Heaven at 2750' elevation

This Escapees Park is a little slice of heaven......crystal clear winter views, light breezes, a few clouds, and temperatures in the 60's. We are really cherishing our time at this park, and as of this evening we will be here a least one more day than planned. There were a number of issues the last two days that have extended the instllation time, but all were overcome with good solutions, and we are very happy with the professionalism of the installation. Below are a few pictures of the step by step process of installing the solar panels. I will post more pictures tomorrow of the charge controller, and batter monitor.

Panel upside down to be "wired" up.

Panel now wired and attached to the roof.

How the panels are configured

"Combiner" box mounted on side of refer chimney

Cables now plugged into "Combiner" box and power flowing to batteries.

The panels come with tilt bars that can be used to tilt the panels left, or right to catch the sun when it is low in the sky as it is this time of year. Tomorrow the sealant will be applied to the areas where screws were used to attach the panels. By the time we finished hooking up the cabling it was too cold to apply the sealant. So, we will be here until at least Friday afternoon, BUT, frankly, that is not bad duty at all. We love it here and will probably take a bike ride tomorrow, and then finish up securing a few more items in the trailer to be sure nothing falls on, or into the T'Bird.

I was able to diagnose and fix a problem we were having with a brake signal making it to the trailer brake lights, so that was a major accomplishment today.

Life is good, and in another day and a half we will be on our way into Arizona.

Thanks, as always, for stopping by and visiting. We appreciate your interest!

The First Day of the REST of Our Lives

Our site for the next 2 days!

For the first time in one year we woke up to a different view....we are still in parkland, but now it is the hill country of Aguanga, CA. We stayed in the boondocking area of Jojoba Hills Escpaee (SKP) Park....our site, 224, was occupied until this morning. We moved up the hill at 9:30am, and at 10am Mike and Lisa Sylvester arrived to install our solar charging system.

Our view....

And more...

Today they ran all the cabling, and associated wiring for the Blue Sky Charge Controller, and battery monitor. Before they began Mike did a thorough inspection of all the possible routes we could follow, but trying to determine the most direct (shortest) route from the panels to the batteries. We came up with "Plan A" that was acceptable to Elaine and I, and then they began pulling wire. Amazingly, Plan A worked. The wiring was run through the refrigerator "chimney" and into the wire tunnel on the passenger side, through the cabinets on that side, and down the wire chase along the right side of the front windshield, and through the floor into the house battery compartment. Mike and Lisa (The RV Guy, Inc.) are wonderful technicians. They kept us involved in every decision along the way. We are very happy with their professionalism, and expertise. They are certified installers for A.M. Solar, whom we bought out solar panel kit from. A. M. Solar shipped the kit directly to Mike and Lisa here at Jojoba Hills, so everything was here waiting for our arrival.

Mike

Lisa

The "shunt" that will monitor all the in going voltage, and out going voltage.

That's it for today.......this retirement thing is really a lot of work!!! LOL! Thanks for stopping by and sharing our journey!

Tomorrow morning at 8am the installation will reconvene. The actual solar panels will be installed, along with the charge controller and monitor, and by this time tomorrow night we will be officially solar powered!

January 30th

OK, now it is January 30th....it is about 6am, and the only thing left to do is unplug the umbilical cord from the power pedestal, turn over the Detroit Diesel 6V92 and say goodbye to schedules. I just handed over the keys to the golf cart we have had use of since we arrived here a year ago to or fellow camp host who occupies the site immediately adjacent to ours....in fact it was on a Monday, January 31st, 2011, exactly one year ago, that we pulled into Rancho Jurupa Regional Park for our 1 year sojourn.

