The last of the road work?

 7:28 am - Tuesday - March 17th - TWW - 47° F, humidity 22%, cloud cover 16%, wind 6 mph out of the northeast....mostly sunny today with a forecast high of 79° F.  The view this morning....

....and on this date in 2017 TLE and I were enjoying a Pahrump, NV sunset....

.....from the RV section at the Pahrump Elks Lodge.

We're getting more consistent with our daily walking....well, almost 'daily walking'....probably more like 4 out of every 5 days we walk.  Monday we completed our 17th 1 mile out and back walk here at TWW.....

....and managed to break the 3 mph barrier for the first time in a few tries.

Before we did any work on the property Monday TLE helped me attached the new roof to the Ford 420 roll cage.  I figured it would take about 15-20 minutes, but I am often wrong in these matters of work time estimation.  It took more like 45 minutes to an hour, but it turned out better than I expected.....

....we've been working on the entrance road to TWW on and off for several weeks now, but it was still in an unfinished state Monday.  We had laid down some crushed lava rock we found on the property in an area which used to get very muddy after rain, or snow.  Unfortunately, we began to have issues with the Ford 420 tractor, which stalled work there, and even after we managed to get the tractor running again had to finish the RV site for Phyllis' Newell, then other things got in the way.  Well, Monday TLE decided we should finish the job, so we did.  Here is what that section of road looked like before we finished it....

Before.....

....and here is what the finished product looks like after 2.5 hours of work....

.....after

TLE took these shots of me compacting the repaired section with the Ford 420

.....we finished the work on the road around 1 pm....in this final push to finish the road we spent another 2.5 hours, but the end result was well worth the effort.  Oh, and by the way, the tractor continues to purr like a kitten.

Later in the afternoon I returned to the roof of the CONEX to reattach a few guy wires which broke loose when the wind blown solar panels (we repaired that last week) hit them.  I needed a few things to reattach them, which I purchased at the General Store in town when we were in town last Friday.  Once again, I thought it would take about 10-15 minutes, but an hour later I had barely finished....

....reattaching them.  These guys wires stabilize the pole holding the wind turbine, which came with the property.  It is not connected to anything right now, but we hope to do just that in the near future.

By the time I put away my tools used to reconnect the guys wires for the wind turbine it was well after 3 pm, and almost time for dinner.  We ate around 4:15 pm....TLE made steak sandwiches with the left over beef tenderloin from two nights before.  So good on sourdough bread. It was a little windy as the latest sunset approached, so we decided to forego a sunset fire, but I did walk out and take a couple of pictures around 6:30 pm for posterity's sake....

....our time here at TWW this winter is quickly fading into the rearview mirror, and within a month we will be on our way back to Likely Place Golf & RV Resort for our 5th summer.  So much left to do in such a short period of time, but we shall proceed with style.

Thanks for stopping by!

The land provides.....

 7:16 am - Monday - March 16th - TWW - 43° F, humidity 19%, cloud cover 21%, wind 6 mph out of the northeast.....mostly sunny today with a forecast high of 71° F.  The view this morning....

....and on this date in 2017 TLE and I were staying a few days at the Pahrump, NV Elks Lodge....

....we were on our way to Las Vegas, NV to attend a college reunion.  We stayed there twice that year.

Sunday we took another 1 mile out and back walk.....

At the entrance gate to TWW

......once again we average 2.9 mph.  On a side note, the sun now rises at 6:42 am, and sets at 6:41 pm.....

....our days are now as long as our nights. 

Charles and Phyllis will be back at TWW on Tuesday so we needed to finish transferring as much water out of the lower tank into IBC totes as possible.  Up until Sunday we had been using our 12 volt SeaFlo water pump to move the water, but running it continuously for 45 minutes runs the battery down quite a bit, and then it takes the rest of the day to recharge it.  I had noticed a 120 VAC water pump in the CONEX that might be a good alternative, but it turned out one of the threaded nipples on the output side of the pump was broken, so I guess that is why it was sitting there unused....doh!  Then I remembered seeing what I thought might be a water pump in the solar battery room, so I went to look for it, and sure enough it was an even bigger (1.5 hspr) water pump, so I took it out to the greenhouse where we were trying to fill both IBC totes.....

.....and set it up to take over the water pumping duties.  We were able to finish filling the IBC water tote on the southeast corner of the greenhouse in no time, and then began to fill the tote at the northwest corner....

....once we were done filling that tote we began to water the two potato growing beds using the water from the lower tank.  I'm not sure how much water is still in there, but has to be getting close to empty....I hope...lol!

