Sunday and Monday, December 28 and 29, 2014 (La Posa South LTVA, Quartzsite, AZ)

It was another cold morning...the coldest yet at 29F (-2C); well that's what the WeatherBug app on my phone said it was. Later in the morning we spoke to Art and his outdoor thermometer read 24F (-4C).

So again, we had a very lazy morning hunkered down in front of the heater staying warm. It was late morning when we decided to bundle up and head out for a walk. Within a half hour or so, we were back inside keeping warm.

After a bowl of hot soup for lunch, Steve headed outside to get started on today's task...emptying the holding tanks. While he was doing that, I puttered around inside.


I even managed to capture a couple of pictures of hummingbirds...finally at our window feeder instead of the bees...

Shortly after 5:00 we walked down to Bob and Sue's...they offered us a ride to Silly Al's where the group was gathering to celebrate Art's birthday.

Jan and Art...

Left to right around the table...Sue, Vince, Fred, Teri, Laurie (Art and Jan's daughter), Jan, Art, me, Steve and Bob...

On the way home, we all stopped at Bob and Sue's to discuss New Year's Eve celebrations. Unfortunately, the weather forecast is for a major winter storm Wednesday and Thursday so it doesn't look like we are going to be able to have our usual potluck campfire. Oh well, we'll figure something out...at this point it looks like we will be gathering at Bob and Sue's for a potluck dinner inside.

Monday morning was another cold start...sure looking forward to this cold snap being over!

Steve started the generator to give the batteries their usual boost before letting the solar take over. While we were doing our resistance exercises he noticed that the generator rpm had dropped, so he checked the panel display and realized that there was no AC coming in...great, what's going on with that?!

So after breakfast he headed out to start his troubleshooting...the generator was outputting 123 volts, the surge guard was switching the AC out to the inverter. That was as far as he was comfortable going. After talking with Bob, he learned that our neighbor, Brian, is very knowledgeable with this stuff. Unfortunately Brian wasn't home...we'd have to wait to go over and talk with him. At least we were still getting a solar charge.

With the cold weather, we've been going through lots of propane so Steve went into town to fill up with both propane and gas. I stayed home relaxing outside in the sunshine reading.

Brian arrived home at around 2:30 so Steve went over to talk to him about our problem...a few minutes later he came over to have a look. It turned out that the wiring was burnt inside the inverter. Steve thought he could faintly smell something the morning before. Brian wasn't sure what was the cause...a loose connection perhaps? This could have been more serious and caused a fire so Steve is planning on installing a smoke detector in the basement storage area.

Steve helped Brian get his tools out and he went to work repairing it...a great neighbor to have! He had to add a junction box and lengthen the wires which he just happened to have. With the work done about an hour later we paid him $50...what a deal, Steve and Brian sat outside chatting over a beer. Apparently the trailer really should have had a sub-panel installed when Camping World did our initial solar install and this was also mentioned by AM Solar when they upgraded our solar system. So Brian is going to take care of that for us sometime while we are here.

I had decided to start working on a new 2015 budget, so I was inside at the kitchen table on the laptop.

It was going on 5:30 when Brian left and Steve came inside...time to hunker down inside as the temperature dropped.