We really already done the hard part.....compacting our lives into a little under 300 square feet.....AND...the BIG AND, learning to live with each other in that same space. We have never looked back, and love our simplified lifestyle. As I was lying in bed this morning cuddling with my wife I thought about wonderful our life has been these past 40 years together.....raising 5 children to adulthood, and how proud we are of them and the families they are now raising. We're not wealthy people, but we feel so rich right now. I had no idea how much our children were going to miss us until yesterday. As I posted previously, we had all our kids, grandkids, and many friends of our kids over to the park for an extended goodbye party two weeks ago, and I have seen each of my children several times since then, so I thought we had said our goodbyes, but yesterday morning I got a text from my youngest daughter, who is 27, saying she had a dream that we left without saying goodbye. I texted her back to meet us at our sticks and brick home around 1:30pm as we were helping my oldest daughter move back into our house. She came over as we finished unloading the truck, hugged me and started crying. Then my oldest daughter did the same, and then my youngest son, etc. Man oh man do I hate goodbyes! In just 30 minutes we will start the Detroit Diesel and motor up to my mechanic's shop (Joel's Automotive) in Upland, CA.

6:30am.....as we drove past the Kiosk (checkstand) the three people on duty all came running out and waved goodbye! I tell you, these people we have worked with the past year are the salt of the earth people. We will truly miss them A LOT!!!

9pm.....we got my mechanic's shop around 7:30am, and I deftly backed the rig, including trailer, into his lot so he could begin the work scheduled previously....oil change (5.4 gallons of Shell Rotella T 40wt Heavy Duty), oil filter, two fuel filters, check transmission fluid, check tires, recharge panel A/C. We left at just after 1pm with the service work done.

We then headed south on I-15 to Temecula, CA, and then east on HWY 79 to Jojoba Hills SKP Park where I sit now finishing the post I began this morning. The day has been a whirlwind capped by my last soccer match, a high school match, in Corona, CA at Santiago H.S. Elaine went to bed early....7:30pm....she is tired, and so am I, but we are both smiling a lot. We are on the road, at last!!!!

Tomorrow morning Mike Sylvester, The RV Guy, a certified installer for A.M. Solar, will begin the installation of our 300 watt solar charging system tomorrow morning. With any luck we will leave late Wednesday, or Thursday morning to head southeast. Lots of pictures tomorrow both of the park we are in, and the installation of the panels.

Good night for now, and thank you so much for stopping by and reading!

January 30th

The replacement BIG air filter

No, the title of this post is not today's date....you haven't misplaced 6 days overnight. January 30th is the day we crank up the Detroit Diesel 6V92 power plant and begin our trip south, and yet to be told adventures.

We are busy tying up all the lose ends. I spent most of yesterday at my office "taking down" everything. Putting files into storage, removing pictures from picture frames so they can be scanned using our recently acquired Docuscan, which, by the way, is a wonderful piece of technology! Thank you Nick Russell for recommending it!

In preparation for my visit to my mechanic early on the 30th I removed the 3 year old air cleaner for my Detroit Diesel so I could order a replacement. Man, that thing is big! 3 years ago, when I was still quite naive, I paid $348 for the one I just removed. With a little help from a fellow Newell owner I found a source online where I could get the same one for $122.50 shipped (NO shipping charge). I got it via FedEx yesterday and it is, thankfully, identical to the old one, so I will be rolling up my sleeves and installing it later on today.

On Monday my mechanic will drain out the old Shell Rotella 40wt Heavy Duty motoroil (takes 3, or 4 gallons), change the oil and fuel filters, and recharge my A/C. Sometime early that afternoon we will head south to Temecula where we will have our A.M. Solar panel kit installed by an authorized representative starting on the afternoon of the 31st. He should be finished by Noon of February 1st....we will sit for an additional 24 hours while the sealant cures, and then on the 22nd we will go back north to I-10 and head southeast into Texas over the next few weeks. We'll stop off over night in Indio to visit a very good friend, and then in Mesa to have a new fridge installed, which has been donated by a good Newell friend, and then off we go into the wild blue yonder.....OK, I guess that's a mixed metaphor! We'll be flying low along I-10 for a week, or so.

