hot but I was able to get my 10,000 steps in. I have been taking too many car trips lately and I have been neglecting my walking. I need to get back on track. 

Life is good.