It’s that time of year where we “fall back.” And the news articles explain how we have an extra hour of time and often ask how will we use this extra hour of time that miraculously appeared out of nowhere.
Continue reading Today You Have an Extra Hour to Use — or do You?
This month I’ll turn 68. Is that old? Are these sayings true?
“Age is just a number.”
“You’re as young [or old] as you feel.”
“Mind of matter.”
To me, these make for good “motivational” or “inspirational” posters — those posters often seen in offices to supposedly get under-achieving people become super stars — I’ve never seen them work however.
I prefer posters like this one but have never seen on in an office 🙂
The past couple of years I’ve fallen several times while backpacking and perhaps this is due to getting older; so the question might be asked,
“Should I do something differently or is it time to consider giving up backpacking, especially since I usually hike alone.” Continue reading “Falling” into Old Age and Backpacking
As we near the end of October, many campers are “winterizing” their campers and putting them into storage. Given our location and easy access to year round camping we “winterize” differently.
This summer we bought a pair of Honda generators as I shared a while back. These were purchased only for use in summer when temperatures are in triple digits (meaning we won’t have any camping neighbors). They also can be used for backup electricity in case of a power outage. We won’t need them for at least 6 months, so it was time to winterize them – meaning to do any required maintenance and prep them for storage. Just in case you have Honda EU 2000 series generators and haven’t read the manual, other than the Quick Reference Guide, here is the maintenance schedule.
You know what I’m talking about — almost every Wal-Mart, Big Box Hardware Store, and even many convenience stores have those cages where you can exchange your 5 gallon propane tank for a “full” tank.
So, is it a good deal to exchange your tanks?
The short answer is No. Continue reading Is it a Good Deal to “Exchange” Your Propane Tanks?
In this post I mentioned that before every camping trip I test the trailer’s breakaway switch. I received several questions about this statement and these questions concerned two very important items:
Adding water to flooded RV batteries can be somewhat difficult as the above picture shows on our 2014 Milan 26RLS. The battery bank is behind the propane tanks and the front of the trailer slopes forward over the batteries. This isn’t a problem if you have sealed batteries that do not require topping of the water. I prefer flooded batteries that can be tested with a battery hydrometer as I shared in this post with instructions on using a battery hydrometer. The downside of these flooded batteries is they periodically need to be topped of with distilled water. As with most things in life, there is a proper tool to add distilled water to a flooded battery — the battery water filler. Continue reading Battery Water Filler
So we got home from our end-of-summer camping trip on September 20th, or two days before the official end of summer, which marks the beginning of autumn. I like to call it autumn because that name is derived from an old Latin word, autumns. Autumn entered the English language about 700 years ago.
Of course when we think of autumn, changing colors in forests and the falling leaves often come to mind. Poets often wrote about this colorful season and soon it was referred to as “the falling of leaves.” So about 500 years ago, in the English language, this was changed to simply “fall.”
In the desert, unless there are cottonwood trees nearby, there isn’t a “falling of leaves” during this time of the year. But there are balmy nights, and the night sky becomes darker and clearer. So with this in mind, I headed to the high desert a few days after our trip to Lake Mead.
Continue reading The First Camping Trip of Autumn — or is it Fall?
We’ve been at Lake Mead for over two weeks. Many people couldn’t stay in one place this long. I can. There is plenty to do and see – one just needs to learn how to slow down and take a micro-look at their surroundings. Every day Corky and I walk and explore. I see eye-candy, Corky smells dog-candy.
Today we are sitting by the lake. It will be the last day of this trip. Time to go home.
I have often written here about Lake Mead Recreational Area. What first attracted my attention were the vast wilderness areas, potentially prime backpacking destinations that became achievable due to the proximity of water in Lake Mead. Often times getting to the lake and water isn’t an easy task, and for the inexperienced can result in bad outcomes, to include death. However, sometimes a little risk returns huge dividends. I wrote about some of these backpacking trips in:
The Eye Candy Backpacking Trip (2014)
Often camping trips with Joyce spark an interest for areas to explore via a backpacking trip. Other times camping trips inspire me to explore the history of an area. Lake Mead Recreational Area has ticked of all these buttons. From backpacking trips into the backcountry and numerous tours inside Hoover Dam, the area just mesmerizes me. Continue reading The Seventeenth Day after the Day After
Early in the morning, as I am outside enjoying a cup of coffee and surveying the world around us, Corky comes to the camper door and lets me know he is ready for our morning walk. Something we have done together a few thousand times.
I began to reminice.
Corky, our wonder dog, has been our constant camping companion since we rescued him from a shelter in 2006. To say we “rescued” him isn’t fair to his previous owner. He was in fairly good health and had been well cared for. From what I was told, his owner had to move to a location that did not allow pets and he was given up for adoption.
The decision to get a dog was somewhat scary – both Joyce and I came up with the decision independently – that was the scary part; we were both on the same wave length, a conjunction of Mars and Venus. At the time I was traveling frequently away from home and a dog would make us both feel more secure in my absence. Both of us have had dogs before, but we are in complete agreement that Corky is special – the best dog either of us have ever owned. Perhaps part of this is that we are older with more life experience and our kids were grown and on their own. Continue reading The Fourth Day after the Day After
We have spent almost every one of our anniversaries camping.
Today’s high temperature at the campground was forecasted to be 107F. Not high by our standards, but we decided a change of scenery was appropriate for celebration.
We are camped in the Mojave Desert. At just under 50,000 square miles it isn’t the largest desert in North America. In total area is ranks only 9th largest. It is, however, the driest desert in North America with an annual rainfall of less than two inches per year. The Mojave is also a rain shadow desert; meaning was created by mountain ranges that prevent precipitation for reaching the area. In our case, the Sierra Nevada and the Spring Mountains created the desert we are camping in. Rain shadow deserts usually mean there is a large mountain range near by – for us that means the Spring Mountains, with its topographically prominent peak Mt. Charleston at 11,916 feet elevation, is only an hour’s drive from our campground.