Town interval.....

 7:11 am - Saturday - March 14th - TWW - 42° F, humidity 17%, cloud cover 41%, wind 4 mph out of the south by southeast.....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 73° F.  The view this morning.....

....and on this date in 2012 TLE and I had just disembarked from the Galveston Free Ferry on the Bolivar Peninsula....

....we were on our way to Louisiana....about 6 weeks into our nomadic life.

Charles and Phyllis headed back to Phoenix around 8 am, and shortly thereafter TLE and I took our 15th 1 mile out and back walk of the winter.....

....as has been the case lately, we averaged 2.9 mph.

We hadn't been to town in about 9 days so around 10 am we headed into town to pick up our mail, so some shopping, and get some Gelato at Highway Hot Dog.....

A scoop each of Dark Chocolate and Cookies and Cream for moi, and for TLE a scoop each of Apple Pie & Caramel

....we made a stop at the General Store to buy some hardware items, such as some perforated angle steel to mount the 100 watt solar panel for the 4Patriots solar charger we're using in the garage to power the chest freezer.  We mounted it on the back of the garage about 6 feet up so it can get sun all day long.  It was sitting on the ground next to the garage, and only getting sun a few hours a day.  Charles has ordered 2 more of these panels, which should be enough to keep the battery topped off while powering the freezer....we'll see.....

....I screwed a 2 x 4 to the garage, and then added the perforated angle steel on top of that so we could hang the solar panel....it worked better than I had expected.

While in town we also filled up two 5 gallon gas cans as we were down to one 5 gallon can.  We've now got 15 gallons of unleaded regular and 15 gallons of diesel on hand, but I doubt we will significantly dent those supplies the rest of the winter.

Our favorite coffee shop in town, The Commodore House, reopened on the 11th after being shut for a couple of months in the off season, so we made a stop there for a cup of coffee to enjoy on the way home, where we arrived around 12:30 pm....

....once home I began work on the aforementioned solar panel hanging project.  By the time I finished it was close to 3 pm.   For the first time in a while I wore shorts and a t-shirt all afternoon, and for the first time in weeks we did not need to run any of our heaters in the evening.  We decided to take a night off from the 'sunset fire deck', but I'm sure we'll be back out there Saturday evening.

Thanks for stopping by!

The committee of four....

 7:15 am - Friday - March 13th - TWW - 38° F, humidity 19%, cloud cover 5%, wind 3 mph out of the east.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 74° F.  The view this morning....

.....and on this date in 2025 this was the view first thing in the morning....

....I forgot how late we had snow last winter....what a difference a year makes!

Before engaging in any outdoor work TLE and I took our 1 mile out and back walk averaging 2.9 mph once again....

.....can't seem to break that 3 mph barrier...lol.  Now onto regularly scheduled activities.

You just knew this would be the story for Thursday.  I'm sure you did.  We finally got to finish organizing the garage.  Thanks to Charles' efforts Wednesday (he assembled the new shelving unit) we got to begin our day (after our walk) moving the new shelving unit into place, instead of building it...saved about an hour or more.  It took a committee of four to get it all done, and I think we adjusted the shelving in all three shelving units a dozen times before we settled on the correct spacing between shelves in order to put everything on them which needed to be off the ground, and this is what is looked like after 3 hours...

Now....

....before....

.....we were able to hookup the solar generator battery to the chest freezer....

....by the time we finished it was after 1 pm, and time for a break, so TLE and I sat on the 'lido deck' for a while before changing into cooler, non working clothes (shorts, t-shirts, flip flops).  I puttered around in the trailer for while with the Tournament Players Championship (golf) playing in the background.

We had dinner at the usual time, 4 pm, in the house.  TLE and Phyllis had prepared cheese melt sandwiches, a spinach salad, a carrot salad, and some more of Charles' delicious potato salad.....

....for a change there was not a breath of wind when we headed out to the 'sunset fire deck', so it was perfect.....

Just after sunset the various solar lights we've installed began to come on

.....thanks for stopping by!

Teaming up to get things done....

 7:23 am - Thursday - March 12th - TWW - 35° F, humidity 21%, cloud cover ZERO %, wind 11 mph out of the north by northwest.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 71° F.  The view this morning.....

....and on this date in 2012 TLE and I had just arrived at Galveston Island, TX....

....snagged the last spot at Bayside RV Park during Spring Break....soooo humid there!

Late last summer we had a big windstorm here at TWW, and two of the 16 solar panels on the roof of the CONEX blew over causing damage to one of them....

The damaged panel

....the  two panels were attached to the roof via a wood structure composed of 2 x 6's and 2 x 4's, which had rotted over the years, and gave way during the windstorm out of the north.  The panels are tilted to face south, so the north wind caught the back of them, and ripped them off the roof.  Charles' handyman, Matt, came up to the property and turned them over shortly thereafter so at least they would be facing the sun, but they had not been set back in place until Wednesday.

