And now the mud....

 7:45 am - Sunday - January 11th - TWW - 29° F, humidity 38%, cloud cover 5%, wind 14 mph out of the east by northeast......clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 47° F.  The view this morning.....

.....the snow is slowly melting.  On this date in 2013 TLE and I enjoyed another beautiful, but subtle sunset......

....at the Tiki Bar in Cedar Key, FL (Low Key Hideaway Motel and RV Park).

Saturday was the third day with too much snow on the ground, and pretty much ZERO accomplished.  With the temps in the mid 40's it was still not warm enough to melt much snow, however, now the ground is getting muddy.  Before we could walk everywhere at TWW on a layer of snow, so there was not much mud with which to contend, but now the very messy part of a snow storm rears its ugly head.  With that said, we spent most of Saturday indoors reading in the morning, then watching NFL playoff games in the afternoon and evening.

Out by the greenhouse (which is white....lol)

The sun is now rising earlier, and earlier, and today it rose at 7:36 am....it was closer to 8 am just a few weeks ago.  The sunsets are getting later now with today's sunset scheduled for 5:38 pm.  Earlier sunrises means our EcoWorthy dual axis solar tracker tilts earlier, and begins renewing our somewhat depleted 12 volt power to our two battery banks, which is converted into alternating current.  Just a few weeks ago the sun was setting close to 5:10 pm, so the days are slowly getting longer, which means more charging time each day, and less need to run our Predator 5000 dual fuel generator.

The first NFL Wild Card playoff game pitted my L.A. Rams against he Carolina Panthers in South Carolina.  It began as a one sided affair with the Rams jumping out to a 14-0 lead, but then the game began to tighten, and it was Rams 17, and Panthers 14 at half time.  The scoring went back and forth in the 2nd half, and with just over 2 minutes to play the Rams trailed by 3 points, but managed a touchdown to go ahead by 4 points with 55 seconds to play.  Time ran out on the Panthers, and the Rams escaped with a victory.  The evening game between the Packers (visitors) and the Bears (home) was a one sided affair for much of the game with the Packers leading 21-6 at one point, but in the second half the Bears outscored the Packers 26-6 win the game by four points.....31-27.  Both games were great games, especially since both teams I rooted for won, of course.

As I write we are entering our third consecutive day with cloudless skies, and all batteries are in charge mode.  Life continues to be better than good, and we are enjoying ourselves at The Wilson Wilderness for a second winter.  We've settled into a kind of comfortable routine, except when it rains, or snows....otherwise it is pretty comfortable.

Thanks for stopping by!

Life at 5,500'

 7:54 am - Saturday - January 10th - TWW - 20° F, humidity 37%, cloud cover 0%, wind 7 mph out of the east by northeast....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast   high of 44° F.  the view this morning......

....the snow is beginning to melt.  This will be our third day with snow on the ground.

Thursday night got cold quickly.....27° F by 7 pm, and it got down to 19° F before the sun rose Friday morning.  After a below freezing night any melted snow freezes, and the ground becomes more firm making it easy, and less messy to walk around TWW.  While our greenhouse interior got into the high 20's overnight it did not hurt the plants at all.  The reason for that is there is no overnight dew on the plants inside the greenhouse, so there is no frost to damage them.  We're kind of on a learning curve here, horticulturally, and it never occurred to me that below freezing temperatures won't necessarily hurt many plants, unless there is frost on them.  Even TLE's geraniums are doing great....it's the frost that has killed them in the past, not the cold.  Doh!

We had 'wall to wall' sun all day long, however, that was not enough to melt much of the snow as the temp never got above 36° F.  As we edge toward Monday we'll see high temps in the 50's again, and actually reach 62° F on Wednesday and Thursday.  Here's hoping the snow on the ground is gone by then as it is really difficult to do much outdoors when the ground is muddy, and it is really difficult to go in and out of the Newell and not track the mud, and other debris inside.  The result of that is we spend the majority of the day inside, and that is kind of frustrating.  Well, that is life living above 5,500' elevation in the winter.  It could be worse, like the winter we spent at the Grand Canyon when it never got above 17° F for a few weeks, and the wind blew at 25-30 mph all of that time.  Compared to that this is easy.

We spent the day reading, napping, and enjoying the winter wonderland from afar, with occasional forays outdoors just to get outside for a while.  TLE prepared tacos for dinner, and paired them with a Margarita.  I've continually told her for over 54 years that if we had tacos for dinner every night I would never be one bit unhappy.  Of course, that would be kind of boring for her, but not for me....lol!

