Category: Uncategorized

You all know by now that I am spending the winter in Arizona.

So there’s no frost, right?

Wrong.

My refrigerator is not frost free. On occasion I need to manually defrost it. I was about to go boondocking again so I wanted my electrical appliances to be at their maximum efficiency. That meant time to defrost.

So, I started eating my way through the food in my refrigerator.

Until my freezer looked like this:

Two steaks, two beef patties, one bag of broccoli, one bag of strawberries, and two trays of ice cubes.

And my fridge looked like this:

One carton with two eggs past their expiration date just waiting for the next trip to the garbage dumpster, some bottled water, two fruit cups, some condiments, olives, and butter.

Then I remembered I have a small cooler bag that this would all probably fit into.

So I packed it all in the bag and defrosted my fridge.

Now I can go to the grocery store.

About time, don’t you think?

After all, a full refrigerator is more efficient than an empty one.

In more ways than one.

TTYL,

Linda

 

My membership at Emerald Cove RV Resort lets me stay free for two weeks. Then I either need to leave for a week or pay $95 to stay. This time I decided to leave.

First I went up north of Lake Havasu City to the BLM’s Craggy Wash area to join Doug & Toni there. The plan was Toni, who has a sewing machine on board, would hem my curtains. I also suggested that I would buy groceries if she would cook and she agreed to that plan, too.

So now my curtains are no longer unraveling in the wind.

And feed me she certainly did. The first night we had roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, roasted potatoes, steamed carrots, and ice cream. The second night we had ribs with homemade BBQ sauce, hand-cut French fries, and pumpkin pie. Toni asked if I wanted salad with that but I decided I’d rather eat more ribs. The third night we had lasagna, Caesar salad,  garlic/cheese toast, and carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. And I brought home leftovers every night so I am still eating well. I do miss the good conversations that went with the food when I was with them, though.

The morning I was scheduled to leave their rig developed an electrical problem. It let some smoke out. And we all know nothing works once you let the smoke out. So Toni brought two laptops to my rig to charge them and do her email stuff. That meant I didn’t leave quite as early as I might have otherwise. Which is a good thing.

Because just as Toni was finishing up, Doug came over with his binoculars wanting to know if we wanted to look. This is what we saw:

 

You’ll have to click to enlarge them. Then look along the ridge line in the center.

See them? Big horn sheep.

And those white rocks in the grassy area below them? Are also sheep. Although we couldn’t tell that until the rocks suddenly grew legs when they stood up.

When I left Craggy Wash it was to go south for a better internet connection so I could do upgrades. You already know how that turned. out.

But, it was also so I could test some new theories about how to make my systems last longer when boondocking.

One of the Escapee members recently posted information about making his battery charges last longer by turning off his refrigerator at night when no one is opening the door. It saved a lot of power without loosing a lot of cool so I wanted to try that. It works! I no longer have to go driving every other day to charge my batteries! Yay!

The other thing I wanted to try was making my black tank not fill up so fast. This part is not for the squeamish so if that’s you stop reading now. It’s also going to be way to much informations for some people so if you don’t want to read about bodily functions you should also stop now. OK, I warned you. I’ll use all caps to tell you when it’s safe to return.

The new rule is: put nothing down the toilet that was not first processed by your body except plain water. Yup. No paper. It goes into a zip top bag which gets put in the trash. Yuck, right? I had a hard time getting my mind around the concept. But, people put wet disposable diapers in the trash all the time. And people put dirty baby wipes in the trash all the time. And women put used feminine hygiene products in the trash all the time. How is used toilet paper different? There are countries in our world where it is customary to put the paper in a waste basket and they would be appalled if you put it down the toilet–which is basically a hole in the ground. So, I’m training myself to not put paper down the toilet. I don’t always remember. But I greatly extended the length of time I can go without having to dump my black tank so I will keep working on this.

OK, YOU CAN COME BACK NOW.

But you might not want to read all the comments this time, either.

The other thing I am doing on my week out is watching TV. No, I didn’t buy a TV. I watch on my computer. But, Dave figured out how to get Downton Abbey from PBS.org. So, I don’t have to wait until it comes out on Netflix to catch up with the rest of you. I’ve only watched the first three episodes of this season so far, though, so I may stay here another day or two to finish since I have a good connection speed here. Besides, there are going to be major wind gusts the next couple of days so I don’t really want to be driving then anyway. And I still have leftovers from Toni’s cooking to eat.

And nothing says I have to back to Emerald Cove right away now that my week out is up. Now that I know how to make my RV let me stay out here in the desert a little longer.

TTYL,

Linda

Many years ago I took a course in logic where they taught us a bunch of fallacies. Things like “poisoning the well” and “circular logic”.

This post has nothing to do with that but it does have to do with circular thinking and circular activity.

Background: I have an iPhone with a Verizon voice and data package. I have an iPad with Verizon 3G which magically lets me do internet stuff. I have a MacBook Air with no internet package. To get internet on my Mac I turn on the hot spot on my phone. Then I have wifi on the Mac and/or the iPad. Most of the time.

