Quartzsite Shopping List

With our newly minted life as fulltimers, we're working hard to get in the proper frame of mind.  Slow down, drive fewer miles, stay longer in places, see the great sights of our beautiful country, and most of all, learn to live in less than 400 square feet.

Although we've had RV's (the Journey is our fourth), up to this time, they've always been for weekend and the annual vacation use.  You don't need a whole lot of specialize "stuff" to equip your RV with.

Now that the Journey is our one and only home (not missing the snow shoveling, the lawn mowing or the evil paintbrush), we want to make it as comfortable and fun to live in as possible.  There are many "nice to haves" and "must haves" to make life better and safer.

In the "must have" category, first up is the tow bar.  We have a Roadmaster tow bar that is supposed to be a non-binding unit.  It has two levers, one on each leg that when you lift them, they release the pressure and make disconnecting the toad very easy.  Especially when the toad is not directly behind the Journey.  I got this tow bar second hand from my dad when he sold his RV and it worked well for a while. I cleaned and lubricated it regularly.  Then it began to bind up on one side, even thought the lever was released, the shaft would not slide into the arm, it was stuck.  No amount of pounding with a rubber mallet would get it to release.  It was still usable, and for our part time travels didn't matter too much.  Now that we're fulltime, it has to be fixed.

Not wanting to buy a new tow bar, in Q the Roadmaster company will rebuild your tow bar.  That's going to be our first stop, to get on the list to have it done.

Next is getting an upgraded braking system for the Element.  I want to get one that is permanently in place and only has to have a single wire or line to attach to the car instead of one that has to be installed and removed from the brake pedal every time you go.

Then there is our "life line", our Internet connection.  We need to get a signal booster and we are pretty sure we're going to pursue one of the Wilson Trucker Antenna systems, so we'll be looking for a vendor who has one with the best price.  We love having the ability to use our computers anywhere and it is a little frustrating when the signal is weak.  (Yes, Sherry, I have not been able to post any comments on your blog or see your pictures, can only read your text.)

On the "nice to haves" is looking at solar panels.  We are mixed in thought on this.  We want to research the systems and costs because we are not sure we would benefit from the installation of them.
So far, the vast majority of our RV travels have been to RV campgrounds, the only off the grid stays we've had have been in Walmarts, Flying J's or moochdocking in our kid's driveways.  We know about the many wonderful BLM lands where you can get away from people and enjoy the solitude of nature. 

We have not been able to do that yet and other than our stay in Q, we won't be able to do this type of camping very often for the foreseeable future.  The rare time we will do this, we'll rely on our 8KW Quiet Diesel Onan generator to top off our batteries.  In the future if we're able to do more boondocking on BLM lands, then it might be worthwhile for us to install a system, they are not cheap.

We are going to look at in-motion satellite domes.  We have one currently on the Journey, but it is an older type.  It has a cable attached to the rotating head that picks up the signal.  It works okay, but at times loses the picture because the head has tracked the signal to the end of the cable and has to unwind and rewind the cable and then reacquire the signal, usually on an off ramp or a long curve in the road.  Sometimes when the signal is lost, it takes quite a while for the dome to reacquire it.  We want to see how much it would cost to upgrade to a dome that has a slip ring system, like on a steering wheel, where there is no cable at all.  We like having the in-motion system so the grandkids can watch their favorite TV shows when they travel with us.

Then back to the "must haves".  Marti is going to look at all the shiny things that a woman needs to adorn her body with, necklaces, bracelets, rings and so forth. 

Her reasoning behind purchases of this type is they don't take up much of the under 400 square feet of room in our Journey. ;c)

Thanks for visiting and feel free to leave a comment.

Fighting With A Weak Signal

We're enjoying our stay here at Edwards AFB FamCamp.  The weather has been nice, the price per night very nice and the Internet signal, well, it has been acting weird. :c(

One minute, it works well and quickly, then without warning, it drops off and we can't get back on for hours.  Technology is amazing when it works and when it does not, it drives you crazy.  It didn't have to drive me too far...

Speaking of driving, we have driven around the base, or should we say we've been driving and driving and driving around this base and we haven't found the ends of it yet.  It is huge!

The runways and taxi aprons are all concrete.  Somebody made a fortune on that contract. 

There are lots of old jets up on display stands that were tested here.  It is an amazing, yet very dangerous process.  Inside the base chapel, there is a memorial listing all the test pilots that died here since the base opened , a 4'x8' sheet of plywood would just about cover all the columns of names, single spaced.  Very eye opening.

Down near the runways are two of the nation's newest unemployed.  Two white Boeing 747s, with special brackets on top of their fuselages.  They were used to carry the space shuttle back to Florida when it landed here due to bad weather over Cape Canaveral.  Now that the shuttle program has been canceled, they are sitting there with no mission.

We have been thrilled to be right near the base exchange and commissary.  We've gone through the Journey's cupboards and purged food items that have expired.  We kept the Journey stocked with many non-perishable items for our former weekend jaunts, but lots of these items never were used.  We tossed them and spent a pretty penny stocking back up, plus getting extra items for our stay at Quartzsite during the big RV Tent show.

The high desert is a nice change for us, its beauty is so enchanting, with the mountain ranges off in the distance gleaming with rays of sunlight and patches of snow.  We even saw our first wild coyote, it trotted across the road right in front of us.  Pretty cool.

Sorry if this post is a little boring and lacking pictures, but we'll soon be in an area where the Sprint aircard we're using will have better coverage.

Thanks for visiting and feel free to leave a comment.

Parked For Four Days

321 miles.  Another longish day's drive, but the end is the reward.  Tonight we're at Edwards Air Force Base FamCamp.  Out in the California high desert, where the Air Force tests new planes and the space shuttles used to land when Cape Canaveral weather was bad.  If you ever saw the movie "The Right Stuff",  much of the story took place here.

We're looking forward to some rest, some fun and some money saving food shopping here on the base.

We pulled in to the campground and we were met by the host.  He told us that the price was $15 a night.  Then he saw that we were Coast Guard so he upped the price to $25.  He said he was retired Air Force and was trying to keep the "riff-raff" out of the base.  I told him that he should be paying me because we added class to the base.  It's always fun to trade jokes and poke fun at other services. :c)

Driving down I-5 and across  Route 58, we saw many signs put up by farmers protesting a decision by the EPA concerning a potential endangered species of fish that could be harmed by the irrigation waters feeding the farms.  So the solution the EPA came up with was to turn off the irrigation waters to the farmland.  This ended up having farms shut down or having to reduce the size of their crops due to no water.  It has cost the area over 40,000 jobs lost.  I don't know what to think, I'm not informed enough of all the issues to have an opinion, but it was sad to see mile after mile of farmland laying unused, and many pieces of farm equipment laid up.

We fueled up at Flying J and were pleasantly surprised in how little fuel we needed to top off the Journey's tank.  The previous drive where we got 8.8 mpg sure helped the wallet feel better.  Today, driving over some very big mountains did reduce our overall mpg, but that's the way things happen on the road.

The mountains had hundreds of windmills turning, generating electricity.  There were 3 sizes, small, medium and large ones spinning away.  Glad to see the renewable energy at work.  Not happy to feel the headwind they generated...

Once again, we have a very weak Internet signal, so no pictures tonight.  We are even having a hard time getting on line, so if we miss a few days posting, we're okay and have not driven the Journey off a cliff somewhere.

 If we can find a free WiFi location, we'll have some pictures next time around.

Thanks for visiting and feel free to leave a comment.