For our evening entertainment we watched the second semi final NCAA Football playoff game between the Oregon Ducks and the Indiana Hoosiers.  The Ducks turned the ball over three times (1 INT, and 2 fumbles) in the first half resulting in 21 points.  The score at half time was 35-7, and even though they still had another half to play the game was over.  In the second half Indiana blocked a Oregon punt, for another 7 points.  The final score was 56 to 22, and it really wasn't that close. Indiana is playing football at a whole different level than everyone else right now.  Their quarterback (also the Heisman Trophy winner this year) has thrown ONLY 4, or 5 incomplete passes in the last two games, and they have not lost the ball due to a fumble in over 1,100 plays.  So, the Championship Game will be played on January 19th in Florida giving the Hurricanes the 'home field advantage', but I really don't know what kind of an advantage that is when you're opponent is Indiana.  But you never know, do you?  That is why they play the games.

Thanks for stopping by!

Winter Wonderland.....

 7:51 am - Friday - January 9th - TWW - 19° F, humidity 41%, cloud cover 0%, wind 12 mph out of the north....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 37° F.  The view this morning....

....and on this date in 2016 TLE and I were taking a hike with Steve and Linda Dempsey, and Michael Vaccari near Clark Dry Lake bed, which was no longer dry....

.....Steven, who is a world class photographer, took these pictures.  Clark Dry Lake Bed is about 8 miles outside of Borrego Springs, and right along side Rock House Road.

We were expecting snow early Thursday morning, but it didn't arrive until 10:30 am.  Personally I would have been happy if it had not snowed, if you know what I mean.  Snow is cool for a short period of time, but then it becomes an amazing inconvenience.  Nevertheless, it did begin snowing, and snowed on and off most of the day, but by 5 pm it had begun to melt....

Friday morning about 8:15 am.....icicles!

....the only time I went outside was to check on the greenhouse heaters (diesel and catalytic), and refuel the diesel heater.  We left them running all night Wednesday, all day Thursday, and all night Thursday night.....as I write they are still running full blast.  Other than 4, or 5 forays outdoors to refuel the Predator, and diesel heater we remained indoors reading, and napping....I believe that is what sane people do on a snowy day.

We watched the semi final NCAA football playoff game between Miami and Ole Miss, and it was a great game with four lead changes in the fourth quarter.  Miami scored with 18 seconds remaining in regulation to go up by 4 points, and that was the final score, so Miami will play in the National Championship game on January 19th.  The second semi final game will be Friday, January 9th between Indiana and Oregon.....should be, we hope, a good game, too.

Thanks for stopping by!

A little of this, and a little of that.....

 8:03 am - Thursday - January 8th - TWW - 34° F, humidity 84%, cloud cover 89%, wind 13 mph out of the south by southwest.....heavy cloud cover today, snow later this morning with a forecast high of 36° F.  The view this morning......

....and on this date in 2013 TLE and I were enjoying another enchanting Cedar Key, FL sunset at the Tiki Bar.....

.....at Low Key Hideaway, about 200 feet from Sunset Isle RV Park where we were residing at the time.

We ran our Predator 5000 dual fuel generator for about 3 hours Wednesday morning to recharge our batteries as there was NO sun.  I have to say this, and I am not sponsored by Predator, this is the best generator we have ever owned.  I've only had to add oil one time since we bought it, and it has over 600 hours on it.  It starts every time, and just purrs like a kitten on gas, or propane, with nary a complaint.  Being able to start it without leaving bed is so nice.  When we had only the Honda 2000 I had to put on clothes to go out and start it each morning, then get back undressed and into the warm bed to wait for our three Suburban gas furnaces to heat the Newell.  Now I just turn it on, and lay in bed with TLE until its warm enough to justify getting out of bed.  It's the small things in life that make the difference.

Charles and I made another trip to the water station for another 1900 gallons of water to top off the water tower tanks.  It took just over an hour round trip.  As I have mentioned, the water station is about 8 miles from TWW, and 90% of that driving is on primitive dirt roads.

