Raring to Go East

We're two days away from leaving the LVTA (Long Term Visitor's Area) near Yuma Arizona and heading eastward.  I have a couple of exciting developments to look forward to.

First, I'll be visiting an 'Intentional Community' toward the end of January in New Mexico.  I'm checking it out to see if this is a nice place for me and my mom to settle in.  We'd still live in our RV on community land. 

Intentional Community is the modern term for commune.  Many are also called 'Eco Villages.'  Basically I'm looking to work and share with a bunch of like-minded individuals in our own small community.  This could take care of my loneliness and might give me some of the purpose I'm looking for.  This one seems more independent and tolerant than a lot of others I've researched. 

What I want is to find a place with the following:

1.  Allow me to use my RV as my residence, because I still owe $64k on it and don't want to buy or build another house.
2. Put me around positive friendly people who I can become involved with in the mutual goal of being frugal, healthy, Earthy, and self-sufficient.
3. Give me the space, water, and permission to grow my own garden and raise poultry.  Layer hens, meat birds, and turkeys.  I might consider rabbits again if I really get self-sufficient and stop buying grocery store meat.
4. Not require minimum labor hours, because some places want you to work 20 hours a week, and I write full-time to make my living.  I will definitely pull my weight and be involved, but I need flexibility.
5. Let me connect to a sewer line, power line, and potable water line for the RV.  (And get a 250 gallon propane tank connected if possible).  This way I won't have to keep moving the RV around.  I do want to live on our solar power as much as possible, but if there's a heatwave I want the option of A/C.  I'd also use shore power during the short days of winter.
6. A community that won't require me to use a composting toilet, because it won't work with my health condition (no colon, loose stool 9 times a day).
7. Be within 40 miles of hospital and medical facilities so my mother and I can have access to the care we need.
8. Have a reasonable buy-in amount and reasonable monthly fee.  (This place does!)
9. Still be allowed to drive my RV or SUV as needed and wanted without violating community rules.  Some communities don't allow cars, some will make you earn 'negative-carbon' points to earn the right to drive somewhere, and others require permission for trips planned out ahead so others can go with you to take care of their needs also.  I don't believe this community I'm visiting has any of those rules, but this is what I need to check out personally.
10. Have a community that's tolerant of Christianity and does not require adherence to any pagan religions or practices.  (There are lots of communities organized around sun worship and the like.)
11. Have a community that's tolerant of the GBLT community, minorities, and the handicapped.
12. A community that won't care if I write erotica or gay romance for a living.
13. Have a community in the desert, because humidity just destroys me and my mom.  Our old bones can't take it.

I think I've found most of what I'm looking for with this community.  I hope they'll let me stay a few days to really get the vibe of the place.  This could be what I've been searching for!  I don't know if they're okay with me blogging about them so I'm not going to give the name or exact location of the place for now.  Check back at the end of January for my full report!

This is only a visit no matter how much we like it.  We have to continue east because we've bought tickets to Puerto Rico and will be flying out of New Orleans in March.  We're going to visit family--the first time in 12 years.  Originally I was going to go to Florida, but it turns out that the flights are cheaper in New Orleans.  This will give us a much shorter trip to get this major family visit out of the way. 

I will give a full report on Puerto Rico in March.  A lot has changed on the island since our last visit. 

So, while we were here in Yuma we were basically in a holding pattern.  The dark days of winter were short and depressing.  We couldn't run our TV after the sun went below the mountains.  We're also dieting so couldn't take solace in forbidden foods.  We got wretched cabin fever and gambled too much.  Every time we went out it was to a casino.  There didn't seem to be any other place that we'd like to go. 

I put an end to this in January.  NO MORE.  But how will I fight my malaise?  Well, I bought a metal detector.  That would get me outside, walking around, and would be something exciting I'd enjoy.  We doesn't like treasure hunting?  Here's what I got:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000VC1AOM/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

So, it's a pretty cheap metal detector, but it's usable.  Not as good as the metal detectors you see them use on 'The Curse of Oak Island' though.  In the beginning it was beeping all the time and only had one tone.  I put the batteries in in a way that smooshed them.  When I fixed this it started working properly with fewer beeps and multiple tones for different stuff. 

Honestly, it's not perfect.  I will wave it over a pull tab and won't hear the beep until I've swung past it, or sometimes not at all.  Other times I'll get all sorts of beeps and dig and dig and not find anything.  Then when I run it over again there's no beeps. 

That said, I have found some interesting stuff on a few occasions, and the pinpointer is helpful (but not perfect either).  I found a door hinge, a lug nut, shell casings, nails, pull tabs, and metal twine.  I've taken it out a few times and I get a lot of FOMO from observers.  I mean--it's something to do.  I've managed to stay out of the casino the last two weeks. 

Here's the Skinny...

I don't think I have many readers of this blog, because I don't post pictures that often.  When I do they're pretty crumby.  Once again I'm giving you a post sans pictures.  Cest la vie.

