Summer Travel Map

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Back to normal

January 2, 2008
Peoria, AZ

Well, the house is back to normal, since we did a good job of getting all of the holiday decorations put away yesterday. Geri took care of the tree and other things that hang, and I did the lights, both inside and outside. For whatever reason, it always seems that it takes half the time to put things away than it does to put them out in the first place. We’ve scaled way back, of course, in keeping with our desire to simplify life, so we were all cleaned up in about 2 hours. Good job!

Last night, we made some burgers for dinner. Pat and Al sent us a gift package from Omaha Steaks, so we thawed 4 of the burgers, which were very good. I surprised myself by deciding to cook them inside as opposed to on the grill. We have this large All-Clad griddle that straddles two burners, and I felt the need to use it. I sautéed up half an onion (I’m the only one that likes onions on my burgers) and Geri found some onion rolls (go figure) in the freezer that she thawed out. I realized that she’d planned ahead for this when she brought out the American (her) and Provolone (me) cheese! We had another large potato in the bin, so I grabbed the deep fryer and the fries were ready in 15 minutes. I had a trick up my sleeve as well, having found a bottle of black truffle barbeque sauce that I’d picked up at Dean & De Luca the last time we were in NYC. It was fabulous on the cheeseburgers. The whole thing paired nicely with a bottle Costco’s best Root:1 Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon.

Today started out mostly cloudy, but it cleared in the afternoon. From what I understand, we’re in for more clouds and a chance of rain over the next few days, so today was just an advance peek. At least we’ve warmed up, although we can’t complain much about the weather when compared to what we see from other parts of the continent each day on the news.

After lunch, we packed up the accumulated stuff for the coach, and headed over there with the pups. I took care of a few maintenance items, and Geri put away all the inside stuff we’d stacked up and made the bed. I replaced all the plastic water hose quick disconnects with brass ones, checked the electrolyte levels in the chassis batteries (good), and did some more diagnostic work on the inverter. Customer Support from the manufacturer said to check the impedance across the input and output neutrals before trying to get it to an authorized service center. As expected, the ohm meter didn’t indicate a problem. As part of the test, I went to re-create the problem fault and, darn it, the thing worked fine without the error code. I put it all back together and ran the generator for a while to charge up the batteries before we headed home.

We’ve still got some shopping to do for supplies before we head out, so that’ll probably be on tomorrow’s to-do list. While we’re in Indio (Saturday through the 13th), we’ll be hanging out with friends (Wayne and Eva) and playing it by ear for meals much of the time. On the other hand, we’re planning to stop at Quartzsite, a big boondocking location just east of the California-Arizona border on I-10, for a week on the way back home. This will require us to stock up on groceries and libations, and arrive with full water and fuel and empty holding tanks, as we’ll be parked on BLM (US Bureau of Land Management) land in the short-term stay area. We’ve boondocked (please note: boondock is not the same as boondoggle) before, of course, and we know we should have no issues if we go into “conservation mode” on water use. We’ll have to run the generator for a couple of hours daily to charge up the batteries, but so will everyone else. This is the time of year that thousands of “snowbirds” descend on Quartzsite for the big marketplace that appears there each winter. The big RV show starts the 19th, so we’ll be there for part of that. Our current plan is to head home on the 22nd, as Geri is back in Physical Therapy on the 23rd.

Tonight, Geri’s preparing the remaining chicken pot pie while I blog, and she just gave me the signal that a) dinner’s almost ready and I’m in the way and b) her wine glass is empty so I better open tonight’s red! See ya!

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