Upon our return I spent time fueling up the Predator for a long run Friday, and also the diesel heater in the greenhouse.  It will pretty much run full time for forty-eight hours as the daily highs on Thursday and Friday will be under 32° F, with overnight lows into the high teens.  It has a one gallon diesel tank, and that will keep it heating for about 16 hours without refueling.  As I sit here composing my latest missive Thursday morning it has been running since 10 pm last night, and will continue to run until sometime Saturday morning.  Additionally, we have the catalytic heater running on low for that same duration.  So far the low temp in greenhouse was 41° F around 3 am this morning, and it is now at 43.5° F. How do I know?  Well, we have this temperature monitoring device with three sensors....#1 is in the greenhouse, #2 is in the cedar shed, and #3 is in the water bay.....

.....which helps us keep track of our critical temperatures....the bottom one is the temperature inside the Newell right now.  Those sensors can transmit up to 300' away....the greenhouse is around 175' away.  When I get up during the night to use the bathroom I can quickly check the status of the greenhouse, and water bay to be sure nothing is freezing.

We had dinner around 4 pm courtesy TLE who made cornbread, meatloaf with Mac 'N Cheese....a perfect winter meal.  It is forecast to begin snowing between 10 and 11 am today (Thursday), and go on for a few hours.  I don't think we'll get enough to stick, and that is a good thing.  Rain is one thing, but snow, and then the ultimate snow melt is a mess for days.

Thanks for stopping by!

The water wagon.....

 7:35 am - Wednesday - January 7th - TWW - 31° F, humidity 80%, cloud cover 77%, wind 2 mph out of the southeast.....cloudy today with a forecast high of 45° F.  The view this morning.....

....tomorrow, January 8th, the high will be 35° F with a low of 18° F, and Friday pretty much the same.  There will probably be some more rain, and also snow in the next few days.

We had not planned to go to Seligman this week, but the growing scarcity of produce made it a necessity, plus our PO Box had received a number of items we ordered from Amazon late last week, so we decided to make a dash into town around 10 am to  do some shopping and retrieve our Amazon orders from the Post Office.  Much to our surprise as we turned from the east/west arterial onto the main north/south arterial we saw that they were scraping it smooth again with a road grader.  The last time it was done was back in mid October, just before we arrived.  Usually they scrape that road every 60 days, but it is just one week shy of 3 months since then.  When the road is smooth, we can reach Route 66 in less than 10 minutes, but when it is washboardy as it has been for a long time now, it takes 10-15 minutes to egress, even with the Explorer.

We reached town around 10:30 am, stopping first at the Route 66 General Store (hardware store, mostly) where we filled up another propane tank, and one of our 5 gallon diesel containers in advance of the very cold weather coming on Thursday and Friday.  We'll probably have to run our diesel heater 24 hours per day for a few days to keep the greenhouse inside temperature at a livable temperature until this cold front passes through the area.  

From there we drove over to the Post Office to retrieve our packages, and while I was about that TLE walked over to Family Dollar to buy a few things.  Our final stop was the Seligman Market to buy produce, and according to TLE they had a great selection on this day.  That is not always the case, but this winter, more often than not, they have had a good selection.

We were home by 12:30 pm, and by 1 pm Charles and Phyllis had arrived for a two day stay.  Once they had unpacked their Ford truck, Charles hooked up the water trailer, and for the first time in 2 months we headed to the water station to pump just under 2,000 gallons of water into the six IBC water totes on the trailer. At TWW we have one 2,500 gallon tank out by the orchard, and two additional 2,500 gallon tanks at the water tower next to the house.  The orchard tank is just about empty, and the water tower tanks have around 1,500 gallons left.  We'll make one more water run Wednesday to top off the tower water tanks, and then we will not have to worry about water for a while again.....

.....it takes 45 minutes to an hour to fill all six IBC totes on the trailer.  When we arrived at the water tower it was 2:15 pm.  There were two people ahead of us with single 300 gallon water tanks to fill, so by the time we filled our six it was just after 3:15 pm, and around 3:40 pm when we got home.

We had dinner around 5 pm, and for the first time in a few weeks I took and 'usie'.....

.....those Houghtaling (Hoteling) girls have great smiles (Houghtaling is their maiden name).

Thanks for stopping by!

Sun showers.....

 8:07 am - Tuesday - January 6th - TWW - 30° F, humidity 67%, cloud cover 57%, wind 5 mph out of the east by southeast.....overcast this morning, partly cloudy later with a forecast high of 50° F.  The view this morning......

.....a little ground fog.  And on this date in 2024 I was enjoying my first soak of the  New Year....

.....at Glamis North Hot Springs.