At dinner Tuesday night TLE asked Charles what he wanted to do Wednesday to which he answered "Fix the solar panels on the CONEX", so that is what we did Wednesday morning....

In this picture we had already removed the damaged panel, and dragged the remaining one, and its metal support structure to the side so we could remove all the damaged wood

Where the 2 x 6 blocks of wood were fastened to the roof....there were 6 in all

In this picture we have replaced the 2 x 6's, and attached to them two 8 foot 2 x 4's (redwood)

The aluminum framework is reassembled and ready to be attached to the 2 x 4's

The aluminum framework is reattached to the wood platform, awaiting a replacement 175 watt solar panel

....from beginning to end it took us about 3 hours to demo the old wood platform (what was left of it), install the new one, and then reattach the aluminum frame with the remaining solar panel.  Charles will order a new 175 watt panel to replace the damaged one.  As you can see in the last picture, the wooden platform for the two solar panels to the left needs replacement also, and we will do that Thursday.  Thankfully, the rear portion of the wooden platform is still intact, and not rotten.

While Charles and I were on the roof the girls moved three more piles of rocks to our rock pile on the eastern edge of the property, and also moved a large pile of branches we cut off the juniper trees by the diesel fuel tank we will soon be installing....

The pile of cut branches (from last winter) was so large you could not see the gravity diesel fuel tank sitting there

Right through there is where the 3 piles of rocks were...now we can walk through there without tripping over rocks

.....Charles bought the diesel fuel tank last winter, but we haven't had time to set it up, however, we will be doing so in the near future.  I think it is about 180-200 gallons.

By the time we cleaned up, and put away our tools it was around 12:30 pm, and time for a lunch snack, which we took inside the house as the afternoon winds had arrived (15 mph +).  After our snack I headed home to take a nap...the wind, and sun took a toll on moi.  Charles, on the other hand, still had lots of energy, and wanted something to do so he headed out to the garage to assemble the new shelving unit he and Phyllis had delivered to us on Tuesday.....

....I didn't know he was doing that, so when I went out to the garage around 3 pm he was almost done.....what a nice surprise!  Now all we have to do is move it into position, and begin moving things onto the shelves!

We had a nice dinner of corned beef, cabbage with carrots and potatoes, and its not even St. Patty's day yet!  Around 6 pm we convened out at the 'sunset fire deck' to watch the sun heading downhill to the western horizon....

....this is the afterglow around 7 pm (sun sets at 6:38 pm now).  We were out there until almost 7:30 pm watching the stars make another appearance, and all of our security lights responding to the impending darkness.

Thanks for stopping by!

Moving water.....

 7:18 am - Wednesday - March 11th - TWW - 34° F, humidity 33%, cloud cover 4%, wind 3 mph out of the north by northwest.....mostly sunny today with a forecast high of 67° F.  The view this morning....

....and on this date in 2012 TLE and I had been on the road for almost 6 weeks.  We had been moving slowly eastward from South Padre Island, along the then Gulf of Mexico (now Gulf of America) towards Galveston, TX....

....it was getting near dusk when we found a small RV park located right on the Gulf at which to spend the night.  Los Palacios was the name of the little town.  It is, apparently, or was then, the headquarters of the shrimp fleet.

Before we did any work TLE and I took another 1 mile out and back walk covering the mile in just over 20 minutes....

....averaging 2.9 mph.  We took the walk around 9:30 am again, which is the perfect time....it's just getting warm enough by then to walk without more than a long sleeve shirt.

TLE set the agenda for Tuesday's outdoor activities, also known as work.  She said we should begin transferring water from the three IBC totes at the house over to the ones at the greenhouse.  We had to move the SeaFlo 12 volt water pump from the IBC tote at the greenhouse, from which we water the potatoes, to the tote on the southeast corner of the house to begin moving that water to the tote on the southwest corner of the house, which is the closest tote to the greenhouse.  Once we had moved most of the water from the southeast corner to the southwest corner tote we began transferring water from the tote at the northeast corner to the southeast corner....

The water pump

Northeast corner IBC tote almost empty now...was over 1/2 full

Water being transferred from the southeast corner tote to the tote on the southwest corner of the house

Southwest corner tote almost full now

.....once the southwest corner tote is full we will then pump it over to the greenhouse totes.

While I was moving water TLE used the Yamaha Rhino to move some old wire fencing we had rolled up a long time ago into the barn for storage, and then did  some tree trimming with her handheld chainsaw.  I had to move the battery we use to power the SeaFlo pump back to the solar room to be recharged before I finished filling the southwest corner tote, so we'll finish that process Wednesday, or Thursday.

Charles and Phyllis arrived around 1:15 pm with 7 packages of things we had ordered from Amazon.  Three of the packages were retrieved from our PO Box in Seligman by them on their way out to TWW.  We had dinner around 4 pm.....

....we all look pretty much the same as the last 'usie', just a little older...lol.

Thanks for stopping by!