A lot seemed like a little.....

7:54 am - Wednesday - February 19th - TWW - 34° F, humidity 53%, wind 8 mph out of the east by southeast.....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 62° F.  On this date in 2015 TLE and I were enjoying the view of the Verde Valley near Cottonwood, AZ whilst boondocking....

We worked a lot Tuesday, but didn't seem to accomplish very much. That's the way it is sometimes.  I don't think we knocked off work until after 3 pm, which is a long day for us, and we were totally gassed by the time we changed out of our work clothes, and sat down in our recliners to rest.

What we did get done we got done pretty quickly.  We rearranged the 4 artificial grass pieces so there a no longer any gaps between the Newell and trailer, so we (mostly me) can walk back and forth without walking in the dirt, which means we will track a little less dirt into the Newell......

....'we' picked up a bucket load of gravel with the Ford 420 loader, dumped it at the entrance to our 'compound', and spread it out with rock rakes to cover all of the red dirt, which turns to mushy clay when it rains, or snows....

....we finally moved the two large Onan generators (again using the Ford 420 loader) that have been sitting derelict next to the garage for years out by the 1969 Chevrolet C-50 so they can be hauled down to Phoenix at a future date to be sold for scrap.....

Where they were.....

....where they are now

.....the Onan generators, we surmise, were used to provide power to the garage to run lights, and ventilation fans for the former marijuana operation.

We did, also, dump our black tank, refill our fresh water tank from the IBC water tote, then refilled the tote from the water tower.  Hmmm....so I guess, in retrospect, we did get a lot done, but it just didn't seem like it....lol.

Thanks for stopping by!

It's a dog's life......

 7:44 am - Tuesday - February 18th - TWW - 36° F, humidity 60%, wind 5 mph out of the east by southeast.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 58° F.  On this date in 2018 I posted a screenshot of the weather forecast for the Grand Canyon, where we were working that winter....

....notice the daily forecast at the bottom, and specifically the low temps for the day each day.....7°, 0°, 7°, 15°, 6°, 10° F.....I had forgotten how cold it was that winter.  Time is the great erasure....lol.

TLE and I always have a number of projects in the back of our minds, and one of them has been there for a long time.....clean up the dog kennel/run.  It is really a nice kennel, but it has become the home to mice, and rats over the years.  Well, its day finally came Monday, but I get ahead of myself.

I try to spend time sharpening the chains on our two Stihl chainsaws every few days, and Monday it was time to do it again after all the cutting we did Sunday on the final stages of the burn pile.  I'm getting more adept with the chain files, and within an hour had them both in pretty good cutting shape again.

By the time I finished TLE was already 'knee deep' in clearing the weeds, and rocks from the dog run part of the kennel, so I joined her.  It's really amazing how much faster these tasks go when we are both focused on them at the same time.  Within an hour the dog run was looking pretty good....

.....next I turned my attention to vacuuming out the kennel, which was full of mice, and rat turds.....it was so bad I think I threw up in my mouth.....

.....these pictures really don't due justice to how bad it was, but you get the idea.  I utilized the very large ShopVac Charles and Phyllis brought up to TWW.....

.....it took me about 45 minutes to completely eradicate the mouse/rat droppings....of course, I utilized a face mask.

With TLE's help I hauled a couple of buckets of gravel to spread out in front of the concrete slab in front of the garage....there was a drop off from the concrete to the dirt of a few inches, and we wanted to smooth it out....

.....by the time we finished it was close to 2 pm, and we were done for the day.

Yesterday I wrote about us becoming grand parents for the 10th time.  My son-in-law, Rod, took a video of he and Sharon breaking the news to their son, Brayden James.  His reaction is so precious I just had to share it with you....

.....I've watched it a dozen times, or so, and I still am blown away by his reaction....enjoy!

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That's grand!!!

 7:52 am - Monday - February 17th - TWW - 39° F, humidity 57%, wind 7 mph out of the south by southeast.....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 61° F.  On this date in 2013 TLE and I were spending the day in Key West, FL....the furthest southern point in the USA....

