A day of firsts.....

 7:07 am - Monday - January 3rd - Anza Borrego Desert, CA - 26° F (coldes night so far), 44% humidity, wind - CALM....crystal clear, blue skies today with a forecast high of 63° F.  On this date in 2019 TLE and I were in Inverness, FL having dinner with good friends Richard and Rhonda (Rhonda is taking the picture)....has it been 3 years already?.....↴

We enjoyed our first cloudless day of 2022 Sunday, and NO wind, another first.  Our batteries were back to 100% by 10:30 am.  Unfortunately the high temp for the day was only 57° F, and that was not reached until after 2 pm.  I tried to spend time in the trailer working on a few projects, but it was just too cold to remain there for more than 10 minutes at a time.

I did manage, late afternoon, to dig a hole into which I dumped five weeks of accumulated ashes from our portable fire pit.  The bush next to which I dug the hole will benefit for a long time to come from those ashes.   And for the first time in a long time TLE asked me to burn some meat on our Sea-B-Que......a very tender London Broil she purchased at Fred Meyers in Newport, OR back in September.  We ate around 4 pm, and were outside by 4:30 enjoying our first sunset fire since 'last year'....lol......

.....there were marsh mellows to roast....our first since we arrived here......

.....a nice afterglow, yard lights, a cigar, a couple fingers of single malt, and a little Frank Sinatra courtesy Siriusly Sinatra just made it even better.....

.....as the fire burned down, and the cold evening air began to overpower the dwindling heat it was generating we gathered our things, and headed inside for the night.  And thus concludes another delightful day in the Anza Borrego Desert....the third day of 2022 is in the books.

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Bowled over.....

 7:15 am - Sunday - January 2nd - Anza Borrego Desert, CA - 27° F (our coldest morning so far), 43% humidity, wind - CALM....at last!  Crystal clear, blue skies today with a forecast high of just 57° F.  On this date in 2012 TLE and I were having coffee at Kona Joe's in Cedar Key, FL.....yup, Kona coffee, for sure....↴

I'm trying to remember the last New Years morning I turned on the TV and watched most of the Rose Parade, and then spent rest of the day watching one college football bowl game after another, but that is exactly what I did.  There was the Outback Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Rose Bowl, Citrus Bowl, and Fiesta Bowl....not necessarily in that order.  Most of the games Sunday were competitive, but two really stood out.....one was the Rose Bowl which was tied 45-45 (Ohio State and Utah State) with with 12 seconds to go, ultimately won by Ohio State 48-45 on a last second field goal, and then the Fiesta Bowl won by Oklahoma State 37-35 over Notre Dame.....either game could have gone either way.

The winds returned again around mid morning, and did not leave for good until late afternoon.  Our batteries reached 100% by 10 am, so we watched virtually every bowl game using our inverter  until well after 6 pm.  It appears we will be leaving our boondock site around January 12th, or 13th to head into Arizona where we will have our annual dental checkups, visit Quartzite, and spend time with our friends Tom and Darlene at their property near Surprise, AZ where there will be some big Newell projects undertaken such as replacing our 8 air bags, and 4 shocks.

After a couple of weeks of pretty cold, and often windy days it looks like we are in for a warming trend where we will see mostly days with highs in the 70's, and lows in the 40's for the next 10+ days.  Today as I finish today's missive there is not a single cloud visible anywhere.  The skies have that wonderful clarity you get sometimes, and our flag is hanging limp, meaning we have not so much as a breath of breeze, or wind from any direction.

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What a complete bust!

 7:53 am - Happy New Year! - January 1, 2022 - Anza Borrego Desert, CA - 47° F, 64% humidity, wind 2 mph out of the northeast......mostly sunny today with a forecast high of 60° F.  On this date in 2016 we awoke a a 'post apocalyptic' Octotillo Wells, CA.......↴

This is not fog....it is dust from all of the sand toys....a fine, almost talcum powder consistency

After several days of heavy cloud cover we awoke to a sunny, windless day with the promise of achieving a 100% charge in our house battery bank without the aid of the Honda EU2000i generator, and we achieved 100% by 11:30 am.  

