We passed 6 million all time views last night.......

 7:46 am - Monday - October 26th - TWW - 40° F, humidity 47%, cloud cover 24%, wind 8 mph out of the south.....partially cloudy skies today with a forecast high of 65° F.  On this date in 2017 TLE and I were at Lone Rock, UT.....

Lone Rock

.....on the shores of Lake Powell boondocking.  One of our top four, or five boondocking sites ever!  The view this morning.....

....beginning to get dryer after the rain.

Charles and Phyllis were on they're way back to Phoenix before 9 am Sunday.  TLE and I had planned to do a little work Sunday, but it was such a nice day we decided to take a walk, then mostly take the rest of the day off from work.....

....we covered one mile averaging just under 3 mph.

I say 'mostly, because we did do a couple of things like lay out the three 'sail' shades we've used in the past to create more shade on the 'lido deck', which will become really important this summer....

....they will be attached to the trailer, and to the patio awning to create a shady area over the artificial turf between the trailer and Newell.  Additionally, we took one of our small tables out to the garage on which to set the 4Patriots solar charger battery, so it is now off the ground, and one is no longer required to stand upon one's head to read the display.....

Much, much handier

.....and with that we were done working for the day.  There were many good NFL games being televised in our area on Sunday beginning with a 6:15 am game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the New Orleans Saints in Paris, France, which was won by the Steelers 16-10.  In other games the Denver Broncos defeated the Arizona Cardinals handily 30-16 to win their 18th game in the last 21 going back to last season.  In the Sunday Night finale the Seahawks throttled the Kansas City Chiefs 20-3, and it wasn't really that close.  At any rate, most of the teams for which I was rooting won.....Rams, Falcons, Browns, Dolphins, Buccaneers, Bengals, and Giants.  I think only two of the teams for which I rooted lost.

Yesterday I posted a picture of our all time views counter showing we would pass 6 million viewers sometime yesterday, and it happened....

....sometime last night.  Just a year ago we had just passed 4 million views, so it has been quite a 12 months!  Oh, I took a video of the 1969 Jeep CJ-5 idling....it is so quiet....

Around 4:30 pm I lit the Sea-B-Que to grill a couple of filet mignons TLE had been aging in the refrigerator, and grilled them to a fine medium rare....

....to which TLE added a side salad....YUM!  Shortly after finishing dinner I noted the moon was rising to the east, and took a shots......

.....that's how big it looked to the naked eye.  We pretty much lazed around all day, and that is the first day we have really done no work since we returned a week earlier.

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"Gentlemen, start your engines....."

 7:30 am - Sunday - October 25th - TWW - 36° F, humidity 56%, cloud cover 5%, wind 7  mph out of the north.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 61° F.  On this date in 2023 TLE and I were in La Quinta, CA....

....awaiting our orders.  They have the best fish tacos; certainly in the top 5 in our travels, and that is pretty good considering they are a chain restaurant.

Saturday was a very, very busy day here at TWW.  We always get a lot done on Saturdays when Charles and Phyllis are here.  The first task of the day was to move the chest freezer from the garage to the battery room.  Charles and Phyllis are early risers; they are usually up well before dawn, so they already had the battery room cleared out in preparation for the chest freezer move when TLE and I arrived around 8:30 or 9 am. With the aid of one of the numerous wagons we have here at TWW Charles and I moved the chest freezer over to the breezeway between the battery room and the CONEX....

Where is was in the garage (right rear corner in front of the Jeep).  The boxes to the left are for the new 780 watt solar array we will be installing in the very near future....

....and where it is now....you will note that it is sitting under one of the wall mounted lithium batteries, so how are we going to open the lid?  Good question!  We are able to move the freezer out from the wall about 4" which will give us clearance to open the lid...we already checked.

.....you may recall that we originally (I wrote about that here) put in in the garage and attempted to run it off of a large solar battery, but the battery did not have enough capacity to keep up with the demand of the freezer.  Now that it is in the battery room we can plug it into the house system, which has enormous capacity.  It's not plugged in yet, as we have nothing to put into it, but there is talk of buying 1/2 a cow.  Anyway, as it sat there next to the doorway of the battery room I was convinced it was bigger that the doorway entrance.  I would have bet $100 it would not fit. We opened the door all the way and the opening measured 29".  Then we measured the freezer....it was 28.5" wide....doh!  I was glad to be wrong.  With a little effort we got it turned to go in the doorway, and with a 1/4" to spare on each side we got her into the battery room.

