Friday, January 31, 2025

Snowpack......

 7:42 am - Friday - January 31st - TWW - 26° F, humidity 64%, wind 7 mph out of the southeast....crystal clear blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 57° F.  On this date in 2012 TLE and I were at an Escapee Park near Temecula, CA having our first solar panels installed....


....the guy on the roof is Mike Sylvester of 'The RV Guy'.  He worked for AM Solar out of Springfield, OR as a remote installer.  Regretfully, AM Solar is no longer in business as of June of 2024.  The view this morning.....


.....at 7:54 am our Eco-Worthy Dual Axis solar array tilted toward the rising sun....yesterday (Thursday) they tilted (see the red circle in the above picture) at 8 am on an, also, very clear morning.

We've been kind of snowbound since Sunday afternoon, and we hadn't been to town for 9 days.  We knew we had a lot of mail to retrieve from our PO Box in Seligman, so  we decided to walk out to the entry road to TWW  to see how bad the snow was out there.  The entire road, except for maybe 100' was still covered with 4" of crusty snow, which had melted, and frozen a few times over the past few days.  To be sure we could safely drive that road out to the main arterial road I hopped in the Yamaha Rhino, put it in 4 wheel drive, and headed out to the entry road to drive up and down it to pack the snow, and make the drive a little easier....

Looking north.....

....looking south, back toward TWW entrance

.....I finished packing the 1/2 mile of road surface around 11 am, and by 12:30 am we were driving the Expedition northward on the entrance road on our way to Seligman.  The main arterial dirt road that is somewhat maintained by Yavapai County (they run a road grader over it every two months, and it's been almost 2 months since their last pass), was in pretty decent shape, so we made it out to US-66 in about 10 minutes.  We arrived in Seligman around 1 pm, and headed directly for the Post Office to get our packages.  This time they were all in a parcel locker, so we were in and out within a few minutes.

Next we walked across the parking lot to the Family Dollar store to pickup some orange juice, and a couple of other items before beginning our drive right back to TWW, arriving back there by 1:40 pm....that's the fastest round trip to Seligman we've ever made.  By the time we began our final approach on the entrance road it was beginning to get a little muddy in one spot, but otherwise it was fine.  We'll have to address that muddy spot with a heavy dose of gravel in the near future.

By the time we changed out of our 'city clothes' it was well after 2 pm, and I was mostly done with outdoor activity.  The snow on the ground is melting pretty fast now......


....and we are hoping we'll be able to move Phyllis' sister Newell Coach in the next couple of days to make way for our move to our new site.  I need to add another bucket of gravel to the site on Friday, or Saturday to finish leveling it, and then on Tuesday we will make the move.

The snow on the north side of the coach has hardly melted as it is in the shade pretty much 24/7.....



....and until we move our coach I don't think it will melt.  And that, my friends, brings us to the end of another TWW day.

Thanks for stopping by!

Thursday, January 30, 2025

Cabin fever.....

 7:35 am - Thursday - January 30th - TWW - 22° F, humidity 87%, wind 4 mph out of the south by southeast.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 51° F.  On this date in 2013 TLE and I were visiting Manatee Springs near Cedar Key, FL.....



....it was very windy that day!  The view this morning......


....right at sunrise....it's going to be a beautiful sunny day!  Hope our snow melts quickly!

There has been snow on the ground at TWW since Sunday afternoon, and Wednesday was no different.  It had snowed overnight, and added about 1" of snow to what was left from Tuesday, so I had to go out and sweep the snow off of 18 solar panels once again.  While I was sweeping off the panels on the Eco-Worthy Dual Axis solar tracker the panels began to tilt toward the rising sun.....it was only 8:08 am.....a new record, and more evidence the sun is getting higher in the sky each day.  Sunset on Wednesday was at 5:58 pm....by Friday it will be setting at 6 pm....50 minutes later than a month ago.

The forecast for Wednesday was mostly cloudy.  In fact, the weather forecast showed 87% cloud cover, but we actually got sun for most of the morning, which is why I had to go out earlier than I was planning to clear snow off the solar panels.  Fortunately, we got enough sun to get all of our battery banks back to 100%.  Again, I was not expecting to get anything back to 100%.

