Desert Living

Last year, we spent 40 days out here in the desert.  This year, if all goes according to plan, it will be just a smidge longer, about 43 days.  Last year, we ran our generator about 175 hours.  This year, with solar panels (four 100-watt panels) we’ve run the generator less than 60 hours.  We know that we will never get our money out of the solar panels, but not having to depend on the generator to keep our 4 house batteries charged is making our boondocking experience a lot more relaxed and pleasant.  We’ve talked about adding 2 more batteries when we need to replace our current ones, so we’ll see how that works out sometime in the future.

So what have we been doing with all this time?

Well, we watch the sunrise:

and the sunset:

And in between, there’s a bit of food!  Rollie and Rod at the Super Bowl Shrimp Boil at our place:

Janna, Deb and Gina get their share of the shrimp boil:

One night Deb grilled the most delicious Salmon!

And socializing!  Below, Jo, Mike, Janna and Fred waiting for Deb’s grilled salmon dinner:

Deb and Rod by the camp fire:

And just taking it all in:

 

We get water, go sightseeing, grocery shopping, to Weight Watcher's meetings, dental and medical appointments, haircuts, for walks and/or drives, take naps, read books, cook and of course, have happy hours and eat!

We’ve gone to Yuma and Mexico, and over to Blythe, California.

Today, we climbed a mountain!

Going up wasn’t so bad, and yes, JB, we did sign the book!  We saw two desert big horn sheep on the trek, but Jim’s pictures turned out fuzzy, guess we’ll have to try to find them again!

Here I am, with the log book:

Mike, Janna & Emmi at the top of the mountain (just over 1,500’ elevation)

Coming back down was a little slow for some of us (me, Rod and Janna):

We’ve enjoyed the company of several different folks who’ve stopped by – Gina & Rollie, Jo & Fred Wishnie, and JoAnn and Doug have all been here at least once, some twice!  JoAnn and Doug came back yesterday to spend a few more days out here, Gina and Rollie stopped by last week on their way back to Louisiana, after saying their farewell to their son, Thomas, who deployed to Afghanistan from Camp Pendleton.  We send our heartfelt thanks and prayers for Thomas as he gives his service to our country! May God’s peace and protection be with him and the entire family during this time.

Janna and Mike got a bad case of Hitch-itch and left us today.  We’ll sure miss them,  but we wish them safe travels.  We hope to catch up with them soon, “somewhere down the road”.

Our plans are, as usual, in Jell-O at this point.  On one of our trips to dump and get water, when we returned and started setting up in our spot, we broke a jack – not so broken that we had to go get it fixed right away, but we are having some challenges getting and staying level now, so we have an appointment later on this month in Mesa to get it replaced.  We’ll probably go into “the city” a little early so we can catch up with some cleaning chores that don’t get done real well out here.  After that, well, who knows!