I'm Still Here

Where Are We Today

Silent Valley Club, Banning Ca.

 (click on pic to enlarge)

Since my last post, I hope you have been keeping up with our social side by following Pat's Blog.

We were at Imperial Dam LTVA, just inside the California state line, when I last wrote. It is a nice area, only 20 miles  from Yuma Arizona. It's down fall was that we had no cell phone reception and the mosquitoes were bad, have never been so itchy from bites. 

We left there on the 14th of January for the LTVA area of Laposa South near Quartzsite Az. After all, the big tent and the RV Show was about to start on the 21st for nine days. People come from all over by the 100's of thousands to attend. They come in every form of RV that you can imagine, from tents, tent trailers, class B,C & A motor homes, gasers to diesel pushers, travel trailers to 5th wheels and some homemade RV's as well. The majority have solar panels to charge batteries for power, anywhere from one to twenty panels, the rest have generators ranging from construction type to the super quiet with invertors in them, I have even seen a couple of wind generators. We have heard and seen pictures of both the show and the numbers of people here, but until you see it, it's so surreal. We enjoyed all aspects of our time here, visiting the show, climbing the Q mountain, looking at property in a Mobile Home park, flying my quad copter to happy hour with great friends.

Big Tent in the middle

Big Tent and all the vendors around it

Looking out over the desert from atop Q mountain

Drone pic looking at the top of "Q" mountain 200 feet.

The "Q" mountain

Three more panels for a total of 6

I mentioned before about tilting our three solar panels to get more out of the low winter sun, that did help with our charging of batteries. I realized that we would need more panels and was going to wait until next year to add more. Our brother-in-law ordered three panels for their rig and got a double shipment, so instead of shipping them back, we said we would buy them from them and I would install them. So, after buying the cable and tilt kits, I installed three more panels on our roof. What a difference it makes, we have full charge usually by noon. Now having a full size residential refrigerator takes power, and if we watch our 48 inch tv at night we still need to run the generator while we do that. A couple of more batteries may make the difference.  

On the 31st of January we left the area and headed for Silent Valley Club just outside of Banning California. This park is located up a two lane twisting and turning mountain road at about 3500 feet, you actually pass 4100 feet and come down to the 3500. It was a bit of a white knuckle drive up, but we made it without any issues. The day after we arrived, we headed back down into Banning for supplies and back up again. I am sure we will be up and down a few times, so shouldn't be too bad when we head back down with the Suite.

While that's my side of our story, it's hard to believe that we are into our 4th month here, and still almost 2 months to go. 

The road up

See the road and view

Our spot C 536

When I think of what is going on back home, not just the weather, but what we would be doing. RV shows are in full swing, and we would have been helping out with our friends from CanAm Rv at the shows they attend, talking about our adventures, the trailers, especially the Mobile Suite and meeting lots of people with the same interests. Don't get me wrong, I'm not home sick, just saying we love what we are doing and don't want to change it. We will be at the fall RV show in Toronto, if Can Am still wants us, along with stories and pictures to share, so stop by and see us.

That's the end of this post, comment if you like and until the next time, take care and be safe.

  Pat's Blog