So much to do.....

7:54 am - Wednesday - October 23rd - WW -  49° F, humidity 54%, wind 4 mph out of the northeast.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 81° F.  On this date in 2020 TLE and I were in Bandon, OR visiting some of our old haunts from our Cape Blanco Lighthouse days back in 2014 and 2015.....

Bandon Coffee Cafe

Fish tacos at Tony's Crab Shack.....best ever!

When we arrived at The Wilson Wilderness (TWW from this point on) Monday we quickly parked in what we knew would not be our permanent site, but we were tired, and I didn't want to drop the trailer so I could position the Newell in a better orientation.  When we are boondocking, and relying upon our solar panels to provide our electricity, we like to have the Newell face due west so our 4 roof mounted solar panels will get sun all day long.  We awoke to temps in the high 40's and ran our gas furnaces for about 45 minutes before the sun began to hit the Newell.

Once we had some coffee in our systems we began to get organized.  I first backed the Newell and trailer up about 100' so I could drop the trailer, then move the Newell to a better position.....

....which put us in front of the house.  This will not be our permanent position, but will serve us well for the next few weeks.  I'll need to use the Ford loader to better level the site where the Newell will be parked until next April, and there are a few other things that needed to be done.  While I was maneuvering the Newell Charles used his pickup to position the trailer next to the site where the Newell will eventually reside......

....the Newell will eventually be backed into the area to the left of the trailer facing due west.

Next it was time to tilt the solar panels, which took about 20 minutes, then we began to assemble our Bluetti power station on the driver's side of the coach......

.....our plan is to continuously power the Newell with these three batteries which total over 6,200 watts of power.  It will be like we are plugged into an electrical pedestal.  To the Bluetti system we have attached three 100 watt solar panels to charge them up each day.  As I write we got through the night with the coach totally powered all night long, and still had 41% left in the battery bank....perfect!!!  The next experiment will be to use our electric heaters Thursday morning to heat the coach.  Frankly, the Bluetti system is working better than I expected, and now that $4,000+ I spent seems to be well worth the expense.

TLE and I spent part of the day unpacking the trailer, so it can be used as my shop once again, and we've still got a ways to go on that, but we're getting there.  Later in the day I installed some indoor/outdoor carpet on the deck of the house, and a runner down the stairs....that turned out pretty nicely. Additionally I put up our two market umbrellas to provide shade on the deck in the afternoon. Eventually a patio cover will be added, and the deck extended, but for now it is much more welcoming.....

....around 11:30 am we drove over to a local resort about 8 miles away to help Charles and Phyllis take on 1800 gallons of water ($9 for 1800 gallons!), so we could learn the process and do it ourselves when we need more water, and they are not here...

.....it takes about 3 minutes to fill each tank.  It is a 25 minute drive each way, most of which is on the Primitive Road.  Once we hit pavement it is just another mile to the water station.  We were home by 1pm and doing more work.  By the time 5 pm came around TLE and I were beat.  I took a shower, and then we headed into the house for dinner with Charles and Phyllis.

There is so much to do here, and all we can do is focus on one thing at a time, and keep moving forward.  This is exactly the kind of project I love, and I know this winter will be amazing! 

By the way, my sister-in-law took a video of us entering the property on Monday.....

....TLE also took some pictures of us crossing a cattleguard....

Thanks for stopping by!

The Wilson Wilderness.......

1:06 pm - Tuesday - October 22nd - Wilson Wilderness, AZ - 75° F, humidity 17%, wind 4 mph out of the south....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 77° F.  On this date in 2017 TLE and I were hiking the Fairyland Trail in Bryce Canyon NP.....

Unlike the previous 6 days we've been on the road, we were up before 6:30 am Monday morning.  Monday would be our last day of travel before reaching our winter destination....The Wilson Wilderness in Northern Arizona.  Yup, the cat is out of the bag now.  You won't find The Wilson Wilderness on any map, but it exists....7 miles from pavement, and 32 miles from the nearest town, which is not a very big town.  Anyway, I get slightly ahead of myself.

We were in the process of organizing the coach for travel when I heard a knock at our door....hmmm....who could that be at 6:40 am in the morning?  I opened door to a very familiar face, but I could not immediately put a name to her.  She said, "you probably don't remember me, but my name is Sandy....".  I immediately knew who she was, Sandy Dittus, with whom we worked with at Tahoe Valley Campground from the summer of 2014 to the summer of 2017.....