Of course, in order to get the freezer out of the garage I needed to reinstall the Jeep battery, and get the Jeep running after its 6 month hibernation, and that is always an adventure.  I wasn't successful initially, so Charles and I had to push it out of the garage.....

  

The Jeep cover is off, and she runs!

.....after installing the chest freezer in the battery room I went back to the Jeep to trouble shoot it, and found the choke was stuck completely closed, so I freed it, then disconnected the fuel line where it connects to the carburetor, turned on the fuel pump to move some of the old gas out, then reconnected it.  It then started on the first try, and purred like a kitten.  Charles and I also reinstalled the battery in the large Champion 11,500 watt generator, and got it running in pretty short order, so now all of our motorized equipment runs.  There will be no more 'summerizing' any of our rolling stock since we will now be here year round.

A few weeks ago Charles purchased 6 more, very clean 275 gallon IBC totes for $50/tote (killer deal) to double our water catchment ability.  We spent about 40 minutes unloading them from the trailer, and using one of our wagons, moved them into position....

....we now have four of them around the greenhouse, and 6 around the house, and two at the back of the barn, which gives us about 3,300 gallons of capacity now.  The original six are all full due to the monsoons we had in the area a month, or so ago.  Eventually we will set up water catchment at the large 2 car garage which has a very large metal roof.  As it turned out we had rain on and off later in the afternoon for about two hours so we've already caught some rain water in the new totes!

I spent the afternoon watching NCAA college football, and there were some more upsets in the top 25, so it was the perfect college football day!  The biggest upset of the day was #2 BYU losing in double overtime to unranked UCG 39-31, then #7 Mississippi (Ole Miss) was upset by #19 Texas, #8 Texas Tech was upset by unranked Cincinnati, #11 Tennessee was upset by unranked South Carolina, #15 Iowa State was upset by unranked Minnesota, #19 USC was upset by unranked Wisconsin.  My USC Trojans had no defense, and no offense, losing 24-7.  They scored no points in the 1st, 3rd and 4th quarters.

On a side note our blog will surpass 6,000,000 all time views sometime today (Sunday)....it sits at 5,998, 100 as I write....1,800 to go!

Thanks for stopping by!

The in-laws have returned.....

 7:15 am - Saturday - October 24th - TWW - 40° F, humidity 56%, cloud cover 54%, wind 7 mph out of the north by northwest.....partly cloudy skies today with a forecast high of 58° F.  On this date in 2024 TLE and I had just arrived at TWW for the first time....

.....and were enjoying our first sunset fire.

Charles and Phyllis were scheduled to arrive at TWW around 10:30 am, so we were out and about by 9:30 am to refill our fresh water tank, and dump our black tank prior to their arrival.  As we did most of last winter, we ran 175' of fresh water hose from the hose bibb in the greenhouse to the Newell to first refill the fresh water tank; we were down to 60 gallons, which is more than I thought we had left.  We added about 95 gallons.  Then it was time to dump our black tank for the first time this winter.  Just as we were finishing Charles and Phyllis arrived.

We had a number of things we wanted to get done in the next two days, including getting the two side by sides (Yamaha and Cushman) running.  You may remember I wrote about the possible need to prime the fuel system to get them started.  Charles and Phyllis worked on that while I did some more string trimming around the driveway circle.  As it turns out, Charles and Phyllis were successful in getting both side by sides running in pretty short order, which was the highlight of the day!  All that is left is for me to reinstall the battery in the Jeep, and get it started.  TLE installed the four piers at the four corners of the trailer to stabilize it, while I did string trimming. If we don't use the piers the trailer bounces on its leaf springs, and makes a lot of noise.  With them there is no bouncing, and no noise.

In the afternoon I spent more time organizing the trailer, and moving a few more things to the garage.  The trailer interior is now emptier than it has been in the last 15 years, and that is a good thing....

Miscellaneous items table plus hammers

Firearms table - that is a .22 caliber pellet gun on the table

Extended pantry table

Tool table and work bench

.....naturally, adding more things to the garage required some outside the box thinking....TLE suggested we hang all of our rope lights, and extra chairs/recliners from the wall....

....and that worked quite well.  Then we set up two of the anti gravity chairs on the 'lido deck'.....

....which is beginning to take shape.  We'll add some sun screens, and the Sea-B-Que table in the next few days.  And with that another day of toil at TWW was complete.  We met in the house for dinner with Charles and Phyllis at 5 pm.  We spent time talking about future plans for the property.  Oh, by the way, Phyllis prepared a beef stew, and garlic bread for dinner.  As always, it was delicious!  Thank you Phyllis!

