"God willing, and the river don't rise....."

7:01 am - Monday - November 3rd - Yuma, AZ - 56° F, humidity 45%, cloud cover 1%, wind 10 mph out of the north by northwest.....clear, blue skies today with a forecast high of 79° F.  On this date in 2011 TLE and I were north of Ventura, CA....

 .....at Rincon Parkway dry camping in the Newell right along the Pacific Ocean, and I mean right next to!  The view this morning.....

The next leg of our trip began around 9:30 am Sunday.  We were not in a hurry as we knew we would be driving in rain all day long.  The last 200+ miles to Yuma was supposed to take about 3.5 hours, but we had no idea what the road conditions along US-95, which we would be driving for 160 of those 200+ miles, would be.  It had rained all night, and was still raining, as forecast, as we pulled out of the hotel parking lot to head to I-40 westbound.....

.....it's about 45 minutes to US-95 southbound which takes us through Lake Havasu....

....where we got a brief respite from the rain.  Soon we were in Parker, AZ where TLE took over driving duties to Quartzite....little did we know how interesting the next 100 miles would be.  Within 20 minutes of leaving Parker we began to come across water flooding across US-95 every 1/2 mile.....

.....by the time we reached Quartzite, where I took over driving duties, we had crossed no less than 30 water crossings with water ranging in depth from 6 inches to 20 inches in depth. Some had to be crossed at very low speeds of under 5 mph.  Just south of Quartzite the routine began again.....one water crossing after another.  We were in a line of about 20 vehicles for the next 70 miles until we finally broke out of the rain, and clouds just north of Yuma....

.....with about 8 miles to go.  We arrived at our hotel just after 1:30 pm....just a half hour later than expected.  To be sure, the under carriage of the VW Beetle is as clean as it has been in years....lol!

Once we were checked into our room, we relaxed and watched some NFL football.  This has been some great football weekend for me.  Pretty much every team I backed won their game on Saturday, and that continued on Sunday with the Rams, Broncos, Bengals, Raiders winning their games.  The Broncos had to come from 14 points down in the fourth quarter to wind 30-26 over the Chiefs, who until last week had been undefeated....now the Broncos have a better record than they.

Around 4 pm TLE and I walked across the street to have dinner at the Cracker Barrel.  We were talking about the last time we had a meal at any Cracker Barrel, so I looked it up on my blog...April of 2018 in Amarillo, TX on our way to Maine for the summer.....8 years is way too long....

....while I was taking our 'usie' one of the waitresses photo bombed our shot....cute!  As always, the food was exceptional.  As we have traveled along the width and breadth of our country we have found Cracker Barrel food to be very consistent, and that is the charm of this national restaurant chain.  Please don't ever change that!

Thanks for stopping by!

Adapting to circumstances....

 7:19 am - Sunday - November 1st - Kingman, AZ - 54° F, humidity 93%, cloud cover 93%, wind 18 mph out of the southwest.....heavy cloud cover, raining today with a forecast high of 57° F.  On this date in 2016 TLE and I were boondocking near Lone Pine, CA....

Mobius Arch (Alabama Hills)

Mount Whitney as viewed through Mobius Arch

Parked right next to Tuttle Creek

....we had always wanted to boondock here and finally did it.  Wish we could have spent a week there!  The view this morning....

third floor room.

Originally, TLE and I had planned to begin our drive south to Yuma Sunday morning, but the weather forecast, which predicted 1/2 inch of rain beginning early Saturday evening, convinced is to leave a day early to avoid the anticipated muddy quagmire of the local dirt roads.  There is a lot of red clay in this area, and just a little moisture turns it spongy and gooey. The forecast also had an affect on Charles and Phyllis' plans to head back to Phoenix.  They had planned to also leave Sunday morning, but sped up the timeline to leave Saturday morning.  They were gone a little after 8 am Saturday.  TLE and I wanted to give the local roads a chance to dry Saturday, so our departure time was to be between 2:30 and 3 pm.  As it turned out that was a very good decision, but more on that later.

