Fulltiming Road Runners

I don’t know what my problem is with blogging lately, but I sure don’t seem to get it done very often.  Sorry.

Time is really flying now.  March is here in just 2 days.  That means in about 6 weeks we’ll be leaving Quartzsite.  Guess I better start getting things organized and ready to pack up and move north.  We have to leave the LTVA by April 15 which is the end of the season, but we don’t have to be on the job in Utah until May 13.  I don’t know what we’re going to do for a month, but we’ll figure it out.

We still don’t have any answers on our electrical problem.  The guy from Zantrax called Thom and he’s not got much of an idea of what’s going on.  He can’t figure it out.  He’s given Thom a couple of things to check out.  Thom did those today and everything is as it should be.  Thom will be calling him back on Monday.  The Zantrax guy doesn’t know if it will help, but he suggests we get the software upgrade on our inverter and see if that fixes the issues.  Of course we’ll have to pay for the upgrade because we’re no longer under warranty, even though we’ve had issues since we bought the 5th wheel almost 4 years ago.  We don’t know if it’s a wiring issue or an issue with the inverter.  Whatever it is, we think the manufacturer should cover the cost of the fix because they installed the Inverter.  We’ve gone through at least 5 fluorescent light fixtures and more than 2 dozen fluorescent light bulbs in less than 4 years.

Knowing our luck, we’ll probably have to go back to the manufacturers in Indiana to get it fixed and that is around 2200 miles one way from Quartzsite, which will cost around $750 in fuel one way (Figuring $2.99/gal for diesel).  It could be that’s what we’ll be doing that one month before we report to work in Utah.  I hope not… our emergency funds are dwindling.

Speaking of “our luck”, we had to replace the two batteries in our ‘03 Dodge Ram 3500 dually pickup today to the tune of $250.  Actually, we’ve done pretty good… the old batteries lasted 7 years.

On our way to Blythe today to get the batteries I noticed a lot of the flowers alongside the road are opening.  We saw California Poppies, Lupine, Brittle Bush,  Apricot Globe Mallow, Desert Gold (or Desert Sunflower), and most of the Creosote bushes along the road are opening out.  Spring is definitely early and already getting beautiful.

We got a phone call on Thursday from the couple who managed the Monte Cristo Campground in Ogden Canyon last summer (Miles & Gary).  We were their supervisors and  got to know them pretty well.  We talked to them a lot last summer about boondocking in the LTVA in Quartzsite and suggested they give it a try.  They called because they were in the area and wanted to stop by.  They just decided to take a road trip for a week and come down and see what we were so enamored with.  They spent the night, sleeping in their van.  It was so great to see them again and spend a few hours catching up.  They will be back at Monte Cristo this summer to manage it, but we won’t be supervising them this year.

Gary  didn’t say she liked it here, just said it’s certainly interesting.  It would really be fun having them here next year.

We had a cloudy day today with rain this evening, but only a slight chance of rain tomorrow and then sunshine again with temps in the 70’s.  I’m loving it.  The rain is keeping the dust down and flowers popping out and the sun and temps are perfect.

Time for me to get dinner in the oven and us fed.

Ya’ll stay healthy ‘n happy.

Toodles.