I had one last 2021 project I've been meaning to do for a month, or so now.....change the oil, and air filters in the Honda EU2000i generator.  I've had the oil and new air filters for some time, but it was either too cold, or too windy before.  While I took care of that task TLE drove into town to do some laundry.  The Honda only holds about 1/3 quart of oil, and this Honda does not really use any oil.  I've had it for a couple of years now, and have never had to add oil in that that time.  While I was changing the oil, and filters I took time to clean dust from its interior, and exterior.

I was just finishing when TLE returned from the laundromat.  Once I put everything away I headed inside to watch the first of two NCAA football semi-finals.  The top 4 teams in college football play in these semi-final games each year to determine who plays in the championship game (this year on January 1oth).  You would think, or at least hope these games would hold some promise of good, well played, competitive games, but once again neither was.  The first game featured #1 Alabama vs. #4 Cincinnati.....it was, essentially, a one sided affair that was over before the first half gun sounded.  The final score was 27-6 in favor of Alabama, but it was not really that close.....the score differential was 21 points, and that happens to match perfectly the average score differential of these games over the years.  The second game featured #2 Michigan vs. #3 Georgia, and this game like the first was over before the end of the first half.....the final score was 34-11.....a 23 point differential.....who would have known?

As predicted by the weather guessers the wind came up around 1 pm on New Years Eve rising to 15-20 mph gusts out of the northwest, which buffeted us all afternoon, and into the early New Years morning hours.  As I write this morning the wind is gone.....thankfully....and we are watching the 2022 Rose Parade from Pasadena as we always do.  I'm not sure if I've mentioned this previously, but I grew up in Pasadena, and used to see the parade in person virtually every single year.

Other than the semi-final college football fiascos the final day of 2021 was rather enjoyable, and as the daylight portion of December 31st came to an end we were treated to a subtle, yet beautiful sunset.....

......Happy New Years to you and yours.....what adventures await us in 2022?  Stay tuned, and find out as our never ending nomadic travels continue.

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Seven stops......

 7:53 am - New Year's Eve - December 31st - Anza Borrego Desert, CA - 47° F, 82% humidity, wind 3 mph out of the north by northwest....mostly clear today with a forecast high of 66° F.  On this New Year's Eve in 2012 TLE and I were watching one of the most amazing sunsets we have ever seen anywhere.....this one happened to be at Cedar Key, FL.....↴

.....the water at Low Key Hideaway Tiki Bar was so glassy it gave a perfect reflection of the sunset.

We had plans to make another trip into La Quinta to run our last major shopping foray of 2021, but we were awaiting notification from Amazon that our recent order had been delivered to the Amazon locker in Coachella.  That notification came around 11:45 am, and within 15 minutes we were in the VW headed east on S-22.  We had a large bag of trash to offload, also, so we stopped first at the Salton City Travel Center only to find their dumpsters locked, so it was on to the Red Earth Casino to try again, and get fuel.  Their dumpsters were not locked, however, the fuel station was packed with New Years revelers fueling up for a long weekend of playing in the sands of Ocotillo Wells....it was at least a 20 minute wait so we pressed on to the Arco Travel Center in Mecca where we found things much less crowded a the fuel pumps.  Within another 20 minutes we were exiting US-86 at Dillon Road to pick up our Amazon package.

In all we made 4 more stops in La Quinta.....the Home Depot to return some of the SharkBite fittings which were the wrong size, then onto COSTCO, followed closely by Stater Bros. and Trader Joe's.  With our seven stops in the bag we were back on the road home by 2:50 pm, and in spite of the heavy New Years traffic arrived home around 4 pm.  Within minutes we were watching another amazing Anza Borrego sunset......

......once all of our shopping spoils were put away we settled in to watch 3 college bowl games. The most interesting game of the evening was the Peach Bowl pitting Michigan State against Pitt (Pittsburgh).  With 8 minutes to go in the game Michigan trailed Pitt 21-16, but when the dust settled 8 minutes later it was Michigan on top 31-21 over Pitt.

As the 21st year of the 21st century comes to a close we are grateful for our health, for each other, for our vagabond lifestyle which enables us to live normal lives during this time of totalitarian overreach by Federal, State and Local governments.  We are not 'locked down', we are not wearing masks inside and outside as mandated by our dear, silly Governor, who continues to ignore the science just like all his totalitarian buddies. We are living free lives unfettered, as much as is possible, by government interference.  We both hope the New Year finds you and yours healthy, happy, and prosperous.

