It IS pretty amazing what 12 hours of sleep will do to impressions. WE LOVE Porto. What a cool city. Of course we DID go out and bought an umbrella. I think more out of self defence. Having never lived anywhere that umbrellas were used I have always had this fear of getting my eye poked out. Living in Oregon for 13 years, it DID rain a lot, but never straight down, and umbrellas did not last long there.
We spent yesterday getting our bearings……. and getting rain gear. I DID check the weather before we came and it looked like 2 weeks of clear weather, but we get here and not so. SOO the only rain gear I brought was a sack jacket that is basically plastic and for emergency rainfall only. Being in a “plastic jacket” is very uncomfortable in the extremely humid situation here….. heavy rains, but warm and humid.
We walked down to the historic area of Porto, with the plans of doing a walking tour today. IE “training” for the camino which we start tomorrow with 25 KM.
A few interesting things we found with our wanderings …
It seems that the way that buildings are “sided” here is with tiles, and many are extremely exquisite, both in colours and design. You can see from the picture above that the tiles are all different colours and shapes. They ALSO do not seem to last forever, and seems to likely take much upkeep. Being “master “tilers” ourselves we like that kind of thing
This is a table we just finished at home with tiles we bought in Mexico. There seems to be very intricate tiles for sale here…..for my next project 🤔. With that in mind… this trip we have splurged and had all our hotels booked for us and our luggage carried from place to place, so we only have to do the walk with a day pack (water, change of clothes etc). SOOO we can buy souvenirs as we go along, because someone else is carrying them 🙃
The other interesting thing we saw yesterday was a graveyard right next to our hotel. It was built/started….in the late 1800s and is known for the exquisite carvings, but what we found interesting is that it was like a large town of mini “houses”
Each of which is walls, roof and a space inside with area for coffins on each side.
Some had only one coffin within… and others we full, with additional family members denoted with placards lined up on the floor.
It struck me as odd that you could actually see the coffins, but then I rationalized thinking perhaps this is a better system in that a family spends a fortune on an expensive box to place a loved one, only for it to be buried within a few days, now THAT seems more odd…. if you think about it.
Not all of the graves were “houses” some were a bit more rudimentary. I was wondering about the plaques placed on the grave, (we also saw them in France), but I figured it out that these were likely family members who were cremated. I had not realized that cremation in a formal was was only started in the early 1900s, and to some it was an abhorrent thing to do with a loved one then. But we tend to take a long time to accept new concepts. I wonder if everyone were to be buried now ….if we would run out of ground space.
This is the “front door” of the little houses. I took this one for Gwen, who loves door pictures.
Oh and what would a day in the city be without a dog story. This was a meat store…..you can just imagine the story. THIS would not happen in Canada. We looked back later on to see him walking down the road with a bone in his mouth.
We DO miss our little Tucker.
Thanks for reading ….love Janet and Ken.
PS I DO want to say that I only included our negative experience as a way to warn others, not as a statement of Portugal, after all we have scammers back home who prey on those who are vulnerable. AND in a new country without knowing language we are vulnerable here. In Canada it seems that they prey on those who are not totally computer savvy. (a real vulnerability these days) I also wanted to say that everyone we have dealt with since has been totally wonderful, kind and helpful. I am sure dealing with tourists can be trying.
We arrived in Portugal yesterday AM after an overnight flight.
I think it is fair enough to totally write off the first day of a trip to Europe because it seems that there is always an over night flight flying east. So glad we have 3 days prior to starting our Portugal camino.
I am going to tell about our first 2 issues coming into the country, only as a means of alerting others, so as not to make the same mistakes as us.
