Housebound, day 3.....

 8:44 am - Friday - February 20th - TWW - 27° F, humidity 55%, cloud cover 27%, wind 9 mph out of the west.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 38° F.  The view this morning.....

.....we got another 3" of snow overnight.....thank goodness most of the snow from Wednesday had melted, or we would have 6-7" of snow on the ground, and would be property bound for another week.  On this date in 2018 I was walking to work at the General Store near the east entrance of the Grand Canyon....

.....it had snowed overnight and the temperature was 0° F.

We had enough sunshine Thursday to get all three battery banks back to 100% by early afternoon.  The forecast for Thursday was 79% cloud cover so we did run the Predator 5000 for just under an hour until it became obvious the forecast was incorrect, and we would have plenty of sun to charge our battery banks.  The high temp for the day was 34° F, and it didn't get there until after lunch.  I read in the morning, but around 12 pm I decided to get dressed and do a couple of the indoor activities I have saved for just such a day.  Water from the melted snow needed to be moved off the concrete driveway apron, so I used my Toro blower to do the job....to power it I used the Champion generator (7,500 kw) we keep in the garage.

The next indoor project was to service the chainsaws (Stihl 20", Stihl 16" and the small handheld cordless 6" chainsaw.....no brand name....which TLE uses) as they all needed some attention so I brought them over to the trailer where I could watch golf on the TV while I worked.  I changed the chain on TLE's handheld 6" chainsaw in about 10 minutes...I have about a dozen of these very small chains, and there are very inexpensive, so I just throw away the dull ones.  Next up was the 16" chainsaw which just had a new pull rope installed by Able Saw in Prescott.  I was using it to limb up the trees around the chicken coop, and after restarting it just a few times the rope broke again....doh!  I thought there must be something inside the rope assembly causing that, so I took it apart.  It appeared the new rope was too long, and as I pulled it to start the chainsaw it was rubbing against the metal guide, so I just cut off the excess and put it back together...now it doesn't rub.  Finally, the 20" Stihl needed a new chain, and I have two spares, so no issue.  One of the two chains needed to be deburred as it had jumped off the 20" bar when it got too loose (my fault) a few weeks ago, so I decided to fix that one, and save the other recently sharpened chain for later.  The chain needing deburring  was almost brand new when it jumped off the bar. That took about 45 minutes, and by the time I finished it was 3 pm, and time to put things away.

Snow was forecast to begin falling around 6 pm, but it didn't start until almost 8 pm.  By the time we awoke this morning we had another 3" of snow on the ground.  After dinner we watched some Winter Olympics events....curling, mountaineering, and the women's figure skating finals.  In curling the USA narrowly defeated Switzerland 7-6 in 'extra ends' to advance to the semi finals where they will play Switzerland again.  In figure skating Alysa Liu became the first American to win the gold in 22 years.  Over the history of the Winter Olympics there have been just 8 American women to win gold, so she has joined an exclusive group of American female figure skaters.

That was our Thursday....now we get to watch snowmelt for a few days....lol!  Thanks for stopping by!

Housebound, day 2....

 7:56 am - Thursday - February 19th - TWW - 20° F, humidity 65%, cloud cover 69%, wind 6 mph out of the south by southeast.....partly sunny today with a forecast high of 38° F, and 1-3 inches of snow tonight, again.  The view this morning....

....and on this date in 2012 TLE and I were east bound on I-20 near Midland, TX....our first month on the road....

....just as the sun is rising in the east, and heading to the Cracker Barrel in Abilene, TX for breakfast.

The snow began to fall around 5 am Wednesday morning, and continued to fall until almost 11 am.  Over that time the snow accumulation hit around 2 inches.....

Starting to stick

Getting thick now

....we ventured out around 12 pm to check on the greenhouse, and all the plants were doing well.  I spent some time around mid afternoon shoveling snow off the concrete in front of the garage so it won't melt and freeze like it did last time creating a serious slip and fall risk.  I also shoveled a path across the wooden deck at the house, and a path from the Newell to the trailer....

Yes, we do have a snow shovel (center of picture in front of the trailer)

....my good friend, Claude Banker is spending the winter at LPG&RVR, and up until two days ago their weather had been pretty nice, but then they received 7" of snow from the storm that is currently hammering the West Coast, and the Sierras....

Likely Place Golf & RV Resort 02/18/2026

....that's the most snow from one storm LPG&RVR has received in a few years, and they're getting another storm today (Thursday)!  Most California ski resorts are closed due to TOO MUCH SNOW, and I believe I-80 over Donner Pass has been closed for a couple of days to traffic.