Thanks for stopping by!

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Wrong again......

 7:29 am - Thursday - December 30th - Anza Borrego Desert, CA - 42° F, 79% humidity, wind 1 mph out of the northeast.....heavy cloud cover today with a forecast high of 61° F.  The view this morning......↴

......on this date in 2012 we were watching a sunset at Cedar Key, FL.......↴

We usually begin to awaken around 6:15-6:30 am each morning as the rising sun casts light across the sky, and makes our curtains begin to glow.  Eventually we'll pull the curtains back to see what kind of Anza Borrego day we'll be gifted.  Often one of us will utter words of delight, leap out of bed, get dressed, and head outside to take a picture, or two, or three....most often it is I, but TLE has been known to do the same thing.  Wednesday it was I who lept out of bed and took the pictures....of course, on my way outside I turned on our three Suburban gas furnaces......

......I love how the sun will light up the mountains and hills to the west, and northwest, and on this morning they turned a light shade of red.  I also noticed Mr. Moon is on the waning fast track....down to a quarter moon again....

.....have we really been here that long?

We never really got enough sun on our solar panels to allow them to work their magic, so the Honda E2000i ran for the better part of the morning, and eventually delivered us into 100% charge status all by herself.

Around noon time we decided to drive into Borrego Springs so could restock a few of our staples, such as peanut butter.  As we approached the city limits it began to drizzle, and continued to do so for the entire time we were in town.  We made a stop at the Frugal Coyote (thrift store) to see what treasures may have arrived since our last visit several weeks ago, and found a few things without which we felt we could not live.  Then it was on to Center Market where TLE did a very small shopping whilst I filled three of our 5 gallon containers, and 4 one gallon containers with filtered water.  It was still raining, but the filtered water dispenser sits just under the eves of the supermarket entrance, so I stayed dry.  Just as I was filling the final 1 gallon jug TLE emerged from the market......good timing as always!

The filtered water machine is on the right

It continued raining all the way back to our boondock site, but stopped just a few minutes after we arrived home.....good timing again.  We were expecting more rain later in the day, but the weather guessers were wrong again....it sprinkled a couple of times for about 5 minutes over the course of the evening, but that was it.  The 80% chance of 1/4" of rain forecast for Wednesday night, and Thursday morning have not materialized.

Wednesday was also the beginning of the major college bowl games leading up to New Year's day, so I watched a couple of them while TLE read.  The Clemson vs. Iowa St. game (Cheez-It Bowl....lol) was a good one ending 20-13 in favor of Clemson as Iowa turned the ball over on downs with about 30 seconds to go.  The second game was the Alamo Bowl pitting the Oklahoma Sooners against the Oregon Ducks....it, unfortunately for Oregon, was a very one sided game until the 4th quarter....Oregon just could not stop Oklahoma....final score 47-32...it wasn't really that close.

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Searchin'

 7:24 am - Wednesday - December 29th - Anza Borrego Desert, CA - 42° F, 69% humidity, wind 4 mph out of the north by northwest.....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 61° F.  The view this morning......↴

Looking west.....

Sunrise in the east...

.....on this date in 2018 we were arriving at Sunset Isle RV Park in Cedar Key, FL.....one of our all time favorite places.....↴

The winds continued Tuesday unabated, but not as bad.....just bad enough to make it undesirable to be outside longer than it took to take a couple of pictures.  Our batteries were down to 79% when we awoke, so we turned on the big Kohler 7.5 kw generator for about an hour to push some electrons back into our house batteries, and then switched over to the Honda E2000i generator to finish the job.....it was slated to be overcast all day, and it was.  Ultimately I turned off the Honda when the house batteries hit 97% around 11:30 am.  It appeared we would get some afternoon sun, but it never really materialized long enough to finish charging the batteries.  There was, however, enough sunlight to keep the batteries at 97% the rest of the day.  As I have written previously, it's not imperative that the batteries get back to 100% every day, but they should return to 100% at least once a week, which is not an issue as we have gotten to 100% about 90% of the time we have been boondocking here.