First of all, totally exhausted we ended up at customs with several very large flights arriving at the same time and two very large areas of customs. We started into one area and the lady told us Canada, US Europe passports etc. So we got into this huge lineup, it said electronic passports. We were pretty sure that we had “electronic” passports since we have the new Canadian passports which include a large plastic page that seems pretty fool proof. Since it seems like a large credit card page we thought YES these will be the ultimate in “electronic”. We after a very long line of the back and forth sort where you face the same people again and again as you work your way to the front. As we were going through the line, I commented to Ken, that I wondered what was the difference between the two areas of lineup….. We got to the front of the line and this lady noticed our “NEW” “Canadian” passports .. and she said OH no, these machines do not handle the new Canadian passports. Then she announced to all of the other people in line this little “detail” about the new Canadian passports, and we were directed to area 5, which was the “traditional” customs area where you walk up to a guy and he asks you questions. This lineup was even longer. I told myself…. relax, you KNEW that the first day was a write off. 🤨
The next “event” I am not including as a negative against Portugal, but as a warning that might prevent anyone else from …. being as dumb as we were. As usual we got our first scam out of the way to begin with early. I guess being up all night, as well as being a little overwhelmed with a totally foreign language, we were ideal subjects. The first question the guy in the airport asked was “first time to Portugal?” which I think was important …. We were looking for the transit to get to the very large BUS station in Lisbon, which was 3 KM from airport. Under usual circumstances, we likely would have just walked, given that we ARE here for a Camino hike. When the guy approached us saying Taxi? We sort of turned him down but when ken asked him how much to get to BUS station he said it was under 10 Euros. I guess we thought, what the heck, let’s indulge ourselves. We SHOULD have been alerted when we got outside and there were lots of taxis waiting, but he had obviously contacted his taxi guy. I guess we SHOULD have known at this point that something was up. To begin with we had thought he WAS the taxi driver. It was all downhill from there. The Taxi finally pulled up and the guy helped us into the taxi. I was following the direction we were going on my phone, and we seemed to be going in the opposite direction, and I commented. Although Ken was attempting to talk to him in his rudimentary Portugese, he clearly only seemed to know a few words of English. We finally got to the BUS station and he turned to give us the fee amount, and we had our 10 Euro prepared, but he used his phone to show us that the fee was 246 Euro. We very quickly woke up and told him in so many many words…. words apparently wasted on him because our words were all in English. Ken was a bit confused as to whether it was pounds, or Euros…. I quickly calculated that this was about 450 dollars Canadian. It WAS 3 KM, and our luggage was in the trunk… which I usually never do. OMG!! Ken made it clear that we only had about 15 euros and 15 pounds sterling. The guy started saying that he was going to take us back to airport and contact the police. We asked if we could talk to his “boss” the guy that we had originally been lured into this “taxi”. He contacted this guy on the phone and suddenly the guy from the airport who spoke perfect English did not understand any English…🤨🤨
I guess I figured that this guy was not going to do us any harm, but I was most concerned about our luggage in the trunk, so I asked him to open trunk, ……. and he did. We gave him all the cash we had, which was about 15 euros and 15 pounds. Got out luggage and left. My theory was that this guy thought we were dumber than we actually were, which was pretty dumb already. He gathered that we would be paying with credit cards AND that we were not familiar with how the pricing was written out. It can be kind of confusing between commas and periods.
I guess our lesson which we should have known is not to respond to anything the guys lurking, and coming up to you in the airport, are selling.
We got to the bus station and caught the bus from Lisbon to Porto, which I realized later was a wee bit aggressive for the first day. We arrived in Porto about 5 KM from our hotel and it was absolutely pouring rain. Long story shortened, we caught the metro to the area near the hotel, walked 1KM in pouring rain to get to a lovely hotel.
Pretty darned wet….. For a variety of reasons we took very few pictures on our first day and I guess I wish Ken had not take THIS ONE.
We had a lovely dinner of Cod and potatoes, and although we have looked forward to some great local Port, now that we are in Porto, we decided to wait another day until we have had maybe 12 hours more sleep.
Today bright and perky, and ready to face the day, and buy umbrellas. I must say I have never seen so many umbrellas in my life.
I guess it is hard to know whether it is the beginning of the year or the end. We are starting to plant garlic for next year and we had our last market yesterday. The market is a little bit later than usual, in fact last year this time we were in England doing the Hadrians wall hike. The garlic is a little bit early … we usually plant around the average first frost time, and I do not expect a frost for at least 2 weeks.(I find that the average first frost should be set back a few week from the first of October until the middle) We are leaving in a few weeks for Portugal to do another of the various Camino’s.
This year we saved a lot of bulbils, not necessarily intentionally ….Most of our garlic is hardneck garlic and hardneck garlic sends up a scape in late May, June that forms into an umbrel as shown above with hundreds of little bulbils. The little bulbils are actually clones of the garlic rather than seeds as there is no pollination that take place. We try to cut off most of the scapes when they are about 6 inches long, the one in this picture has already formed 2 loops.
If you leave these on the plant too long they form into the umbrels shown above. The reason to cut them off at about 6 inches or so, allows the plant to put more energy into growing the Garlic bulb, and we certainly found this to be true this year, as all of the plants that we allowed the umbrels to mature turned out to be smaller garlic than its neighbours .
I have decided to use these bulbils that we have SOOO many of this year… to expand our crop somewhat. Trying to have enough garlic to plant 5000, takes a lot of garlic to begin with, and it cuts into last years harvest substantially. I usually end up buying more garlic to plant in the fall to end up with the amount of garlic I want. To grow from bulbils takes a few years to get actual proper garlic.