Once again, TLE and I spent most of our day indoors reading, and napping, as the temp never got above 34° F.  Today (Thursday) it may get to 38° F, and Friday around the same.  We won't get back into the 50's and 60's until next Monday, or Tuesday.  After we get through the next storm (tonight) we'll go through the snow melt process where the red clay will turn to red mud, which will prevent us from doing much outdoors, however, I've got a few ideas for some indoor activity....the garage needs reorganizing, and so does our trailer, plus I need to change the oil on our 1969 Jeep CJ-5's Buck Dauntless V-6, so I've got things to do, but not until Sunday, or Monday as it is just too cold outside for my 76 year old bones and joints.  The odds are we won't be leaving the property until next Wednesday, or Thursday as the roads will just be too muddy.  We're hoping there will be enough sun today to recharge our batteries, but the forecast cloud cover is 69%, however, we always have the Predator 5000 on which to fall back.

As always, we thank you so much for stopping by, and wish everyone a wonderful day wherever you may be!

Housebound again.....

 7:50 am - Wednesday - February 18th - TWW - 32° F, humidity 67%, cloud cover 100%, wind 27 mph out of the south by southwest....snowing as I write with a meager forecast high of 34° F.  The view this morning.....

....started snowing around 5 am, and has just intensified as I write.  On this date in 2017 TLE and I were boondocking in the Anza Borrego Desert....

....about 8 miles outside of Borrego Springs, CA.

The cloud cover first thing Tuesday morning was pretty heavy, but the forecast was for just 40% cloud cover, so we didn't run the Predator 5000, and just trusted what sun there was would be enough to recharge our batteries, and we were right.  By 2 pm both of our battery banks were fully charged via photo voltaic energy only.  However, the winds continued to blow ferociously in the 25-30 mph range with gusts into the 50's at times, so we were pretty much housebound all day long.  The one good thing about the wind is it dries out the ground pretty quickly, so when we did venture out there was no mud to dodge, as the ground was pretty firm even after all that rain we got Sunday night into Monday morning.

TLE and I spent the better part of the day reading, and enjoying the warm confines of our 1982 Newell Classic diesel pusher.  It's amazing to think that we've lived full time in our Newell for 15 years now, and she has really stood up to it well.  Most sticks and staples motorhomes do not stand up to full time living very well, and their interiors begin to look a little threadbare after just a few years.  We still have the original interior curtains that came with her 44 years ago, the original ZipDee awnings.  We have, as you know replaced all the old lighting with LED lighting years ago, and we are on our third floor now.  The old CRT TV's have been replaced with modern, flat screen, smart TV's, but we still use the original AC units to cool her interior in the summer.  The interior still looks fresh, and inviting.  We still have the original Suburban gas furnaces (3), and we use them when living off the grid to heat the interior.  We've replaced all the major appliances at least once, except for our Magic Chef stove/oven, which we use almost exclusively when living off grid.

Mechanically, she is in great condition.  As you will recall I replaced all 8 air bags, and all four shocks a few years ago by myself.  The Detroit Diesel 6v92 350 horsepower diesel engine has around 193,000 miles of faithful service.....90,000 of those miles are since we bought her in 2008.  It is supposedly a million mile motor with an in frame rebuild recommended at 500,000 miles....TLE and I won't live long enough for that to happen.  When we were shopping for our 'next' motorhome we were looking for something in the 8-10 year old range, but then came across our Newell in a Craigslist ad....she was just 26 years at the time.  She became not only our next motorhome, but our last motorhome.  If seems as if we have always lived in her, and there is not a day which goes by that one of us doesn't comment on how much we love having her as our home.

We love our vagabond life, and still cannot imagine living in a sticks and bricks home ever again, but I know that day is probably coming, however, for now, and as far as our imagination can project into the future, she is, and will continue to be our home.

Thanks for stopping by!

The verdict is in.....

 8:30 am - Tuesday - February 16th - TWW - 33° F, humidity 63%, cloud cover 40%, wind 17 mph out of the south by southwest.....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 44° F.  The view this morning....

.....and on this date in 2013 TLE and I made it to Key West, FL....one of our bucket list items....

.....it was also the day my blog, still in its infancy, passed 50,000 total page views....we now sit at 3,450,862 total page views as of this morning (Tuesday).  We are adding 60-80,000 page views a month now, which should put us over 4 million page views by the end of the year.

By 9 am Monday the forecast winds had arrived, and by noon time they were steady at 25 mph, with gusts into the 50's at times.  Not exactly a day one would want to spend much time outdoors, and we did not.  You could tell rain was on the way, and it finally arrived around 7:30 pm, but I get ahead of myself.