.....it has been 7 years since we last saw Sandy.  She lives in Henderson, NV, just a few miles from the Walmart.  We've been friends on Facebook for years now, and she saw my post about overnighting at the Walmart near the In 'N Out Burger, and took a chance that we were still there, and drove over at 6:30 am in the morning to see if she could catch us before we left, and she did!  We invited her into the coach, and talked until after 7:30 am.  What an amazing, serendipitous occasion.

We did some morning shopping at the Walmart, and after putting our purchases away were rolling our wheels ever southward by 9 am.  We would be meeting up with our friends about 8 miles from their property at 2 pm, and they would lead us into their property.  We had around 156 miles to drive Monday, and that should take us around 3-4 hours, so we wanted to give ourselves plenty of time to make a couple of stops, one to refuel the Newell, and still get there on time.

As you will remember, the previous two days were amazing driving days, but Murphy's Law dictates that there will always be a bad day, and Monday was a bad day.  Bad in the sense that the road conditions on US-93 were some of the worst we have traversed in recent memory.  When the road is rough, it makes 156 miles feel like 300.  Nevertheless, we continued our journey.  Around 11:30 am we stopped at a Travel Center of American truck stop to take on fuel.  The posted price was $3.56/gallon, but with our TDS discount card we paid just $3.03/gallon.....we took on 115+ gallons, and saved $48!  We got an amazing 7.5 miles/gallon on our last tank of diesel, which is around 1 mpg better than our usual 6.5 mpg!

The pump price, but we paid just $361.94

.....from the TCA station it was just 96 more miles to our destination meet up place.  The road continued to deteriorate mile after mile.  At least we reached the Interstate, which was even worse, if that is possible, than US-93.  Finally, we exited the Interstation for a secondary road with just 50 miles to go.  We arrived at our meetup place around 1:30 pm, and saw that our friends had just arrived....perfect timing.  From there it was another 30 minutes of driving on a 'Primitive Road' to our destination for the next 6 months.

By the time we had parked in what will be a temporary location, and set up camp it was getting close to 4:30 pm, so we headed into the house for an early dinner, wine, and conversation.  Eventually the sun began to set, and we got our first amazing sunset here.....

Thanks for stopping by!

Hang on and steer.....

7:07 am - Monday - October 21st - Henderson, NV - 57° F, humidity 39%, wind 2 mph out of the west.....mostly sunny today with a forecast high of 83° F.  On this date in 2017 TLE and I were attending the wedding of our youngest, Tim, to Laila in Riverside, CA at the Mission Inn.....

.....seems like yesterday!

We had a 200 mile drive planned for Sunday, but we were in no hurry to be on the road.  We had our eyes set on leaving around 10 am, and what do you know?  As we drove through Goldfield I looked at the clock and saw it was 10:02 am....perfect!

After a brief climb out of the city we began a 196 mile descent from over 6,000' elevation to just under 2,000' elevation in Henderson, NV.  The first 90 miles was either flat, or a slight decline, so we were at zero throttle for a lot of the time, just coasting along on a cushion of air.  The driving does not get much better than Sunday.....

......sometimes we could see where we would be in 30 minutes the view was so big, and so long.  The Newell performed flawlessly, and all I had to do was hang onto the steering wheel and enjoy the view.  We made one stop at a truck stop in Amargosa Valley to add air to the trailer tires, and were back on our way in about 20 minutes.  

As we neared Las Vegas the traffic, of course, increased exponentially, and US-95 went from 1 lane to 5 lanes in just a few miles.  We arrived at our destination, a Walmart Supercenter, around 2:15 pm.  The Walmart is behind us, and there is an In 'N Out Burger in front of us.....

...we walked over to COSTCO to do some shopping, and while we were there we each had one of their $1.50 ballpark hotdogs with a drink before walking back to the coach.....

....I watched part of the NLCS (National League Championship Series) game 6 between my L.A. Dodgers and the New York Mets in which the Dodgers were victorious.....10-5.  The Dodgers will be playing the New York Yankees in the World Series beginning Friday.....nice......they last won the World Series in 2020.....

.....it took a while to get used that background sound of a busy city, but we slept well, and in a couple of hours we'll be heading to our winter destination....stay tuned!