Now that we have the 1.5 horsepower, 120 VAC pump we can retire the 12 volt SeaFlo pump.  I really can't explain why I didn't think of this sooner, but I am a creature of habit, only changing habits when conditions demand it, and running our small 12 volt battery down so quickly made me consider other options.  It takes much less time to set up this pump....we just plug it into the greenhouse outlet, connect two hoses (inlet and outlet) and flip the switch!  Plus it takes about 1/2 the amount of time to fill a water tote as the 12 volt pump....the land provides!

After taking a midday break I spent time starting the Jeep again.....it started right up again, and idled wonderfully.  Then I moved over to the tractor to service it (check oil, coolant, hydraulic fluid, etc.), then started it again without the aid of starting fluid.  It always runs a little rough at startup, but smooths out within a minute, or so to a nice, steady diesel rumble.  I also hit all the grease fittings to lube all of the moving joints on the loader bucket.  While I was doing the service I decided the driver seat needed some shade.   There is a roll cage of sorts, but no roof attached.  I've got this piece of plywood (3/4") that has been sitting in the garage for a year unused, so I moved it over to the tractor, then found four hex bolts long enough to fasten it to the roll cage....

The roll cage

I drilled 4 holes in all

....we should be able to affix that plywood to the roll cage Monday morning, and then I will have shade when operating the tractor.

I finished drilling the four holes just after 4 pm, just as TLE came out to let me know dinner was ready, which turned out to be one of my favorite salads....crispy chicken salad with croutons, tomatoes, olives and lettuce.

Around 6 pm we headed to the 'sunset fire deck' to see what kind of light show the setting sun might provide us, and did we ever get a good one....

The sun touching the western horizon around 6:30 pm

....the sun touched the western horizon around 6:30 pm, and then the light show began.  The sunset continued to evolve for about 40 minutes until the grand finale (picture above), which was mesmerizing.  Another great ending to another great TWW day!

Thanks for stopping by!

Moving water.....

 8:00 am - Sunday - March 15th - TWW - 53° F, humidity 14%, cloud cover 36%, wind 6 mph out of the north by northwest.....mostly clear skies today with a forecast high of 70° F.  The view this morning....

....and on this date in 2015 TLE and I were in Sedona, AZ.....

....hiking the airport loop trail.  Over the years we've been to Sedona 4, or 5 times.

Charles asked us to empty the lower tank at the water tower into the 5 of 6 IBC totes we have on site.  The 6th one is 'ours', and is already full.  As you know there is an upper and lower tank at the water tower, each of which holds 2,500 gallons of water.  The way the system works is you initially fill both tanks, and then pump water into the home from the top tank.  When the top tanks is down to about 1,000 gallons we then pump water from the lower tank up to refill the upper tank.  Over the time Phyllis has owned this property (about 2 years now) we have never emptied the lower tank, so Charles felt it was time to completely empty it, and then rinse it out before refilling it.  He believes the water is getting stale, and that certainly could be the case.  He estimates there are about 1,000 gallons left in the lower tank, and that should fill all 5 totes.  We began the process Saturday morning just using gravity to begin filling the two tanks on the east side of the house....

....it took most of the day to move that water, but we got each 4/5's full by 6:30 pm.  We left the last 5th in each in case we get any rain before we begin to drain them in the future.  We also topped off the IBC tote on the southwest side before we called it a day Saturday.  We'll have to use the SeaFlo 12 volt water pump to fill the tanks at the greenhouse as it is slightly uphill from the lower water tank, and with it being so empty now there is not enough natural water pressure to to fill them without mechanical aid.....

We completely filled the IBC tote on the southwest corner of the house as we will be transferring water from it to the greenhouse in the next week, or so, and no rain is forecast for that time period right now

.....while we let gravity do the work to transfer the water I spent time with the Jeep, and Ford 420 diesel tractor trying to figure out why each of them had fuel delivery issues.  You will recall that when I left off work on the Jeep the other day it would idle, but you could not accelerate above the idle.  When we were in town Friday I bought a bottle of SeaFoam gas treatment which is good for cleaning out the ports in carbs, and injectors such as we have on the Ford.  I put about half the bottle in the Jeep fuel tank, then started her up.  She fired pretty quickly, but would only idle at first, however, over the next 10 minutes I could tell she was running better and using the throttle linkage at the carb was able to accelerate very smoothly.  In fact, this is the beast I've heard her run since after I first purchased her.  I restarted her several times, and she fired right up and ran very smoothly for a change.

Next up I did the same for the Ford.  The last time I ran her she began running like only 2 of the 3 cylinders were firing.  After pouring in the rest of the SeaFoam into the diesel tank I started her up, and she began running roughly just as she did a couple of weeks ago, however, after she warmed up, she began to run on all 3 cylinders again....SUCCESS!  I restarted her several times over the course of the day, and got the same result.....she runs much more smoothly now with very little smoke.  In celebration I made a short video for you viewing pleasure....