While I was outside I took down the sail shade from the house deck since all it has been doing the last 5 days is catching snow, which is not a good thing.  I also cleared the snow off our Adirondack chairs, and the other chairs on the deck.  While I was at it I decided to climb the ladder to inspect the solar panels on the CONEX.  I had noticed when up there several weeks ago that several of the panels we not tilted at 45°, which is the optimal angle.  After checking the size of the bolts holding the tilt arms in place I climbed down the ladder and retrieved a couple of crescent wrenches from the CONEX and went back up to try to raise the one set of panels up to the optimal 45° angle.  It took about 15 minutes, but I got it done.  There are at least 2 other sets of panels which need to be tilted up to the 45° angle, but I decided it was just too cold, and wet, so I'll work on them another day when the sun is out, and it is in the 60's again, which is not really too far away.  In fact, by this weekend we'll have 60° F weather again for the next 4, or 5 days.

That was pretty much the extent of my work day, but at least I was outside for about an hour, which helped to alleviate the 'cabin fever' that is beginning to become an issue.  I'm an outdoor guy, and I need to be outside soaking up vitamin D, and doing something productive....lol!  This sitting inside for most of the day, every day, is not for the faint of heart.  On the other hand, we've made an appointment with Yavapai Bottle Gas to move our 120 gallon tank to the new site on Tuesday, February 4th, so there is going to be a lot of OUTDOOR activity around here over the next 5 days as we begin to move all the chess pieces around TWW chessboard so we can be ready to move the Newell Tuesday morning, after the propane tank is moved.

Thanks for stopping by!

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

Snow life.....

7:49 am - Wednesday - January 29th - TWW - 24° F, humidity 92%, wind 4 mph out of the southeast......partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 43° F.  The view this morning.....




.....we're actually getting sun pretty early this morning (Wednesday), and the solar array has already tilted toward the rising sun at 8:08 am....a new record.  On this date in 2012 TLE and I were having a last dinner with my brother Phil, and his wife Jeannie in Riverside, CA before beginning our full time travel adventure.....



We awoke Tuesday to a winter wonderland at TWW.  The snow ranged in depth from 5-6" around the property.....

5"

.....we weren't expecting any sun Tuesday morning, and expected to run the Predator 5000 for much of the day, but much to our surprise we were getting sun showers by 9:30 am, so I headed out to sweep snow off the 12 ground based solar panels, and the six elevated panels on our Eco-Worthy Dual Axis solar tracker.  By noon time all our battery banks were back to 100%....something we did not expect.

I shoveled a pathway to the house front door, and that was pretty much the extent of my outdoor activity.  By late afternoon a lot of snow had melted, however, it began to snow around 5 pm, and continued snowing until around 8:30 pm.  Think we got about an inch during during that time.

Living in the snow is fun for about 48 hours, but then it begins to get a little inconvenient after that.  By the third day you just want to be able to get outdoors and do something productive, but everything we want to do is more easily done without snow blanketing the entire area.  On the other hand, a snow day is the perfect time to catch up on the many YouTube channels to which I subscribe, and that is what I did for the rest of the day.

As you must surmise, we decided to spend the winter here at TWW (5,500 feet elevation) knowing there was a possibility of snow, and cold temperatures.  We made that decision with our eyes wide open, and have no regrets about that choice.  In fact, our experience here has far exceeded our expectations in many respects.  We would have liked to get our permanent site done more quickly, but it is what it is.  By this time next week we should, barring any unforeseen circumstances, be in our new site.

As I close today's missive the sun is shinning brightly, our batteries are being recharged, and life is good.....


.....thanks for stopping by!

Tuesday, January 28, 2025

Dichotomy....

7:03 am - Tuesday - January 28th - TWW - 26° F, humidity 80%, wind 2 mph out of the east by southeast.....snowing this morning, and a forecast high for today of 40° F.  The view out our front door this morning.....


.....close to 6" of snow now.  On this date in 2015 we were in Wittmann, AZ at the property of good friends Tom and Darlene McCloud watching an amazing sunrise.....why was I up so early?....


We were expecting snow early Monday morning, but what we got instead was a lot of sunshine.  We had imagined being holed up indoors most of the day, but when you get that much sun you have to be outside doing something, so that is what we did until about 1 pm Monday.  

My first task was to wipe off all the solar panels on the property at ground level....that is about 18 solar panels.  There are 14 on the roof of the CONEX, but I avoid going up there anymore than necessary, and it wasn't necessary to do that Monday.  Next TLE and I preemptively dumped our black tank not know what conditions we would face Tuesday, or Wednesday, and it was about 2/3's full.  Better to dump early, than to do it with snow covered ground.  We did that the winter we were at the Grand Canyon, and it is not a fun process when everything is frozen!

We created 3 new burn piles last week, but were waiting for no wind to light them, and Monday morning was just such a morning....zero wind.....

