Dusty and Desolate: Quartzsite to Yuma/Winterhaven
After an uneventful stay in Quartzsite doing all the laundry and showers in preparation for 5 nights of boondocking, we headed south via US-95 towards Yuma, AZ. This was a straight shot of a highway threaded between the Yuma Proving Grounds and the Kofa Wildlife Refuge. One of them is a popular winter boondocking spot, the other a large and sophisticated ground combat weapon testing facility. Don't mix them up!
When you say out loud what we were doing on this leg, it sounds a little silly. I found this guy on Instagram (via @theflyinghens) that does solar installs (or says he does!). I talked to him on the phone, and he offered to do it for much less than the other guys, and sounded very knowledgeable. I put in a down payment on parts, then meet him out in the middle of the desert and let him into our rig. Sure, that sounds legit?! So we were a little nervy going into this.
We stopped at the rest stop just outside Winterhaven for lunch and to fill the freshwater tank, and gather our nerves for our first real boondocking in a mapless desert. We found the place down a decently smooth dirt road and met one of the installers there. These two guys and their families travel around doing these installs as a hobby, along with friends they met in the Escapees club. Everyone was friendly, upstanding, technically adept and helpful. Doesn't look like a scam, phew!
It was quite surreal being in such a harsh desert environment. The ground was hard, dry, rocky and flat all around. Only the toughest, meanest plants can make it out here, along with mostly nocturnal creatures. No bugs, no birds, and endless dust. The air was so dry our humidistat couldn't read it. It’s hard to describe how uncomfortable it all felt. LIke the water was just being sucked out of you. Unwelcoming, even.
We got out the bikes to ride around, but there was really nowhere to go. You'd ride several minutes in the steady wind, turn around and well, there's the rig just a little further away. Ground here looks the same. Mountains still way over there. How far did I go? How many blocks would I have traveled if I had done this ride at home? It was very alien.
The next morning, the 14th, was install day. I got ready a bit early and emptied the passthrough storage and opened up the utility door so they could work under there. Plan was to have 4 people doing the install and take care of the whole thing in a day. We could stay in the rig, and would only lose power briefly when cutting over to the new system. Pretty slick!
For the curious, we got:
4 Lion Energy Safari UT1300 LiFePO4 batteries
6 250W solar panels mounted on Iron Ridge rails
1 Victron 3000VA Inverter
1 Victron Cerbo GX
1 Victron MPPT 150/100 Solar Controller
This is a sort of minimum setup for a set-it-and-forget-it boondocking system for moderate weather. It'll run one high-load appliance like an air conditioner, but not for very long unless the sun is bright. But most importantly, it'll run the fridge overnight with ease, and the propane furnace too. We still have the big generator that came with the RV, so we can use it to charge the batteries and run any other high loads. (It takes about 3 hours for a full charge from the generator, and we can charge and run the A/C simultaneously if needed. But usually the panels do the heavy lifting)
The installation went without a hitch, and even came with a cool little display that shows what the system is up to. It'll even report usage online so we can see our power history and troubleshoot any problems. So cool! We're very lucky to have found an installer that could get us such a powerful system at a price we could afford!
During the install we found a small leak in the hot water service line, and the solar installers generously offered to fix it while they were in there, so I picked up some PEX in town and they took care of it the next day when they finished buttoning up all the installation.
The night after the installation, the wind - which was already pretty steady all day - turned into an unholy howl, coating everything in dust and shaking the whole RV. We had unwittingly parked broadside to the wind, and since it was hot had left the windows open. The first few big gusts pushed clouds of dust inside before we could get the windows shut. The noise, shaking, whistling, and fear of real damage kept everyone up most of the night. Poor Audrey was in tears and slept, or tried to, in our bed. I ended up on the couch where it was a bit quieter. It was hot, stuffy, dusty, noisy and unsteady.
In the morning we tried to put ourselves back together enough to move the rig. The wind died down considerably, but it was clear that it wasn't gone for good, and being positioned the worst possible way was not going well. We packed up our stuff enough to move, only to discover that the bunkroom slide wouldn't go in! It would go a few inches, then one side would stop, and it would get crooked and the other side would stop. We thought it might be fouled with dust, and tried cleaning it out. I called Evan, the previous owner - who had quite some trouble with this slide himself - to ask where the slide controller box was so I could see if there was an error or override (there wasn't). I called the slide manufacturer help line, which was kind of helpful but didn't solve it. Though I did learn that it's not completely foolish to move the RV with a slide out, so... that's what we (carefully) did.
Once we were repositioned and settled in, we tried a set of instructions for "resynchronizing" the slide that the solar installer helpfully passed along. There was much creaking and groaning from the mechanism, and a lot of nerves as we carefully counted the button presses, but it worked! The slide went in and back out! Much relieved, and much less windblown, we got a much better night of sleep.
Sunday the kids and I visited Imperial Dunes, just south a bit from our spot. These are mostly an ATV driving area, but once you walk in past the main tracks, the dunes themselves are a wonder to explore! It's like another planet, but then you turn back around and there's a freeway right there. For many years there wasn't, of course, and the dunes formed a difficult barrier to travel between CA and AZ. For a few decades there was a plank road they would reposition with horses whenever the dunes moved. A section of the original road is still visible today. Now, of course, there's an interstate right through them which is fast, but hardly romantic.
The kids mostly wanted to dig in the sand and slide down the dunes, and all had a blast. We wished we had come by earlier instead of waiting for our last day there!
Next stop: Tucson, AZ where we will clean everything.