We spent the morning closing up all of our infrastructure (locking everything), and watching some NCAA college football.  We also stowed or patio awning, and the two 'sail' sunshades as the forecast also included winds in the 20 mph range while we are gone.  As the morning progressed we slowly packed our backpacks.  Taking lots of time to pack reduces the chances of forgetting something, and we almost always forget something.

By 2:45 pm we had packed the VW Beetle, double checked to be sure everything that needed locking was locked, and were on the road around 2:50 pm.  We had a few soft spots along our long driveway, but not bad.  The connecting road which runs along our property was pretty dry, and the main north/south arterial was in very good shape with just a few muddy areas which we were able to circumnavigate easily.  The road was still just as smooth as it was two weeks ago when we arrived, and we reached US-66 in less than 15 minutes. When the road is bad it takes us 30+ minutes.

Within 10 minutes of reaching US-66 it began to rain (earlier than expected), then became torrential.  Torrential enough that I had to slow down to 45 mph to be able to see.  Torrential enough that all of the dirt, dust, and some mud was completely pressure washed off the VW.  It continued raining, sometimes very hard, all the way to Kingman where we arrived just before 4 pm.

We made a quick stop at the local Smith's Supermarket, then headed over to our hotel, which was just across the street on Stockton Hill Road.  By 4:30 pm we had completed our check in, and were in our room.  Once we had unpacked we walked across Stockton Hill Road to the local Panda Inn Express.  It always amazes me at how much food you get for $12 at Panda Inn Express!  

We were back home by 4:45 pm, at which time I turned on the TV to watch the USC vs. Ohio State game, which was already in progress.  The score at the time was 7-3 in favor of USC (home team).  We forgot to pickup some forks at the Panda Inn Express, so I went downstairs to get some 'Sporks' we keep in the glove compartment for just such an 'emergency'.  By the time I returned it was 14-3 USC....wait, what?  USC is now unranked due to their humiliating loss to Wisconsin last week, and Ohio State is the #2 team in the nation.....

I'm actually much happier here than I appear

.....we got, by the way, an 'ACCESSABLE' room, aka: ADA room, which is twice as large as a regular room.  It wasn't classified as a suite, but it did have a couch, and two desks.  Something to keep in mind for future travels.  As the evening evolved the Trojans widened their lead to 12 points holding the Buckeyes to 3 field goals, and just one touchdown to win 30-18 on a stormy, rainy night in the Los Angeles Coliseum.  The Buckeyes didn't score a touchdown until under 2 minutes to play.  We were very impressed with the improved USC defense.  They actually played well for 60 minutes.

We headed off to slumberland around 9:30 pm looking forward to a good night's sleep, and to continuing our trip south to Yuma Sunday morning.

Thanks for stopping by!

A rare rain day at TWW......

 7:32 am - Saturday - October 31st - TWW - 47° F, humidity 71%, cloud cover 79%, wind 14 mph out of the south.....cloudy today with a forecast high of 59° F.  On this date in 2013 TLE and I were finishing installing new faux wood vinyl flooring in the Newell....

.....we originally had real wood flooring, but it was coming apart.  We also removed the the couch, bought another euro recliner for TLE, and installed a work station which I still use to this day.  Now, 13 years later, we are on our third iteration of flooring, which we installed back in 2022.  The view this morning.....

We awoke Friday to the threat of rain, which became reality around 9 am.  It rained quite hard for several hours, and by hard I mean so hard it was deafening at times.  The rain continued until early afternoon.  As a result two of our six new IBC water totes filled half way, and the other four have anywhere from 6" to a foot of water in them.  The real test will happen Sunday when the weather guessers are forecasting 1/2 inch of rain, which should last all day.  If that forecast comes to pass I would imagine all six new IBC totes will be full giving us over 3,400 gallons of water catchment in the past couple of months.

We ran our Predator dual fuel, 5,000 watt generator for a couple of hours to get our Bluetti bank of batteries charged to 100%, then the sun took over to charge the two Cloud Energy lithium house batteries.  By the end of the day all of our batteries were at 100%.  90% of the time we do not need to run the Predator at all, even on cloudy days, but it is good to have it on super rainy days like Friday.  To pass the time I caught up on a number of the YouTube channels I follow, and TLE read.