The box in the middle shows the actual bulbils fresh off of the umbrels (at the bottom). The rounds shown in the other boxes are essentially the bulbils from last year. That is what they grow into. Then when you plant the rounds, you end up with a proper garlic head. This is a bit of an oversimplification as the bulbils do not all grow into a round, some just grow into very small garlic heads. (it also gives me something to keep me busy in June, sorting through the rounds, preparing them for planting)
This year we have opted to grow our entire upper garden bed in the bulbils and rounds. I find that some of the rounds grow into our largest garlic of the year. Last week we planted all of the bulbils. This week we are planting our regular garlic stock.
This is our main garden…
THIS is our upper field, essentially a 300 ft by 6 foot garden we built with wood chips compost and soil.
As far as the rest of the market gardening, I would say that everything but the garlic we sell at the farmers market are just the things we grow way to much of to eat ourselves. (and our rocks and toques I make). I have never been very good at knowing just how much to plant just for ourselves. Many of the things I grow are more experimental than anything.. just growing to see if I can. For instance, this year I finally successfully grew watermelon, huge in fact. … only to realize.. what the heck are we going to do with all these huge watermelons? Perhaps they might be a big item in our booth next year.
We find that Lavender grows like a weed here and have been taking the new baby plants and put them in the back garden and dig up a few before each market and then put them back in the garden if they do not sell.
In the past I have tended to grow tomato plants and sell the plants in the spring and then the tomatoes as they ripened. I have always ended up with a lot of tomato plants because….. well the packets had a lot of seeds… Then I started saving seeds. and well…. ended up with even more seeds. I have been trying to grow less tomatoes because I end up planting 100 plants each year and then selling as many as I can and then giving many away, but always ending up throwing some away. Last year I found out that tomato plants could be an item for the food bank and gave them many of them. This year with my plans to grow less, I ended up not growing nearly as many plants as usual, as it was a very cold spring and many of the ones I planted died and I had to replace.
They ask each year exactly WHAT I am going to sell at the market and to be honest, I am never sure, just whatever grows to a point that we have more than we need. I guess we are hodge podge market growers.
We have a freezer full of strawberries, raspberries and black berries and so started selling them at the market. We have found that they are a great item, and always selling in the first 15 minutes. They take hours the day before to pick, but this year I have decided that I love picking berries (except strawberries which I have to bend over to pick, hard on back)
We even ended up with a lot of apples this year, this being the 5th year we have been here on this property, so hard to believe. Of course we try to make them all into something and have lots of help to peel them. (and we have lots of help. :))
One of the crops we grow lots of but do NOT sell, are the dry beans. Since beans, tofu and nuts are our main form of protein we do go through a lot, and they taste so much better grown from scratch and then cooked in instant pot …than canned or the dried versions in the stores. SO few versions in the stores anyways. The yellow/white ones in this picture are Hutterite beans which we have found to be quite delicious. The black and white ones are calypso, and the black ones are a variety of “black” beans.
I guess one might ask, why bother? It is all a lot of work but I guess we make enough with our “farming” to pay for a trip in the fall, and so that is one reason. I guess the other reason is that we enjoy it, and what else will we be doing. It seems that you have to have a “thing” when you are retired and I guess this is it, for us, at least for this part of the year.
We headed south a little later than usual this year…… so that we could come back up a little later… with the hopes of hitting a few places on the way home that we usually cannot get to because of the cold/snow. We usually go down through Nevada on our way down, when we go in November, but most years we are in a rush because some weather system or other is “encouraging” us to go south and fast…
So we usually come down I5, and over to Susanville California and enter Nevada near Reno/Carson city area. We go down through Hawthorne, then Tonopah and Beatty (essentially HWY95).
Nevada sits at a higher elevation, and so the nights can be cold, below freezing, which has always steered us to find a different way home. This year with our new battery…… etc… we are able to fully charge each day and discharge down to 70% (battery charge) during the night. SO we are able to camp in “dispersal” camping areas, which are areas designated for camping with no formal amenities such as electricity, water etc. Usually they are not far off the road, on BLM land, and also usually quite scenic.
THIS was from a dispersal site out side of Tonopah. We love Tonopah because of the amazing rocks we find near there. Miles of open area (BLM land) (kind of like Crown land in Canada) to wander all day long, looking for cool rocks. This year we have learned the many faces of petrified wood and so stuff we thought was nothing we now realize can be beautiful agatized or opalized petrified wood.
Well this picture is from Lake Mead, but you get the picture of what we do all day almost every day, wherever we happen to be.
I have not taken many pictures of rocks this trip, because they tend to be more “photogenic” once they are cut, or tumbled.
