My Trails

I’m back camping in Quartzsite now. The knee is coming along well and I can walk without pain once again. I have to be careful that I don’t do too much, because even though my knee is fixed, I’m way out of shape from a couple years of not doing much but holding down a chair. It sure seems wonderful to get out for walks. 

Quartzsite has been chilly. Mornings are in the low 40s and it usually doesn’t get out of the 60s in the afternoon. We have had two days of temps in the high 70s but it’s not supposed to last past today. I have been burning propane in the mornings, so even with all my solar and batteries, I have had to rely on fossil fuel for heat. The good thing is that I don’t use much in this small space. 

I have been working on some small projects around my rig. Seems like something always needs fixing. Just setting up my solar, propane bottles, rugs and chairs is more work as I get older. The nice thing is that I can do a little at a time. 

In another week I will watch Hanna for 4 days when Donna goes to Disneyland. It might be good to have a pet for company for a few days, but I’m not looking forward to taking her out to go potty in the early morning. 

That’s all for now. I just wanted to update my knee progress. I’m not having any pain while walking but bending it still hurts a little, and I wake in the night once or twice and need to move the joint to get comfortable. I think I’m doing great at 7 weeks since surgery. 

… I opened up my blog to look for a date that I was interested to recall. I was shocked to see that I had only written a handful of times in the last two years and there were large gaps in my travels and history. I guess I can blame it on Covid. We would all like to forget that part of our life. 

One of the main reasons I use my blog is to keep a journal so I can remember what I did with my retired life. There some more improvements to my rig I would like to document, and some medical procedures I’m a little embarrassed to tell about, but important to reveal. I keep thinking I would like to know more about the history of my Dads and Grandfathers problem about this medical issue, but people didn’t talk about it as much back then. 

I’ve spent quite a bit of the winter of 2021/2022 at the LTVAs in Quartzsite and Yuma. During that time I have made several trips to Mesa for doctor appointments and one to undergo a TURP procedure. When men get older it is very likely their prostate enlarges to the point that urinating becomes a problem. There are several drugs that can relax and shrink the prostate, but after a while even those don’t help all that much. The TURP (transurethral resection of the prostate) is an operation that physically removes part of the gland to open up the urethra. 

It has been three week now since my procedure, and other than a few uncomfortable side effects, things are a lot better. I’m still healing but on the mend. 

I wanted to mention that I added four more solar panels to my rig. With the panels on my roof, the panels on my homemade trailer, and the extra four I just purchased, I now have a total of 1200 watts of power from the sun. I didn’t have room for more panels on the roof, and I really didn’t want to lug them in and out of my rig every time I moved, so I fashioned a way to hang them on the side and use them for an awning over my window. 

I now have more power than I know what to do with but I’m sure I will put it to good use down the road. That’s it for now but more updates coming as I explore the possibilities of going total electric. 

Unwanted hitchhiker!

I have been lucky in my years RVing to never suffer an infestation of rodents in my engine – until now. While camping on the Burnhardt Road just outside Rye, AZ., I was invaded by pack rats. I keep the engine hood open and put a light under the front end but it didn’t deter these little buggers.

One morning I peered down in the shadows of my motor and thought I could see some sticks and grass. I pulled the air cleaner out and sure enough the space under the alternator was full of sticks, mesquite pods, and prickly pair fruit. I removed everything I could reach with some tongs and packed up to get out of there.

I spent the night at Walmart in Payson, sure that I had left the pack rats behind in the desert. When I opened up the hood the next morning I saw a rat scurry back behind the engine. I couldn’t believe he could survive the drive of 20 miles the afternoon before. Not having any more options, I drove 80 miles down to Phoenix thinking the engine heat would make him drop out on the way.

After I parked at brother Daryl’s, I bought an electronic rat trap and some poison just in case he hitchhiked all the way down. The next morning the trap was empty but I could see where they were rebuilding the nest. I rebated the trap with peanut butter and offered a cup of poison for good measure. During the next night he wandered into the trap and met his demise.

I’m pretty sure he was the only one I brought down. I’m keeping the trap set just to make sure, but so far there has been no activity.

Sticks behind the engine.

Today I pulled out the engine cowling that allows access to the back of the engine to see if there were any nest building that I couldn’t see. I was shocked to see sticks and pods and fruit jammed into the back of the compartment. There were even cow pies and dirt clods dragged into the space. I spent several hours digging and removing almost a bushel of debris. It must have taken them hundreds of trips to bring it all in.

Box full of nesting material.

One thing is for sure – I must be a heavy sleeper to have not heard the invasion. So far I have not found any damage. Rodents are known for getting in engines and chewing wires. They can do hundreds of dollars damage. I will have to be more careful from now on and make sure I’m protected from pesky varmints.

Burnhardt Road Rye AZ

Payson weather was getting too cold overnight, so after a week at our campsite, we decided to move to a lower altitude. The ladies went over to Cottonwood and I drove south to a spot just outside Rye, Arizona.

Rye is only 15 miles from Payson but 2000’ lower in altitude. I figured that some daytime temperatures would be quite warm but nothing very uncomfortable. It turns out that a few days have been up into the 80s, a perfect temperature as long as you can sit in the shade and enjoy a beverage. The inside of Minnie, however, becomes too warm as the sun beats down and cooks the walls. With that thought in mind, I wanted to document here the homemade air conditioner I built.

If you don’t want to hear about mechanical contraptions you can skip this part.

I can’t fully take credit for the design of my evaporative cooler but I have long had the idea way before I found out others had similar designs. I have a large box fan purchased this summer that I would place in the window and use a mister bottle to spray the air in front of me. This worked ok but was tedious and inefficient. I tried soaking towels and hanging them in front of the fan. I tried blowing the fan across a tray of water. Nothing worked very well. Then I got the idea of placing a cooler pad in front of the fan and dripping water through the pad and catching it in a tray below. When I looked on YouTube, it turned out a few others had the same idea and explained in detail how they built one.

My first design had the cooler pad in front of the fan. Placing the pad behind the fan draws more air than trying to push air through the fan but I was worried about moisture getting into the fan motor. I finally rationalized that box fans are so cheap that even if they only lasted a couple years it was worth the increased efficiency to pull air through the pad.

Cooler unit

My final design (so far, I’m always tweaking it) uses a frame of pvc pipe with holes drilled along the top and a cooler pad held inside the frame. A small fountain pump circulates water up the pipe where it trickles down through the pad into a plastic tote. The whole frame and pad are attached to the fan and placed in the window. I cut the tote lid for shrouds to seal the unit to the window.

Circulation pump

Cooler pad and frame

Evaporative cooling works well when the humidity is low. On very dry days I have seen the air temperature as much as 15 degrees lower than the outside temperatures. When the humidity gets above 25% or 30%, the cooler will only take a few degrees from the outside air.

My swamp cooler would not be possible without the new lithium ion battery I put in. I have to give credit to the extra power it produces to run a box fan and fountain pump for hours on end.

Once everything is set up and running, all I have to do is add water every couple hours. It’s amazing how much water will evaporate into the air. And I guess there is a benefit to health too. Studies show that a slight increase in humidity is better for us than very dry air.