It seems there is a “known” problem between the phone and the Mac. The Mac, every now and then, decides it doesn’t want to be connected to the phone so it disconnects itself. Then it doesn’t like to reconnect. It always makes me jump through at least two hoops and sometimes several more before it will reconnect to my hot spot.

For some time now, my Mac has been nagging me to do updates. But, I have mostly not been in places with fast connections so I have been reluctant to do them. But, then I got a notice that there is a new OS for the phone. Maybe they fixed the disconnecting problem?

So I drove from north of Lake Havasu City down to the Plamosa Road BLM just north of Quartzsite where I had a fast connection for the short time I was there. But, the connection is not fast near Arizona Highway 95 and I didn’t feel like driving the, I think, eleven miles in that we were before to see if it was better there. So I drove on south to get closer to I-10 to see if it was better there.

It was just OK. But, I decided it was likely as good as I was going to get.

So I turned on my phone and asked it about the update. It said it needed a wifi connection. No problem. I turned on my hot spot, turned on my Mac, plugged the phone into the Mac, and said there you go. Anyone see a potential problem here?

It simply did not occur to me that using my phone for a connection while updating my phone might not work. I’ll never know for sure whether my Mac just decided it didn’t want to be connected any longer or if the phone tried to reboot while acting as its own hot spot. All I know is that more than a half hour into the update it crashed.

Which broke my phone.

Now the Mac said the phone needed to be restored. Which requires a wifi connection. Which it can’t get from the phone because the phone is broken.

So, I drive north again. To the McDonald’s in Parker. And use their wifi to restore my phone. Mostly.

It did all the restore then said it had a just a few more questions. Starting with what did I want to use for a network?

Ummm. The phone is my network. And McDonalds won’t connect to my phone as an alternate.

So I drove back to Quartzsite and spent the night.

The next morning, I drove to Phoenix. To an Apple Store.

They wanted to know what my problem was. I said, “Your system update broke my phone.”

They wanted to know if I called to make an appointment. I looked at they guy in disbelief and said, “Your system update broke my phone. My phone is my wifi connection. So your system update also broke my internet.”

“OK.” he replied. “I just wanted you to know you are supposed to make an appointment for next time.” Aargh!

Fortunately,  they were well staffed today so I only had to wait about fifteen minutes to get a tech to help me. He had me connect to the store’s wifi and cleaned up the mess. We did have my usual problem with the Apple Store saying my password is wrong a few times before it said, “Oh, OK. I guess I’ll take it this time.”

Then I stayed and did all my other updates using their wifi just in case anything else broke in the process.

The I drove back to Quartzsite. 315 miles round trip to fix my “new, improved” software.

And I still don’t know if the “known” problem was part of the fix.

TTYL,

Linda

Most RVs come with window coverings know as day/night shades. They do a fairly good job of doing what they are supposed to do.

When they are fully opened they look like this:

When the day part of the shade is down it allows you to look out while making it harder for casual passersby to look in.

And when the night shade is down it is supposed to provide full privacy.

But they cannot be just thrown in the laundry when they get dirty. And they have a tendency to break their strings so they can no longer be adjusted up or down.

So, as those of you who have been following my blog a long time know, I prefer curtains.

Thus, when I bought this new rig I brought with me sheers I really like from the house we sold back in 2008. I am now in the process of cutting them into pieces to make curtains for my much shorter windows. I no longer own a sewing machine so the process is not going quickly. But, here’s what the partially made curtains look like in the daytime in that same window.

And here’s a closeup showing the color and pattern in the window over my desk. That bit in the sun along the left side is the color–light tan; not blue.

And here’s what the first window looks like with the night shades in that Sportsmobile made for me.

Yes, that picture was taken at the same time of day from the same location. Really does block the exterior light, doesn’t it?

The wrinkles at the bottom of it are cause by trying to force it into that space with the day/night shade still installed.  When that curtain is ready to hang, I will remove the day/night shade and the new night shade will fit much better.

I do lose the self-storing capability of the day night shades by making this transition. But the curtains will stay in place all the time and the new night shades have their own storage compartment above my vehicle’s cab area. And I like them a whole lot more. Including the ability to throw them in the laundry when they get dirty.

TTYL,

Linda

The desert around Quartzsite, Arizona, is big. There is lots of room for lots of RVs to park there. And there are lots of groups that meet there. Some are big groups and some are small groups. And each group has its own way of parking.

I showed you pictures of the Escapee Class gathering where we parked every which way  in a general vicinity. And I showed you pictures of the View/Navion group pretty much lined up in two rows.

But some groups like to circle the wagons.

If you are a small group you can do it this way:

 

Parking nose to tail lets everyone have their door facing the center gathering spot.

But if you have a lot of rigs that makes your circle too big. So some groups park this way:

 

Side by side with everyone’s nose facing the center.

But for some of us that makes our side windows much too close to our neighbor’s side windows. It can be hard not to look inside and see what your neighbor is doing.

So our class group just parks any which way as long as we are not too close to one another. Which has the side advantage of letting each of us aim our solar panels or TV receiver the best direction for us.

Isn’t it great that there are so many right ways to camp?

TTYL,

Linda