For readers who have followed along our path, what I’m about to report will come as no surprise … Kaka happens.
Merde.
Poop…..you know...sh!t!
Full-time Rving is really about a constant process of solving challenges; where to stay, how long to stay, how to get important mail, tank maintenance, battery maintenance, repairing all the high-quality, American-made stuff falling off the trailer. Along with planning routes, calling campgrounds to ensure their policies and prices are as advertised on the internet (and let us tell ya…they rarely are), every day is met with some challenge.
Some difficult, some perplexing.
Full-timing is an exercise in what est seminar training (of which I am a 1980 graduate) called, “Be Here Now.” If ever you choose to follow this lifestyle, even over the course of a couple of weeks, you will discover precisely how much, how fast, and how well you can think on your feet.
It must be working: we’ve lost a combined 220 pounds! 😂
We arrived at our wintering grounds, near Yuma, Arizona, on October 22nd. As is our norm, we got into our set-up routine: I readied the trailer to get unhooked from The Beast, set out the orange ‘feet,’ under the jacks, got the trailer level, which set in motion Renee's tasks.
The trailer, situated so we can get optimal solar, at Imperial Dam.
She checks the insides, to ensure nothing is in the way of the slides, then gets them deployed. That allows me to commence either hooking up to shore power, or deploying and setting up the portable generator.
Given we are at a BLM (Bureau of Land Management) LTVA (Long-term Visitor's Area), it’s essentially an enhanced boondocking site: there is access to a central dump station, and potable water, but out here, you park wherever you want (within reason: one does not try to park in close proximity to others), and you are on your own for electricity. to that end, we unloaded our new, MUCH quieter generator.
The generator—or genset—we used all the rest of the time on the road was a large, open-cage style generator. I purposely oversized it, relative to our wattage needs, plus, it happened to be the least-expensive one at the time.
But...it is LOUD!
As is the way of these things, the quieter the genset, the more expensive it is. One of the quietest is a Honda, but at the size we need, they are pushing $3000!
During these past six months I discovered we could use a smaller wattage genset (the old one is 9500w), and that made it a bit easier to find an affordable smaller, quieter one (6000w). We found one that fit the bill for $700, and also has the benefit that Renee and I can load it onto the back of The Beast by ourselves: the old one needed a hoist to get it on and off.
I get the genset up and going, not only to charge the batteries (they did not seem to be charging adequately via solar: more merde to report, later), but also to get the AC running…in Yuma, in October, it still reaches the 90s (for my overseas readers, that’s in the 30s).
Next, so that we have decent cellular service, I got the Starlink set up. Here is where the merde begins…
It’s usually a fast, easy set-up: put out the dish, hook the cable in to the router, plug in the router, and in a few minutes, no matter where we are, we get stable, lightning-fast internet.
Not this time…?
It worked less than 2 hours!
I go through the troubleshooting, ensure there’s juice to the router, triple-check the cabling, and...bupkis. So, I put in a trouble ticket to Starlink...oops…remember needing decent cell service?
Unfortunately, we don’t have great service here. At best, you can get one bar of LTE, and that’s if you find the sweet spot.
I finally get a message to Starlink.
Then I wait.
And I wait.
And I wait…for three days!
We are both getting a bit…shall we say, peeved?… given the fact of this being near-new equipment (the old Starlink router gave up the ghost about a month ago, and no new bits are sold to support it), plus the fact the monthly charge is...not cheap.
After three days, of bad cell service, no Roku TV (I know, I know..1st-world problems!), and not being able to upload anything to the blog, I receive a call from a friendly Starlink representative. She quickly diagnoses the problem being likely a bad cable, and tells me they’ll send one right way!
Right away = it arrives on the 30th of October.
Long story made short, we’re back in the Internet business.
Remember the issue with the solar? Well, I had already envisaged a greater charging capacity for the system, and that took the form of four 250w, flexible solar panels. I had them set up at Quartzsite, back in February/March, but wasn’t impressed with how much extra oomph the array provided. This, that, and the other thing kept me from building a support rack and setting the panels up for a more propitious angle, to capture the sun’s energy. It’s a fairly involved process, one I didn't want to tackle for the relatively short stays we had, before getting to Imperial Dam.
I bought some PVC pipe, a bag full of fittings, and fashioned a rack to hold the panels…
Then, I got the panels out of the traveling spot, inside the trailer, and attached them to the rack…
After hooking them into the wiring harness, up on the roof, and knowing there was some issue with the rooftop panels, I hooked the ground array to the system, without the rooftop panels in circuit, and VOILA! We were getting charged! That confirmed there was some issue with the rooftop unit.
A day or two later—when the winds stopped—I got up and began troubleshooting the rooftop array, and found a major problem: one panel had shorted out, and fried its feed cabling! That interrupted the circuit for the remaining 5 panels, rendering them useless. I took the bad panel out of circuit, and for the time being, we're back to having reasonably-powered charging. One problem, sorta solved.
But wait! There’s more!
Thanks to the inability of our current leaders to, ya know, actually lead, we found out that Renee’s ACA-subsidized insurance is nearly doubling. This chucks a bit of a hammer into our travel plans: she will be eligible for Medicare, which will be considerably less-expensive, but…doesn't become eligible till next July.
Recall that part, about solving challenges on the fly?
We will: the plan is, we’ll stay here at Imperial Dam right up to end of LTVA season, which is April 15th, then hustle our way back to the tree row in Oklahoma, where it doesn't cost us a cent to ‘rent’ our spot, until late June/early July, then we can more easily afford to get back on the road.
Would we go back to a sticks-n-bricks? Would we trade our adventures, the new sights, the people, the sunrises and sunsets for all this?
Merde, NO! 😋
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