Quartzsite, AZ

Friday - We left the LTVA for the windshield repair location in the early afternoon. We stopped across the highway at the La Posa South LTVA to empty our tanks and refill our fresh water. The LTVA fee gives you access to water/dump/trash though there are no water/dump facilities within the La Posa Tyson Wash LTVA. At least not this year. 

So far, we have been dry camping for over three weeks. Each time we dumped our tanks and refilled it was due to opportunity not because we needed to. We have needed to run our generator for several hours per day and on cloudy days, even more. For example, our batteries were down to 24% this morning as they didn't get fully charged from solar due to the clouds and we have friends over for dinner so I turned off the generator before they were full. 

Tonight, we are in the parking lot of the windshield shop on the corner of Main and 95. We had dinner at a diner called Times 3. Good diner food for a reasonable price. We have 30amp power here at the shop, an almost full water tank, and empty grey and black tanks. We can sit here for a while…

Saturday - There was an event here last night with hot air balloons but the weather didn't cooperate and they canceled the tethered balloon rides. They used to launch from here but, I'm told, that the BLM didn't like the balloon crews driving across their land to retrieve the balloons. Very possessive about it being "their" land.

It is too windy to remove the windshield and rain is forecast for this evening so we wouldn’t want to be without a windshield. The forecast is for better weather tomorrow. We can’t really complain about the location. It’s flat, near restaurants and the grocery store, and we have 30amp power. Definitely a set up from dry camping on BLM land.

This afternoon, we went out to Roadrunner BLM area to visit with Richard and Hope, who were at the Grand Design rally. We played Mexican Train, a game with dominoes. 

Sunday - Still in the parking lot all day. The windshield guy said he was coming in but hasn’t showed up as of noon. Rather frustrating but it is Sunday, not a day he’s normally open. 

Just playing around with HomeAssistant graphs watching the solar charge controller top off the batteries. Such is life in an RV…

The windshield guy showed up around 3 with a pile of stuff for repairing fiberglass. Fresh resin, hardener, mixing cups and sticks. Some 2” wide material that is more structural than filler as well as a package of cut strands. He explained the process and what he would like me to help with (mixing resin w/hardener, taping plastic, etc.). Starting tomorrow morning at 8:30…

While poking around on the Magnum remote, which is where you set battery type and charger parameters, I noticed that it did have a setting for battery type of LFP or LiFePO4. I didn’t think it had support for lithium batteries so I didn’t even look. I switched battery type from CC/CV to LFP and it seemed to work fine. Voltage climbed to 14.4V on the Magnum display which corresponded to 14.1V on the Victron. The Magnum reads higher during charging due to voltage drops in the cabling and connectors. It then dropped to “float”. We’ll see how long it stays in that mode.