Tuesday, January 15, 2013

A Day Trip and A Hike

I missed my first daily post since the New Year yesterday.  The excuse is that we had to take a long day trip to Indio and our battery power situation is getting really bad.  I was simply too tired to do the blog.

Our day trip to Indio was for the primary purpose of securing a source of heat for our little home.  It has been freezing at night and we have no power to run the heater fan in the camper.  So I did a little research for an indoor safe propane heater and found the little Buddy Mr. Heater.  The nearest place to purchase said heater was at the Wal-Mart in La Quinta (next door to Indio, CA) about 60 miles away.  So off we went to get some heat.  While we were in Indio, we had a nice lunch in a Chinese Restaurant.  We filled up with $3.99 diesel in Salton City on the way back home and scoped out a free dump station at the same time.  Here is our new heater with the camping coffee percolator next to it.  Boondocking with serious time limits on generator hours (10 am to 8 pm) changes your lifestyle.  The heater works great.

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Upon arising this morning I put on the coffee and our new heater, then took the dogs for a morning nature call.  After breakfast, I went into the basement of the camper and opened the panels to reveal the innards of what makes this thing work.  The purpose was to take pictures of the converter and charger equipment so I could do a little research on their quality.  While I was there, I checked some wiring blocks and found a loose nut on a major connection of the battery system.  After tightening that and taking pictures, I buttoned everything up. 

After lunch, we drove to the local State Park Campground and paid a $7.00 day use fee to get access to the trail head for the Palm Canyon Trail.  We also got to take our trash to the campground dumpster.

The Palm Canyon Trail is 3.0 miles round trip from the trail head to a small desert oasis with a spring fed stream.  I was able to complete the journey since the grade change was not too strenuous.   We made the round trip in about 2 hours.  Here are some pictures from the trail:

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     Can you see the shark from Jaws?

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According to the trail guide, the CCC did the stone stairs in the 1930’s.

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                                                                                                 Rosie does not like log bridges.

Well the sun is going down and I will soon be out of power again.

Thanks for stopping by.

3 comments:

owensontheroad said...

We have not done any serious boondocking yet. There is so much to learn :)

TravelBug-Susan said...

I saw Jaws!(and Rosalie's jaws too!)

Good hike. So nice to get out and about.

Coldheartedtruth Teller said...

The shark is wearing a blue shirt!