Sunday, March 15, 2009

Offgrid

What a descriptive word,offgrid. When used in this context, "we'll be off of the grid for one third of a year", it begins to make more sence.
Now, that's a wild concept for a mountain boy that has fond memorys of watching as the Rural Electric Cooperative crews brought the new fangled electric lines closer and closer to the house.
We had a pull chain light placed in two of the rooms of the house. Right in the center of the room. We had no electric appliances, but put a wall outlet in the kitchen any ways. Finally, months later, we got our first electric appliance, a clothes iron. We still kept those heavy old cast irons that was heated up on the stove though. Electricity was a on again, off again kind of thing back then.
I guess you might say that we moved into the electric age kind of slow. Five or so years later, we were still trying to find batterys for the large console radio in the living room, the center of entertainment for us. The Grand ol' Oprey was often shared with the neighbors in our living room. They would walk home to the light of a carbide light.
From May to September of this year (2009)we will be living off of the grid. Nearly one third of a year. We have been getting ready for that in a slow kind of a way. In late 2007, we bought a Oliver Travel Trailer that is self contained and have been slowly getting the various systems ready to stay off of the grid for extended periods of time.
We are avid boondockers, and this has been a fun thing for us to this point. We'll see how we feel about it after one third of a year offgrid at ten thousand feet of elevation !

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