Monocular....

Friday was the big moving day......the day we would move south about 100 miles to the shores of Mono Lake for our first boondocking gig since last April.  The temperature forecasts were not optimistic......Friday and Saturday would be sunshinny days with no wind, but then Sunday the weather would begin to deteriorate once again, nevertheless the temperatures were projected for the high 40's, to high 50's over those two days with lows ranging from 26 to 30......okay, not too warm, but manageable.  In our minds we committed for two days with the plan to evacuate sometime Sunday afternoon down to Bishop to avoid the forecast snow for Sunday night/Monday morning.

The temperature in Carson City at 0600, when I woke up, was about 21 degrees.....not a problem with electric heaters blazing away......but, that was 5, or 6 degrees lower than the forecast.....hmmmmm.....that's not a good sign.  We were ready to set sail by 0930, so I cranked up the DD, waited for the air ride system to return to 'ride height', and then moved about 300 yards over to the propane station.  We were down to less than half a tank, and normally I would not worry about filling up for another month, or two, but we're going to be boondocking a lot the next few weeks, which probably means running the gas heaters a lot based on the forecasts, as well as running the fridge off propane, occasional use of the propane 7.5 kw generator, and the normal operation of our water heater which is gas only.  I figured we'd take about 30 gallons and I was close....the final total....29.5.

We merged on to US 395 southbound at just 0958.....our Delorme mapping program gave us an ETA at Lee Vining of 1209 hours.  There are 3 passes between us and Lee Vining......Simee Dimeh (5,987'), Devil's Gate (7,519') and Conway (8,143'), and the DD handled them with ease once again.  We made our obligatory stop.....the only stop of the day......at the Vista Point just below Conway Summit......there is a lot of snow on those peaks in the distance.

We arrived at our boondock site just after 1220 to find it empty as we had hoped.....the odds it would be empty considering the time of year and the recent temperatures were quite good, and we have it all to ourselves.  It took a little bit for us to maneuver around in the site to get a mostly level spot, and to orient ourselves so our solar panels would get maximum sun all day long.  We ended up with the front of the coast facing southeast, which means the front will get the sunshine in the morning......considering how cold it will get here at night I think that's a good idea.

By the time we had finished maneuvering, and setting up it was after 1400.......most of the time was spent with me on the roof tilting 3 of the four solar panels .....I snapped the next picture quite by accident.......

Me and my shadow....

The 'pano' I was trying to take when I snapped the shadow picture

We can only tilt three of the panels at one time now that two of them are side by side (see rear of coach roof).....if I tilt both of them then the one on the left will cast a shadow on the one to the right of it.  Before I tilted the panels I was getting 8.1 amps of solar power input to the batteries, and after I tilted them it went up to almost 14 amps.

At 1500 hours it was just 43 degrees, and that was the high for the day......several degrees lower than the forecast.....sitting just on the eastern edge of the Sierra Nevada peaks we lose the sun much earlier.....about 1600 this day......so, with a sunrise about 0630 and loss of sun by 1600 we only have 7.5 hours of sunlight, and of that only about 4.5 of maximum sun on the tilted panels......not a long charging day.  By the time we set up we only had 2 good hours of solar generation left for the day.

Our site is in a perfect spot to view virtually the entire lake.....the paved road takes a 'nose dive' just past where we turned off to enter the site, as you can see.......

.....evidence of how cold it has been here, and how cold it stays during the day is seen below....there is still snow on the ground 10 feet from our coach......

We spent the afternoon inside staying warm, and reading........we watched the current episode of 'Amazing Race'  and were in bed by 2130.....it's going to be a cold one!

Thanks for stopping by!