Next time ask TLE first....lol!

 7:51 am - Friday - December 5th - TWW - 22° F, humidity 37%, wind 2 mph out of the east....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 51° F.  On this date in 2019 TLE and I were in Riverside, CA.....

....attending the Festival of Lights at the Mission Inn.

Thursday morning we recorded the lowest low so far this winter....22° F.  The ceramic heaters we installed in the water bay, and the shed did their job keeping the temp in the mid 50's, and they don't use as much power as I thought.  Once they warm up they consume around 100 watts each.

The outdoor temp didn't reach 40° F until around 11 am....needless to say, but I'll say it anyway, we didn't do much outdoors before noon time.  Thankfully, there was no wind, so as long as one was in the sun one was comfortable.  Once one stepped into the shade the temp seemed to drop 15°.  

Since we left TWW last Wednesday to drive down to  Phoenix for Thanksgiving we have accumulated a lot of clothes in the laundry hamper, so around 10, or 11 am TLE headed into the house to do a few loads.  Once it was warm enough for me to work outside I spent the day taking care of a lot of little things like rerouting the solar, and charger lines in the house battery compartment so they go through the floor enabling me to now completely shut the bay door.....

The grounded charger cord (charger at the top of the picture) 

going through the floor now.

The old hole I drilled years ago has the positive and negative

 solar lines running through it now

Now I can shut and lock the battery bay door

....I already had one hole in the floor I cut back in 2021 to run some LED lights off the batteries, but I needed a much larger hole for the battery charger cord (grounded) to fit through.  Specifically I needed a 1" hole saw to cut the new hole.  While the actual job of rerouting these cables took about 5 minutes, I spent 30 minutes looking for the 1" hole saw....lol.  I forgot TLE and I had packed the box with my hole saws in one of our suit cases we store in the through bay.  It wasn't until I had exhaustively searched the trailer, garage, and CONEX several times that I finally asked TLE if she remembered what we had done with the box.....of course, she did, and I had the 1" hole saw in my hands within 60 seconds....LOL.

I did a lot of other small things throughout the afternoon like start our 1969 Jeep CJ-5, start up the Yamaha Rhino which hadn't been started for over a week, check the engine bays in Phyllis' Newell for mice, and found that we had caught two (one on each side), checked our engine bays for caught mice, and there were NONE (those new solar LED rope lights are doing the job!), reinstalled the solar porch light on the underside of the patio awning (we stowed the awning when we went to SoCal, so had to remove the light), and I know there are other things I did, but don't recall at this time. 

Around 1:30 pm we drove over to Dawn, the egg lady's off grid property to buy 4 dozen eggs.....love those unwashed, pasture raised chicken eggs!  It's always nice to chat with Dawn, and her husband Matt to catch up on the local happenings (she moderates a Facebook group for this area).  Their property is around 2.5 miles, as the crow flies, from our property, and it takes us just 10 minutes to get there.  They have a nice park model home, with a separate large metal garage (about the size of ours). They raise goats and chickens, and have a well established water catchment system catching rain water, and snow melt off the garage, plus a large solar array.  And just like TWW, they have to haul in their water.

By the time we returned it was getting close to 2:30 pm, and the warmth was leaving the air quickly.  I spent a little time in the trailer moving a few things around for easier access, but by 3:30 pm I was back inside the warm confines of the Newell, signaling the end of another TWW day.

Were at the beginning of a week long, clear, blue skies stretch so solar charging will not be an issue.  For the third day in a row our house batteries got back to 100% further proving the need for the extra solar panels on the roof of the trailer.  That extra 300+ watts of solar power are the difference between only getting back to 90%, and getting back to 100%.

Thanks for stopping by!

For the first time in 6 years......

 7:53 am - Thursday - December 4th - TWW - 21° F, humidity 47%, wind 5 mph out of the east......crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 47° F.  On this date in 2012 TLE set up our first nomadic Christmas tree in the Newell.....

....while we were in Campbellsville, KY working at Amazon.

It's been over 9 months since my last dermatological examine at Northern Arizona Dermatology, so I arranged for an appointment about a week ago for 11:15 am Wednesday.  Snow was forecast for the Flagstaff area Wednesday, so we got an early start to be sure we had time to account for possible snow and/or construction delays, of which there were none.  We were passing through the gate of TWW around 8:20 am, and by 8:45 am turned right on Route 66.  Our estimated ETA for Flagstaff was around 10:26 am.  

As we gained in altitude we began to see snow on the side of I-40.....

.....and by the time we were 10 miles out it was snowing.  We actually arrived in Flagstaff around 10:20 am, so had time to stop off at the local NAPA automotive store to buy some starter fluid, which we use to start our cold blooded Ford diesel loader with gannon. 

