BLTC*

7:17 am - Friday - December 10th - Anza Borrego Desert, CA - 43° F, 57% humidity, wind - CALM....mostly sunny today with a forecast high of 65° F.  On this date in 2012 I posted this picture.....it is more true every day......taken when we were in Port Townsend many years ago.......↴

A few days ago we ordered some things off Amazon to be delivered to an Amazon locker in Coachella, CA, which is exactly 52 miles from our location.  We have no mailing address out here in the middle of the Anza Borrego Desert, and this is the nearest Amazon locker available....

.....it is at the intersection of I-10 and US-86, outside the local Chevron/Extra Mile store.  I know, right?  That is a long way to drive to get a package (104 miles round trip), but we needed to make a drive into La Quinta to visit the local COSTCO, Walmart and Supercuts.  Our pantry is getting quite bare, and Center Market in Borrego Springs is very expensive with man made supply chain interruptions, and Bidenflation (6.8% year to date, by the way).  We knew it was going to be expensive, even at the La Quinta Walmart, but we had no clue how expensive.....

......this receipt (I have folded it so what we bought cannot be seen) does not include ANY alcohol, or meat (alcohol, by the way, is not that bad right now), just produce, meat, food stuffs, staples, TP, paper towels, Kleenex, etc.  We do not live extravagantly.  Meat, right now, is amazingly expensive.  The total was $386.75.  One year ago this same stuff would have cost us no more than $300, probably less. Now, this is for two people for 10-14 days.....I can't even imagine what it is costing a family of 4, or 5 for food per week right now.  Dry cereal is running about $1 more per box than a year ago.....crazy!  And, on top of that, gasoline, is averaging around $4.60/gallon for regular unleaded....about $1 more per gallon than it was a year ago here in California....."let's go Brandon!"

You will recall we filled our Newell diesel tank in Minden, NV back in late October of this year. We took on 139 gallons at a cost of $495 ($3.54/gallon)....if we had waited until SoCal to fill up it would have added another $148.  Back in August of 2020 we paid $2.08/gallon in Coeur d'Alene in late August, and $2.21/gallon in Lincoln City, OR in mid September of 2020.  As recently as March of 2020 we paid $2.89/gallon near Medford, OR.  The best local price for diesel we have found here in California is $4.54/gallon, but all fuel is at least $1 more per gallon  here in California than the neighboring states.  Just on the last fuel up in Minden, NV we paid $148 more due to Bidenflation.  The current fossil fuel policies of the Biden administration have increased the cost per gallon of diesel in California by almost $2.50 in the last 12 months.  As the credit card commercial says...."What's in your wallet?".....well, Brandon, not a heck of a lot right now.

The drive into Coachella to pick up our Amazon packages was uneventful, and took just over 50 minutes.  From there we headed to the local Supercuts (its been 6 weeks since my last haircut) in La Quinta, then the local Walmart, and finally COSTO.  By the time we finished in COSTCO it was around 3 pm, and time to head for home.  We made one last stop at the Red Earth Casino on the shores of the Salton Sea to fill up one of our 5 gallon gas containers at a cost of $3.34/gallon....by, and far, the best price for unleaded regular in SoCal we have seen by almost 30 cents.  It used to cost me around $12-13 to fill the can, now it costs $22.....that's inflation you can sink your teeth into.....lol.

We arrived back at our boondock home just after 4:15 pm.....just before sunset, however, there was no sunset due to heavy cloud cover we had all day.  When I checked our state of charge on the charge controller monitor it was at 98%.....not bad for a cloudy day!

Thanks for stopping by!                                    (FJB)

*BLTC - Better Living Through Coffee

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