TLE putting out small grass fires


.....once we had piled on cuttings from the three separate burn piles, and it had burned down to what you see above I left TLE to tend to what was left, and headed over to drive rebar stakes into the ground around our new site, to which I attached two lengths of string running the length of the site on both sides.  To the string I attached 'levels' to see how much more gravel we need to add to the downhill side, or east side of the site, to bring the site closer to level.  I didn't take a picture, but we'll need at least one more bucket of grave on the downhill, or eastern edge of the site.  

By 12 pm the clouds were rolling in, and by 1 pm it began to snow...and it snowed until around 9 pm.....








....fortunately, we got enough sun that all of our battery banks, including the house were at 100% when the snow began.  Tuesday will be a different story, however.  I envision a lot of Predator 5000 run time then.

Monday was certainly a dichotomy.....we went from sunny, balmy weather to heavy snowfall in a matter of hours.  As I write this morning (Tuesday) the snow is still coming down, but very gently.  The forecast is showing partly cloudy this afternoon, but it sure doesn't look promising right now from where I sit....


....thank you for taking the time to stop by today.  Goodbye for now from the very snowy TWW!

Monday, January 27, 2025

Day 3

 7:19 am - Monday - January 27th - TWW - 29° F, humidity 55%, wind 6 mph out of the east by southeast.....85% cloud cover today with rain/snow forecast for this afternoon, and a high of 43° F.  On this date in 2012 TLE and I were experiencing one of the last sunrises at Rancho Jurupa Regional Park where we were camp hosts for 12 months....


....on February 1st we would begin our full time traveling adventure....in just a few days we will celebrate 14 years living in the Newell full time, and 13 years of full time travel.....amazing....does not seem that long ago.

Sunday was day three of our permanent site preparation.  Of course, it is not like it's taken us three whole days to do the work. We've only been working on it 2-3 hours per day, but have gotten a lot done.  I started the Ford tractor around 10 am, and let it idle for about 20 minutes before getting to work hauling two more buckets of gravel to the site.  That was our unprofessional estimation of what it would take to completely cover the rest of the underlayment fabric, and get the site as close to level as possible side to side, and front to back......

Looking east....

.....and looking west

....by 12:30 pm we had finished raking out the two bucket loads of gravel, and were more than pleased with the result.....is it a final result?  Not sure yet, but we're close!

Naturally, we're going to have to move Phyllis' sister Newell to a different location before we can even think about moving our Newell.  And before we can even think about moving our Newell we'll need to call Yavapai Bottle Gas to come and move our 120 gallon tank to its new location, as well, and the shed will have to be moved to its permanent location, so there will be a lot of moving parts to organize before the move can be completed.  We are, however, as close as we have been since we arrived over three months ago......three months and a week to be exact.  

Additionally, we also loaded the three piles of small rocks I raked out of the site on Friday, drove the Ford tractor up and down the site to pack the gravel, and then hauled them away before calling it a day.

Sunday was also the day of the NFC and AFC championship games for the NFL.  These two games would determine the participants in the Super Bowl in two weeks (February 9th I believe), and that is how we spent our afternoon.  Usually I am just hoping for competitive games, but I was rooting for Washington over Philadelphia (NFC game), which turned out to be an error plagued game for the Commanders, was won handily by the Eagles 55-23, and it wasn't really even that close.  On the other hand, the AFC championship game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Buffalo Bills was an amazing game that went back and forth until the very end.  When the dust settled Kansas City had prevailed 32-29....it really could have gone either way.  Naturally, I was rooting for Buffalo, so neither of the teams for which I was rooting won.  As a result this year's Super Bowl will feature the same two teams from last year,  and this will be the 3rd successive year K.C. has been in the Super Bowl, and the 5th time out of the last 6 years.  If K.C. wins this year's Super Bowl it will be the first time in NFL history any team has won it three years in a row.  It seems we may be seeing the latest NFL dynasty.

By the time the sun set Sunday all of our battery banks were back at 100%, and that is a good thing because we will have a lot of cloud cover Monday and Tuesday.

Thanks for stopping by

Sunday, January 26, 2025

Gravel time.....

 7:16 am - Sunday - January 26th - TWW  - 32° F, humidity 39%, wind 9 mph out of the southeast......crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 50° F.  On this date in 2018 TLE, our daughter Meredith, and I were riding the Grand Canyon Railroad from Williams, AZ to the Grand Canyon Village....



.....the view this morning......




