A short work day......

 7:41 am - Thursday - March 6th - TWW - 38° F, humidity 85%, wind 20 mph out of the southwest......heavy cloud cover with snow and rain this morning, and a forecast high of 43° F. The view this morning.....

.....this snow was not expected.  Rain was expected....lol!

We knew a storm was rolling in Thursday so we got to work early.  I finished drilling three more holes in which to drive rebar in the newest railroad tie planter we put together the other day, and then the ladies spent the early afternoon filling each of them with top soil in preparation for planting in the very near future, but before we do that we need to install the new 6 foot tall fencing around the greenhouse and planters to keep out the unwanted animals which may want to harvest our crops before we are able to do so.....

You may notice that the second Ferrell Gas propane tank has

 been picked up, finally, by Ferrell Gas

....we headed to the water station late morning to refill the six IBC water totes on our water trailer....the top tank, which feeds the house directly was nearly empty, and were back at TWW by 12:15 pm.  The bottom tank which TLE and I use still has 1,900 gallons of water in it, so we're good for the near future.

I closed up the 'carport' ends I opened the other day, started and ran the Jeep for a while, then the 1969 Chevrolet C50 dump bed truck.  Both started easily....nothing like OLD technology!  Our work day was over by 2 pm as the winds were rising, and the temperature was dropping quickly.  By 4 pm we were sitting down to dinner in the house, and the end of another TWW day came to an end.

As I write, the snowfall (Thursday morning) has intensified.....

Thanks for stopping by!

On the 'receiving' end.....

7:17 am - Wednesday - March 5th - TWW - 34° F, humidity 51%, wind 8 mph out of the southeast......mostly clear, blue skies this morning with increasing cloudiness this afternoon, and rain overnight, and a forecast high of 60° F.  On this date in 2021 TLE and I were spending a few days in Santa Barbara, CA at the Elks Lodge (#613)....

 ....on our way back to Seal Rock, OR where we would remain until October.  We had taken a one month hiatus during our 1 year commitment to get our alternator repaired, and make a few other upgrades to our beloved 1982 Newell Classic diesel pusher.

As promised by the weather guessers we had crystal clear, blue, sunny skies Tuesday, and NO wind....a perfect day to get a few things done around TWW before the arrival of Charles and Phyllis for a brief two day stay.  They're coming early this week as we'll have rain Wednesday night through Thursday morning, meaning there will not be much work being done.

I spent part of the morning filling in the holes Charles and I dug to find the path of the 3" septic line, and then turned my attention to filling on the actual hole we dug when we finally found the line....lol!  Before doing so I fixed a leak at the new 'T' I installed, then had TLE flush the two toilets inside the house to send a rush of water down the line to the septic tank to see if I had successfully fixed the leak, and the answer was a resounding 'YES'!.....

.....meanwhile TLE was up on a ladder spraying water proofing on our patio awning.  After putting the septic project to bed I turned my attention to figuring out how to roll up the 'doors' on the new carport we setup a week ago with Charles and Phyllis.  I finally decided to use a long bungee fed through a 'hook' at the peak on each end of the carport,  then roll up the fabric, finally securing it in a 'open' position with the bungee....

Maybe that's what that 'hook' was for.....hmmmm?

....it actually worked better than I had expected.  I then spent about an hour trying to tack down the sides of the carport fabric to the ground with bungees and stakes so it will be more secure when we get those winds out of the southeast.

It was a very good 'sun' day, and all of our battery banks achieved 100% status early in the day, and I'm happy to report that those ceramic heating elements I had to mess with at 2 am Tuesday morning did their job and kept the water bay above freezing without consuming too much alternating current (120 VAC).

Charles and Phyllis arrived just before 4 pm with my new receiver hitch for the 1969 Chevrolet C-50.....

This a 2" receiver mounted to a 5/6ths inch steel plate....rated at 20,000 lbs.

....a new electric blanket for our bed (the old one bit the dust a few days ago), as well as 100 feet of welded fencing (6' high) for the greenhouse to keep out the varmints, and by 4:30 pm we were enjoying some snacks in advance of the President's address to a joint session of Congress......

....the girls decided hors d'Oeuvres would in order since the Wilsons arrived so late in the day, and they were correct, as usual.  There was something for everyone.  We spent over an hour talking, munching and sipping vino as is our custom.

Our sojourn here at TWW is getting short with only 5-6 weeks remaining, and soon we'll be getting ready to head back north to our beloved Likely Place Golf and RV Resort.

