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.