January/March 2023
60 Percent Chance of No Rain
Weather Forecasts and Other Adventures, South Carolina to Arizona
We’re sitting out in the middle of the Arizona desert — it’s March Madness if you’re a basketball nut — The Ides of March if you remember Julius Caesar — the beginning of Daylight Savings Time (except in Arizona which doesn’t acknowledge such things) — with Atmospheric Rivers to the west of us, houses sliding into the ocean on both coasts, and some of the drought finally going away out in the west.
But where we are? “60% Chance of No Rain” — that was our weather report for yesterday. What in heaven’s name does all that mean? We’ll talk more about that later, we promise.
When we last wrote, at the tail end of 2022, we were settled in Alabama, down at the campground we enjoy so much, the Escapees Rainbow Plantation. We were spending much of our time working on getting Slim Charles ready for action. You remember Slim Charles? Our new motorhome. We had just sold the Tiger, to a very nice couple who live in the Montgomery, Alabama area.
In January, we traveled up to Columbia, South Carolina to have some work done on Sir Slim; all went pretty much as we had planned. For anyone keeping track, the projects we had done were the installation of new house batteries together with a complete - and proper - rewiring of the inverter and the overall battery installation. This was a major step as it allowed us to begin monitoring the condition of the batteries; super. Next we had an appointment to reupholster the front captain’s chairs and the sofa; and following that we had some new carpeting installed as well. Things are definitely beginning to look better Chez Slim.
Work done for the time being, on our way back to Alabama we stopped at a COE park on the Georgia/Alabama border and spent several days enjoying the countryside, the water, a lone deer eyeing us while wandering in the bushes, and gaining a general sense of ease living in the new coach.
Next, we headed back to the Plantation to drop off the car. We’d been keeping it with us until now and made good use of it running around town while the various projects were being accomplished in the Columbia area, but were not going to keep it with us for this year’s adventures. As were were driving along we answered the phone and got a big surprise — we’d finally gotten to the top of the list for a long-term lease lot down at the Plantation — and it was important that we get down there ASAP to confirm that we would accept this particular lot for ourselves. We also had some other bits to do before we dropped off the car and headed for the West Coast. The timing worked out perfectly for us and we were really pleased that this transaction could be handled so easily. We were grinning big time as we drove up and took possession of our new spot.
A couple of days later, all chores completed, and having given the seal of approval on our lease lot, we hit the road. Our original plan for heading out west was to take our time, stop for several days at a number of interesting places, enjoy getting more acquainted with Slim, and visit with some buddies along the way. But, as often happens to many of us, the call of the road is strong and we decided to speed things up a bit. As Rick said, “Kathy wants her solar”, and so off we went, having abandoned the more leisurely path that would have let us mosey along, and also more easily deal with the vagaries of travel across country in February. We set an earlier appointment for the solar install and headed off along I-10 on a quick - for us - week long trip cross country.
We suffered from strong winds and very cold weather going across Texas, but otherwise had no real trouble. Crossed the Continental Divide for the first time this year, and drifted on into New Mexico and then Arizona. We were able to catch one set of traveling friends when we crossed paths outside of Willcox, Arizona, at a birding area on a pond south of town (photo above). It was actually quite nice, with lots of strange looking ducks and even some sandhill cranes to be viewed from afar. We could see snow on the mountain range east of us in New Mexico. Not too shabby.
We pulled into Glendale, on the west side of Phoenix, right on target, and Ron took his usual excellent care of us. Soon we’d been fitted out properly with three solar panels on the roof, a new solar controller and various wires and fuses tying everything together. This was a really big step in fully welcoming Slim into the family. We’ve relied on solar power to enable our lifestyle right from the beginning and it just doesn’t work without it. Now we were ready for 2023!
A brief description for the technically interested among you: Our completed system consists of 600 watts of solar keeping our 4 AGM six volt deep cycle batteries charged up, which then power everything we need through a 2000 watt Magnum inverter. This is basically the same system we’ve had in the Tiger for the past six years so we are very familiar with it. It is simple, and old school, with no cutting edge technology (aka Lithium Ion batteries), but we know it will take care of our needs just fine.
Before we left the Phoenix area we took our chances and drove right into Phoenix, straight to the Heard Museum, which is right in the downtown area. Slim drove into Phoenix! Happy to report we had few problems, the museum has an area set aside for larger vehicles to park in (wow!), and we spent a very nice day wandering this really nice museum. The Heard is a private museum dedicated to the arts and history of the indigenous peoples of the American southwest. They also do temporary exhibits, and were currently featuring some lovely old surf boards out of Hawaii — including one by the famous early surfer, Duke Kahanamoku, as part of an exhibit on the ancient history of surfing in the islands, which had been developed by the natives.
The museum is beautifully done, displays excellent craftsmanship and artistry, great statues in the courtyards, and a monument dedicated to those who served their country. But the most interesting part of all to us was an entire section dedicated to the story of the “re-education” of the children of these various tribes in the 19th and early 20th century, by sending them off to boarding schools, being harshly punished at times, and forcing them into “cultural annihilation” programs. Very absorbing, and very disturbing.
