My Trails

Raincoat

There are still a few RV’s parked here at the camping area near Cottonwood. The weekends bring a few overnighters, and once every few days, new people will arrive or leave. I’m parked beside a guy in a fifth-wheel that got here the same day I did. We had both planned to leave for new surroundings on Monday but a change in the weather has forced us to endure a few more tranquil hours of monotony. Even though it is tempting to get back in the travel mode, I have all that I need here and have no desire to drive in the rain and set up camp in the cold and wind of locations to the north.

I manage to average a motorcycle trip into town every day. There is a place to get water at the Giant gas station and I have filled my 7-gallon jug twice in the last week. There is a sign saying the water is non-potable so just to be safe I dose it with bleach and use it only for bathing and flushing. I buy drinking and cooking water from a store that sells RO water at 30 cents a gallon.

My waste tanks are still doing well. The lights that act as indicators for the state of contents of the tanks are pretty goofy. They seem to have a mind of there own and give me false indications on random days. I guess this will be a good test for the duration of my supplies and liquid assets.

My refrigerator is working great. I still use the probe on the thermometer I bought to keep track of the temperature inside the fridge. Maybe some day I will use the thermometer in the way it is intended, but I still have some trust issues related to a history of refrigerator infidelity. My propane is down about 30 percent and that is one store that I cannot let run out. I could probably use my inverter or generator to run the fridge for a day but it would not be very economical. One of the modifications I would like to make is a quick connect for an external propane tank that I could carry for a backup.

I did laundry yesterday. For being a tourist town the Laundromat was quite reasonable. Double load washers were only $2 and dryers cost me 75 cents. On the way back to camp it rained a little but not enough to wet my newly laundered clothes. Weather is one of the drawbacks in relying on a motorcycle for transportation to town, and it is also discouraging that I am limited in what I can carry. Even though I get 75 MPG, I have to make separate trips for groceries or water or laundry. I keep thinking there should be a way to strap more storage to my bike but so far I haven’t resolved the problem. I have seen pictures of motorcycles in Vietnam where it is not uncommon to see a man, his wife, three kids, a bundle of clothes, and a crate of chickens, all balanced precariously on a bike no bigger than mine. Now that’s efficiency.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 5th, 2015 at 4:40 pm and is filed under The Great Outdoors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.