The sunrise Tuesday gave some promise of a lot of sunlight, but the clouds quickly rolled in after these pictures were taken....

.....one of the rare times I was outside for any length of time I noticed that we had lost the left front wheel cover on the Newell during the heavy winds Sunday night/Monday morning.  We also lost the solar light off the top of the flag pole, but I found that within minutes Monday morning....it had flown through the air around 100 feet directly to the southeast.  I did not realize then we had also lost the aforementioned wheel cover.  Anyway, I began to walk out toward S-22 scanning the scrub brush for the black tire cover, and ultimately crossed over the highway walking about 200 yards out to the south.  About that point I remembered the direction the flag pole solar light had flown, so I shifted my search more to the southwest.  Just about the time I had lined myself up with the flag pole and began to walk back, still looking for the wheel cover,  I heard TLE call my name.  She had seen me out looking for something (for what she did not know at the time) so she came out toward S-22 and immediately saw the wheel cover just on the south side of the highway, which is why she called my name.  I looked over and saw her holding the black wheel cover....it was right in line with my direction of travel back toward the trailer, and flag pole!

Searching for the wheel cover was about as exciting as it got for us Tuesday as we continued to hunker down inside the warm interior of our home on wheels.  We both spent most of the day reading......

.....around 4:15 pm I noticed we might get a little peak at a sunset so I went outside to memorialize it as best I could......

.....we have now been at our current boondock site for almost 5 weeks, and a total of almost 6 weeks since we arrived in Ocotillo Wells back on the 23rd of November.  The sunrises and sunsets begin to blur one into another, and the peace and serenity we feel deepens with each passing day.  We are in our happiest of happy places when we can spend days and weeks living off the grid as we are doing now.  I'll leave you with this recording by the Coasters.....

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Wind chill.....

7:32 am  - Tuesday - December 28th - Anza Borrego Desert, CA - 47° F, 54% humidity, wind 2 mph out of the west by northwest......partly cloudy with light breezes today and a forecast high of 58° F.  On this date in 2018 we were stopped at a Rest Area 50 miles south of Atlanta.....traffic and rain were terrible.....some of the worst traffic ever........↴

After being buffeted by high winds all night we awoke to wind blown skies....you can just see the sun peaking over the top of a cloud bank on the eastern horizon around 7:30 am......  

....it was a day of running the Honda E2000i generator for much of the morning to recharge the batteries until we had enough sun to take over the task, and then maintain them at 100% for the balance of the day.  By 5 pm they had slipped back to 99%.

The windy conditions continued all day making the 58° F outdoor temps feel more like 50° F.  I had to take down the flag pole for much of the day, and probably should have taken it down the night before, but I was being lazy.  Due to the wind chill factor we spent another day inside reading with very occasional forays outside to take care of this and that.

Around 4:30 pm TLE called my attention to the cloud formations surrounding us, and how the sun was lighting them up, so I went out to capture a few images of our 360° view.....

View to the east....

View to the southwest....

View to the north....

.....we spent the evening reading, and I was in bed shortly after 9 pm.....TLE followed a short time later.

We found out Monday afternoon that there is a change in our New Year plans.  Originally our kids, and their friends had planned to come back out to Ocotillo Wells on New Years Eve, but some of them decided not to leave home for New Years, and the others wanted to be closer to home so they are going to a place called El Mirage Dry Lake about 45 minutes from where they live.....as you know the drive out here is about 2.5 hours, so I totally get it.  That means TLE and I will not be moving down the hill on New Years Eve, but remaining here in our beloved Anza Borrego Desert boondock site until around the 12th, or 13th of January making this the longest we have ever boondocked in one place, and most number of consecutive days boondocked ever.  However, our consecutive number of days boondocking record will continue to be extended when we move up to Quartzite immediately after we leave here.

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It's windy!

 7:35 am - Monday - December 27th - Anza Borrego Desert, CA - 47° F, 55% humidity, wind 16 mph out of the west by northwest.....good morning from the wind blown Anza Borrego Desert as we enter our second windy day.  Our forecast high here today is 58° F....will it get that warm...I don't know.  On this date in 2017 TLE and I, along with our good friend Art Young, hiked the Bright Angel Trail at the Grand Canyon down to 'Indian Garden' where we had a short lunch before hiking back to the rim....10 miles in all......↴

....unbeknownst to me a the time was I had had a stroke that morning before beginning the hike.  The next day found me at Flagstaff Medical Center enduring endless testing, which confirmed the stroke....

