I've got all the storage boxes I need for now, I'll have to wait till I do a little traveling to see if there's anything else I need. I'm going to make some bungee cords when the bits and pieces get here Friday. And those bungee cords will be used for holding things down, and stabilizing the load.

This morning was spent fooling around with the storage totes that I bought and trying to find a way to secure them during my back-country travels and yet make them quick and easy to get to.

Everything that's going to be on the truck's floor will be completely secure and won't be able to go anyplace. The seat backs mostly block the storage totes on the first shelf, so I'm not really worried about them. However, it's the stuff on the highest shelf that's getting most of my attention since everything up there is free to go forward if I stop quickly, and for the most part, it is aimed at the back of my head.

Always looking for the simplest answer, my first thought was to wear my motorcycle helmet while driving the truck. This would protect me from storage totes flying around inside the truck and increase my chances of survival if someone runs into me.

Unfortunately, wearing a motorcycle helmet is kind of hot, especially in the Arizona desert. When you're riding a motorcycle, it's no big deal because you have lots of air beating you in your face, but without all that air blowing at you, it would be pretty hot inside the truck wearing a helmet. So faced with the choice of either removing the truck's windshield to make it more like riding a motorcycle or figuring a way to tie down the storage totes, I wisely ordered some bungee cord makins from Amazon, so I can assemble some bungee cords just the size that I need.

                                                          theboondork

My daughter and my grandson on his seventh birthday.

I just saw these weeds growing in the garden today. They look like a dandelion but they're not. And that little puffball of seeds is only about an inch in diameter.

I got the shelves in the truck back seat pretty much the way I wanted them. Now I need to figure out what’s going to be stored there and how I want to store it. So I went to Home Depot this morning and bought a couple of storage tubs to see what size would work best. That’s backward from what I should be doing, which is first determine what I’m going to put in the storage boxes and then buy a storage box that fits that need.

But that goes against my one-track mind, which says turn the backseat into a storage area, and buying storage tubs to put on the shelves is part of turning the backseat into a storage area. But determining what’s going into the storage boxes has more to do with packing than building a storage area, and packing is not the track my mind is on right now. This is why I sometimes end up doing things backward that doesn’t appear to make any sense.

One of the reasons that I got busy and turned the backseat of the truck into storage in record time, is I started packing a few things into the bronco a few days ago, and pretty quickly figured out it wasn’t going to hold the things I need to make myself comfortable.

Even though I’ve taken numerous mini-vacations in the bronco, I  never had to carry enough clothes for more than a couple of changes. Or enough food for more than a few days. But once I started putting things in the bronco to last for a while, it became apparent that I would be going to the grocery store a lot, and a laundromat parking lot would have to be one of my boondocking spots.

Fortunately, it looks like using the truck’s backseat for storage solves the problem or at least mitigates it to the point where I can live with it.

Today was my grandson’s actual birthday; he already had a party at the house with his friends Saturday. So this afternoon, it was just the immediate family having dinner and giving him gifts from the family. I, of course, took some pictures and will be posting them every now and then.

                                                      Theboondork

The birthday boy is seven years old today. It seems to me his years, and my years are flying by way too fast... Especially my years.

My grandson likes high tech toys like VR goggles, and my granddaughter thinks that's boring and sticks with the tried-and-true Barbie dolls.

I got a lot done today on my "turn the back seat area of my truck into storage space" project. The weather wasn't as hot as it's been lately, which put me in a mood to get more things accomplished than when it's 90° outside.

And the most important thing that I needed to get done was to buy a sheet of plywood from Home Depot and have them cut it up into pieces the sizes that I needed. Normally I would cut up the plywood myself, but with the bronco on the back of the truck, there's no place to put a sheet of plywood, and a sheet of plywood won't fit in the bronco, so I had to have it cut up before I can take it home.

Unlucky me, it just so happens that the saw that Home Depot uses to cut up sheets of plywood was broken, so I had to put the plywood back and go to Lowe's where they had a working saw.  And they were nice enough to make four cuts in the plywood that gave me the sizes I needed and didn't even charge me for making the four cuts.... Thank you, Lowe's

So after mounting some shelf brackets on the back wall of the truck cab and doing some gluing and screwing to the plywood, I've got the backseat storage area shaping up with just some minor things to finish up on.

If I could just summon up a little bit more ambition, I would paint the whole shebang light gray, so it matched the truck's interior, but so far, I haven't felt the slightest twinge of concern over how it looks.

                                                               Theboondork

My shelves are largely finished, there's only detail work to do now.

With the back-seat gone bye-bye, I have more floor space for storage than I had before

And on top of that, and equal in size, is a nice flat space for storage tubs full of things I can't live without..... That some people refer to as junk. And on top of that a two foot wide, 4 foot long shelf for lightweight things like a folding chair, and a tripod or two.