Thanks for stopping by!

Into Nevada.....

7:27 am - Sunday - October 20th - Goldfield, NV - 34° F, humidity 45%, wind 7 mph out of the north by northwest.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 68° F.  On this date in 2017 TLE and I had just arrived at Bryce Canyon National Park.....

At last, time to roll our wheels once again after a 3 day layover in Bishop, CA.  Usually we continue heading south on US-395 out of Bishop on our way back to SoCal, but on this day we headed northeast on US-6 toward US-95, and then south through Tonopah, NV, and eventually Goldfield, NV where we planned to overnight at a local RV park.

We departed the fairgrounds around 9:30 am, and within a few minutes had transitioned from US-395 to US-6, a highway we have never driven in the all the years we have been traveling through Bishop.  A few years ago (2021) we drove US-95 south from Fernley, NV, which intersections US-6, but this section was brand new to us.  We were pleasantly surprised to find the pavement was only a few years old, and the road surface was smooth, and mostly flat for the first 40 miles......

.....within a hour we were making a long climb, probably 8 miles, to Montgomery Pass, which would be the highwater mark for us Saturday at 7, 167'.  From there is was mostly downhill, and then flat all the way to Tonopah.....

.....we took a 20 minute break at an abandoned gas station (below), and then continued southward on US-95/US-6 through Tonopah, then another 25 miles to Goldfield, NV....

"On a clear day you can see forever...."

Back in Nevada

.....we entered Nevada around 11:30 am, and the Newell will not be reentering California again until next April.  We arrived in Goldfield around 12:30 pm after a most pleasant 3 hour drive from Bishop, having covered around 140 miles.  Clark's Custom Camp is located on the very north end of Goldfield, and has around 10 long pull through sites with full hookups, including 50 amp electric.  The coast for us was $30.....

A bare bones RV park, but the perfect place to ride out the cross winds

.....within 15 minutes we had paid for our overnight stay, and were plugged into the 50 amp receptacle.  We wanted to get to Goldfield early in the afternoon as the winds from Saturday were forecast to make a return engagement, and we did not want to be driving another 100 miles in a cross wind.  As it was, we had a cross wind, although mild, for the final 25 miles into Goldfield.  Soon after our arrival the winds intensified, and we were very happy to be stationary, and not fighting those winds.

We'll continue to Henderson, NV on Sunday, then arrive at our winter destination sometime Monday afternoon.  Since Monday we've covered just 500 miles of the 800+ miles to our destination, and Sunday will be a 200 mile day, leaving just around a 150 miles, or so, to our winter destination.

Thanks for stopping by!

Giving the Jello its due....

 7:35 am - Saturday - October 19th - Bishop, CA - 39° F, humidity 32%, wind 12 mph (no wind discernable at this time).....a few high clouds today with a forecast high of 74° F in Bishop, but we will not be here to see that high.  Only got to 61° F yesterday, for a few minutes.  On this date in 2021 TLE and I were partaking of In 'N Out Burgers in Indian Hills, NV.....

....ironically we had overnighted in Alturas, CA the night before, and driven right by LPG&RVR on our way south.  The next summer we would be working there (LPG&RVR).  The view this morning.....

See the moon in the upper right hand corner of the picture?

Our decision to remain in Bishop one more day was a good one, but there is always that temptation to challenge the 'jiggling Jello', and to drive on a day we should not.  I'm glad we didn't.  The winds were ferocious most of the day, and they were even worse at our  next overnight destination (Goldfield, NV).  TLE never left the coach all day, and I was not much better, although I did walk over to the fairgrounds office to pay for one more night, and dump the trash.  Later in the day I topped off our fresh water tank, and disconnected our fresh water hose as it would be close to freezing Friday night.  Otherwise we remained indoors all day long.

I was able to get caught up on many of the YouTube channels I follow, and even record a nap or two during during that time.  By 8 pm the winds had abated here in Bishop, but they were still going strong in Goldfield until the early Saturday morning hours.  I'm glad we stayed here.

By Monday, or Tuesday we'll be at our winter destination, but until then we still have a few more days of driving, and I am looking forward to that!  The highways we will travel Saturday over to Highway 95 will be new to us, and our Newell.  Nothing like new territory to refresh the nomad soul!  We'll be rolling our wheels between 9 and 10 am (today).

Thanks for stopping by!