We arrived without incident at Northern Arizona Dermatology around 10:30 am, and by 10:50 am were called back to the little room.  For the first time in 6 years I had NO biopsies required, and just one tiny spot on the back of my right hand frozen....about the size of a small button.  Ryan advised he doesn't need to see me for another 12 months....the best news of all.....

Looking out of the waiting room window 

at Northern Arizona Dermatology

....by the time Ryan Wood (PA) finished his examination it was 11:15 am, the time of our original appointment.  Sometimes it pays to arrive early to a doctor's appointment.  Being called in early is certainly a rare occurrence, but so nice when it happens.

We headed back down the hill to Fry's Supermarket (Kroger) to do a medium shopping, then over to the Fry's fuel station to take advantage of our 20 cents/gallon off points.  We were on the road home by 12 pm.  It was still snowing the first 10 miles westbound on I-40, but after that the sun made an appearance, and the snow stopped.  We arrived back at TWW at 2 pm without incident.

We'll get back into the 50's by Friday, and back into the 30's for low temperatures each day by Sunday.  Our brief cold snap is coming to an end...thank you Jesus!  We decided to run the catalytic heater in the greenhouse on low all night Wednesday night.  The low got to 21° F, and the little catalytic heater kept the greenhouse interior at 27° F....it was over 32° F for much of the night until about 3 am when it  dipped below 30...don't ask me how I know.

Thanks for stopping by!

The planned and the unplanned.....

 6:55 am - Wednesday - December 3rd - TWW - 33° F, humidity 49%, wind 3 mph out of the south by southwest......partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 44° F.  On this date in 2012 TLE and I were walking home from the night shift at Amazon.....

....in Campbellsville, KY.

Tuesday began with mostly clear skies, but by 2 pm the clouds had rolled in again, and the temperature dropped.  First thing Tuesday (first thing meaning around 10 am) Charles and I worked on fixing a slow leak in the pump house (water).  Over the course of an hour, or slightly more we managed to reduce the leak to a drip every 2-4 minutes, which is much more manageable than 60 drips per minute.  Why the temporary fix?  Well, the plan is to install a much bigger expansion tank in the pump house making it necessary to enlarge the pump house.  The materials have been purchased, but we are waiting for Charles' handyman, Matt, to have time to come up and build the enlarged area.  In order to the leak we will need to remove the plumbing from the pump, which is a big job, so we'll do it all at the same time.  In the interim, the problem has been somewhat abated.

Before I arrived on the scene Charles had moved the painting tables, and firring strips into the greenhouse where it would be significantly warmer enabling us to paint everything in one day, and it worked quite well.  By early afternoon all sides of the firring strips, and 2 x 4's had been painted, so in the next few days we'll begin the finishing touches on the greenhouse.

Recently I bought a new battery for the 1969 Chevrolet C50 tilt bed truck, and wanted to put the receipt, and warranty into the truck glove box.  When I went to open the passenger side door I discovered the button you depress to open the door had become dislocated again....doh!  You'll remember I had to fix this problem right after we bought the truck last winter.  Anyway, a simple task of putting the battery receipt in the glove box turned into a 40 minute project in which I had to remove the door card, which is complicated all by istelf, in order to fix the problem. Finally, with TLE's extra hands I got it fixed.

By that time the aforementioned clouds had rolled into TWW, and our work day was over.  I put away my tools, and headed back to the Newell to take a nap before dinner at 4:30 pm.  Phyllis had made Turkey Tetrazzini from leftover Thanksgiving turkey with some leftover cranberry sauce.  Combined with the wonderful turkey/cranberry sandwich TLE made the other day for dinner that makes 3 meals we've had from that one turkey.

I put one of my temp sensors in the greenhouse Monday night, and the temp got down into the 20's, which is what we expected.  In order to grow things in there this winter we're going to have to use a heater at night.  Charles had brought a propane catalytic heater up to TWW last winter for use in the battery room, but it turned out we didn't need it.  It's not very big, but Tuesday night we set it up in the greenhouse to see how warm we could keep it.  On low the temp was dipping into the high 30's, so I turned it up to high and was able to keep the inside temp at 47° F all night long....as I write early Wednesday it is still at 44.7° F (coldest before the dawn, right?).  

Tuesday ended up being a day of planned and unplanned tasks, but we got it all done.  As I was walking back to the Newell from the greenhouse I observed the end of what must have been a pretty sunset....

....so I captured a few pictures to memorialize it, and was surprised at how well they came out.

Thanks for stopping by!

Road work.....

 7:56 am - Tuesday - December 2nd - TWW - 28° F, humidity 36%, wind 5 mph out of the east by southeast.....mostly sunny today with a forecast high of 53° F.  On this date in 2024 TLE and I were enjoying a sunset at TWW....

