theboondork's RV blog

Sometimes I'm amazed how fortunate I am

12/3/2017

There was a weird sunset last night, it looked like it was going to be a good one because there were some clouds in the sky but the sunset ended up kind of pitiful as far as Arizona sunsets are concerned. But just before the sun went down the rays of the sun, hit the clouds just right and everything on land turned yellow and orange. It was only pretty for a few minutes but it was cool while it lasted. Than the sun just dribbled down below the horizon without putting on a show at all.

Tonight is supposed to be a full moon and it will rise over vulture peak so maybe I can get some nice moon shots.

The weather forecast is still calling for a cooling trend next week with highs in the low 70s and low 40s at night, and that sounds like some good trail riding weather to me.

I figure long about Tuesday I'll go to the post office in town and see if I have any General Delivery mail yet. I never got a tracking number or anything when I ordered my new inverter so I don't know where it is or even if they've shipped it, I guess if I haven't received it in a couple days I'll give them a call to see what's going on.

The company told me they had never sent an inverter General Delivery before and was amazed that it was even possible. I explained to them how to do it, and that people get General Delivery all the time so I hope they didn't screw it up somehow.

I'm getting used to living without an inverter and the only thing I'm doing without is my microwave, which I honestly haven't even missed. The only annoyances is having to schlep my equipment back and forth to and from the chargers instead of just keeping them plugged in all the time.

If somebody had asked me a few weeks ago how important my inverter was I probably would've said my life kind of revolves around it. Which leaves me utterly amazed at finding out that all this time the most important thing it did was conveniently charge up my computer and camera batteries.

theboondork

4 Comments

Vall & Mo link

12/4/2017 01:03:28 am

Hi Tom,

As usual, great pics! The contrast between the blue Arizonan skies (with or without clouds) and the redish-rocky terrain plus the eventual cactuses has always amazed us.

We own a couple of smallish inverters (in the 100-200W range) for the laptops, and are planning to start fulltiming with them, plus whatever comes in our first rig, before replacing the latter with a solid 1500-2KW inverter (and then keeping the current ones as a backup and for use in the truck). More or less like you're doing...

Regarding General Delivery (USPS, right?), we used it two or three times during our RV vacations and it was amazing how well it worked. The only issue was with Amazon, which ships however the heck it wants... but usually via UPS (at least at the time). We had to rent a UPS mailbox for a few days (at eye-gouging price plus fees plus a surprise "too many boxes" nasty fee at the end) in order to receive the stuff... anyway since them we read about a few tricks to make Amazon ship it over USPS (and then being able to use GD), will be sure to put them in practice at our next RV trip.

Cheers,
--
Vall (now with Mo, yay!)

theboondork

12/4/2017 10:05:56 am

Thank you for the picture complements that's always appreciated.

Funny you should mention Amazon because the only time I've had problems with Gen. Delivery is ordering from Amazon. And on one occasion the only thing that saved me from having my order sent back to Amazon was there happened to be a UPS office in town which I found out about when I went to a UPS mailbox store like you went to. I was hoping I could have my package sent their but the young lady working there, obviously not the owner, told me about the hoops I was going to have to jump through, the club I was going to have to pay to join and the cost of them receiving the package based on the weight, and it wouldn't cost anything if I went to the UPS office. Which I did and everything worked out fine.

I'll have to investigate the "few tricks" you referred to because a lot of stuff I order is from Amazon and it's usually a problem getting it sent to the post office.

Tom

12/4/2017 02:53:05 pm

Hi Tom,

By "UPS Office" above, I think you meant a UPS Distribution Center (ie, large warehouse where items arrive before being delivered locally), right? If so, this agrees with our experience: if you have a UPS CD around, you can go and pick your stuff there, we've done that once. But also in our experience (except in densely populated places we tend to avoid) UPS CDs are far and few between... :-/ For example, near our beloved Mojave National Preserve, the nearest one was in Las Vegas, and the other in Barston (both a couple of hours away, while the nearest USPS was in Baker, which was less than half an hour drive).

Here are the pointers to the pages I learned the Amazon/GD tricks:
https://www.pcmech.com/article/how-to-use-usps-general-delivery-when-online-retailers-wont-ship-to-a-po-box/

There' s some more information here, including a post by yours truly:
www.rvforum.net/SMF_forum/index.php/topic,100685.msg905785.html#msg905785

Good luck, and if you try it, please let us know (we haven't had the opportunity to do that yet, as we've beem unable to take vacations in the US SW deserts for a couple of years now -- need to remedy that as we really, really miss them).

Cheers,
--
Vall & Mo.

12/4/2017 05:13:30 pm

Yeah I meant UPS distribution center but the place in del Rio Texas was so small calling it a distribution center was giving it too much credit.

I will look at those websites first chance I get. And when I get to Quartzsite probably next week I should get a chance to use that information because I need something from Amazon and the only way I can get it is general delivery to the Quartzsite post office. I'm not sure if that's a fair test because the Quartzsite post office is MOSTLY general delivery. Whenever I was there there was always a long line at the general delivery window.

Tom

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