We convened at the house to have dinner with Charles and Phyllis around 4 pm.  TLE prepared potato soup with sour dough cheese bread; a perfect winter dinner.  We have travel plans which originally had us leaving TWW on Sunday to drive to Yuma for our semi annual dental exams and cleaning, but due to the forecast of 1/2 " of rain coming down Saturday night and all day Sunday we are leaving Saturday to get out before the main north/south arterial becomes impassable.  We'll leave Saturday before the rain begins, spend Saturday night in Kingman, then continue our trip south to Yuma on Sunday morning.

Thanks for stopping by!

The unexpected can be a good thing.....

 7:24 am - Friday - October 30th - TWW - 52° F, humidity 82%, cloud cover 92%, wind 15 mph out of the south by southeast.....heavy cloud cover today with rain on the way, and a forecast high of 54° F.  On this date in 2015 TLE and I were in John Day, OR....

....at the fairgrounds.  We've been through John Day twice over the years, and it has always been in October when the leaves are changing.  The view this morning....

.....supposed to be raining by now, but it's not, and that's okay by me.  More rain equals more weeds, and we've got enough.

We're not usually outside working before 10 am, but Thursday we were out by 9 am.  We wanted to be sure we were able to complete the installation of the new bank of solar panels by the end of the day Thursday as we were pretty sure it would be raining Friday.  TLE was on hand every step of the way first helping me carry the solar panel rack we had assembled Wednesday over to the site we had chosen.  Then we moved the four 195 watt Eco-Worthy solar panels over so we could begin to attach them.  Frankly, I thought this was where the 'Hockwald Way' would intervene, but it did not.  Within an hour we had the panels attached, and wired together in 'series'....

.....next I ran the 100 feet of solar cable from the solar panels over to the Newell.  It's only about 65'  between the two, so at some point I will shorten them.  I had to install MC4 connectors to the solar cables coming out of the house battery compartment to complete the connection with the 100' solar cables, which came with MC4 connectors already installed.  The spot we chose for this solar installation gets the morning sun about 30-40 minutes sooner than where the solar tracker is placed, so we think it it is optimal location.  Only time will tell.

About the time we were finishing the installation Charles and Phyllis arrived, unexpectedly with a trailer full of shelving, cabinets, etc. they had been gifted by a food bank which was closing down.  We weren't expecting them until Friday morning.  We have needed more shelving in the garage, so we spent the next couple of hours unloading everything, moving around stuff in the garage, and inserting the new shelving and cabinets.....

We moved all of our emergency food supply to the new shelving unit (far right).  You can also see the new to us cabinet between the shelving unit and the yellow shelving

It used to be there in the corner where the gas cans are now sitting on two new to us tables

We moved a lot of stuff off the yellow steel racks and now have more room to store stuff

....all of the pieces they brought up from Phoenix fit perfectly the spaces available, and what a difference they make!  By the time the four of us finished it was early afternoon, but our day was not done.  

It's been over 6 months since we visited Dawn and Matt's place, which is a little over 2.5 miles away.  We've been buying free range, unwashed eggs from Dawn for the past two winters, and we were just about out of eggs, so around 12:30 pm TLE and I headed over in the Yamaha to buy 5 dozen.  Since we were last there in early April she and Matt have completed the new goat pen they began building last December.  We visited for a short while, then headed back to TWW.

By this time I was totally ready for a snack, and a nap.  After a brief rest I headed outside to finish putting away the tools we had used to finish the new solar rack, moved the Jeep back into the garage, put away the Yamaha, and then called it a day.

Around 4 pm we headed over to the house for scrambled eggs and hash browns with gravy courtesy Phyllis, and one of the 5 dozen eggs we had just bought.  Phyllis scrambled the eggs, and Charles fried the hash browns.  We talked and ate for over an hour before heading home for the evening.

For the first time since we returned to TWW almost two weeks ago our house battery bank reached 100% charge rate late afternoon, which can be attributed 100% to the extra 780 watts of solar power we installed.  Combined with the 620 watts on the roof we now have 1,400 watts of solar panels charging our house battery bank.  Combine that with the 600 watts on the Eco-Worthy dual axis solar tracker, and the two 330 watt panels charging the trailer we now have 2,660 watts of solar power.

