More Shots of the Senator's Wash

We had a quiet day due to the wind, but I decide to learn a bit more about my camera phone.

I am attaching 3 more shots. The panorama shot was a feature of the camera where it has you take a series of 5 shots which it guides when you are aligned for the next shot, then it compiles it into a single shot. It is actually a 180 (half circle) arc. Too cool!!

The shot with the sun beams is using an intellishot feature (or some term like that) that lets the camera think its way through the features and highlights of the shot and bring out its best prospective.

The last shot is just looking from one side of our set up across to the lake and mountains flanking the other side.

Anyway, we are about to settle down for a movie courtesy of the genset, so I will bid you

Adieu

Settling in at the Wash

We have passed one night in our new site. It is a beautiful location and the quietness was broken during the night by the sounds of braying burros and baying coyotes.

Yesterday around sunset, I went down the road a small step (2 minutes by moped) and shot the phone toward the rig. I engaged the flash as I was shooting right into the sun, and by flashing the camera, you compensate for the flood of light from the sun.

When I downloaded from the camera mini card I discovered that it was an even cooler shot than I thought. If you look closely, you will see the sun to the right, the moon to the left within the sun's aura, and nestled between them is a rectangular lump representing our rig. - I had no idea that the moon was visible at the same time because the sun's brightness engulfed my view with the naked eye. I love photography!!

Around 5 this morning a very strong wind kicked up, but we are really liking it here.

I am going to step out and explore the area, so for now I will bid you,

Adieu

Quick Post on the Way to Senator Wash

We went, we saw, we liked.

Our month at this location is not up until the 25th, so if we go now and decide it isn't working, there is still time to reconsider. We are chomping at the bit and eager to give it a try.

The $75 fee is actually rather like a parks Canada fee, if you want to do frequent day trips and such. The fee for long term boondocking from Sept 15 to Apr 15 is $180. Still better than monthly pad and power. (You don't have to pay the $75 if you are doing the $180)

Stay tuned...

For now I bid you

Adieu

Senator's Wash, California

So far this adventure into the states has been an interesting series of events. We have managed to find a few interesting places to go, but I have to say that yesterday was a really wonderful and unexpected day.

Most of the day was just hanging out with my parents, which I haven't had a lot of chance to do in the past 3 years, they living between Yuma and their costal BC home, and we being in Alberta most of the time. It was a fantastic and relaxing day.

However, just when most people would be hitting the winding down of their day, my Mom suggested we go look at some of the lakes in the area.

For some reason which utterly escapes me, even though we stopped at the rig to pick up Midnight, I completely forgot to grab a camera (!!???!) .... I know - going to sightsee and not bring a camera, - what was SHE thinking!!! But fear not my disappointed friends all was not lost, I remembered my back up.

We decided while down here to get cell phones that would become our permanent new voice communication units, and the ones we chose were the LG en Touch which just happens to have a 3.2 megapixel camera, and with a bit of accessorizing with a $14 memory card that holds 4 Gs of shots, I was all set to use it as a downloadable alternate source of digital photography. (Although my laptop doesn't, our brother printer has card reading slots , so I use it to transfer the shots to my computer). I digress....

Somewhere past Mittry Lake, I did recall that the phone would also take pictures, so I though, what the heck, better than nothing. So I starting shooting and what a reward!

(Not bad for a cell phone, don't you think??)

Senator's Wash is just across the California border, but only about 20 minutes from Yuma. - About the same distance as Oliver is from Penticton, as last year taught us.

(The other shots from the link are as we are leaving through the Yuma Proving Grounds)

What we really liked, as you can see from the pictures, it is a beautiful area. It has an annual fee of $75, about 4 sani-dump stations, water refill station, bathroom and shower facility, and no traffic noise.

Backing up somewhat, the lake viewing outing was inspired by the knowledge that I still have this insatiable desire to actually sit in our kayaks while placed upon a calm source of water bigger than a bathtub.....

Ken and I are not generally inclined to boondocking long term, but you just can't beat the price or view. Where we are now, it is a really nice area and with friendly neighbours. The rent is inexpensive for the area, but we are RIGHT beside highway 8 and beside E South Frontage Road, and the traffic roar is quite extensive.

We are going to be making a decision about where we will spend the rest of the winter. Where we are now, it is only $260 per month plus power, but as with most places that reads the metres on their own sites and don't charge a power company hook-up fee, the rate is somewhat - shall we say, magnified?? - I believe it is going to be around 15 cents per Kwh.

One thing I have notice which has gone unnoticed by us up until now. When we connected upon our arrival, we used the 50 amp. The metre seemed to be moving rather like a hamster on a wheel. I decided since we were on 30 amp all summer, and the weather is supposed to look a whole lot kinder than last year, I would try switching to the 30 amp hook-up plug. BIG difference. The metre's wheel slowed right down.

So the new lesson is that unless your power is included, if possible, use 30 amp, you will save a lot of money on power bills. I think it might have to do with the converter that is charging the house batteries, because nothing else was different, and the change was instant.

