Tools, how many is enough

Clicking the pics is nothing new, sometimes it gives you something to do. Sometimes it may brighten your day, other times scare you away, but one thing without a doubt, I'm living the good life camping out.

Camper Van boondocking on the beach. I see more and more folks that are cutting that electric cord and boondocking where they want to be instead of camping where they have to be.

Unfortunately putting a new propane burner in my refrigerator didn't help the situation. Oh well, I did the easiest, cheapest thing first, so now I need to take out the refrigerator's gas valve, check it out, and maybe clean it to see if that helps anything.

Having to do things like this when something goes wrong is why I have so many tools. But, unfortunately, most of my tools are still in the Arctic Fox back in Denver. Some of the tools there would've made this job a lot easier. Still, I'm just not going to be able to carry the weight of all my tools, so I'm going to have to figure out what I really need and what I don't, which is difficult when you never know what's going to break down, and that's why I ended up with so many tools In the first place .

So I guess going through all of my tools and getting rid of the ones I hopefully will never need is one of the many things I've got to do this summer. But I reckon the biggest thing is I need to sell the Arctic Fox since I no longer need it, and it's just taking up a lot of space at my daughter's house. My oldest son has expressed interest in buying it, which would help me a lot because I wouldn't have to take everything out of the trailer which would save me a lot of hassle.

Theboondork

Houseboat elephant Butte reservoir

This is something I don't think I've ever seen before, a jet ski actually being used for a purpose other than roaring around the lake leaving as many angry people in its wake as possible. This guy appears to be going fishing.

This is what jet skis usually do. Get as close to fishermen as possible and then show them all the cool moves you've learned how to do on a jet ski.

This Frankenstein looking "boat,"  is used for various jobs around the marina. Among other things it can lift boats and carry them around, it can even lift sunken boats off the bottom of the lake.

But this morning its being used for pulling on underwater cables which lift the hundred foot long bridge that folks walk on to get from the shore to the marina.

The bridge and the marina are both floating on the reservoir, and large cables keep them from floating away. The folks doing this job that I talked to said that the reservoir is rising about 3 inches a day, so every week their having to raise the bridge, and that's despite the fact that the dam on the Rio Grande, that made this reservoir, is releasing "some" water. That sounds like an awfully good sign for the drought ravaged areas downstream.

This is a picture of the bridge the goes from the shore to the marina. "Frankenboat" pulls on underwater cables,  and a worker on the bridge cranks up a winch to hold it in place.

They were very fortunate to have me there to supervise this operation at such a critical time, and these fun-loving pranksters that work there, showed their appreciation by tossing me over the handrail into the lake.

If you look on a hill overlooking the beach you can barely see the Lance peeking over the ridge in my current boondocking spot.