We spent all morning indoors with short forays out to the greenhouse to check on our rapidly maturing vegetables.  We knew we had a package at the PO Box, which had arrived Saturday, and we were waiting until the afternoon to go into town and pick it up along with any mail as we were hoping two other packages would arrive, but they did not, so around 2:15 pm we headed into Seligman in the Explorer to buy some Velcro at the General Store, some milk at the Family Dollar, pick up our mail, and then have a late lunch at Westside Lilo's.....it was kind of a delayed Valentines Day occasion.....

Have I told you before how much I like their coffee?

.....TLE ordered their Ruben, and I their 'BOLT' (bacon, onion, lettuce and tomato).  I chased my entree with several cups of their wonderful coffee.  We lingered over our entrees talking about this and that until almost 4 pm, and were home a little after 4:30 pm.  The original forecast by the weather guessers was for rain by 5 pm, so we wanted to be home before it started.

As it turned out the rain did not arrive until 7:30 pm, and it did not stop until sometime after 2 am.  The wind was blowing furiously all the while.  I woke up several times to the driving rain wondering how much we would would capture in the three IBC water totes we installed last week.  Well, the verdict is in.....

The southwest corner of house....almost a third full....

.....the southeast corner of the house.....a little over 1/5th full....

....and the northeast corner of the house....2/5ths full

.....combined the water we collected would have filled one 275 gallon IBC tote from just one rain storm.  The IBC water totes at the greenhouse (we've been using water from the one on the southeast corner to water the plants inside the greenhouse) also did well....

The northeast corner of the greenhouse is about 1/3 full now (was about 1/4 full before the storm).....

....and the one at the southeast corner is just back to 1/3 full, where it was a few weeks ago before TLE began using that water to water the plants in the greenhouse

.....this is water we would not have on hand without the rain gutters and totes.  We've got a forecast snow storm heading our way early Wednesday morning that may drop 1-3 inches over 6-7 hours....we'll see.  If the storm does materialize, then we'll be adding to our water catchment totals again....very exciting!

We watched some Winter Olympics coverage for our evening entertainment.  There was short track speed skating, figure skating pairs finals, Monobob (single person Bobsled) finals, and curling.  We haven't really gotten into the Winter Olympics this time around, but there have been some interesting stories.  We do really enjoy the short track speed skating, Skeleton, Luge, and Curling....not exactly the glamourous Winter Olympic disciplines....lol.

We were in bed a little after 10 pm listening to the rain on our riveted aircraft aluminum roof.....thanks for stopping by!

This adventure.....

 8:47 am - Monday - February 16th - TWW - 44° F, humidity 42%, cloud cover 59%, wind 13 mph out of the south by southeast.....cloudy, and a forecast high of 52° F, and winds 25-30 mph with gusts to 50 mph today.  The view this morning....

.....and on this day in 2013 TLE and I were on Marathon Key of Florida Keys fame....

.....we drove our 2002 T-Bird the rest of the way to Key West...the furthest, southern most point in the U.S.

We expected to have to run our Predator 5000 dual fuel generator Sunday a goodly portion of the morning due to cloud cover, but the clouds unexpectedly parted enough for a few hours enabling us to shut her down after only 90 minutes, and let the sun take us the rest of the way to 100% charge.  

We decided to make Sunday a rest day after getting a lot of work done this past week.  Round four of the AT&T Pebble Beach Invitational was playing on the TV all day where we saw Scottie Scheffler come from 8 strokes down to finish his round tied at 20 under par with three other players.  However, the other players still had 6, or 7 holes to play when he finished, and ultimately one of them, Colin Morikawa won at 22 under par. It was, however, an exciting round four which saw 8-10 golfers in position to win at any given time.

Winds were forecast for Sunday, but they never really materialized, which is always a good thing.  We are fully expecting the forecast winds for Monday and Tuesday to materialize, and even possibly rain Monday night, so we are prepared, but if those forecasts fail we are ready to get more work done.  

I've been thinking about how interesting this winter has been so far, and how much time TLE and I have had to ourselves in this beautiful, tranquil, and amazingly quiet location.  We have this kind of unified vision of what needs to be done here, and often TLE will suggest working on the same thing I had in my mind for the day.  She is amazingly resilient, and strong for her age, and sometimes I forget, if even just for a moment, she is a woman.  I never ever hear the words "I can't" from her.  Sometimes it turns out she can't, but she is always willing to give anything a try no matter how daunting the task may seem.  I am so grateful for her adventurous spirit, without which we would not have done half the things we have done since we retired, and this current adventure on which we are embarked is no exception.  When we first arrived at TWW in October of 2024 the amount of work needed to make this property not just liveable, but productive once again was overwhelming, and I know we both felt overwhelmed, but we just kept putting one foot in front of the other figuring out things along the way.  Without the two of us being committed to a common vision this would never have worked.  And now, some 16 months into this experiment, we find our selves thriving on this off grid property.  We are now growing our own food, and we've been able to create a comfortable environment here where success is expected.  I say all of that to say this....without Elaine, this whole adventure would have no meaning to me.  Without her hourly, daily and weekly support, which never waivers, we could not have accomplished as much as we have.  Thank you TLE for signing on for this adventure!