Thanks for stopping by!

A flurry of activity......

 7:56 am - Tuesday - March 4th - TWW - 35° F, humidity 63%, wind 1 mph out of the east by southeast....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 58° F.  On this date in 2022 TLE and I were boondocking at our favorite Anza Borrego Desert site.....

.....and I wrote this: "Sometimes the beauty of the Anza Borrego Desert overwhelms my senses. I find myself just staring at the 360° view, and wondering why I am so blessed to live this nomadic life. My former workaday life seems so far away.....it's almost as if that life was someone else's life. Then I realize it was someone else's.....I'm no longer that person." Sometimes I surprise myself with occasional bursts of eloquence.....lol.

We knew we had several packages awaiting retrieval in Seligman, and that after 12 pm it was going to be cold, and blustery with a chance of snow, and/or rain, so I took care of a few things left over from the hardline sewer installation, and then headed into town around 11:30 am to get our packages and mail.

I don't think I've mentioned it yet, but we are no longer having to take our wash into town to the laundromat. Now that we have consistent water pressure in the house we've been using the washer and dryer to do our laundry, and is it every fast! Meanwhile, we don't lose a couple hours of our time here at TWW. With no need to do laundry, we made the round trip in just over an hour. I'm glad I got what those final tasks on the sewer hardline completed, as there is no way I would have wanted to be outside doing that work on Monday afternoon.....

.....we didn't get any rain Monday, but we got snow flurries all afternoon, which stuck to a few things, but not to the ground. It was a very good day to be inside. Thankfully, we had just enough sun in the morning to get all of our batteries back to 100%, and Tuesday we will have lots of sunshine, and no wind, so we've got that going for us, too.

With cold temps, wind and snow flurries it was an ideal day to be inside the warm confines of the Newell catching up on many of the YouTube channels I follow, and also a good time for a couple of naps. The afternoon seemed to pass by quickly, and soon darkness enveloped TWW once again.

Thanks for stopping by!

Some jobs are just too gross......

 6:55 am - Monday - March 3rd - TWW - 32° F, humidity 81%, wind 10 mph out of the south by southwest.....cloudy today with a forecast high of 45° F.  On this date in 2013 TLE and I were at Monk's Vineyard, a funky thrift/wine shop in St. Augustine, FL.....

.....which I do not believe is in business anymore, but was a very cool, funky place.  The view this morning.....

As Sunday dawned, a day which I have been dreading, I had just one goal, just one thing that needed to be accomplished.  Nothing could get in its way.  It had to be finished, once and for all.  I was not looking forward to this job one single bit.  I was sure it would be an all day job, and  had been second guessing myself ever since I conceived, and began to execute the task a week and a half ago.  Not much scares me anymore, but the thought of cutting into an active septic line is not one of those things to which one looks forward to doing with any amount joy.  All that aside, I was outdoors around 9 am getting ready to finish digging out the sewer line so I could cut it, and insert a black 3" ASB sewer 'T'.  Within an hour I had finished clearing dirt away, and had made the two cuts.  Next I inserted the 'T', then applied the black ASB glue. Much to my surprise, and delight, there was just a little clear water coming out of the uphill portion of the ASB septic line....it smelled kind of like our gray water tank.....

.....there she is....all installed, and glued.  That wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be.  

I wasn't planning on digging a ditch to bury the line between the coach and the newly added cleanout, but I wanted to be sure the grade between the Newell and the new cleanout was all 'downhill', so I stretched out an orange string line between to pieces of rebar, and began to use my yard long contractor's level to check the grade, digging where needed to keep the line moving in a continuous downhill grade....

....once that was done I began to lay out the 10' sections of 3" diameter ABS pipe, then glued them together using 3" couplings.  Soon it was time to connect the Newell end of the pipe to it sewer connection.....

.....which I did using a 3" flexible rubber coupling.   Then it was time to connect the septic line end to the cleanout, which I did using one of my clear Rhino Flex elbows....

.....and with that I was done, and it wasn't even noon time yet....wait, what?  It only took 3 hours, not 8?  LOL!  We'll let the ABS glue cure overnight, and then we'll complete our first black tank dump using the new hardline.  

Below is a picture of the former cleanout (the left side of the picture) to which we have been macerating for a few months now.  It is all uphill from our new location (it was downhill from our original location here at TWW), so I chose the direction (right side of picture) to the now exposed septic line that would give us the best chance of a downhill flow.....see the picture below......if you click on the picture you can enlarge it enough to read the text I've inserted........

