Only 11 months till Christmas!

Saturday morning @ 6:30, clear skies, lots of stars, and a cool 7 or 44 degrees and the forecast is for nothing but sun and a high of 22 or 71, sun rise is 7:37, sun set is 6:01. The days are actually starting to stretch out a few minutes every day, enough that we can notice it with no generator time yesterday and a partial cloudy day the solar harvest was near 282 amp hours, which got us back to 89%, we are going to pack today for a move early tomorrow, but will check our solar harvest today, I have already moved our suitcase panels to get the early morning sun so with no clouds we should be able to achieve 300+ amp hours today. So there will be no generator time today either, we have picked a spot at La Possa West, very close to our spot two years ago. The advantage of this spot is its proximity to the big tent and the tented village around it, we can easily walk to number of shops as I install our new solar panels for additional supplies.

This fourteen day stay at LTVA (Long Term Visitor Area) will carry us through our time before heading north to Nevada in February. The cost is $40 or around $54 Canadian but provides, dump station, water, and garbage. This will bring our cost of camping in January to 337.50 Cdn or $10.89 per day down from December’s $15.24/day (with full hookups), but up from November’s $7.29/day. The January cost was driven up by the ballon festival at Lake Havasu which after backing out the festival passes ended up at $229.50 Canadian for a week in a parking lot. I did not include the $65.00 cost of the Beaver Rally, as it included four breakfasts and four dinners, as well as a number of seminars and beaver game events.

Our number of stragglers from the rally is only six including our coach, everyone will have to be out tomorrow, and I suspect many will be required to move today as we are the last coach in of the six left. The BLM rangers are a great bunch, but we have been told that the fine for staying beyond the allowed fourteen days is quite harsh and we have no interest in finding out just how harsh. It is now 8:00 and the first of the six left is heading out, and then there were five…

Today will be a packing day, oh not a difficult day, as I need the suitcase out as long as possible for the solar harvest. But we need to move early tomorrow as I need some time to pick up items from the tent before it shuts down at 3pm on Sunday. We will not hook up the toad tomorrow to move the five miles north, the spot we have picked will most likely require me backing Thunder into the spot. The key issue is getting the best angle for the highest solar harvest.

This is just a snapshot of 27 minutes of actual solar harvest.

The blue line is the amperage from the panels and the brown line shows the how many amp hours the battery bank is from full.

The amperage deviation marked in red was our fresh water pump running and the deviation marked in green was the circulation pump from the boiler, after it was shut off. The other little spikes are lamps being turned on and off.

The upward trend of the blue line is as the solar harvest becomes stronger because of a improving angles to the sun.

With no clouds forecast for today, and if I keep the suitcase properly angled we are hoping for one our best solar harvest, I do not expect to get to 100% of capacity but I’m hoping to get close to the 90% level. Living off the grid is so much better when you can replenish the energy you use everyday without running the generator, and not living in fear of alarms going off because of low battery voltage…yea this is pretty great, if I say so myself.

7:28 and the sunrise is beautiful this morning, at 45 or 7 degrees, it has the makings of another sunny day in the Arizona desert, the forecast high is 21 or 70 degrees with a light breeze at 3 miles per hour, the forecast also is for some high cloud that will effect our solar harvest negatively, it does make for great sunrises and sunsets.

But as we check the forecast that is ahead for the next week, it becomes more obvious what the draws us to the ruggedness of the desert. As we watch the weather forecast in other parts of the country and the temperatures swing from ten degrees below average to ten degrees above average in just a matter of three or four days. And we certainly have had a few cool evenings that got close to the freezing point, but that normally only lasts for December through January as storms come in over the Pacific, then the temperatures start climbing back to that seventy degree range that is our target desired temperature.

Today is Friday and we need to move Thunder by Sunday, we are nearing or fourteen days stay limit here at Roadrunner BLM camping area, this is an area that was new to us, but certainly one that we will visit again, as we become more familiar with the options available. You must keep in mind that two years ago when we were here we were green as grass about the whole BLM (Bureau of Land Management) thing, in fact we were pretty green about a lot of everything as we were only a few months into the full time RV living life style.

We have become so much more comfortable with this life style, we and when I say “we” I really mean me have become much better at socializing with new aqaintenances, after so many years of being defensive from years of complaints in the service industry, which just makes you quiet cynical over time. But we have met so many amazing people over the last two years, it has been so been so great, the only down side is that now we have to try to spend time with people all over the continent, it certainly effects our travels and routes. And as we look toward the spring, we look forward to returning to all our new friends at LHR (Lake Huron Resort), as we are schedule to report for work April 20th, less than three months from now.