For our evening entertainment we watched the first game of the World Series pitting the Tampa Bay Rays (American League) against the Milwaukee Brewers (National League).  Everyone expects this to be a closely fought series, and the first game delivered just that.  For much of the game the Brewers led 2-1, adding an insurance run in the 7th, and the Rays added another run in the 8th, but that was it for the scoring.  The game ended on a bases loaded strike out giving the Brewers a 3-2 victory.

Thanks for stopping by!

Trailer time.....

 7:44 am - Friday - October 23rd - TWW - 39° F (our first morning in the 30's), humidity 48%, cloud cover 11%, wind 8 mph out of the south by southwest.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 60° F.  On this date in 2017 TLE and I were at Bryce Canyon, UT.....

.....hiking the Peek-A-Boo Loop trail. The view this morning.....

....first completely cloud free morning since we arrived Sunday as we begin our 5th full day back at TWW.

We've been living with total chaos in our American Trailer since October 8th when I took down my tool tables back at LPG&RVR in preparation for our trip south, so my focus Thursday was to carve order out of total chaos.  There were several things for which I have been looking, and I knew, in my heart, the only way I was going to find them was to empty the tool bags, set up the tables, and organize everything.  The only way that was going to happen was if I dedicated the day to doing just that.  I ended up moving another couple of wagon loads of stuff to the garage to store, and then began setting up the tables....

.....within a few hours my nervous tick had completely disappeared, and I had found the things for which I had been looking since we arrived on the 18th.  All that is left in the trailer are the things I will access on a daily, and weekly basis.  It is probably the emptiest this trailer has been in 15 years.

Now that we have moved pretty much everything from the trailer into the garage that will kept in long term storage it is time to sift through all of that stuff and begin to make hard choices about what is not needed anymore.  We both know there is a lot of stuff on our the shelving units we installed the last two winters that we haven't seen in a year, or two, or maybe even forgot we had. Storage space is at a premium in the garage, so it is time to make room for stuff we actually need.  It was mostly windy Thursday; I believe it got into the low 20's (mph) for several hours, so working outdoors was not desirable, so being able to spend all my time in either the trailer, or garage worked out well.

All of our solar is working as it should, and I don't have to spend a lot of time worrying about batteries getting recharged each day.  The Eco Worthy dual axis solar tracker is on her third winter of service, and is working like a charm.  Before we set that up back in the winter of 2024 it was a constant struggle to keep our battery banks charged. Getting the solar tracker setup, and working was a life changer for us.  The Bluetti AC200MAX has been in continuous service now for 24 months, and is now entering its third year without even a hint of trouble.  By continuous service I mean it has not been turned off for that period of time, except for an hour, or two when we moved the shed to its current position on February 5th of 2025 (I wrote about that here).

The Thursday Night Football game between the Chicago Bears and New England Patriots was a good one going down to the next to final play of the game.  Entering the final 1.5 minutes the Bears held a 9 point lead, so New England was in a fix; they had to score 10 point in that time to win the game.  With about 40 seconds left they kicked a field goal to pull within 6 points and then attempted an 'onside kick', which failed when Chicago recovered the kick.  All that remained was to hike the ball and take a knee to win, and they (Chicago) did.  We also watched the 5th episode of season 51 of Survivor before heading off to dreamland one more time.

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The setup continues.....

 7:44 am - Thursday - October 22nd - TWW - 58° F, humidity 73%, cloud cover 55%, wind 12 mph out of the south......partly cloudy skies today with a forecast high of 61° F.  On this date in 2020 TLE and I were in Port Orford, OR....

.....at one of our favorite Coastal Oregon restaurants....Redfish....right on the ocean.  The view this morning....

I received notice that  a couple of things we had ordered from Amazon had been delivered to the Post Office in Seligman, so we had plans to go to town later in the day, but first we needed to install those three 100 watt portable Bluetti solar panels on the roof of the trailer until we are able to set up the new 780 watt solar array we bought a few months ago, and had shipped to Charles and Phyllis.  Combined with the 620 watts of solar panels on the roof of the Newell this gives us a total of 900 watts being pumped into our lithium house batteries.  The new solar array has four 195 watt panels, which when combined with the 620 watts on the roof of the Newell will give us a total of 1,400 watts.  We've had a lot of heavy cloud cover since we returned to TWW, so in order to not have to run the Predator we need that extra 300 watts....