Finally leaving the area, we dropped down to deepest southern Arizona, through the small towns of Ajo and Why and, waving hello to the border patrol encampment just up from Mexico, we spent a week at one of our favorite camping locations — Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. We’ve been here several times over the years, but never stop loving the drive down through the increasingly magnificent cactus plants, with small roadside flowers popping up here and there. It’s lovely to be here. The Sonoran Desert is hard to beat.
After a week, during which Rick continued working on many, many projects he wanted to complete inside the coach, and wishing we could just stay here for the rest of the winter, we began looking at routes into California. About this time we decided that a wander that included stopping in Yuma was a good idea. We’d never spent much time there (and remain pretty unimpressed with the area), but there was a huge Napa store in town and we had a blown fuse that needed replacement. We’d called ahead and found out it would need to be ordered, so we went through that process, and by golly the fuse - and a spare - was sitting there waiting for us! The miracle of what can happen when all systems work properly.
And a lovely surprise: very close to the Napa store is a nice little neighborly cafe called Brownie’s Restaurant, right there on So. 4th Avenue, that provides some of the best breakfast we’ve had in years. Can highly recommend it! The bacon? Yummy.
While in Yuma, we stayed a couple of nights at the Escapees park in town, one of only two of them we’d never before visited. Now there’s only one left. Good traveling friends Andrea and Thomas Folda were spending some time at another park in the area and drove over one afternoon for a nice catchup.
So much for Yuma! We headed out of town to another favorite camping area, where we spent two wonderful weeks — the KOFA National Wildlife Refuge, a bit further north in this same lovely Sonoran Desert. We stocked up on food and water in Yuma, made the short drive up to KOFA and settled in. KOFA is an open, dispersed camping area on the edge of low mountains. There are other campers around, including a few ORV vehicle types, but the nature of the desert insures plenty of space, loads of cactus varieties, the aforementioned mountains to enjoy, wonderful sunsets and sunrises to marvel at, and the general feeling of taking charge of your life and doing exactly what you want to do.
This is the kind of thing that is made possible through the beauty of solar power, and our new set up worked perfectly. Also it’s worth mentioning that in the Tiger we would have been limited to spending less than a week before having to head out for groceries, a water refill and a visit to a dump station. Slim Charles’ larger refrigerator and tank capacities allowed us to stay in this lovely spot more than twice as long. Go Slim!
Eventually we moved on, waving goodby to our favorite ocotillo and saguaro cacti and promising to return again. We had made plans to meet some good friends in an area northwest of Barstow, California. We were crossing paths at a place called Owl Canyon, which we had heard is well worth the drive and an excellent place to hang out for a few days. Our friends were coming from Temecula in Southern California, having just bought a new trailer, and heading further north toward their home in Idaho; the idea was to intersect in the wilderness in between. Meeting up, we had a wonderful time together discussing and exploring each of our new travel vehicles and just generally catching up on each others’ lives.
We had hoped the weather would cooperate, and everything worked out fine. It was quite windy much of the time up in that canyon, but it’s a nice little place and we enjoyed ourselves a lot. Owl Canyon is quite near a natural spot called Rainbow Basin. The scenic drive is too tight for our rig, but they had a truck that seated four (plus their 2 dogs in back), so we enjoyed a wander through a very tight, very narrow piece of scenery. I must say that it wasn’t as impressive as other canyons we have wandered through, and seemed washed out, possibly from the ongoing wet weather (even parts of the desert got drenched), but it was lots of fun, and we can recommend that you take a look.
Best part of our time in this area? The Joshua Trees are starting to bloom now, and are quite spectacular. Late March turned out to be an excellent time to be in the area. As we traveled towards Barstow, we had spent some time on the JoshuaTree Highway, aka Highway 164 west of Searchlight. The trees were coming on well, and we stopped at an area called Wee Thump Joshua Tree Wilderness to enjoy them. A few days later, by the time we left Owl Canyon, they were absolutely everywhere, looking their finest.
We are now heading to the Coast, and planning to spend much of the month of April visiting friends and family throughout various parts of California. Of course, we’ve now used up a whole lot of our un-obligated spring, so if we don’t catch you now, we’ll hope to hook up somewhere down the road.
Oh, yes, the weather. We keep a close eye on the weather all the time, of course. For us, that means checking one or two of the weather apps that are out there for our entertainment. Sometimes they are very helpful; that goes without saying. But as often as not it’s merely a need for the bots to check off all the boxes. Tomorrow is supposed to be 91% change of .04 inch of rain, and wind gusts up to 50 mph. A bit of rain and a lotta wind. That means dancing between the drops and holding on to your skirt. We can deal with that. Talk to you again soon.
Rick and Kathy and Sir Not-So-Slim, dancing in the desert and hoping fervently for no more atmospheric rivers.
Don’t forget to visit the Photo Page for our time in the Southwest