Time in a bottle

Hey guys! How is everyone?  It's our day off! Now, before you get to thinking that means we're doing all kinds of exciting stuff let me share a secret with you.  While we do not have "normal" house maintenance any more (no lawn mowing, or big house to clean) we do have certain chores that need to get done and today has been that day.  We emptied our black tank today and did a back flush.  I have not spent a lot of time talking about black tanks (or poo) because so many blogs out there already cover that.  It is an important aspect of RV life but is really for the most part simple and not anywhere near as gross as you imagine it would be before you learn.  We back flush by running a hose through our bedroom window and into the bathroom.  There is a system that does it on the RV but that takes about 4x longer.  This is much quicker...you just need to be paying attention.  Jay and I do it together and make sure we don't get distracted while it's happening.  Basically after you open your black tank and dump, you close the tank back up and refill it with hose water to flush it out.  Then you open it and dump it again.  We did this twice until it ran clean through the elbow joint.  That's it.  Job done.  Super easy.  Of course, I've heard stories of people getting distracted and ending up flooding their whole rig or having a fountain come out their vent on the roof.  We're trying to make sure that never happens to us. ;)
The rig also needed a cleaning so I did some of that.  Let me tell you, I love that we only have about 200 square feet to clean!  I even cleaned the hardwood floors on my knees...all 3 feet of it! ;)

I did start off by taking a walk in the desert this morning.  I took the camera to share some images with you. ;)  First the sky last night and then this morning...

 Yes, we actually do have clouds occasionally.  Today we have our windows wide open and that is a double edged sword as many things are in this world.  Life has trade offs.  There is a breeze and nice fresh air, but there is also a fine powder of sand that lands on everything.  You can dust and it settles right back on your surfaces.  Luckily, there aren't many surfaces to dust!

Neighbors have some pretty landscaping...that first pic is what they call a "wash"  where rain water slams through when we do get rain.

You see these signs quite often by a wash...if you do go in and get stuck, you have to pay the bill to get rescued.
Something caught my eye while I was walking and I came upon this amazing pet cemetery.  It has obviously been much loved.

 We also have a golf course out here...yeah, I was surprised too...

It is a beautiful 83 degrees  Here at La Paz as I type this.  There is a breeze blowing and the clouds have come in some.  We're expecting some winds due to the weather that will be effecting the north western states.  We are not expecting snow. ;)  However, we have taken down all of the awnings to be on the safe side.  We're read gusts up to 25 mph+ are expected by tomorrow.  And, there is actually a 20% chance of rain on Sunday!  I am not looking forward to the rain.  I know that seems weird, but the ground here is so hard it does little to absorb and you end up with flooding.  Also, I'm told everyone's roof leaks here.  Crazy, huh?  Like I said, trade offs.

The park is still pretty quiet.  We have had a couple of Passport America people come in.  Some of them find they like the park and stay extra.  We've done that a few times.

In case I haven't mentioned it, we love Denise and Phil (our assistant managers).  They are just super nice people and since they have been a maintenance team they are learning the computer stuff from us and we (Jay) are leaning the more technical stuff (electric, plumbing) .  It seems to be a really good mix for the Park.  We are all thinking we'd like it if they invited us back next year.  Now, don't get me wrong.  We have bad days.  We miss family.  The internet stinks and definitely  would need to improve for us to come back.  Yesterday we had a site that kept blowing their electric.  Jay, Phil and Denise dug a hole by hand yesterday for the new water tank. 7 foot x 7 foot by 12 inches deep.  They had to start it with a pickax and Phil used his truck to pull up the pole that was cemented in.  It's not even the busy season yet.  We'll know more after we deal with the craziness of January.  Most days are more enjoyable than not.

I know I haven't mentioned the title yet:

If I could save time in a bottle

The first thing that I'd like to do

Is to save every day till eternity passes away

Just to spend them with you 

 If you've been paying attention you know that we live our life in song titles. :)  I know I've mentioned we need a cool new name for our RV adventures and the other night while we were listening to tunes and enjoying the night we decided the lyrics to "Time in a Bottle" really sum up our feelings about this lifestyle.

But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do, once you find them
I've looked around enough to know
That you're the one I want to go through time with

As we move forward, we'll be using this more and more.  Hopefully we'll get our youtube channel going soon.  I'll keep you posted.

Oh, by the way, I've lost 5 more pounds.  Officially lost over a 100 now.  Thank you all for your support and comments along the way.  It's certainly a privilege to share this journey with all of you.  happy November!

~Mikki

First sand storm

Hi Guys! How's everyone doing? Getting your steps in? Keeping hydrated?  Don't let the cooler months let you forget to drink your water!  I hope everyone is feeling healthy!