....as it turned out I only had to make a few grade adjustments to maintain the downhill grade all the way to the new cleanout.  It took 4.5 lengths of 10' ABS pipe to reach the cleanout....I was thinking it would be closer to 60', which is how far it was to the old cleanout.  When we return next Fall we'll take the time to dig a trench, and bury the ABS line, but that is for another day.  Digging a 45' trench through the caliche rock, which permeates this part of Arizona, would take a week of hand digging, or perhaps we'll rent a trencher from Home Depot....we'll see.  For now, we can now dump the old fashion way again, and that was the goal.

To round out the day TLE and I refilled our fresh water tank from our IBC water tote, whilst simultaneously refilling the same IBC water tote from the water tower.  By 2 pm we were done, and it was getting quite windy (gusts to 30 mph), so I changed clothes, and sat down to watch round four of the current PGA tour event, and I'm sure there were one, or two naps thrown in for good measure.

Thanks for stopping by!

Scraping by.....

 7:29 am - Sunday - March 2nd - TWW - 39° F, humidity 33%, wind 13 mph out of the south by southeast.....clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 60° F.  On this date in 2020 TLE and I had just arrived at the Quechan Casino in Winterhaven, CA....right across the border from Los Algodones, Mexico, and my dental appointment the next day.....just after parking this storm arrived.....

.....it rained torrentially for about 2 hours, then the skies cleared just before sunset, and this was the aftermath.

As you will recall TLE and I began to work on preparing the green house wood frame for painting, but were interrupted by two days of driving....lol.  While we were gone Friday Charles and Phyllis continued the work, so Saturday was our first day working together on the green house rehabilitation project.  We basically gang tackled the final scraping and nail removal, and by the end of the day she was 99% ready for paint.....

....in all we worked from around 9 am to 2:30 pm getting a lot done.  Pretty much all that remains is to blow dust and paint scrapings off the wood, and then commence painting.  Charles and Phyllis brought the 20 new polycarbonate clear corrugated panels with them on Thursday, so once the wood is painted, we can begin to install the new roof.

TLE got out two top sirloin steaks for me to grill around 3:30 pm.  It was a little breezy, but the wind was out of the southeast, so the trailer pretty much blocked the wind in the Sea-B-Que area.  We all like our steaks medium rare so it was pretty easy.  We had a long, leisurely dinner filled with good food, wine and conversation.....

....we were all tired after a long day of scraping paint, but after dinner we decided to watch a movie called "In the land of Saints and Sinners" (2023, 4.5 stars in IMDB) with Liam Neeson.....it turned out to be a very well done, interesting movie!  By the time we finished the movie it was going on 7 pm, so we bid our adieus and headed home where TLE and I watched the first three episodes of season 3 of Reacher (Prime Video).  Just as with the first two seasons you are immediately drawn into the plot, and captivated.

And thus comes to the end of another The Wilson Wilderness day....thanks for stopping by!

Driving Miss Elaine......

 6:57 am - Saturday - March 1st - TWW - 43° F, humidity 29%, wind 9 mph out of the east by southeast.....mostly clear skies this morning with clouds moving in this afternoon, and a forecast high of 68° F.  On this date in 2013 TLE and I were in St. Augustine, FL having lunch at A1A Ale Works.....

.....regrettably, they closed in May of 2024....a really nice restaurant!  They had a soup called 'Ale and Cheese Soup' which was that for which one might die, so to speak.

For the second day in succession we left TWW for another long drive, and by the time we finished we would have covered over 500 miles of driving the last two days.  It's been a year since I was seen by a dermatologist, and the one I've been going to (Dr. Jou) since 2019 is way down in Poway, CA (San Diego....417 miles away now....that's 13 hours of driving round trip), so it was time to get one closer to home.  Since we'll be returning to TWW each winter for the foreseeable future, I found a new one in Flagstaff, which is only 90 minutes from TWW.  My appointment was for 2:15 pm, but we also needed to pickup my freshly sharpened Stihl chainsaw chains in Prescott, we left TWW around 9:45 am to make the slightly less than 2 hour drive to Abe's Saw, arriving there without incident around 11:45 am.  

The drive from Prescott to Flagstaff takes around one hour 45 minutes, and once again we arrived there around 1:30 pm......45 minutes before my appointment.  We made a quick stop at Home Depot to buy a few items for our 'hardline' sewer project, and still made it to Northern Arizona Dermatology by 2 pm.....so far the day is going just like we planned it!

