Monday, Monday, Monday, now just imagine that being spoken in a big booming voice…kind of gets you a little excited that something great is going to be happen today…well sorry it’s not, at least for us, both of “The Buchanan’s” are still down with colds so today will be a bit of a rough day, because I have to get up on the roof to reset the solar panels for travel, and put our Zamp solar suitcase away, remove the windshield sun shade before we prepare to hit the road.

Heading north out of the Yuma area on US-95 today, it’s Monday so my expectations are for reasonably light traffic, we have a little over 60 miles (100 kilometres) to Quartzsite of two lane road so I’m sure there will be a few people that aren’t happy with my speed. But that will be their problem not mine, we will get our first look at the craziness that is Quartzsite with two weeks till the maximum crazy level, after I looked up the fees for water and dumping at the RV Pit Stop, and realized that just two dumps would cost more than getting a 14 day pass at LaPossa South LTVA (Long Term Visitor Area) which also allows us to dump our garbage, dump our waste dump and water fill at the Pit Stop was going to be $25+taxes, so the $40 for 14 days at the LTVA in Quartzsite seems like the best deal, it will make it cheaper over the next two weeks of adding water and dumping waste tanks.

So we made it to LaPossa South camping area, purchased our permit, and headed off to the dump station to dump and reload with fresh water. It’s always a busy spot because it is the only dump station for three large LTVA’s so you normally expect a line up but it’s always entertaining to watch people at the dump station, for some reason it just seems to bring out the worst of people’s behaviour, and don’t get me started about the stupidity of people at the water fill station. Today was reasonable we were about 7th or 8th in line so I just figured we would be about an hour, what always amazes me is how a coach like ours that can hold up to 120 gallons of waste can pull up and dump faster than some one in a converted vans that only hold 40 gallons. These are some of the questions that normal people just can’t find an answer for, this area around Quartzsite is a very broad mix of rigs from little home made wood trailers to a million dollar Prevost coach, and it’s usually the Prevost owner that will be the biggest hold up…just saying.

After refilling with water we headed north up to Quartzsite, we can report that the big tent is up, and as we pass over I-10, our route changes to AZ-95, yes it changes from US-95 to AZ-95 in Quartzsite, just a little confusing on a good day, but as we head north we pass a couple BLM areas again we are on two lane highway, there are a couple of passing lanes enroute to Parker AZ, it is the Parker dam just north of Parker that backs up the Colorado River to actually form Lake Havasu. We have settled into the Blue Water Casino parking lot for a night of black topping and we will head up the road to Lake Havasu tomorrow morning, it’s only about 40 miles and one of the prettiest drives along the Colorado River in Arizona. Travel distance today was only 106 miles (170 kms) but it involved the best part of four hours, tomorrow will only be about one hour as we move to our spot for the balloon festival.

Well I’m off to a sluggish start today, I am coming down with Miss Laurie’s cold so I guess the best I can hope for, is because I did get my flu shot the effect will hopefully be less than what has hit Miss Laurie. So I crawled out of bed at 8am just as the solar starts to harvest, the state of charge is at 50% not too bad we only dropped 25% over night or 150 amp/hours. Remember it’s not about how much power we actually use everyday that is at issue, it’s about our ability to replenish the power we have used, and it’s all about that ability while we are boondocking, because the alternator on Thunder charges the batteries when we are on the road.

The weather today is very similar to yesterday, full sun, a good solar day, only difference is the cool breeze from the north, so it feels cooler than it actually is. Because we will be moving tomorrow, what ever the solar array brings in today will be what we have to work with, our time here in Yuma has not worked out as well as we had anticipated, no movie, no visit with Gilles and Francine, no trip to California to see the Pacific Ocean and no supply restocking…just way too many NO’S, but this is real life and we just have to roll with the punches that life throws at us.

So let’s try to stay positive as we move on, we have reserved a dry camping spot on a parking lot in Lake Havasu State Park and it’s on a first come basis. So our plan is to be there early on Tuesday morning the gates open at 9am, to get our pick of the 60’ X 22’ pieces of a parking lot, the direction we park will determine how much solar we can harvest, but since we are going to Lake Havasu for the balloon festival the desired view may effect the parking direction. Because we will be there for a week we need to go there, with full fresh water and empty waste tanks. In a worst case generators are allowed and we may have to supplement our solar. I would also make the assumption that there will be lots of generator noise all over most the week.

So Monday we will head north up US-95 through Quartzsite, so we will most likely dump waste, refill fresh water, and top off the propane tanks at the RV Depot in Quartzsite, we had hoped to visit some people while in the Quartzsite area but that now with our colds doesn’t look likely. We could stop at a number of spots on the way up, I think the actual spot will just remain open at this time, much will depend what time we get on the road, we are less that three hours away from Lake Havasu so it would be good to get up a close to our final destination as possible so maybe to the Parker AZ. area tomorrow.

Solar Update: at 4pm Sunday afternoon our state of charge is 72% so we will not get to where I was hoping as the charging level has dropped off to less than 20 amps if we do get to 75% it will not hold till 8pm…Conclusion we will need more solar panels, looks like at least 400 watts…but we will see.