We're a little over 3 weeks out now working here at La Paz RV Park.  Seems like longer.  I don't mean that in a bad way.  It's just that the days here seem very long and blend into each other a bit.  It get tricky remembering what day it is quite often! Hard problem to have, right??  ;)

The weather has started to cool down. In fact I often need to bundle up now in the evening. (Jay says it's wonderful...the weather, not me bundling up...he thinks that's hilarious.) We're running in the 70-80s during the day and down into the lower 50s at night. The weather can be really weird here though.  This week we had a rainbow (sorry, I missed getting a pic) and then not long after that our first sand storm.  This was a learning experience.

First, let me say I actually had seen it coming but didn't realize it.  We went into town to find out about a sand delivery for the new water system, and since we have really awful internet here we stopped to see about a Winegard portable satellite . ( You knew they had me with the name, right?) DISH network has a special and it seemed like a good deal.  By dropping our phone package back to what we originally had (we had increased it to unlimited LTE but since we can't get that here we can't use the hot-spot feature) we can basically offset the price.  So they told us that the paper work and programming would take an hour or so and they'd call us when it was ready.  We picked up some groceries and headed back to the rig.  ~ Our new assistant managers made in to the park today.  Their truck had broken down about 140 miles away so they had to have service and didn't make it until late in the day. ~ I mention this to let you know that we had a few things going on and when the rainbow happened we thought it was cool but didn't really pay that much attention.

I was making potato salad and ribs for dinner, and the kids will know that I get pretty involved with making potato salad. :)  I got the call that the satellite was ready and I left Jay to pull the eggs off the grill burner while he was chatting with the our new help and hopped in the car to head back into town.  After I picked up the satellite and was driving back, I noticed this amazing looking cloud over the mountain.  It was quite a bit more orange that usual, but it didn't really click what that meant.  Anyway, I got back to the site and back to making dinner.  We actually had the ribs boiling on the grill ( we boil them in seasoned water prior to grilling to make them super tender) and I stepped into the rig for a second when I heard Jay yell "just let it go! watch out!" and then " Hon, we've got problems out here!"

Yeah. It was that fast. Just like that the wind came out of no where and ripped our little awning that had all the solo-cup lights out of the ground and up over the neighbors truck and it was two sites down before it stopped enough for Jay, Phil and Denise to grab it. (We did have it anchored but not enough I guess!)  I came out of the rig to help.  We got all the solo-cup lights off and believe it or not my humming bird feeder didn't break! suddenly an alarm was going off in the rig.  Like fire alarm style alarm. Very loud.  I took a look around but couldn't figure out why it was going off.  It stopped after a few minutes and we finished getting the awning put away. Yes, the wind was still blowing during all of this. It was also carrying sand along with it just for fun.  I was putting the awning back in the basement and noticed the grill flame had blown out but the propane was still going. The wind was dying down, so I went ahead and restarted the grill.  About that time the alarm started going off again.  It took us a little bit, (it's very hard to think when you have a very loud noise going off insistently and dogs freaking out from the noise), but finally Jay noticed a light on the control panel; flipped the LP leak warning switch off and the noise stopped. YAY!  Apparently, when the grill had blown out and I had the basement open putting stuff away enough LP blew into the basement to set off the sensor that there was a leak!  How cool is that?? I mean, it was loud, and stressful but now I know we never have to worry about not knowing if we have an LP leak! ;)  Our FBG will let us know for sure!

The sand storm lasted a total of about 10-15 minutes (seemed longer lol) but was a learning experience for sure.  I now know what I saw over the mountain.  The residents say you can't tell if it will show up when that happens. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. And apparently that was a very little one.  Their advice (the next day) was shut your windows first or you'll have piles of sand inside. Yikes!

Just another lesson from the desert.  It can be so beautiful and change in a hot minute!

This morning I was awake early so I went out to open up everything here and walk the dogs...this is what 6:15 am looks like here...

One of the dryers in the laundry room has been acting up so we spent last night doing laundry and checking it out.  Exciting Friday night. :)

3 weeks isn't enough to tell us if we love it or hate it here yet.  We've had a couple of days of each so far.  The best part by far is the people.  Everyone is so super nice here.  They have been very appreciative of the work we are trying to do and really supportive.  We do miss everyone at home.  We're hoping that now that we have some help here, we'll be able to see some of the area and enjoy what makes the desert fun.  Hopefully I'll have some good pictures soon. ;)

Each day we get to learn a little more.  Sometimes the hard way, but hey, at least we're learning!  Thanks for coming along with us! More soon.

~Mikki