Of course, you know, when you have an afternoon appointment at any doctor's office the one the thing you most assuredly know is that you will not be called into the small room on time, and this time was no different.  I think my name was finally called around 2:35 pm.  Ryan, a PA (physicians assistant), performed the full body examination, and true to form there were a couple of areas of concern....one on my back, and one under my left armpit.  Biopsies were taken, and I was dressed, and out the door tad after 3 pm, which is kind of what we had thought would be our exit time when planning our day. After a quick stop at the local Fry's Supermarket to get Frappuccinos (there is a Starbucks inside), and fill the gas tank of the Expedition, we were on our way back to Home Depot, and then on our way home shortly thereafter.

Naturally, any home project requires at least two trips to Home Depot, and this current project is no different.  I forgot a couple of things in my haste to get in and out of Home Depot quickly, and had to return there before heading home.  Thankfully, the Home Depot is on the way out of town to I-40, so there was no back tracking.  I got what I needed, and we were on the Interstate by 3:50 pm, arriving back at TWW at exactly 5:20 pm.....90 minutes exactly!

Phyllis and Charles had held dinner until we got home, so we quickly unloaded the car, and headed indoors for Creamed Eggs and toast.  I haven't had creamed eggs for years, and they were as good as I remembered!  

While we were gone Charles and Phyllis kept up the work on the greenhouse getting the wood framing ready for painting.  There are a lot of nails to remove, and old paint to scrape, but we're getting close to painting time now.  We already have the new polycarbonate roofing (twenty 26" x 8' pieces), so once it is painted we can install the new roof, then the water catchment system.  Things are moving fast.

As you know, we live about 6-7 miles off US-66 (Route 66....America's Mother Road), and back in its heyday Burma Shave had signs posted along the route which kept weary travelers entertained.  In the section of Route 66 between Seligman and where we live they have recreated these signs, so I had TLE take a video of one section of the signs a few days ago, then then slowed it down to 1/4 speed so you can read them.....

....there are probably 8 sets of these signs with interesting, and often humorous sayings....enjoy!

Thanks for stopping by!

Prescott days.....

7:25 am - Friday - February 28th - TWW - 42° F, humidity 28%, wind 9 mph out of the east.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 69° F.  On this date in 2013 TLE and I were in St. Augustine, FL at a local campground dry camping.....

 .....they were out of full hookup sites, so we decided to dry camp.

A week, or so ago TLE broke her pair of trifocals, and need to get them repaired, or replaced, so a trip to COSTCO was in order (that's where she got the original pair) Thursday.  We also had plans to meet Charles and Phyllis for lunch in Prescott on their way up to TWW.  In order to make all the stops we had planned we left around 8 am to make the slightly less than 2 hour drive.  It was very windy along the I-40 corridor from the northeast, so we were steering into the wind all the way to Ashfork where we exited I-40 for 89 southbound to Prescott.

We arrived at Abe's Saw just before 10 am, and I dropped off 3 chainsaw chains for sharpening.  My sharpening skills are not there yet, and Abe's only charges $7/chain.....way cheaper than buying new ones at $43 each.  Right across the street from Abe's is a Fry's Supermarket (Kroger), and that is where we headed next to do a big shopping....the pantry cupboard is getting bare.

Next up was the COSTCO fuel station where we took on 15 gallons of fuel, then into the store around 11 am where TLE headed directly to the Optometrist department to get her trifocals repaired, or replaced.  While she was so engaged I went around the store picking up items she wanted.  By the time I returned she was wearing her 'new' glasses.  COSTCO was able to find a frame in their stock which matched the shape of her lenses, so it was just a matter of popping her lens into the new frames....

.....there is a restaurant in Old Town Prescott (Barley Hound Gastro Pub) we have wanted to try for some time, but they were always closed when we were there (they're open Wednesday through Sunday), and they were open Thursday so that is where we met Charles and Phyllis for lunch.....

......they had arrived just before we did, and it was just 11:55 am, so we headed inside and got a table.  What a great choice for lunch!  I had their Chicken Caesar Salad, and TLE their 'Duck Burger' with duck fat fries.....very, very good!  We both had a pint of their Oatmeal Milk Stout.  Charles and Phyllis split their 'Fish and Chips'.  The Barley Hound Gastro Pub gets a 4 star rating on 689 reviews.  We were finished by 1 pm, and making our way back to TWW where we all arrived without incident around 2:50 pm.

Thanks for stopping by!