KAWABUNGA

When we were looking at buying a truck to pull a fifth wheel trailer with, we didn’t even have a trailer located yet, a friend on the sales staff at DeQueen Ford called. He said, “I have just taken a truck in that I think will do everything that you need it to do”.

The F350 1 ton dually had a 6.4 liter diesel engine in it with two staged turbo chargers. He was right. Though we tend to carry everything we can think of, our trailer’s title weight is under 6 thousand pounds dry. We haven’t weighed it yet, but guess that we might have two tons of “stuff” loaded in it.

That would still place us at or below ten thousand pounds or five tons. The F350 is rated at twenty six thousand pounds GVW.

As we departed Trujillo Meadows and started the steep descent off of LaManga pass, 3000 feet in five miles, I thought “KAWABUNGA” !  Very much like the Ninja Turtles, just before they would get into some heavy action.

Then I began to laugh to myself. It fit quite well. The 3000 watt Yamaha generator in the bed of the truck has a home made rain cover that I have fashioned out of  a plastic sand box cover. The cover has a turtle hull design on it and was green.

As we talked and laughed about it, the name “Kawabunga Truck” seemed to stick in our minds as we made our recent 48 hour blast across America’s Heartland.  The Ford has been the Kawabunga Truck ever since then.  I wonder if I might need to send an apology  email to Donatello and the Ninja Turtle crew    .   .   .   .   .   .   .

Any body know how to translate Kawabunga into Spanish ? I think that would look good across the tailgate or maybe the rear bumper.

QUICK

Two days before we were scheduled to close the campground, lock the gate and head down the mountain, at the end of our season of managing  Trujillo meadows, we received a voice mail from the sugar beet harvest. The pre pile was starting early there in North Dakota and they would hold a job for us, but we would have to make a quick trip.

Our plan had been to visit Tumbleweed and Earth Dancer in Spearfish South Dakota. Their plans had changed, kind of like ours had, and they were up in Yellowstone.

We would make all haste on the most direct route. Our truck and fifth wheel trailer are 55 feet long bumper to bumper. We normally get around fourteen MPG with the cruise set at sixty two MPH.

That wouldn’t happen this trip. The speed limit was seventy five miles per hour and we had the cruise set at just under eighty. Yeh, I know, geeze …

As the the speedometer crept up, the miles per gallon plummeted. A couple of stops for a little sleep, then, forty eight hours later, we are in our Rv park in North Dakota.

Then, the rain started, we wouldn’t start work until Monday morning.

Naturally, that meant that it was time to go Geocaching. Since we were here in Hillsboro last year, a lot of new caches had been placed. He, he, it didn’t take much to get us off and caching.

HATCH

Hatch New Mexico grows some of the finest peppers in the world. Most locals buy them by the tow sack full and have them roasted. Here is a look:

 

 

The heady aroma of the roasting green peppers saturates the air for many feet around the roasters. I can stand down wind and breathe deeply, enjoying the wonderful scent until I nearly become light headed.

This Wal Mart super center in Alamosa Colorado has three large propane powered roasters that run all day long when the Hatch Peppers are in season.

FREEBIES

You don’t have to be on the internet for very long to figure out that there is lots and lots of free stuff out there. And, most of it is worth exactly what you pay for it.

I’m guilty of going for a freebie. It was so simple. I just had to cut copy and paste the script onto our blog.

It was a hit or visit counter. And it was free ! However, I wasn’t sharp enough to think that the blog would ever need a counter that went up to over six digits. Yup, at 999,999 visits the counter went right back to zero and started counting all over again. He, he, guess I got what I paid for. I wonder if I loaded another counter onto the page, if it would pick up the correct count.

Say, any body know where I can get a good visit counter for free ? 

RAINFALL

Local mushroom gatherers watch the rain gauge carefully this time of the year.

They know that after so many inches of rain, the mushrooms will suddenly spring up from the earth.

Some are brightly colored, some drab and some are just plain old BUTT ugly.

There are so many different kinds, how do people know which ones are good ?

 

ADOBE

Mogote, Colorado, on the banks of the Conejos River.

INVERTERS

Some RV’ers elect to install one very large inverter to provide all of their household voltage needs. Some run microwaves, coffee makers, hair dryers and so on and so forth.

Inverters come in all sizes and with lots of features including a wireless remote control. They can be quite expensive. Smaller inverters can be quite the opposite and are readily available locally.

We thought about our camping style and our voltage needs at various times of the day. Our findings kind of surprised us. We realized that we were using our generator un necessarily and that for the most part, a couple of smaller inverters would serve us well. Our goal became to  significantly reduce our generator use and improve the quality of our camping experience.

Our first inverter to install was a salvaged out 400 watt unit, from a battery jumper pack. Here it is to the right of the solar controller:

Using this inverter as a test platform, we checked the actual current draws of our various appliances with our Kill A Watt meter.

This photo shows the current draw through the inverter that supplies the office slide out where the 32’ TV , Satellite receiver, two FRS radios and the laptop are being used.

We really enjoy being able to run all that stuff while quietly chatting about the wildlife we see out of the picture window, because the generator isn’t running to disturb them.

Our next inverter to install was a 200 watt unit that normally supplies all of the power that is needed in the office. Here is a look at it:

These two inverters are mounted side by side in the trailer basement. On those occasions when the load requirements in the office are higher than normal, it is easy to switch the office circuit from the 200 watt to the 400 watt inverter.

The 400 watt inverter is mostly used for running appliances such as the pancake air compressor when checking tire pressure or fixing a flat.