.....we drove the T-Bird down to Key West from Marathon Key.  

Our goal for Sunday was to finish burning the last of the tree trimmings which had been sitting for 2 months, which means they were quite dry, and extremely easy to light on fire.....

.....when we began on Saturday that pile of tree trimmings was 10' wide, 30' long and 6' high....that is a lot of burning over two days, but we got it done.....

The burn pile is gone!

We keep nibbling away at that old, dead juniper tree, and now are beginning to cut up the large limbs (left side of picture), which had been previously detached from the tree.

The ash pit left over from the burn pile

....we worked from 10:30 am to 1:30 pm before calling it a day, and putting away all of our tools, although we continued to monitor the 'burn pit' to make sure it would not flare up and start an unplanned fire.  We've still got a couple more piles of tree trimmings to burn, but they are still drying out, and out of the way, so for now we've just got to turn all the remaining large, dry wood piles into firewood.  I think we've got enough uncut wood to last a couple of winters now, we just have to turn it into a usable form.  Just the wood in that still standing dead tree is worth a least one winter, if not more.

Around 2:30 pm TLE got a text message from our youngest daughter, Sharon, advising she was 15 weeks pregnant, and that Brayden (her son) would no longer be an only child....wait, what?  We had hoped to hit double digits in grand children, but thought that ship had sailed a few years ago, so this news was almost like a fairytale.....

.....Brayden has always wanted a brother, and now his wish is coming true.  So, anyway, TLE and I will become grand parents for the 10th time sometime in late July, or early August.  We've been great grand parents for a number of years now, and hope to have many more of them, too.  Life is very good!

Thanks for stopping by!

Eggsactly.....

 8:23 am - Sunday - February 16th - TWW - 37° F, humidity 53%, wind 4 mph out of the east by southeast....partially cloudy today with a forecast high of 62° F.  On this date in 2019 TLE and I had dinner in Surprise, AZ with two good friends we met while working at the Grand Canyon as cashiers in the General Store during the winter of 2017-18......

.....Sherry Hill-Trailer and Kathy Rogge McCarley....we are still in contact with them all these years later.  I have oft said that our nomadic journey has been more about the people we meet along the way than the places we have visited.

At last! A day with sunshine!  We had big plans for Saturday, and by the end of the day we had successfully executed those plans, but I get ahead of myself.  A week before when we were filling our IBC water totes at the water station we met a couple of guys, and one of them was a guy named Matt.  He and his wife, Dawn, moved out here about 4 years ago after buying a piece of bare, undeveloped land.  They have slowly created a lot of infrastructure, and run chickens and other animals on their property.  I mention the chickens specifically, because their hens produce more eggs than they can consume each week.  He said if were were interested we could buy their extra eggs.  Well, we love cage free eggs, so I contacted his wife, Dawn, on Friday to do just that.  Due to the many predators in the area, which include coyotes, they cannot let their chickens roam free (pasture raised), or they would be decimated by the local coyote population.

Matt and Dawn live about 2 miles from us, as the crow flies, so we made arrangements to drive over to their place Saturday morning to buy a couple dozen, unwashed eggs.....

....you may recall that back in the early stages of the Wuhan Flu back in early 2020 we were in Wittmann, AZ when there was a similar egg shortage and found a local guy selling pasture raised, unwashed chicken eggs.  Dawn's price for a dozen eggs is $3.50 if you bring your own egg cartons....$4 if you don't....much better than the $10+ we pay in town for eggs right now....if they are in stock!

We were back sometime after 10 am, and getting ready to tackle the big project of the day....burn pile!  We've trimmed a of trees since we arrived back in October, and have tried to burn a lot of what we don't use for firewood, but we still had a 4 large piles north of our Eco-Worthy Dual Axis solar tracker.  We knew we couldn't get it all burned in one day, but we came pretty close.  We worked steadily from around 11 am to near 3 pm before we called it a day, and got a lot done....