....for the first time in two winters all of the equipment is running well, including the Yamaha Rhino with which we have had a lot of fuel issues involving bad fuel lines.

I received the new propane gas regulator for the Sea-B-Que the other day, but had not yet grilled anything on her so TLE got out 2 tender loin steaks we bought at Fred Meyers in Klamath Falls last summer....OMG!  They were so tender......

....they were very thick steaks, so it took me about 14 minutes to get them to medium rare. TLE added a side of boiled spinach, which was perfect.  That steak was melt in your mouth delicious!

Thanks for stopping by!

Town interval.....

 7:11 am - Saturday - March 14th - TWW - 42° F, humidity 17%, cloud cover 41%, wind 4 mph out of the south by southeast.....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 73° F.  The view this morning.....

....and on this date in 2012 TLE and I had just disembarked from the Galveston Free Ferry on the Bolivar Peninsula....

....we were on our way to Louisiana....about 6 weeks into our nomadic life.

Charles and Phyllis headed back to Phoenix around 8 am, and shortly thereafter TLE and I took our 15th 1 mile out and back walk of the winter.....

....as has been the case lately, we averaged 2.9 mph.

We hadn't been to town in about 9 days so around 10 am we headed into town to pick up our mail, so some shopping, and get some Gelato at Highway Hot Dog.....

A scoop each of Dark Chocolate and Cookies and Cream for moi, and for TLE a scoop each of Apple Pie & Caramel

....we made a stop at the General Store to buy some hardware items, such as some perforated angle steel to mount the 100 watt solar panel for the 4Patriots solar charger we're using in the garage to power the chest freezer.  We mounted it on the back of the garage about 6 feet up so it can get sun all day long.  It was sitting on the ground next to the garage, and only getting sun a few hours a day.  Charles has ordered 2 more of these panels, which should be enough to keep the battery topped off while powering the freezer....we'll see.....

....I screwed a 2 x 4 to the garage, and then added the perforated angle steel on top of that so we could hang the solar panel....it worked better than I had expected.

While in town we also filled up two 5 gallon gas cans as we were down to one 5 gallon can.  We've now got 15 gallons of unleaded regular and 15 gallons of diesel on hand, but I doubt we will significantly dent those supplies the rest of the winter.

Our favorite coffee shop in town, The Commodore House, reopened on the 11th after being shut for a couple of months in the off season, so we made a stop there for a cup of coffee to enjoy on the way home, where we arrived around 12:30 pm....

....once home I began work on the aforementioned solar panel hanging project.  By the time I finished it was close to 3 pm.   For the first time in a while I wore shorts and a t-shirt all afternoon, and for the first time in weeks we did not need to run any of our heaters in the evening.  We decided to take a night off from the 'sunset fire deck', but I'm sure we'll be back out there Saturday evening.

Thanks for stopping by!

The committee of four....

 7:15 am - Friday - March 13th - TWW - 38° F, humidity 19%, cloud cover 5%, wind 3 mph out of the east.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 74° F.  The view this morning....

.....and on this date in 2025 this was the view first thing in the morning....

....I forgot how late we had snow last winter....what a difference a year makes!

Before engaging in any outdoor work TLE and I took our 1 mile out and back walk averaging 2.9 mph once again....

.....can't seem to break that 3 mph barrier...lol.  Now onto regularly scheduled activities.

You just knew this would be the story for Thursday.  I'm sure you did.  We finally got to finish organizing the garage.  Thanks to Charles' efforts Wednesday (he assembled the new shelving unit) we got to begin our day (after our walk) moving the new shelving unit into place, instead of building it...saved about an hour or more.  It took a committee of four to get it all done, and I think we adjusted the shelving in all three shelving units a dozen times before we settled on the correct spacing between shelves in order to put everything on them which needed to be off the ground, and this is what is looked like after 3 hours...

Now....

....before....

.....we were able to hookup the solar generator battery to the chest freezer....

....by the time we finished it was after 1 pm, and time for a break, so TLE and I sat on the 'lido deck' for a while before changing into cooler, non working clothes (shorts, t-shirts, flip flops).  I puttered around in the trailer for while with the Tournament Players Championship (golf) playing in the background.

We had dinner at the usual time, 4 pm, in the house.  TLE and Phyllis had prepared cheese melt sandwiches, a spinach salad, a carrot salad, and some more of Charles' delicious potato salad.....

....for a change there was not a breath of wind when we headed out to the 'sunset fire deck', so it was perfect.....

Just after sunset the various solar lights we've installed began to come on

.....thanks for stopping by!