Good guess!

Tuesday was born with ominous weather reports bouncing all over the TV and Internet.....FLASH FLOOD WARNINGS, FLOODING WARNINGS, TORRENTIAL RAIN WARNINGS, etc.  It had rained on and off most of the night and by dawn there were puddles of water scattered here and there across the dry desert playa in which we find ourselves......

.....some reports warned of 1/2" of rain per hour, and that this was just the first of several Pacific storms rolling in courtesy of El Nino.  Well, here was our dilemma....we were supposed to leave our encampment around 1000 hours for our dental appointment in Los Algodones at 1330 hours.  Between here and I-8 there are FLASH FLOOD zones too numerous to count......we weren't so much concerned with getting to Los Algodones, but getting back......we would be arriving back home near sunset, but with the heavy cloud cover it would be dark well before the official sunset time.  There was no way to know whether any of those FLASH FLOOD zones might be flooded, or suffering from the aftermath of a FLASH FLOOD, so we decided to do the wise thing......don't drive if you don't have to.......so we called our dentist who was very understanding and rescheduled.

I ran the 7.5 kilowatt propane generator for about 2 hours until there was enough ambient light to overcome our basic draw of 6 amps an hour, and then turned it off.  During that time we had the TV on to glean all the weather information we could before making our decision to abort our drive south.  We had gotten down to 83% on our batteries overnight, and by the time I turned off the generator we were back to 90%.  About an hour later when the skies darkened significantly I turned on the small Honda 1000 watt generator for a couple of hours and got us up to 93%, then shut her down again and lived off our batteries most of the rest of the day.

TLE had frozen some broccoli left overs from Thanksgiving and decided this was the day to thaw them out and make cream of broccoli soup with extra sharp white cheddar for lunch......and what a perfect rainy day lunch it made....it was so thick you could stand a cracker on end.....in my shot the cracker had just sunk below the surface.....:-)

We spent the rest of the day napping, reading and just enjoying the sound of rain on our aluminum roof secure in the knowledge that while it was desperately cold and wet outside we would continue to be warm, cozy and dry inside our aluminum cocoon. 

The 'soporific' sound of rain on the aluminum roof

About mid afternoon we got a group message from Linda and Steve inviting us over for dinner at 1630.  Linda made her famous Marcella Hazan's butter sauce over fusilli pasta , and Michael brought a tossed salad.  We sat talking about everything under the sun, sipping adult beverages, and ultimately partaking of the dinner fare.  It is one of the delights of spending time with interesting people who happen to be good friends.   There is never a break in the conversation, and before you know it several hours have delightfully melted away.  Around 1900 hours we bid our adieus and headed for our respective coaches for the night.

After I turned on the Honda 1000 watt generator TLE and I settled in to watch a couple of NCIS's and hit the sack around 2200 to the sound of still falling rain......our batteries were at 94%.......it was a wonderful way to end a very relaxing day.....it that had only been the real end to our day.....around 0400 this morning (Wednesday) the wind came up out of the northwest and began flapping our still deployed awnings......after listening to the noise for about 10 minutes I roused TLE to help me stow the main awning......we have been doing this for years now and can do it in just a couple of minutes.....it is always best do it before the wind becomes too brisk, plus it means I will be able to go back to sleep not worrying about the awning being destroyed by a big wind gust.  Surprisingly the wind had almost a balmy quality to it.  We were back in bed sawing off a few more z's within a few minutes.

By the bye......the broadband out here on Rockhouse Road rocks!  2-3 bars of LTE all the time!

Thanks for stopping by!