As I write Friday morning around 8:15 am, the forecast rain has arrived....thanks for stopping by!

There 'he' is again......

 7:41 am - Thursday - October 29th - TWW - 41° F, humidity 47%, cloud cover 51%, wind 15 mph out of the south by southeast.....cloudy today with a forecast high of 66° F.  On this date in 2013 TLE and I were in West Jordan, UT.....

....courtesy parking in front of my brother and sister-in-law's home.  Took a little effort to shoehorn the Newell and American trailer into that cul-de-sac.

TLE and I dedicated Wednesday to finishing the assembly of the solar panel rack, which will hold the four new 195 watt, bifacial solar panels.  It's been a while since 'the Hockwald way' reared its homely head, but Wednesday there 'he' was.  What should have taken an hour at best, took TLE and I working together, combining our two brains, two hours, but we got it done....

....for the base we used 4' x 4" pressure treated wood.  They, in turn, will be attached to 5 concrete piers....

.....which will add extra weight to keep them from being flipped over by the wind, which has happened, on occasion, here.....

....once that was done I removed the four solar panels from their packaging and leaned them against the new solar rack to wire them together to see if we had to wire them together in parallel, or could wire them together in series, which is preferred.  The voltage limit of our Victron charge controller is 100 volts, and the voltage generated by the panels in parallel was around 57, which is way under 100 volts, obviously.  Next I wired them together in series, which generated 87 volts, still way under 100 volts, so that is what we will do when we move the new rack to its location just to the north of our Newell.

We took a break right after finishing the assembly of the solar rack, then I, mostly by myself, ran the voltage experiment.  Once I was satisfied with the results I began putting all of the tools we had employed away, and cleaned up the mess created by unpackaging the four solar panels.  By the time I finished it was around 2 pm, and time for a nap.

The current weather forecast shows rain this Friday (62% chance tomorrow, in the morning) and a lot of rain Sunday (89% chance with the possibility of up to 1/2" of rain), so we should get a long ways toward filling our new IBC water totes.  A half inch of rain is a lot of rain for this area....

.....TLE had me grill two Mahi Mahi steaks for dinner, to which she added boiled spinach and rice....

....while we ate we watched game 5 of the World Series.  By the end of the 6th inning the Brewers had built a 4-0 lead, and their relief pitchers were almost unhittable, but the Rays did managed to get one run across the plate in the bottom of the 9th inning, but that was it, and that was the end of the 2026 World Series.  Not as exciting as the 2025 World Series between the Dodgers and the Blue Jays, which went to 7 games, and could have gone either way.

Thanks for stopping by!

Water catchment upgrade.....

 7:26 am - Wednesday - October 28th - TWW - 38° F, humidity 38%, cloud cover 34%, wind 13 mph out of the south......partially cloudy today with a forecast high of 66° F.  On this date in 2014 TLE and I were near Port Orford, OR.....

You can see the light at the lighthouse in the distance

....at the Cape Blanco Lighthouse walking in stormy weather on South Beach.

As you will recall, Charles and Phyllis bought 6 more 275 gallon IBC totes to double our water catchment abilities.  Once they were in place it was clear we would have to modify the length of the down spouts on two or three of them so we could reach the fill point on each of those totes.  Initially we had only made them long enough to reach the single tote.  On two of the other three the down spouts were already long enough to reach either tote.  On the final one all we had to do was move the new tote from one side of the original tote to the other for the down spout to reach each of them.  I spent about 3 hours making the changes necessary to fill the new totes....

Northwest corner of the greenhouse

Southeast corner of the greehouse

Northeast corner of the barn

Southeast corner of the house

Northeast corner of the house

Southwest corner of the house

.....which should get some water this weekend when it is forecast we will get at least a 1/4" of rain.  While I was thus engaged TLE was straightening up the greenhouse interior.  Right now all we have in there are the plants we brought south from LPG&RVR, but due to recent big wind events some damage had occurred to the visqueen, and there was general chaos inside....

