 |
| Night Sky Over Lost Dutchman State Park |
Happy Birthday Valerie (my oldest grandchild)! I tried to connect on Skype, but Karin didn't have her iPad on. I left a video "happy Birthday" message.
I took a few night time photos, but with all the Christmas lights on the nearby trailers & buildings, plus a less than favorable location, there is nothing to be proud of. I'll include a few just because I went out in the cold to take them. With the clear skies, it quickly dropped to the low 40's, and was 37°F at 7:00AM. Made it a little tough to roll up the water hose! More photos at today's LakeshoreImages page.
Not a bad drive to Quartzsite, although the 5 lanes of traffic through Phoenix was annoying. Every time I tried to move over to the right lane, it ended & I had to fight to move over one lane to the left. In any case, I pulled into La Posa West Long Term Visitor Area around 2:00 & bought a $180.00 season pass. While it may have worked out a little cheaper to buy multiple 2 week, $40.00 passes, it is a pain to do it every 2 weeks, and after staying a couple of weeks my average campground cost will go down below the current average. Before the $180.00 pass, I was averaging $24.40 for the trip, higher than normal, but acceptable.
The Arizona State Parks drove the average up, but even though they are a little on the expensive side at $30 - $35 per night, they are very nice campgrounds with clean bathrooms & showers, and sites where the volunteers immediately rake & tidy up the sites as you leave, including making sure all the breakers are off on the power posts.
I drove to La Posa South to dump the trailer & fill the fresh water tank, so I'm good for around 2 weeks. I can't give a site # since there aren't any in the middle of the LTVAs, but I'm on the north side of the La Posa West area not far from where the "Big Tent" will be set up. The additional portable solar panel is out & helping the rooftop panels charge the batteries. Actually, they are fully charged by the truck on the drive here, but the laptop draws almost 6 amps, so I figured it is worth setting it out as soon as possible.
A good 3 bar AT&T signal that is currently feeding the iPhone with KJZZ in Phoenix, a jazz & news NPR station. The choices here in Quartzsite for direct radio are slim. Not that there aren't stations, I have plenty, but they are all religious or country western, with the exception of the local Quartzsite station, which plays boring music, but does have ads for what is going around in town. Verizon provides 4 bars of 4G LTE even without the outside antenna & amplifier. Not the fastest LTE signal I've used & it will be a lot slower when the crowd arrives, but it is usable for posting photos, etc.
I drove through the area looking for people I met last year, but didn't see any of the group of Toyota Class C RV's from California. I did run into Rudy, a Brazilian/Canadian that was here last year. We sat around drinking his beer and chatted till dinner.
There is one problem with a frozen shrimp ring, at least after you opened it & pulled the cover off the cocktail sauce - it tipped over in the refrigerator on the drive & I spent 10 minutes with paper towels cleaning the spilled sauce out of the door & bottom of the refrigerator. Plus, I don't have much in which to dip the rest of the shrimp.
Since the batteries are up, I used the microwave to make a Boston Market Chicken Parmesan & Spaghetti dinner, the only Boston Market dinner I like, although I'm used to cooking it in an oven rather than a microwave. While it is crisper when cooked in the oven, I can't run the toaster oven on the inverter. Microwaving the dinner on high for 9 minutes used almost 15 amp hours.
Until Tomorrow -
No comments:
Post a Comment