We got many repairs on our ten year old SUV since last update.  New muffler, new catalytic converter, power steering repair, a bunch of other stuff.  She purrs like a kitten now.  The Nissan Armada was an expensive car when new, and it's turning out to be an expensive car to repair.  We still love it and don't want anything else.

Right now we're back at our boondock in the Long Term Visitors Area near Yuma Arizona.  Originally the plan was to be headed east right now, but the car repairs made us buy another permit and this time we got two weeks worth. 

Life is just too easy, convenient, and cheap here.  We have water, dump station, trash, propane, and a church for my mom.  The permits include everything except the propane which is sold at the Christian Service Center next to where we're camped. 

These permits are cheap compared to our usual monthly camping costs.  I normally budget $200/mo for permits, dumping, water, and an occasional Passport America campground.  Here I can get by for $100/mo.  $80 for a 4 week permit, and $20 for propane.  After the huge budget devastation the car repair caused me I needed a cheap month.

I don't want to get complacent, however.  My goal is to get to Florida before the end of winter so we can have a short flight to visit family in Puerto Rico.  Whether this goal continues in January or in February...not sure yet.  But we're staying put for now.

This is our first winter living off our solar.  The short days are such a pain.  Especially since our generator has some problem where it shorts everything out after we run it.  It never seems to add any juice to our batteries either.  This is a problem we need to address, but I'm just not up to another repair right now.  Maybe, eventually, we'll get this worked out.  (We're close to the dealership so maybe there?)  I just don't know where we'll live while the repairs happen.  Ugh.

Anywho, we run out of power shortly after the sun moves to the side of us.  The Satellite is a power suck.  Watching TV is turning into a luxury.  Work, however?  My work has to get done.

I work in the evenings because I can't concentrate when my mom and cats are bouncing around the RV.  Night gives me quiet time to get into my writer zone.  Of course, we have no juice left in the batteries at night, and can't run our generator.  My laptop batteries only get me two hours of use.  So what do I do?

I take that 410 watt cigarette lighter inverter we bought when our main inverter blew and hook it to the engine battery.  I hook my laptop to this and work.  After an hour or two this battery is dying.  So I turn on the RV and let it run long enough to replenish the battery.  Then I go back to work. 

Often I have to press my 'Emergency Start' switch to get the RV to start.  (Thank God for this, BTW.)  I'm probably doing damage to all our batteries.  I'm sorry if anyone is cringing out there.  I just need to be able to work.  I'm not retired.  I have to make my monthly income writing my novels.  I try to get something out every month.

So, yes, the dark days of winter are not ideal, but we always seem to manage one way or another.

I almost forgot--the reason I called this post 'here's the skinny' is because my mother and I are dieting again.  I know we try and fail alot, but our health is suffering.  Also, if we do get to Puerto Rico I don't want my cousin mentioning how fat we are again.  x_x 

Cocopah

We're at the Cocopah casino on the Indian Reservation in Yuma (Summerton, actually).  There is a big RV lot on blacktop with lines marking out nice large spaces.  There's about 30 RVs here and it's only half full.  It's $10 to stay here for 3 days, but they give you one day free, so it ends up being four.

This is perfect because we just dumped and took water at the LTVA in Winterhaven and are good to dry camp for 4 days. 

Why did we drive the rig out here?  Well, first off, I was going to have to do it eventually because we needed gas in the RV and there's no gas stations in Winterhaven except for one on a military base (where we had a negative experience before). 

Second, the car will be done tomorrow and it would be hard to drive the RV to the Meineke.  I want to get an Uber like I did before.  There's no Ubers in Winterhaven.  Moving over here gives me access to that service again.

This is a very nice blacktop boondock.  Pretty quiet so far, except for one noisy truck engine that ran for a while.  All around us is bright green grass, the casino landscaping.  It's been so long since I had something other than desert and scrub brush to look at.

Of course, we're stupid and gambled ourselves broke.  Not really--but we did go overboard.  In that regard it becomes a much more expensive boondock.  Meh...oh well.  It's what we enjoy.

Before we settled in here we drove to a Food For Less and got provisions.  This is a Mexican grocery store chain in Yuma (and elsewhere?).  We were low on everything so I really filled up the shopping cart, including the space under it. 

If you go to a Mexican grocery you'll notice that people have very little in their carts, or are just carrying one or two items to the checkout.  People go shopping more than once every two weeks.  A lot of the carts looked to hold the contents of one dinner. 

So here I come with my megacart.  The check out lanes aren't designed for big piles of stuff.  It's that tiny rotary style check out you see at little mom and pop grocery stores.  I let a man with two items ahead of me.  Then a woman with one item comes up.  I tell her to go ahead.

Her eyes bulged and she said, "Really?" in a tone that sounded like she knew me (or my type) and was shocked that I was being civilized.  She followed it up with a genuine thank you, and a 'thank you so much!'