So, things are heating up in my neighborhood. As of today I have 5 high school soccer matches left on my schedule, and then I will become an officially retired soccer official.

Thank you for stopping by and reading!

21 Days.......

It's been 17 days since I last posted......I have watched lot of College bowl games in the last 17 days. Amazingly the worst game I watched was last night's BCS National Championship game between Alabama and LSU. But, the most important thing is we are just 21 short days away from departure day! We are doing our final sifting and sorting, and deciding where everything will be stowed. Amazingly everything we really want with us will fit with room to spare. A month ago I was not optimistic.......even a little! Fortunately, my wife has very exceptional spacial skills. When we would take driving trips it was always her job to fit everything in the trunk, and she always did!

My brother and his family are coming in their trailer this weekend to see us off, and the next weekend my kids are coming to the park. The park staff is holding a going away party this Friday evening for us and another couple who have finished our tour of duty.

The high school soccer season is winding down. Of the 46 games I was assigned, only 13 remain. The time, she is a flyin' by!

One of the things Elaine is hoping to finish before we hit the road is to finish scanning all of our pre-digital camera family pictures. To speed this job up we bought a Docuscan. A blog we follow, Nick's Blog, recommended this device to those of us living the RV life style. I can say without reservation that his recommendation was a wonderful one. Thank you Nick! There is a very short learning curve, and is very easy to use. It comes with a 1 gb SID card. The cost is around $99.

The weather here in Rancho Jurupa Regional Park has been clear. For the first week of 2012 it was in the 80's. It has settled back down to the low to mid 70's each day. We haven't had rain in about 6-7 weeks, so it has really been a dry fall and early winter. One thing we have had way too much of is Santana winds. I can't remember the last time we had an onshore breeze. It's been offshore for about 2 months now......not the norm for sure.

Well, that brings us up to date. Thank you for stopping by and reading!

Christmas Eve - 2011

Just a few sunrises left until our view changes!

Wow! Did December go fast, or what? Come on now, we just had Thanksgiving dinner a few days ago.....it seems. It's funny to think that I've spent the past few years trying to slow time down, unsuccessfully, I might add. For the first time in years I've been happy to let go of the coat tails of Father Time, and let him have his way for change. This past 11 months have flown by. I remember first broaching the subject of us moving into the Newell, and leasing the house to the kids in mid August of 2010. While our goal was to do just that, but in another year, Elaine was a little hesitant at first mention of my big idea. Like most people we know, the recession that started in 2008 put a serious strain on our finances. I wanted to salt away some more money for retirement, and there just wasn't enough to go around. I saw this as a chance to put a serious dent in cutting our living expenses, and direct a little more into savings.

I'm glad we had started to divest ourselves of a lot of the "stuff" that had overtaken our lives the past 25 years back in January of 2010. We had a couple of yard sales and really cleared out the garage, and closets of "stuff" that wasn't being used, and was just takin' up space, and donated what was left over to Disabled Vets. By that August a lot of the hard work had been done, so I just presented the plan, and then left her alone for about a month. Eventually she came to me and said she liked the idea and was ready to execute it! What a great wife, and partner! I then let the kids know our plans, and they loved the idea of having the house to themselves.

OK, that part was easy, but Elaine wasn't going to retire until September of 2011, so where would we live until then? Our initial plan had been to bounce back and forth between a couple of local county parks (Prado and Rancho Jurupa) every two weeks....each park has a 14 day maximum stay per 28 day period. That would have cost us around $750 a month......not bad compared to our mortgage payment. Then I had the idea of applying for a camp host position at one of them so we could just put down temporary roots, and stay in one place for FREE. Easier said than done.....I found out that the local parks had waiting lists, and turnover in camp hosts was low. Well, I put in one application at Rancho Jurupa just after New Year's 2011 thinking we should have done that a year before, but as they say "nothing ventured, nothing gained". Within 10 days we got a call from the resident ranger who asked us to drop by for a face to face interview. When we arrived she walked us over to the new "cabins" they had just put in (really what I would call "park models") and asked us if we would be interested in taking care of the cabins as our camp host job. Originally the County was going to hire someone to do that job, but due to budget constraints they decided to use volunteer labor. We, of course, said "YES!", and the rest is history...by February 1, 2011 we had become FULLTIMERS! Neither of us has, for one minute, regretted our decision, and, in fact, we love our new life......of course you knew that, right?