As cold days go, Saturday was not that cold, however, if the wind had been  blowing it would have been very cold.  Since rain/snow are being forecast for Monday (70% chance as I write) we wanted to get the 'underlayment' down on our new site by Sunday afternoon, and a layer of gravel upon that to keep the ground underneath from getting wet, and spongy as red clay dirt is inclined to get when it rains.  We also needed to refill our fresh water tank as it was down to under 40 gallons, so I pulled out the battery we use to power the water pump, and began to fill the tank....it takes 20-30 minutes to put in over a 100 gallons of water so while that was ongoing I fired up the Ford tractor to begin hauling gravel.  While it was warming up we unboxed a 12' x 40' piece of underlayment which perfectly covered the site I had cleared on Friday.

In all I moved four buckets of gravel to the site, then the hard work began....raking it all out to cover the entire sheet of underlayment, and make it level......


....I'll need to haul a least two more buckets of gravel Sunday morning to completely cover the underlayment so none of it remains exposed.  We were done filling the water tank, and raking the gravel by 1 pm, just as the winds began to return.  The Ford tractor worked well, and I am getting used to the controls, which are way different than those of the Kubota tractor I used at Seal Rocks RV Resort back in 2020-21.  Having access to a running tractor is a real game changer here at TWW

It was pretty much cloudy all day Saturday so the Predator 5000 ran quite a bit in order to get the Bluetti AC200MAX battery pack recharged, as well as the house batteries.  I even had to hook up the Honda EU2000i generator to the Bluetti that powers the trailer to get it back to 100%, which it did in about an hour of run time.  That's the first time since I hooked up those two 325 watt solar panels to keep it charged.  Both Bluetti battery packs got back to 100%, but the house batteries only got to 80% with little, or no sun on the rooftop solar panels.

I did something Saturday afternoon I haven't done in some time....watched a golf tournament all afternoon.  The Farmers Open was in progress at Torrey Pines Gold Club in San Diego, CA.  The weather there was very similar to the weather here in Northern Arizona....windy, blustery, and cold.  It looks like SoCal is going to get about 1/2" of rain today (Sunday), and with the rain after those fires there will probably be some mudslides in the burn areas.....hope it is not too bad.  Those poor people in Malibu, Pacific Palisades, and Altadena/Pasadena don't need anymore misery.

Thanks for stopping by!

Saturday, January 25, 2025

'Site' seeing......

7:55 am - Saturday - January 25th - TWW - 34° F, humidity 12%, wind 10 mph out of the south by southeast....cloudy today with a forecast high of 52° F....winds in the low 20's this afternoon for about 4 hours.  On this date in 2020 TLE and I were living at the Riverside, CA Elks Lodge.....


.....$10/night for 20 amps of electricity.....not bad, and very close to the Mission Inn.  The view this morning.....

I was out working with Charles around 9 am....way too cold to be doing anything outside at 36° F, but we were working on the tractor again.  Charles and Phyllis were going to be leaving around mid morning so we needed to finish what we began Thursday afternoon.  While we did get the left rear tire reinflated (liquid + air) it appeared the Schrader valve stem had a slow leak.  Fortunately I carry extra Schrader valve stems, so I just unscrewed the defective one, and screwed in the new one.  I had to take off my gloves to do the deed, and by the time I was finished my hands were numb with cold.  Then it was a matter of repressurizing the tire.  Charles got the PSI up to 24, and we called it good.....


.....by 10 am, or shortly thereafter, Charles and Phyllis were on their way back south.  I finished my work on the 'new' 1969 Chevrolet C90 dump truck (checking the oil and coolant levels), then moved it back to its parking spot out by the barn.  I've ordered a new seat cover, which should arrive next week, and I still need to check all the bulbs for the turn signals, and brakes on the truck....I think some of them have burned out.

Next, the main attraction of the day.....use the Ford tractor to begin grading our permanent site next to the trailer.  Before I could start moving dirt, I needed to remove a bunch of surface rocks from the site to make it easier to scrape dirt from the high end of the site to the low end to get it close to level before we begin hauling gravel from our gravel pile out near the gate to the property.  It didn't appear that there were many rocks, but you know how that goes.  What you see on the surface is only about 10-20% of the actual rock.  By the time I was done I had a pile of rocks weighing between 500 and a 1,000 pounds to move.  That new prybar I bought at Harbor Freight worked amazingly well, which gives me hope for removing those rocks out on the entrance road in the near future.  Considering how many rocks I had to lever out the dirt it didn't take that long.....