....we've been remiss in doing that this year.

We were expecting Charles and Phyllis to arrive between 2 and 3 pm Monday, and with lots of sun, and no wind was the perfect day to get a lot of small things accomplished.  First up we needed to unload the firewood from the Yamaha Rhino we had cut the previous day.  With all the wood we cut the previous two days we were able to fill the wood box on the deck, and the box inside the house.

Once that was done I headed over to the Ford diesel tractor to get it started, and warmed up so we could do some road work on the connecting road to the house.  You will recall that there is a 75 foot section that has a low spot, which collects water when we get a lot of rain.  It was all torn up from people driving through it after the week long rain event.  My plan was to use the gannon to drag dirt from both sides of the low spot to raise up the low spot, then smooth it out with the bucket, and rakes, and finally drive back and forth over it to pack it down....

.....TLE took a couple of short videos while I was compacting the dirt.  In all it took less than an hour to get it looking good again, but we still need to put more dirt in that low spot.

When Charles and Phyllis were here before Thanksgiving they brought a load of firring strips, and 2 x 4's to be used to finish off the greenhouse, but due to all of the mud they drove through the wood got quite muddy, so TLE and I pulled them out of the CONEX, and placed them on the painting tables (I wrote about that yesterday).  Before we can paint them we needed to remove the mud, which was now quite dry.  The only thing that worked was using a wire brush to remove the mud, and it worked quite well.  After all of the boards were clean I used compressed air to blow all of the residual dirt off them, and the tables so we can paint them Tuesday.

Additionally, we finally moved the wood pallets, upon which the wood had been delivered, over to our 'pallet' area, rolled up all of the long garden hoses which had been in use over the past few weeks, moved some more wood we had cut a couple of weeks ago in another part of the property into the wood box, lit the wood stove in the house so the house would be warm when Charles and Phyllis arrived, moved more wood over to the cutting/splitting area near the Eco Worthy dual axis solar tracker to be cut and split at a later date, moved the saw horses over to that same area to get the wood off the ground, making it easier to cut, moved the portable fire pit over to the 'sunset deck' (FINALLY!), and checked the fluids in the tractor adding some hydraulic fluid for the first time since last winter.

I was just adding more wood to the wood stove when Charles and Phyliss arrived around 2:30 pm, and with that we were done for the day.  We had dinner around 4:30 pm which featured scrambled eggs with salsa, and hash browns smothered with leftover Thanksgiving gravy....YUM....

.....we love sharing dinner with Charles and Phyllis, and, as always, the conversation was wide ranging.  With that another TWW day came to and end.  

Thanks for stopping by!

One out of two....

 7:46 am - Monday - December 1st - TWW - 30° F, humidity 41%, wind 7 mph out of the east by southeast.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today (a rarity lately) with a forecast high of 51° F.  On this date in 2021 TLE were boondocking 8 miles out of Borrego Springs, CA.....

.....we lit up our boondock site with solar lights.  When driving home at night from Borrego Springs it was so DARK we needed these lights to show us where to leave the highway to return to the Newell.  The view this morning....

We had very low ambitions Sunday, and just two goals: 1) Get the painting tables out of the CONEX, and place the new supply of firring strips on them to be painted when it got warm enough...

....and 2) Cut and split some more firewood for the wood stove in the house.  Well, we got the tables out, and the firring strips laid out to paint, but it never got warm enough to paint them.  It began as a sunny day, but by noon time clouds began to roll through the area, and the wind speed increased, meaning the temp never got much over 50° F, which is not ideal for painting.

We did, however, manage to cut and split enough wood to fill the Yamaha Rhino dump bed one more time....

.....so that's two loads of wood in the last couple of days.  As expected, the Stihl chainsaws worked flawlessly.

By 2 pm it was getting quite cold outside, so we called it quits for work Sunday, heading into the warm interior of the Newell for the balance of the day.  Of course, Sunday means NFL games.  The highlight of the day football wise was the miraculous victory by the Denver Broncos who won a thriller in overtime 27-26 when the Washington Commanders (used to be Redskins) failed to make a 2 point conversion, which would have given the Commanders the victory by a point.  That makes 9 consecutive games won by 3 points, or less....the most in NFL history.  The Broncos are tied with the Patriots for the best record in the NFL at 10-2.

We're in for a 5-6 day stretch of lows in the 20's overnight, and an even longer stretch of highs in the 50's.  There may be one day in the 60's, but that's it.  The connecting road to the property is finally drying out so we can go out and fill in the low spot with dirt, and smooth out the large tire ruts.  TLE and I remain in good health with just the aches and pains of advanced age being our only complaints.  We are loving our second winter here at The Wilson Wilderness, and are excited to be able to begin to use the greenhouse for its intended purpose.

Thanks for stopping by!