theboondork's RV blog

Still in Wickenburg Arizona, not much sunshine, not much Internet.

1/21/2021

Roses are red, violets are blue, one pic to click, sad but true.

A Quartzsite sunset, from a few months ago

It was cloudy today but not as bad as yesterday. My concern is there are five rainy, cloudy days coming up back to back starting tomorrow. I won't be getting much charging from the solar panels, so if that forecast is correct, I'm starting today going into electric conservation mode to save power; this mainly entails not using my Asus 17 inch laptop and using my 13-inch laptop very little. If I were smart, I would learn how to do my blog on my phone, so I didn't have to turn a laptop on.

Those two laptops are the most significant power users in the Arctic Fox, so cutting out their usage saves about three-quarters of my electricity. Other than the laptops, the only thing using electricity is the control board on my refrigerator, some Phantom loads, and my LED lights.

I don't have any new pictures to show, partly because of the weather and partly because I don't want to turn on the 17-inch laptop to work on them. I can't use the 13-inch laptop to work on pictures because it doesn't have the processing power to deal with the 45 Mb Raw files the camera makes. Still, if I knew ahead of time I was going to use the 13-inch laptop, I could set the camera to take JPEG's then the 13-inch laptop would be okay and wouldn't take all day to deal with one picture.

Believe it or not, I actually enjoy being challenged like this because it doesn't happen very often, and it tests my abilities as a boondocker to deal with some mild adversity. Since I don't own a generator, so being able to stay comfortable on limited electricity is part of the life I have chosen for myself, and after all worse comes to worst I'll check into an RV Park till the lousy weather blows over... no biggie

theboondork

10 Comments

OFM

1/21/2021 03:20:16 pm

Jumper cables to the truck batts and start the engine.

Tom

1/22/2021 01:27:19 pm

Yup, that would work. But I'm not sure how it would work with lithium iron batteries. It might be great because lithium iron batteries will take all the power you want to give them, there's no tapering the charge. So they might charge up really quick.

On the other hand that same benefit of fast charging might melt the jumper cables. I would have to do more research into that possibility.

Tom .… Having toooo much fun testing my survival skills.

Judith

1/21/2021 08:53:41 pm

Well, I can't have a helpful conversation about tires, especially RV tires, but I can tell you I do like that header photo of the train. I find them mysterious and wonderful, even if the daytime. And seeing one in the light you've shown that one in, is just a treat. Hope you can enjoy your challenges and switch to JPEG if you have to! It's been unusually rainy and cloudy here in TX too. I suppose the same weather system. They say the sun will come out tomorrow. Maybe yours will too.

1/22/2021 01:37:32 pm

Well thank you Judith, I'm rather fond of trains myself. In Dateland Arizona those trains ran by every two or three hours day and night. Most people would find that disturbing to be staying in an RV Park with those train tracks 100 feet away. But to me it's an opportunity to take pictures of trains going by at high-speed, and fortunately I am able to sleep through all the racket.

Actually my biggest problem with the pictures is the time it takes even for JPEG's to upload on the Internet. My Internet here is marginal at best, and occasionally nonexistent. So trying to use my laptops as little as possible to save electricity, and having a small JPEG picture take 20 minutes to upload is more than I can bear.

Unfortunately my bad weather is going to last until Tuesday, if the weather guessers are correct, and is going to end Tuesday night supposedly with some snow... that'll be interesting to see.

Tom

Frank Souze

1/22/2021 12:58:23 pm

Adapt, improvise and live to boondock another day?

1/22/2021 01:42:39 pm

Wise words. Sounds like some military training in there somewhere. In the Air Force we used those concepts to survive payday night at the local bars, so we could live till another payday.

Tom

Linda

1/22/2021 01:37:41 pm

One advantage of having my van was I could drive from Q to Parker and back for a shopping trip and my batteries would charge while driving. The downside of that was needing to drive more often than I would have liked when days stayed overcast for too long a time. Having no propane system meant everything ran off either my diesel fuel tank or my batteries.

1/22/2021 02:24:51 pm

That's the problem with RVs, none of them are perfect, it seems they only do one thing just right, like my Arctic Fox is great for parking and sitting around in, but not so good when I have to take it to a grocery store.

But there's so many good things about a van sometimes I wonder why I don't have one already, but then I look inside of one and wonder if I could still do all the gymnastics necessary to live in one. I think spending time in my little Bronco slide-in camper during the summer, is giving me some good practice, and insights, about living in a van, because the size and space is very similar.

The older I get the longer that drive from Q to Parker becomes. And I don't think I've ever seen the parking lot at the Walmart in Parker anything but packed nowadays. I take that back, when I was there a couple months ago and went to the 6 AM Tuesday morning Geezer hour, the parking lot was only half full.

Speaking of grocery stores, back before there were Walmarts everywhere, I was camping in a van myself, and parking at a grocery store was easy. But what would all the big trailer, big bus, RVers do if there were no Walmarts and everybody had to park at tiny little grocery stores like we had in the past. I think it would be a whole lot less people driving humongous RVs.

Tom

1/23/2021 01:44:36 pm

Our first cross country motorhome trip was many years ago in a rented Class C. At that time we bought groceries at Safeway. We simply parked in the back 40 the way the big rigs do now. My journal from those days said you'd think Safeway was our favorite tourist stop given how often we went there. :)

1/23/2021 03:11:17 pm

I do the same thing in little towns, where the stores and the parking lots are small. Sometimes I'll have to park in some empty dirt lot half a block away from the store. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, a lot of little Western towns have too much empty space in them where shops have gone out of business, and people have moved away. It's hard to keep a little town like that alive. The kids leave when they get out of high school because there's no future staying there. So there's nothing there but to many vacant lots and the old folks that have more past than future.

Yeah most RVs don't hold a lot of food, pantries are small, refrigerators or small, shopping for groceries becomes something you have to do more often. But at least it gets you out of the RV for a while. If I need a break from driving, which I shouldn't because I don't drive that far, I'd rather stop at a Home Depot, or a Walmart to take a break. Easy parking and I can shop while I'm resting.

Tom

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Still in Wickenburg Arizona, not much sunshine, not much Internet.

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