So, here we are just a few weeks from continuing our FULLTIMING life, but now on the road. Tomorrow we will drive up to our oldest son's home in Rancho Cucamonga to exchange Christmas presents with his family, and our other children and their significant others. Tomorrow evening we will go to our traditional Christmas movie, which, this year, will be the new Sherlock Holmes movie. We started this tradition a number of years ago when the first "Lord of the Rings" movie came out.

We took a nice bike ride on Wednesday to run a few errands.....it's great when you have a wide open schedule....you can just dawdle around from one place to the next with no time constraints, other than sundown.....lol! One errand was to stop at Staples so I could get the 2012 calendar insert for my DayRunner, and then off to Target to get a video game for our grandson's XBox Kinnect, and then to Von's to pick up some filet's to grill that night. On our way back we stopped in at a local coffee shop we had not been in yet called "Back to the Grind".....kind of a cool place.....and then back home.....probably only about 15 miles round trip, but we took 3 hours to do it....what a very nice afternoon!

I have really been enjoying my new Kindle......I've read 12 books on it since I got it, a couple of months ago, and have 3 stacked up in the home page to read. Later today Elaine and I will spend some time in the trailer deciding what goes with us on February 1st, and what stays in the office warehouse, and what gets tossed.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to one and all! Thank you for reading!

December 17, 2011

The title of this new post has no particular significance other than to say that we can now see February 1st just rising above the distant horizon.....we are no longer counting months, but weeks now....less than 6 weeks until we pull anchor.....soon it will become days that are counted, and we will begin to feel the pressure of wrapping up all the loose ends as we finish our preparations for life on the road.

One of those loose ends is the installation of a solar charging system on the roof of our "home". We have chosen AM Solar to complete that task. They come very highly recommended, and we have been impressed with their communication so far. One of their authorized mobile technicians will be stopping by our location on December 19th to do a pre-installation inspection, and then on Fedruary 1st we will journey down to an Escapees park (Jojoba Hills) near Temecula, CA to have the installation completed.

On the home front I just finished my last soccer matches of the Fall Club season last weekend....seems like it was just September 12th (opening day) a few short weeks ago. I just finished the 3rd week of High School soccer and have done around 21 matches to date, with about 24 to go. My last High School match is January 31st, and that date will mark the end of an era for me. I did my first youth soccer match in the fall of 1984. Hard to believe 27 years has passed so quickly. I will truly miss the exhilaration of running up and down the soccer pitch, as well as the camaraderie of my fellow referees. Many players whom I coached, and whose matches I officiated over the years are now grown, and now I officiate their children's matches. That is a lot of water under the proverbial bridge.

In addition to that we will soon bid farewell to our home of the past year (Rancho Jurupa Regional Park), and most poignant of all, we will be saying goodbye to the many friends we have made here. I really do not like saying "goodbye". The resident ranger has agreed to keep us on the approved host list, so we can return. Frankly, if I had to pick a place to spend a few years at this would be my choice. All other future camp host jobs will be compared to this experience. I have read a number of work camping horror stories, so I know it is not all "peaches and cream" out there, however, our experience here has been nothing short of amazing.

The weather the past two weeks has alternated between severe Santana winds, below freezing temps several times, and major rainfall....it is now raining again as I write.....just 24 hours ago we were being buffeted by 40 mph winds.

Well, that's the update. Stay tuned for more posting as we edge toward our road trip. Thanks for stopping by!