Thursday, January 17, 2013

A Tough Night and Moving On

Yesterday was uneventful from a sightseeing perspective.  I cleared out the basement of the camper so I could get in it to remove the panels to the working stuff; to get the information on my Converter to see if it was a single phase or a 3 phase.  It appears to be a single phase which explains why our batteries have been getting slowly worse over the last year.  Did some research on camper electrical systems and learned a lot.  The Internet is such a wonderful place.  As soon as the sun got low in the sky, the batteries tanked so I shut everything down and we went over and visited with our Canadian neighbors, a couple in their eighties that have been coming to this same spot for 12 years and spending 4 to 6 months boondocking in this same spot for free.

There was no blog last night because of our battery condition.  This morning at 5:00 am the low voltage alarm started beeping and that drives Sammy nuts.  I had to get up and turn the Battery Disconnect switch to OFF.  What a night!  I had already awakened at 3:00 am and could not go back to sleep.  It was warm all snuggled up with my sweetie, but the air was on the very cool side on top of the covers.  The low voltage alarm persuaded me to get up for the day.  I lit up our new Buddy Heater and turned on the flame under our percolator.  Took the pooches for nature walk and came back to have coffee with Rosie and watch the sun slowly creep over the mountains to the east.

Our batteries were so dead I had to hook up the power cable to the connector in the truck in order to get enough power to start the generator so there would be enough power to bring in the slides and adjust the stabilizers to get hitched up.  We were hitched and ready about 7:45.  Our neighbor from Canada came out to wish us safe travels.  Then we pointed the truck east towards Salton City.  There is an Arco station/truck stop at the intersection of 22 and 86 with 5 free RV dump stations.  During the dump process of the black tank, my hose came loose from the connector.   YUKKY!  Managed to close the valve before too much got on the pavement and then hosed it down.  After we finished dumping, I had the rig weighed on the truck scale ($10).  I haven’t done the final calculations, but it looks like we are still a little overweight.

About 3 hours later we slipped across the border into Arizona and Mountain Standard Time again.  We arrived at the Caravan Oasis RV Resort and were greeted by our friend Brian Morris, who had recommended this place for a winter respite and had hand picked our site.  This is a large resort with 550 sites.  Many of them have trailers that have been permanently set up to stay here year around.  Some of the trailers are “Park Models”, which are kinda like a mini-mobile home.  Many Canadians on site.  Our neighbor to the rear is a lady by the name of Rosemary and her husband.  After getting set up, we relaxed a little, then took a walk to check out a dog run, one of the pools, the laundry and the pool hall (billiards).

Grilled some chicken for dinner while consuming an adult beverage or two.  Checked e-mail and Facebook and wrote a blog.  It is good to be in civilization with full amenities again.

Thanks for stopping by.

4 comments:

owensontheroad said...

I am glad we have yet to have a dumping 'accident'. Not a great time for sure.

Coldheartedtruth Teller said...

Glad to see things are working out.

Coldheartedtruth Teller said...

What is happening in AZ? Warm enough?

Coldheartedtruth Teller said...

What is happening in AZ? Warm enough?