....we connected the three panels in series which produce 70 volts.....the charge controller can handle up to 100 volts, so this is well within its parameters.  Meanwhile the Eco Worthy dual axis solar tracker is doing its job to recharge our Bluetti battery bank every single day.

Next up TLE used awning spikes to tack down all of the turf pieces in place so the wind will not move them, which it would without them, while I spent time in the garage reorganizing the stuff we moved there on Monday so we could move the wagons in and out easily....

Now we can move around the garage interior without 

having to move four things

Charles added to our propane supply

In the rear left corner of the garage we have our emergency food supply, which continues to grow....we've added three more buckets in the past couple of months

.....around 12 pm we decided we had done enough for the day, changed clothes and headed into Seligman.  Whoever is running the road grader out on the north/south arterial dirt road is doing a much better job.  It was graded about 2 weeks ago, and still is very smooth.  Driving the Explorer we were able to reach US-66 in just over 10 minutes.  Last winter it would take over 20 minutes it was so rough.  We were in Seligman a mere 20 minutes after hitting US-66 making a brief stop at the General Store, and then over to the Post Office to pick up our packages and mail.  Our last stop before heading home was Highway Hot Dog for a couple of Americanos, and some Gelato....TLE had the lemon pie, and I the caramel....OMG...I had forgotten how good that Gelato is.....

....while we were consuming our Americanos and Gelatos it began to rain torrentially for about 30 minutes, which was cool as we were in no hurry.  When the rain finally letup a tad we made a beeline for the Explorer and headed for TWW where we arrived without incident around 2:15 pm.

After getting home TLE spent most of the afternoon reading, and I returned to the garage to do a little more organizing before calling it a day.  For the evening's entertainment we watched The Amazing Race....we'll watch Survivor Thursday night.

Thanks for stopping by!

Sometimes the lunch is free, and there are no strings......

 6:51 am - Wednesday - October 21st - TWW - 63° F, humidity 81%, cloud cover 80%, wind 14 mph out of the south by southeast.....heavy cloud cover this morning, but little rain so far, with a forecast high of 63° F.  On this date in 2013 TLE and I were east of Bozeman, MT....

....on I-90 heading west toward the Continental Divide.  We had just spent 20 days working the sugar beet harvest in Sidney, MT.  The view this morning....

....the forecast was for rain all night, but it has only rained about 30 minutes so far.

Our goals Tuesday were to begin unloading the trailer, and moving a lot of the stuff we brought south with us to the garage, pull out all of the artificial turf pieces and cover the ground between the Newell and the trailer, and deploy our patio awning, which we did....

.....now the garage is full of stuff for which we need to find a place.  We only worked for about 3 hours, but it was hard work emptying the trailer, and moving most of that stuff to the garage just so we could get at the turf pieces.

You might notice a piece of equipment right in the middle of the garage that is new to us....it is a Shopsmith MARK  V Home Workshop System.  I was perusing some of the local Facebook Groups and saw someone was offering this machine for free, and they were only about 5 miles away, so I contacted them, and made arrangements to go pick it up Tuesday afternoon.  Used, on eBay, these Shopsmiths go for about $350-400.  It can be used as a table saw, a wood lathe, a sanding wheel, etc.  Anyway, I drove over around 2 pm, and found it was larger than I thought, and was thinking I would have to come back with Charles and one of his trailers to pick it up, but then Steve suggested he could load it on one of his trailers and deliver it, so that is what we did. Within an hour we were back at TWW with the free wood working system.  People out here are so generous!  Steve and Barbara moved out here back in 2017, and had actually looked at our property, but ended up buying the one they're at because it had a well.

With the forecast rain TLE and I had to move the two side by sides back into the barn.  I'm going to have to prime the fuel system in each unit to get them running.  I'm not sure why, but there may be some air in the systems that is not allowing the fuel pumps to create enough suction to pull fuel from each fuel tank.  That will be for another day after the current storm system passes through the Seligman area.

Yavapai Gas Bottles sent a guy out (Ryan) to reconnect our large propane tank to the Newell, and do the necessary safety checks, then later in the afternoon Tom came to refill our tank.  When we left last April it still had about 32% in it.  As you know, we don't use as much propane as we once did, and when we left we hadn't had the bottle refilled in almost 2 months.  Before we reduced our propane usage we were getting it refilled once every 4-5 weeks.

We've now been back two full days, and have been able to get a lot more done than I expected, even though we are taking our time.  We'll continue to plug along getting the rest of the stuff out of the trailer, setting up my tool tables, and turning it into a workshop.

Thanks for stopping by!