....soon I was using the bucket on the Ford tractor to drag dirt from the high side to the low side, then it came down to plain old manual labor....I had to rake all of the small rocks out, and then begin smoothing the site from front to back....




.....I managed to create a pad about 40' long and 12' wide.  The coach is 36' long and 8' wide, so plenty of room to place the coach exactly where we want it.  After I finished raking I took an 8' long 2" x 4" and laid it side to side at the front and back of the site, then using my 3' long construction level laid on the 2" x 4" found it was very close to level, and the back of the site (in the background of the 3rd picture) is now 5-6" higher than it was before.  We will be pulling into the site with the front of the coach at the back of the site so the passenger side of the coach will face the trailer.  The front wheels will rest on the raised pad at the rear....

  

....next up we'll put down some 'underlayment' fabric on the ground, and then begin hauling gravel.  The underlayment will keep the gravel from being pressed into the ground over time, especially when the ground gets wet from any future rain.  As you know, this has been an incredibly dry winter so far here in the Seligman area, but we do have snow and rain forecast for early next week....we'll see.  When this red earth gets wet it can get spongy.

By the time I put my tools away it was after 3:30 pm, and TLE was getting ready to ring the dinner bell.  Getting that pad prepared by the end of the day was a very big deal, but I was also very tired. Digging all those rocks out of the earth, and then raking the new pad took a lot of energy.  By the time I changed out of my work clothes I was running on fumes....lol.

Thanks for stopping by!

Friday, January 24, 2025

Inflation......

7:46 am - Friday - January 24th - TWW - 23° F, humidity 18% , wind 6 mph out of the east by southeast.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies again today with a forecast high of 56° F. On this date in 2013 we witnessed one of the most beautiful sunsets during our 5 week stay at Cedar Key, FL....



....the setting sun was perfectly reflected off the glassy smooth water.  I don't know if we will ever return to Cedar Key, but the memories of our 5 week stay there from December 2012 to February 2013 are still very fresh, even after 12 years.

We hadn't planned on doing a tree trimming, or building any rock borders around any trees, but somehow that is exactly what happened.  TLE had mentioned to me Wednesday night that Phyllis wanted some of the tree limbs on the juniper trees between the back porch of the house, and the battery room cut so she would be able to drive either of the side by sides around that circle.  That' show it started.  Of course, I was more than happy to test one of the new Stihl chains I had bought in Prescott, and it worked perfectly!  It cut through large branches like a knife through warm butter.  Before I knew it TLE was gathering large rocks to form a border, or curb around the three trees I was pruning....

TLE admiring her handywork in her Carhartt bib overalls


.....and just before 12 pm we finished.  It really turned out well, and now either of the side by sides can be driven around that circle to pick up, or deliver items for the battery room, or CONEX.

After a snack I moved the 1969 Chevrolet C90 over near the trailer so I could plug in the ShopVac to vacuum out the interior, as well as clean all of the windows inside and out.  I'm going to buy a new seat cover for the bench seat as the foam rubber is still in decent condition, but the cover is shot.  I got the glove compartment to open, and the heater controls to work again while I was at it....a little penetrating oil, and patience always works.....


.....around 2 pm Charles advised he was ready to reinflate the left rear tire on the Ford tractor, so I left off working on the truck, and joined him.  The process included injecting window washer fluid (it will not freeze down to 10° F, or something like that).  We used one of my water pumps to pump the solution from a 5 gallon bucket into the tire until it was level with valve stem (we had parked the tractor with the valve stem in the 12 o'clock position).  Once that was achieved we then added 20 PSI of compressed air to the tire.  The result was that for which we had hoped.....a fully inflated tire.....


....it took us the better part of two hours beginning to end, but we were successful, so now I can begin to level our permanent site!

Phyllis and TLE made waffles for dinner with a side spinach greens salad.  We've all talked about wanting waffles for dinner for a couple of weeks, so Phyllis brought a waffle iron up from Phoenix on this most recent trip.  We love our meals together.  We talk about everything under the sun, and laugh a lot.  They'll be heading back south on Friday, so we'll be by ourselves once again.

Our solar array begins to tilt towards the sun earlier and earlier.  Thursday they began to tilt at 8:14 am.....that's an improvement of 10 minutes since we first set up the array.  I can imagine that within a month they will begin to tilt before 8 am....nice.  We've been getting back to 100% on both house and the two Bluetti battery banks (shed and trailer) before noon every day lately, and as a result spend less time thinking about their status.  Now that the tractor is fixed there will be a lot of new stuff getting done around TWW.

Thanks for stopping by!