.....you can see the missing panels of visqueen in the picture above on the east and south facing sides.  TLE and I will repair those sections in the next couple of days prior to the new weather front arriving here on the weekend.  I also use dour ECHO string trimmer to knock down all of the weeds choking the walking paths to the greenhouse, and around the growing beds themselves.....

.....they were about 3 feet tall in places, and it seemed like I was cutting alfalfa....lol!  I am slowly, but surely cutting down all of the weeds around the house, but it will take a few more sessions before that is finished.

By the time we finished we had worked almost 4 hours, and we were both ready for a snack, and a nap.  We are finding as we work each day that we are are recovering more quickly each time, and have a little more endurance the next day, so we are working our way to being 'work hardened' as they say at Amazon.  

Later in the afternoon I spent more time assembling the steel rack which will hold the four new 195 watt, bi-facial solar panels we purchased....

.....I have a little to do before I can begin the final assembly of the rack, but by 3 pm I was ready to be done, so I'll finish it up Wednesday, then put all the pieces together, and attach the solar panels.

We had chili, cornbread and Margaritas for dinner, and watched the 4th game of the World Series in which the Rays got out to an early lead, 1-0, which the Brewers tied one inning later.  Then the Rays went up again 2-1 late in the game, but the Brewers tied it again on a homerun.  It remained a tie game until the top of the 12th when the Brewers hit another homerun to go up 3-2.  It looked like the Rays would be swept as the bottom of the 12th began, but after an error, and then 3 more hits they won 4-3 to extend the World Series to a game 5.  It was a very good game!

Thanks for stopping by!

Town and country.....

 7:57 am - Tuesday - October 27th - TWW - 41° F, humidity 39%, cloud cover 1%, wind 14 mph out of the south.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 66° F.  On this date in 2013 TLE and I were in Ogden, UT....

....having morning coffee at "Grounds for Coffee, a legal brew".  That smile!  The view this morning.....

.....first totally cloudless day we've had in a while, and the temp will be over 65° F today!

The Post Office notified us a few days ago that the package containing the 100 feet of solar cable I ordered from Amazon had arrived, so we headed into town around 10:30 am to retrieve said package, and pickup a few groceries.  The north/south arterial was graded over 3 weeks ago, and it is still very smooth, so we're able to drive the Explorer comfortably at 25-30 mph and get to US-66 within 10 minutes.  

The drive into town was uneventful, and by 11 am we were pulling into the USPS parking lot to get our package, and while I did that TLE walked over to the Family Dollar to buy a few things for the pantry.  Within 20 minutes we were at the Seligman Market to buy some freshly made bread, some produce, and a few other sundries, then we were back in the Explorer headed back to TWW arriving there around 12:15 pm.

We spent the afternoon figuring out how to configure, and then attach two 'sail' sunshades between the trailer and Newell patio awning.   After many failed attempts at the perfect configuration we finally settled on this arrangement using only two of the three 'sail shades'....

Afternoon shot....

Morning shots

....we don't mind the morning sun hitting the 'lido deck', but really want to provide a larger area of shade in the afternoon, and this configuration achieves that goal.  The bottom two pictures were taken this morning.  Now we can sit anywhere we want on the artificial turf between the Newell and the trailer.

I also spent about 20 minutes repairing another faulty fuel line in the Yamaha....

See the split at the end of the line?

There were literally dozens of cracks in the hose, too

.....and I believe, fingers crossed, that is the final bad section of fuel line.  When we left for town I noticed a gas smell coming from the Yamaha, which was parked near the 'lido deck', so upon return I got right on it, found the problem, and replaced it.  It's always something, right?

By the time we finished with our afternoon activities it was 3 pm, and another day at TWW was quickly moving into the rearview mirror.  We watched game number three of the World Series between the Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Rays, which quickly became a blowout with the Brewers jumping out to a 10-0 lead after 4.5 innings when the Brewers scored 8 runs with two outs, and that is how it ended.  On the NFL front the hapless Dallas Cowboys managed to defeat the Philadelphia Eagles 38-21 in Philadelphia on Monday Night Football.  Apparently the star quarterback for the Eagles, Jalen Hurts is out for the season due to blood clots in his lungs.

Thanks for stopping by!