Thanks for stopping by!

Why not burn all 3 in one day?

 8:35 am - Sunday - February 15th - TWW - 38° F, humidity 41%, cloud cover 75%, wind 9 mph out of the southeast.....very cloudy today with a forecast high of 56° F.  The view this morning.....

....and on this date in 2010 TLE and I were camping at Rancho Jurupa Regional Park in our 1982 Newell....

.....within a year (02/01/11) we would be workamping there, and living full time in the Newell.  I guess that means we've living full time in the Newell for 15 years!

We need light winds, or no wind at all to do burn piles here.  It's not a law, or anything, but prudence dictates that if we don't want a forest fire here at TWW we should use caution, and not burn on windy days, right?  Well, Saturday was a windless day until mid afternoon, so we decided we should light those three burn piles (one at time) around 10 am.  Before we lit anything we ran about 200 feet of hose out to the three burn piles to be sure we had adequate water to douse any unexpected fires outside of the burn areas, then we lit the first burn pile....

The first burn pile

The 2nd burn pile

The 3rd burn pile...the biggest of them all

We used the opportunity to burn a lot of old, rotten wood, too

.....the final burn pile, the largest of them all, was just about burned down to ashes by 2:30 pm, so about 4.5 hours for all three burn piles.  Once they were down to ashes we raked out the ashes, then doused each pile heavily with water to be sure hey were "out".

Once we were sure all the burning coals were extinguished we headed inside for an hour break before returning to coil up the numerous water hoses we had employed, and then put our tools away (rock rakes and shovels).  We spent the balance of the afternoon watching the AT&T Pebble Beach Invitational (golf) where they are having some of the weather headed our way.  We had planned a sunset fire, but by the time the afternoon breezes had died down it was after 6 pm, and too late to get a fire going, however, we did walk out and observe the sunset for a few minutes....

.....thanks for stopping by!

Two in one......

 7:56 am - Saturday - February 14th - TWW - 28° F, humidity 39%, cloud cover 10%, wind 3 mph out of the southeast....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 57° F.  The view this morning.....

Order is restored....we have SUN!

.....and on this date in 2018 we got a dusting of snow at Desert View.....

.....at the east entrance of the Grand Canyon.  Worked at the General Store there from November  2017 to April 2018.

First thing Friday morning, due to the weather forecast predicting rain all day long, TLE and I finished stowing the firewood we cut the other day for the house.  By the time we finished we had refilled the wood box on the wood deck....

.......we fully did not expect to do any other work outside Friday due to the aforementioned weather forecast, however, once again we were buffaloed by the weather guessers.  We did have heavy cloud cover one might expect with forecast rain all day long necessitating running the Predator 5000 for about 90 minutes first thing, but even with cloud cover we got back to 100% on the Bluetti battery bank.

By 11 am we realized it was not going to rain, so we got dressed and headed back out to the chicken coop to  begin dragging all the branches I cut off those juniper trees into burn piles, plus dragging out all the wood, roofing and plumbing junk the prior owners had discarded there.  Once that was done I realized I needed to cut some more limbs off the surrounding trees, so I took care of that.  By the time we finished dragging everything out we had created three burn piles....

The biggest

The smallest

Almost as big as the biggest

.....and several piles of junk....

We'll cut this up to burn in our portable firepit

Old roofing, and siding

.....now that all the trees have been 'limbed up' the area around the chicken coop looks great....

Those trees will provide shade in the summer for the chickens

I cut a couple of the larger limbs into smaller pieces for future splitting

.....at this point TLE headed into the house to cook a roast in the house oven, while I remained out at the chicken coop removing all of the old chicken wire fencing, and posts.  It didn't take me as long as I expected....

The chicken coop sans fencing

Old 4 x 4's and T-posts

The old gate, and some type of cage

.....by the time I finished it was 2 pm, and I had been working for around 3 hours.  Time to put stuff away, and relax.  As it turns out the lack of rain enabled us to get about 2 days of work done in one day.  I had figured it would take TLE and I at least 3 hours to create the burn piles, and remove all the discarded junk, but it took the two of us less than 2 hours enabling me to spend that third hour taking down the fencing which I thought would be a 2 hour Saturday project.  On top of that we have two days of sunshine (Saturday and Sunday) in which we can light the burn piles, and begin to clean out the chicken coop.  Snow/rain is forecast for Monday-Wednesday next week, but who knows, right?  The weather guessers could be wrong!

Thanks for stopping by!