theboondork's RV blog

A date milkshake....mm mm Good

1/4/2023

Not many pics today, it's easy clickin.

I got out of bed before sunrise this morning and wandered around in my pajamas trying to get a picture of something interesting, but all I could get was this picture.

Despite the crowds of RVs here, I had a peaceful night's sleep last night and wasn't at all disturbed by any generators running in my vicinity.

There's a major train track on the other side of the highway from me which would make it about 1/4 of a mile away, and looong trains go by every few hours, but I don't find them disturbing at all. But, of course, that could be attributed to my continued loss of hearing rather than the silence of the modern freight train.

But the reason I mention that is when I leave here heading for Tucson, which is only about 230 miles away, it brought back memories of my stays in Dateland, Arizona, and the campground there where the train tracks almost run right through the campground. This would be disturbing to most normal people, but I see it as an opportunity to take some close-up pictures of trains going by.

There's some boondocking in Dateland but not near the railroad tracks, so staying at the campground allows me to hear the train's whistle a mile away and walk the couple of hundred feet from my camping spot to the tracks and take pictures as it goes by.

Thinking about that made me want to take some train pictures. But I wonder if it made me want to take train pictures enough to actually stay there for a night or two. I usually stop in Dateland to get a date milkshake from the country store, and the country store is where you register for the campground, so it might come down to how badly I want another date milkshake later that day.

Theboondork

15 minutes later the sky exploded into this.

Even though this is a BLM two-week stay boondocking area, like I mentioned yesterday it looks like there's a lot of folks here that are set up for a longer stay than that. This class "A" near me looks like it would take one week to set his rig up, and another week to take it all down again.

10 Comments

OFM

1/4/2023 04:45:37 pm

I thought that I read on another blog a few days ago the date shake location is out of business,

Tom

1/4/2023 05:49:52 pm

Oh no? I hadn't heard that. I know that every time I was there they were never very busy, the campground had plenty of empty sites, and of course, that's what I liked about it. But I guess staying at a campground so close to the train tracks that if a train derailed, it would take out half the campground wouldn't appeal to most people.

Well, that's going to hurt the people that live there; that store was the only business in town. I have to drive right by it on I-8, and that was always a handy place to stop for a break and get a date shake.

Tom

1/4/2023 06:08:48 pm

http://missadventuretravels.blogspot.com/search?q=date+shake

Tom try this site for date shake info.

1/4/2023 06:24:33 pm

Well, I'm bummed out! I don't know where else I'll be able to stand next to a freight train going by me at 50 miles an hour and feel the ground shaking.

Tom

Judith

1/4/2023 07:35:34 pm

Yeah. Looks like bad news on the date shakes. But what a sunrise.

1/4/2023 08:41:54 pm

Thank you, Judith. I do love my sunrises; I just wish they happened later in the morning, after breakfast, maybe nine o'clock.

I am going to miss those date shakes, but I think what I'll miss the most will be laying in bed at night in that campground, wondering if a freight train is going to come rumbling through my campsite.

Tom

Linda

1/5/2023 03:17:09 pm

I could probably have that Class A ready to go in 20 minutes. Take down the shade cloth hanging from the awning. Retract the awning. Stash whatever was under it. Pull in the slide. Lower the solar panels. Done. IF the solar panel lift is remotely powered. Of course if the solar panels are not remote controlled I never would have lifted them in the first place.

1/5/2023 05:30:43 pm

You sound like someone who has packed up an RV and been ready to go a thousand times or more.

I agree with you completely on the solar panels, Linda, when I install my panels, I've never used the gadgets that allowed me to tilt them. The Arctic Foxes panels lay flat on the roof, and so do the Lances.

I know it would be real handy in the winter when the sun is so low on the horizon to have the panels tilted toward the sun, but I would be too lazy to get up there and do it. And with the Lance I couldn't imagine myself putting the panels down, running to the store, and then putting the panels back up again when I get back to my boondocking spot... That would require far more ambition than I currently possess.

Tom

1/6/2023 02:46:19 pm

We kept the panels flat on all our rigs. One of our installers taught us that when they are lifted the sun doesn't hit them until it gets right in front of them. When flat, the sun can start hitting them when still at an angle. Made sense to me.

1/6/2023 04:11:37 pm

I'm not sure if that installer makes sense or not. It seems like the sun can hit the panels at an angle, whether they're lying flat or lying at an angle. to me, the biggest difference would be you get your best charging on the panels when there face the sun head-on, and if your panels are flat on the roof and the sun is always low on the horizon, you never get the full sun on the panel. And that's the advantage to sitting them on the ground, which I've never done, there are too many things that can go wrong with that, but you can turn the panels every hour, so they're always facing the sun.

I put my panels flat on the roof for basically two reasons; I'm lazy. And, I read years ago that instead of going through the hassle, and danger, of putting your panels up and down, just figure out how many panels you need to supply the amount of electricity you're going to use in the summer, and then add a couple more panels. That way in the winter with the sun low on the horizon, with the extra panels you will get somewhere near the same amount of amps you get in the summer. And I did that to the Arctic Fox, but the Lance simply doesn't have enough roof to hold as many panels as I would need to equal the Arctic foxes amp output

But I never found the extra panels idea to be exactly true. I have a meter on the wall of the Arctic Fox that measured every amp coming into the batteries, and every amp going out, and in the summer when the sun was straight overhead and my seven, flat mounted 140 watt panels were getting full sun for a couple of hours, I would be getting 55 amps.

In the winter the most amps I've ever seen coming in to the batteries in the Arctic Fox was 35 amps per hour. So the best scenario is to have the panels always facing the sun, but I'm either too lazy or have too much common sense to be up on the roof fooling with the panels all day.

Tom

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.

A date milkshake....mm mm Good

Leave a Reply.

Archives

CONTACT THEBOONDORK