Back to Yuma

Today we left the Salton Sea to go back to a reliable boondock we wintered at last year.  It's the Imperial Dam LTVA (Long Term Visitor Area) in Winterhaven, CA, right by Yuma, AZ and Algodones Mexico (where my mom got her teeth done last winter).

This is the area we want to be in with our current travel goals.  We also like it because this is a place made for people who live in there RVs.  For $40 we get a 2 week permit that lets us camp, dump, fill water tanks, and dispose of our trash.  (You can get a season long permit for $180 which would cover Sept 15 to April 15).  There's also a coin shower at the more expensive camping area on the water.  It has everything we need and is quiet, peaceful, and safe.  We stayed in this area all winter last year.  I'm sure we'll do it again in the future.

We came here because this is where we got our solar installed for the new motorhome.  As you know, we blew our inverter and I couldn't install the new one because we upgraded to a 2,000 watt inverter and the leads on our wires won't fit.  We also think we have a battery problem because we get more life from our engine battery than from our six battery bank.  As soon as the sun goes down the auxiliary batteries read empty. 

This may be because we damaged them by draining them to empty, but we followed the instructions originally given to us by the solar place to the T.  We never let our charge control display drop lower than 12.1.

Anyway...

The solar place is on vacation, but the workers live in RVs surrounding it so one of them greeted us and explained they'd take care of us Friday after the holiday.  In the meantime they let us set up camp on their lot and gave us an electrical hook-up.  This is the solar  place by the Christian Service Center.  I can't recommend them enough.  They have done great work for us and always treat us fantastic.

We are loving this because we've been limping along on a 410 watt cigarette lighter inverter for the last couple of weeks.  It doesn't allow us to watch TV and use the computers at the same time.  Every time we disconnect the TV and satellite receiver we have to go through a long riggamaroll to get it started again.  It takes about 10 minutes for the satellite to finish its tests and find a signal every time we want to watch TV.  It's been a pain in the butt.

We're settled in with power once again.  We bought a 2 week permit, since there is no shorter option so we'll be here until December 5th.  We dumped, got rid of trash, and took on water.  It's nice to be back in familiar territory.  :)