We received quite a few sun showers of decent duration Monday, and as a result all the batteries at TWW reached 100% charge.  It doesn't take a lot of sun to do that, but certainly more than we've been getting lately.  The weather continues to be cold and damp.  First thing each morning the ground is so wet one might think it had been raining....you would think we are living somewhere in the southeast instead of at 5,500' in Northern Arizona.  I know a dryer environment is just over the horizon, so we will 'just keep on keeping on'.

I spent a few hours outside cleaning up after our two days of painting furring strips in the greenhouse, installed two of the eight new security solar lights I purchased, set up the solar rope lights Phyllis bought for her Newell to keep the local rodent population at bay.  Right now the little solar panels for each of those rope lights are just sitting in a sunny area next to the Newell getting charged, and to see if that area gets enough sun every day to run those lights all night.  I also fixed a solar spot light we purchased a couple of weeks ago....a wire inside the solar panel had come loose, so I resoldered it to its contact, and now it works again.  I'm sure there were other things I did, but they don't come to mind right now...oh wait, I also installed the 2026 license tag for the Newell.....we received it back in September, and the 2025 tag expired in November, after we arrived at TWW, so after 4+ months it is finally on the rear license plate, and we are legal once again....talk about procrastination....lol!

New security light

The repaired spot light

Phyllis' new rope lights....ready to deploy

The afternoon skies were quite beautiful.....

....and with all the clouds we got an interesting sunset.....

....once again, not a lot accomplished, but things are getting crossed off the 'to do' list each and every day.

Thanks for stopping by!

Crystal clear, blue, sunny skies.....NOT!

 8:04 am - Monday - January 5th - TWW - 40° F, humidity 77%, cloud cover 60%, wind 10 mph out of the south by southwest.....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 46° F.  The view this morning.....

....and on this date in 2022 Rich and Marnie Aaron (our managers at Ramona Oaks RV Resort) stopped by our boondock site near Borrego Springs, CA.....

......to visit.  We really need to go back there.

It seems to me that last year I wrote more often than not that we had "crystal clear, blue, sunny skies" here at TWW, but this year it seems like I'm writing "partly cloudy", or "heavily overcast" skies most days.  Is it just me, or do you see it, too?  Well, we had another one of those Sunday, which mostly rendered our outdoor environment cold and damp.  Throw in the persistent breeze we've had the last few days, and it is down right uncomfortable outdoors right now.  It was barely warm enough in the greenhouse to apply the second coat of paint to the last 5 furring strips.  I had to wait about 3 hours in between coats of paint for the paint to dry enough.

For the first time in a few days the batteries for the house here returned to nearly 100% charge (96%).  The house has no backup power, such as a generator, so they are entirely dependent upon the sun to recharge their batteries.  With the aid of our Predator 5000 dual fuel generator we are able to return both the Bluetti power bank (three 2,200 watt hour batteries), and our Cloud Energy house batteries to 100% every day without fail. Sometimes, like recently we have to run the Predator 2-3 hours to do so, but most often we only run it about an hour in the morning, and 30 minutes before we go to bed.  Once the sun begins to rise earlier, and set later we'll run it even less.

We've been running the diesel heater in the greenhouse 4-5 hours per night, and it is keeping the interior over 40° F, sometimes even higher, and the result is healthy, thriving plants.  Right now we're growing onions, cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, and peppers, and soon we'll have more.  TLE is spending more and more time out there tending to the garden she and Phyllis are growing.

On the water pump front there are no new leaks, and the repairs I made a couple of weeks ago are holding quite well, so we have a continuous supply of pressurized water at our disposal 24/7 now.  Before we had to turn off the pump when not using the water from the water tower, to reduce water loss, but now we don't have to do anything except turn on the faucet, or flush the toilets.

Sunday was also the final weekend of regular season NFL football, and there were some meaningful games.  The Denver Broncos (finished the season at 14-3) secured a first round bye by defeating the L.A. Chargers 19-3....another defensive gem with a lot of field goals. These Broncos remind me of the Peyton Manning led Broncos that won the Super Bowl in 2016.  Not a lot of offense, but just enough, and an amazing defense.  The Rams also won, along with the Pittsburgh Steelers led by Aaron Rogers, who toppled the Ravens to secure a playoff spot.  The playoffs begin January 10th, which also happens to be the birthday of our daughter Sharon, and the anniversary of my father's passing.

Well, it looks like we're going to have a mostly sunny day today....at least for now.  Time to get outside and enjoy the sunny weather....thanks for stopping by!