Wednesday January 31st 2024

Dear Journal:

Another boondocking morning, last evening we watched television till after nine, I read for an hour or so before heading to bed and I awoke this morning to find our batteries at 52% , and it will be a while before the panels start to harvest any solar this morning and it is becoming clear that we will have to add some more solar panels to be able to boondock as before. Let me just clear up and misunderstandings, I was aware that we would most likely would need to increase our solar array when I decided to purchase the 12 volt compressor style cooling unit last July, it was not an issue when we were travelling as the batteries were getting recharged by driving and this is our first real test.

The refrigerator compressors are drawing more power than I had anticipated originally but that’s ok, we are energy hogs, we leave all our systems running over night, while we could conserve by shutting down our invertor, or other systems, I would rather just add some more solar and enjoy all of our creature comforts, and I’m also at a stage now where I would like to not have to tip the panels on the roof of Thunder. We were doing that when we boondocked but we simply need more solar, I think the battery bank is large enough, I just need to be able to refill it quicker with more solar. But now the coffee is perked and I have settled into enjoy a morning brew with a wee Irish blessing, we are going out for breakfast this morning with Tom & Kathleen. They are picking us up at nine o’clock this morning and there is a Cracker Barrel on the far side of Casa Grande.

Breakfast at Cracker Barrel is always a great start to any day, and while still in Casa Grande the restaurant is a fifteen minute drive from the campground, we drove past the new “Lucid Motors” factory which is being built in the Casa Grande area. Lucid manufactures electric vehicles as well as lithium batteries to power them. Arizona has become a popular manufacturing area with a number of new semi-conductors manufactures as well as automotive and aerospace manufacturing.

While at the campground we were hearing what sounded like cars racing, but we seem to be in the middle of nowhere surrounded by desert, so I was surprised to be told that there was a private race track just a few miles away. So after breakfast we travelled to the area of the racetrack, which is only a few miles from the campground just south of Interstate I-8 in the Arizona desert. A little research shows that it is early in its development, with many more facilities to be added, it is visible from I-8 but we had never noticed it previously on trips to and from Ajo.

These photos are from Google Maps the one above shows the race track in the bottom right corner and our campsite being in the top left corner less than three miles away. The photo below shows the race track a 2.32 mile 15 turn circuit that has a membership of $30,000 initiation and $4800 annually. It is presently at stage 1 and has more tracks and facilities planned in the next 4 stages, cars and motorcycles are welcome with go carts in future stages.

We landed back at the campground and while Miss Laurie took a little rock hounding adventure, I enjoyed some sunshine with Mister Sam at the coach, latter in the afternoon we ventured over to Tom & Kathleen’s coach where we enjoyed a quiet afternoon with dear friends while realizing that we will be heading out tomorrow morning and this may be our last visit this winter, as Tom & Kathleen leave this month for a volunteer position in Nevada.

An amazing sunset this evening and to avoid getting in trouble with Miss Kathleen I just snapped a photo from just in front of their coach instead of walking to the wall with everyone else.

We were getting ready to have dinner on their patio, everyone else was busy preparing dinner and mixing beverages, so after I snapped a sunset photo I snapped a photo of Tom & Kathleen’s site. The shadows were getting long as you can see and we enjoyed the last supper with the Andersons for this visit. And as sad as that may seem right now it has been phenomenal to spent a few days together catching up and planning our next get together.

After dinner we went back to Thunder and watched some television before calling it a night, the battery bank again did not get back to 100%, but we will have quite a power deficit by tomorrow at departure time, we will catch back up when we get back to our full hook up spot tomorrow afternoon.

Blog 509