I looked like a fat trashy white person.  We had planned to shower that morning, but couldn't park the RV in by the token shower without a permit, so we skipped it.  I was dressed in what I'd slept in last night because I expected to get cleaned and dressed up after my shower.  My hair was in a messy bun.  My splotchy skin is white as a fish-belly.  People can't tell I'm a Sorta-Rican (half hispanic).  I look white.  The woman was a young black girl.  She acted like she was not accustomed to someone like me being considerate.  Her reaction made me stop and think. 

But, then, it could be because people in this area are generally inconsiderate and have nothing to do with race.  I don't really know.

Without Our Follow Car Again

So we’re in the LTVA (long term visitors area) in Winterhaven California.  We spent our first few days here in the lot of the solar place.  On Saturday they installed our new inverter.  It looks like our batteries are fine.  I think when we disconnected the fuse we screwed it up somehow, but now we have plenty of power to last us into the night.  The new inverter hook-up cost $80.  That was great.

What’s not so great is our Nissan Armada (the follow car).  We got a ‘Service Engine Soon’ light.  After ruling out a loose gas cap we went to Autozone to have them tell us the code and what the problem was (they do this for free, pretty sweet).  

We need a new catalytic converter.  Le sigh.  Fine.  We drove to the garage across the street to see about getting this done.  This is Alice Auto Repair in Yuma.  Can’t say I recommend them.  The guy made up some malarkey about us needing OEM parts and quoted $1,700.  When I claimed I didn’t have the money he suddenly decided we didn’t need OEM parts and went down to $1,200. 

I was pretty pissed.  You could see the dollar signs in his eyes.  And we expect to be ripped off at mechanics, but by one or two hundred bucks.  Not $500+.  I claimed I’d have to ask my brother for a loan, paid $35 for the quote and high-tailed it out of there.

Someone on Facebook said that I should go to an exhaust place for this kind of repair.  On Saturday I took the car to Meineke on 4^th Ave in Yuma.  As I was driving there the car was not doing well.  I’d step on the gas and it would take a few seconds for it to actually go.  Every stop sign was a struggle for me to get moving again.  This was a 30 mile drive and I felt that if I couldn’t get the work done the same day I was going to be screwed.  I couldn’t manage another round trip. 

Meineke quoted me $350 over the phone, but my Nissan is a fancy expensive car and needed a fancy expensive catalytic converter.  I wasn’t surprised when they told me the part was going to cost more in the range of $600 and would take hours more labor than they anticipated.  This jived with what the last guy quoted me. 

What I didn’t expect was to walk under my car and see that my muffler was rusted out and clogged with carbon.  It’s supposed to be hollow, but when he knocked on it it sounded like it was stuffed full of crud.

So I need a new muffler too.  Yay.  I got quoted $1,400 for both repairs, labor, tax, etc.  Is that good?  I don’t know, but it’s still less than the first guy quoted me just for the catalytic converter.

More importantly, I barely got it there and I wasn’t about to start driving around trying to find another quote.  In fact—I wasn’t even going to drive it back to the campground.  That thing was staying there until it was fixed.

Since we’re going to Mexico I told her to do a full diagnostic and see if anything else needs to be repaired.  Then I installed Uber on my mom’s phone and got a ride back to the camp.  I’d never used it before.  I got a drive home with pleasant conversation and no complaint about making him go out to the middle of nowhere.  I’ll use this again if I need to in the future.

I explained to my mom that I had to leave the car there.  We agreed it was the best way to do it.  She had gotten our solar work done while I was gone and was happy to report it was only $80. 

Later on I hear the solar workers saying that the woman in the RV was waiting for her daughter to get back and couldn’t move the RV off their lot herself.  I yelled out the window that I was back.

“What?  How did you get home?”

“I took an Uber.”

“Wow!  You’re brave!”

What?  I didn’t feel brave.  I wasn’t sure if I was dealing with a technophobe or a sexist.

Anywho, I took the hint and moved the RV off their lot.  We dumped and got water, though before finding a spot to settle in.  No sense in moving it twice.  We’re parked a few hundred yards from the solar place because I wanted to be close in case anything they did for me wasn’t working.  This is also close to the Christian Service Center where we’re getting our mail forwarded.  It’s good to be in walking distance to stuff when you don’t have your follow car.

After the diagnostic, new tire rods, a leaky transmission line, an oil change, and a cracked power steering line added another $500 to our quote.  Ugh.  That’s $1,900.  But I don’t doubt the things they’re telling me.  It’s a ten year old SUV and the previous owners did not do routine upkeep.  Yes, we have to put money into it to keep it running well.  It’s better that than buying a new car.

Hopefully the work will be done by Thursday.  At that time I will see if this one guy who offered to give us a ride is still willing to do it, or I’ll call the guy who Ubered me the first time and see if we can work something out.  There’s no Uber in this remote area.

In the meantime, we’re stuck home.  We need groceries.  I’m stretching out the last of our food as best I can.  If we don’t have the car by Thursday we might have to go camp at a Walmart so we can get provisions while the work gets finished.

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.  :)