We have several stacks of very dry wood we will cut up for the wood burning stove in the house, as well as our 'sunset fire deck'

TLE hauling branches to the burn pile

Letting it burn down

When we started this space (between the red arrows) was completely filled with branches.....

....and this is all that was left at the end of the day.

....working outdoors with TLE, who is a very hard worker,  here at TWW is one of the joys of living here!  We will finish burning the last pile of branches on Sunday, then begin to cut into those three large piles of very dry wood.

I forgot to mention that while I was getting my haircut Wednesday TLE walked over to Home Depot (same parking lot) and bought another piece of artificial turf (5' x 7'), which I finally unrolled Saturday...

....it's the piece in the center of the above picture.  And that was our Saturday.  A lot accomplished, and a connection made for farm fresh eggs!  

Thanks for stopping by!

Drying out....

 7:52 am - Saturday - February 15th - TWW - 32° F, humidity 92%, wind 5 mph out of the northeast.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 52° F.  On this date in 2013 TLE and I were on Marathon Key in the Florida Keys riding our bicycles.....

.....the sunny, cloudless view this morning.....

The rain fell until around 5:30 am Friday morning, and thus began the 'drying out' phase from our winter storm.  The cloud cover was still very thick, and stretched from horizon to horizon.  We ran our Predator 5000 generator for many hours Thursday to maintain our two battery banks, so we were hoping to see some blue sky break through that seemingly impenetrable cloud cover.  Meanwhile the steady hum of the generator could be heard in the background.  Most days now we don't even run the generator first thing in the morning anymore, and our batteries still get to 100%.  It's nice to sit looking out the driver side salon window with no sound, but we're not there yet.  We still need to turn on our three Suburban gas furnaces to transform the Newell interior from a space that is only suitable for hanging meat to one that is hospitable to human life.  It takes about an hour before we can begin turning off one heater at a time, and get back to the 'QUIET' we so enjoy.

After being cooped up inside the Newell for the second time in as many weeks I had to get out and do 'something'.  I decided to use the time to service our two Stihl chainsaws.  While the chains on each are pretty new, and still pretty sharp, a little work with a chain file never hurts anything, plus I needed to work on my chain sharpening skills.  I think I spent the better part of two hours working on the chainsaws before putting things away, and heading back into the warm Newell interior.

I passed the afternoon watching Round 2 of the Genesis Open being held at Torrey Pines (San Diego) this year.  Normally, this tournament would have been held at Riviera Country Club in L.A., but due to the fires in January it had to be moved.  It's nice to have golf back on TV again.  Frankly, I miss playing golf, and I miss putting, but I intentionally left my clubs at LPG&RVR knowing I would not have time this winter to play.  Being able to watch golf alleviates some of the angst.

We're back into a warming trend over the next two weeks where we'll see daytime temps consistently in the 60's, and even into the 70's for a few days.....nice!  I had to hook the Honda E2000i up to the trailer Bluetti AC200P battery for a couple of hours as it was down to 14% after two days of heavy cloud cover.  That's only the second time since I plugged that Bluetti into the trailer that I've had to do that.  I don't foresee that being necessary for the rest of the February based on the forecast.  We did get quite a bit of sun later in the morning, and all of our battery banks arrived back at the desired 100% state of charge.

Thanks for stopping by!

Rain days.....

 7:54 am - Friday - February 14th - TWW - 40° F, humidity 88%, wind 17 mph out of the south by southwest.....partly cloudy skies this morning with a forecast high of 46° F.  On this date in 2015 TLE and I were boondocking off Thousand Trails Road near Cottonwood, AZ.....

....we boondocked near a hot air balloon launch site.  The view this morning....

Looking north Friday morning....

The weather guessers were spot on about Thursday's weather.  It began raining around noon time, and rained all afternoon, all evening, and all night long.  As I write we can see some blue sky, but the forecast for today (Friday) is more rain until early afternoon.  We spent part of the morning putting some of our rolling stock in the garage, and making sure everything was buttoned up around our site, but that was the extent of our outdoor activity.  