Now, where was I....

Senator's Wash is a dry campground that overlooks a beautiful lake. What can I say, it is tempting. However, we have to consider carefully. Where we are they generally have a 5 month commitment. If we leave, we can't come back this year, and if the boondocking doesn't pan out, the other sites, if there can be vacancy found, will be closer to the $500 range for equal services.

If we do go, some of the savings can be directed toward solar panels that will help to keep the batteries charged, we brought the blue boy and would therefore have reasonable access to the sani-dumps without up-rooting the rig every few days. Drinking water is only 50 cents for 5 gallons at self-serve station around Yuma, and we can haul the rest for the holding tank. It is a bit more work, but what else are we doing besides site seeing? I can use my parents' washer and clothes line for laundry.

What can I say, decisions loom. However, we have to the 26th of the month to decide. Tomorrow we are planning to make a day of Senator's Wash and see if a little digging can reveal to us how to lean on the choice looming.

Stay tuned, but for now I bid you,

Adieu

Picasa - It's working again :-)

I did a bit of figuring and looking about, I discovered that I was overdue for updating my software for Picasa. Now that I have downloaded and installed the updates, it is functioning very well, and as an added bonus, it went through all my pictures and helped me to tag my people. Too cool!!

For security sake, very few of my people shots are included in this post, but for anyone not using a web album, this is a neat way to organize.

Tags are an organizing tool that lets you use a search rather than manual scan to find a theme in your shots. Folders are a good start, but for example, if I have tagged properly (which is a bit of work at the start when you already have a lot of untagged shots to go through - but worth it) I can do a search for pictures of Aunt Bertha in Calamazoo and it will narrow the shots I need to look at to those only tagged with Aunt Bertha, and with a geotag of Calamazoo.

Anyway, since my up and downloads are now working properly, I am inserting a few shots of what I referred in my last post to pre-desert and one shot of the blimp.

Anyway, we are off to greet the day, so I will update you as I go. For now, I bid you

Adieu

Day trip to Quartzsite

We decide to go on a day trip yesterday. We went for a change of scenery. We were also hopeful that we would, by chance find our Oliver neighbours in the area as we knew that it was their destination before we lost track of them.

We did also get to see the Yuma Blimp which is used, among other things, for border surveillance. You can actually see it to the north of our park site.

I didn't take any pictures as it was a fairly continuous scene of what I would call pre-desert landscape. (When I picture desert, I picture no foliage, and sand dunes) There was plenty of plant life in the area, of the arid friendly persuasion - cacti, mesquite trees, and scrub brush.

We didn't see our friends motorhome, but we did stop to see some of the stalls and shops in what I would consider to be the tourist district of Quartzsite.

What we did find out is where you can go if you are extremely tight budgeted and want to do snowbirding. You would have to be set up as boondock friendly as there are no hook-ups, but for $40 short term, and $180 for a season, you can land in the middle of nowhere with several thousand of your closest friends. The site just south of Quartzsite on highway 95 on the left side is the only landing area with a dumping station and water refill that is included in the fee. (I think it is the second host station on the left, but it is the one that also has a host station across the highway on the right). It is called La Posa.

The town is appropriately named as it is the region that harvests a wide range of beautiful stones and rocks which when polished radiate a beauty worthy of jewelry.

Unfortunately, I am not much for jewelry, and having very limited space, I would have nowhere to put any treasures.

I am also still experiencing great difficulties with my Picasa web photo program, and am therefore limited in my ability to download and upload. (I am hoping that my archived posts are not experiencing problems because of it.)

Anyway, for now, I am going to head out on another day to see what it holds.

So I will bid you

Adieu.

Update on Genset - by request.

My post entitled "On The Road" has brought a reminder that I was going to give an update on our new genset, the DP7500RDS.

We have had several opportunities to use it since our purchase of it, not least of which being when Ken's daughter's home town had a blow-up of their college's independent power station (upon whose grid they were attached).

In that situation, we drove the truck over and cranked it over (a simple turn of the inserted key and turn it starts) and then in her case, we simply plugged a regular extension cord in to cool their fridge back down, and restore a bit of order to the more vital low power items in the house.

It ran steadily for 4 - 6 hours, and still only used about 1/2 a tank. (If memory serves me correctly)

I wouldn't call it a whisper noise level, still, for a diesel it is acceptably quiet, being no worse in my estimation than your average gas model.

We have also used it to power the rig on 30 amp service when in Bellevue where our site of choice is without power on site. It was able to run as much as we normally can on 30 amp - microwave can't run with heaters, for example.

The third use we have had for it was to run Ken's welders when working on various projects and repairs. Again it has preformed as hoped and expected.

All with the great fuel economy that you can expect from a diesel, and with the lower maintenance level that is also common with diesel engines.

I would definitely give it a great score and would not reconsider our purchase, in retrospect.

Ken is running it using synthetic oil as he finds it improves performance and increases the fuel economy.

(Coal, I hope this answers your questions. Let me know if I can give other details.)

With that, I bid you,

Adieu