Having lunch at 'Indian Garden'

One mile from the top on our return hike

Sunday began cold and windy, and only got more so as the day progressed.  It was too windy to do much of anything outside, so we didn't.  Except for a few forays outside I spent pretty much the entire day inside napping and reading.  As the day wore on the wind increased in velocity, and overnight wind gusts into the 30's continued to buffet the coach.  TLE woke up saying she was amazed she hadn't gotten sea sick....lol.

Well, this will probably go down as one of my shorter blog posts, but such is life when you are housebound by the elements.

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The roundtrip......

7:52 am - Sunday - December 26th - Anza Borrego Desert, CA - 56° F, 49% humidity, wind 11 mph out of the west (feels more like 15-20 mph)....crystal clear, blue skies today with a forecast high of 62° F.  On this date in 2018 we were winging our way back to Nashville after a whirlwind Christmas visit with our kids....arrived in SoCal Christmas Eve, and flew back out the day after Christmas.....we were tired, but very happy......↴

We were up far too early Christmas morning, but we had a purpose.  That purpose was to drive 125 miles into Ontario, CA to see our kids for Christmas.  Believe me when I say this.......TLE and I are not fond of pounding out 250 round trip miles on any day, let alone Christmas day, but what a rewarding day it was!

We were out the door, and in the VW heading east on S-22 to its junction with US-86 by 8:15 am.  We stopped off at Red Earth Casino, about 5 miles north of Salton City to top off our fuel tank at $4.64/gallon for premium.....yup, that's a lot, but the best price we have seen in SoCal....and were back on our way within 10 minutes.  The drive was easy as traffic was amazingly light with virtually no truck traffic.....

....as we approached Banning Pass on west bound I-10 we could see clouds.....

.....which eventually turned into a light rain as we approached Ontario.  We had planned to be at Tim and Laila's home around 11 am to hang out with them before Christmas dinner in the afternoon, but we made such good time that we stopped off at Rod and Sharon's new home (to which we had never been) for about 45 minutes before heading on to Tim and Laila's.....

Left to right: Sharon, Brayden, TLE, Rod and moi

.....next we drove down to Tim and Laila's home where we delivered a Christmas gift to Crosby, which did require some assembly.  They provide a plastic screw driver to screw the parts of the trucks together, and attach the wheels.  Crosby caught on pretty quickly to using the screw driver, and soon the four trucks (dump, tow, fire and garbage) and crane were assembled....

....by 2 pm the rest of the family, and extended family began to arrive, and soon it was bedlam.....18 conversations going on all at once.....it was like one big, blended Hockwald family

......around 4:30 pm we bid our adieus and began the 125 mile home in the now gathering rain storm.  It continued raining all the way to Banning Pass where the rain abated, and the wind increased.  By the time we turned west on S-22 to drive the final 22 miles to our boondock site it was pitch black, and even our high beams had little affect on the inky blackness which enveloped us.  Unable to see, or recognize many landmarks as we cruised westeward we suddenly came upon the turn off to our site, and belatedly recognized the glimmering solar lights around the Newell....I say belatedly, because we drove past the turnoff about 20 yards before we realized we had missed it....no harm no foul, as they say.  Thank goodness for those solar lights!

As we parked the VW and opened our doors to exit they were pulled out of our hands by a strong west wind blowing from the rear of the car, but we managed to extricate ourselves, and our belongings without mishap, and were inside turning on our heaters within seconds.  Our daughter, Meredith, was not able to attend the Christmas dinner, but sent along a bottle of 12 year old Macallan single malt scotch, which TLE and I utilized to toast our successful 250 mile round trip drive to celebrate Christmas with our kids......

....she knows what makes her Dad happy.....thank you Meredith!  Missed you!

We are no strangers to whirlwind Christmas trips as you know....I started this missive with a picture of TLE and I on an airplane returning to Nashville, and the Newell back in 2018 after another  whirlwind round trip....I get tired just think about that one!

We both hope you all had a wonderful, family filled Christmas, and thank you once again for stopping by!

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