Day 20 - Quartzsite, AZ

If I said that I wasn’t nervous I’d be lying. Just a little earlier, the NWS put out a high wind alert with gusts up to 50mph. We did get some gusty winds but I think it was closer to 30mph. I did pull in all the slides and I was tempted to pull up the jacks and move closer to the highway. But Bridget doesn’t seem to be the least bit concerned.

About 8:30pm I went out and looked at the dry wash. It was far from dry and my stress level went up. Bridget humored me and I moved the coach away from the creek to slightly higher ground. To me, just being away from the wash was sufficient. Stress level down it was time for pumpkin pie and vanilla ice cream...

The next morning was clear (and cold!) as the rain had ended around 4am. Last night, we had just moved to a somewhat flat spot but it was not very good and kind of close to some others. We moved back to where we were before as there was no more rain in the forecast. Based on the wet ground in the wash, it had filled up maybe ¾ of the way. I’m still glad we moved especially since it was easy as I already had all of the slides in due to the wind forecast. simply retract the jacks and go.

The battery bank was at 55% this morning. I had both furnaces running plus the inverter. It was only at 85% yesterday evening so we used about 30% of the capacity or about 130 amp-hours. Based on our power usage over the last couple of days, we would need to recover about 220 amp-hours per day. If we assume 5 hours of useable sun at this time of year, we would need a minimum of 570 watts of solar panels. And given the lower sun angle and cloudy days, I’m going to stick with my initial guesstimate of 1000 watts of solar. In multiples two panels. The ones high on the list are 210watt panels for $189. A pretty good price compared to the 5th wheel installation.

This morning, we drove up to the casino in Parker, AZ, to meet Camper Van Kevin. We have been watching his YouTube channel for a while. He travels around the country with his 3 dogs in a class A motor home with a Honda dirt bike on the back. Pretty entertaining videos.

This afternoon we visited with Chip and Ruth whom we previously met at the campout at Eklutna Lake last 4th of July.

Since we were having leftovers today, I had the generator running for a couple of hours this evening. As a result, the charger actually switched to float mode. This was sensed by the Victron battery monitor and it did a synchronization as to what was fully charged. The SOC jumped from 88% to 100%.