The rain was steady, and never very hard, but always present.  The kind of rain you hope for in a very dry place such as where we live.  You certainly don't want torrential.  This kind of rain soaks into the ground where its life giving moisture will remain for weeks, if not months into the future. 

Due to the heavy cloud cover we had our Predator 5000 dual fuel generator running most of the day, mostly to put as much energy into our house batteries as possible.  We managed to get them back to 84%, but that was the high water mark for the day.  On the other hand, our Bluetti AC200MAX battery bank reach 100% by late morning.  Love those lithium iron phosphate batteries!

Around 7 pm TLE and I had to got outside and stow our patio awning due to the freshening wind conditions.  The wind actually blew all night long at 17-20 mph out of the south, so stowing the awning was the smart thing to do.  As I write (around 8:15 am Friday) it is still windy, and should continue to be so until this evening, but for now we are getting some sun on our Eco-Worthy Dual Axis Solar Tracker....in fact, we're getting around 400 watts right now.  Our house batteries went down to 57% overnight....as low as they've been for quite a while.

At any rate, it looks like today (Friday) will be another wet, windy day, so we'll be holed up in the warm, dry confines of the Newell most of the day.  Hoping for a break in the weather early this afternoon!

Thanks for stopping by!

Shopping and coifing....

 7:34 am - Thursday - February 13th - TWW -  37° F, humidity 63%, wind 12 mph out of the south by southeast.....heavy, heavy cloud cover today with a forecast high of 45° F, and rain most of the day (the low is only going to be 40° F).  The view this morning.....

Getting ready to rain this morning....Thursday, February 13th

.....on this date in 2017 TLE and I rode our bicycles 8 miles into Borrego Springs from our boondock site near Rock House Road to have lunch at Red Ocotillo.....

....one of our very favorite eateries in Borrego Springs, or anywhere for that matter.

The last time I had my coif adjusted was January 6th, and I was getting a little shaggy, so a trip to Kingman was in order, not only for the haircut, but to do a relatively big shopping, and get the Expedition washed.  It hasn't been washed since we had the snow storm, and it was really filthy.  I checked in online with Sport Clips for 12 noon, and we left around 9:55 am to make the one hour drive into town.  By the way, the main north/south arterial really, really needs to have some road grader attention.  We're hoping to see them scraping the road soon as it has been nearly 2 months since they last smoothed out that road!

We arrived, without incident, at the local Smith's Grocery Store (Kroger) to do the big shopping around 11 am.  While TLE cruised slowly through the produce section I made my rounds of the store picking up butter, orange juice, V-8, etc. to speed up the process.  Before I retired I NEVER went grocery shopping with TLE, and couldn't find anything on my own, but after 13 years of going shopping with TLE I can find most anything on my own....sometimes I even find things TLE can't find.  By the time we finished, and got through the checkout line it was around 11:45 am, and my appointment at Sport Clips was a mile away at 12 noon. 

We managed to arrive at Sport Clips around 11:55 am, and by 12 noon I was in the chair getting my ears lowered.  I always get the 'MVP' treatment, which includes the haircut, a shampoo whilst reclining in a vibrating recliner, a hot towel on my face, and a shoulder massage....all of that for $25!

I was on my way back to the car by 12:30 pm, and within a few minutes we pulled into the local car wash place....not the DIY kind of car wash place, but the kind where you sit in the car as you go through the car wash.  We got the 'BASIC WASH' for $12, and within 10 minutes we were on our way back to the Smith's fuel station (we didn't have time after we finished shopping) where we topped off the Expedition tank at $2.70/gallon....by and far the best price we've paid for unleaded regular in quite some time.  Once that was done we were on our way home where we again arrived without incident around 2 pm, and that was pretty much our day.  

It appears we will have rain here at TWW on Thursday and Friday, so not sure if conditions will enable us to get anything done outdoors.  It may be a good time to reorganize the trailer interior, or it may be a good time for reading a good book, or two, or maybe both. There is always something to do at TWW!

 Thanks for stopping by!