Beatty is a town in the south west of Nevada, that is at a lower elevation, so basically the last warm spot heading north. ( 🙃 OR the first warm spot heading south). It is the gateway to Death Valley heading west. There is not much there to interest us usually, but while searching for a store, I discovered an old historic casino that they are apparently remaking into perhaps a coffee roaster place??? Ken and I LOVE steampunk stuff, and this old casino has been completely refaced, resurfaced in Steam punk.
as you can see, the buildings around are totally PLAIN…
I guess what struck me is that this amazing building appears to be done up SOOO well in a town that …. we will just say is ….not so amazing…… Whatever this place will be, it is not there yet and the work is continuing. It must be quite a labour of love, as this town is far from anything. I know myself, I will be anxious to see what it looks like next year.
Tonopah ……..photos…
… and always the ever present Burros…. just sitting watching what we are doing…. so cute.
To go back to the map at the beginning, we drove a highway between Tonopah and Austin,( that does not show on that map), but is a great highway, along a long valley with snow topped mountains either side. I am not sure that they are snow topped in the summer time, so it seems early spring or late fall might be the most scenic times to travel this way.
We are currently just south of Mcdermitt, which is a border town between Oregon and Nevada. It seems that every border into Nevada has a number of casinos…. but this one only has one, it is called the SAY WHEN CASINO. 🫢I like that name. Today we are on the hunt for opalized petrified wood, which we have never really seen, but might have.
It IS getting down to 27-28 F (-2, -4C) at night and it is quite freeing to know that we can weather these temps with no hookups.
petrified wood from Tonopah
Although I have likely mentioned this in this blog before.. I lost the diamond from my engagement ring out in the desert while rockhounding… about…7 years ago. We always jested that perhaps some rock hound might find it in the desert and think he had discovered a new diamond mine
I have gone ringless for all those years and last year at the Tucson gem show, we searched for and found a beautiful sapphire. We went home and I found a jeweller to take my engagement ring and wedding ring, and salvage the gold, and the create a new ring with the sapphire and leftover diamonds
I was never really happy with the ring, I think because I had chosen not to have claws on the ring … this is “bezelled” which is a safer setting but allows less light under the gem.(better for rockhounds and gardeners….)……. soooooo
This year we decided to once again look for a sapphire at the Tucson Gem show and were drawn to the booth with the Montana sapphires which are not so much blue as more of a greenish colour. We spent quite a bit of time going over all of the choices there and found the gem we liked the most (we also got to know the guy quite well, he cuts all of his gems and had lots of stories to tell)
….oh and BTW. …. MORE STEAMPUNK…. Each year the Tucson Gem show has a competition for ART made from recycled stuff.
LOVE THIS STUFF….
Now THIS… stuck me a picture worthy…perhaps someone else might feel that an antitheft device on the steering wheel is an important accessory, but my thoughts were … why bother?
some early thoughts, but the wrong shape….
so in the end we bought the sapphire we liked the best, then went in search of a setting, not really expecting to find something I liked… but I did…. The setting was priced at 6000 but he sold it to me for….1500… (MUCH less than a transmission)…. and there was a jeweller at the Gem show to put the sapphire into the setting and so we went home with a new ring
I cannot honestly say I have ever had much of an interest in jewelry…. but for some reason I tend to stare at my new ring all the time…. I guess after 40 years of marriage it was time for a new one. Ken on the other hand lost his ring in our first 5 years, and so his is also a replacement.
So looking at the maps between here and home, there is STILL severe weather warnings, so shall hang out here for a few more days…
Bye for now, much love from Janet, Ken and Tucker.
As luck would have it, we are 20+ hours drive from home and as you can see from photo….. each direction has severe storm warning 🤔. To top that off, we are at Lake Mead and the wind is howling at 20 mph. White caps….
Yesterday it was closer to 30 MPH and so we spent the whole day indoors. I should point out that we love our Motorhome and it is plenty big enough for us, however the size IS dependant on going outdoors during the day. It IS a small space to spend 24 hours.
What to do? Make sourdough….
NAP…. manoman am I ever bored….
BOOOOOOrrrrrreeeed
Or maybe work on Blog,…. 🙂
We are at Stewarts point …. a far east and north part of Lake Mead. Lake Mead is the reservoir created by the Hoover dam, and is a massive lake. It HAS been much more massive in previous years, and less massive last year when we were here.
We have been gone now for 2.5 months and are looking for a route to get home. Big storm across the west coast all the way, it seems, from Canada down into California. Apparently the Sierra Nevadas got 10 feet of snow. I am sure that Lake Mead WILL be much higher when all that snow starts to melt. But we only got wind and just a little bit of rain.
We have had a great winter, with a few exception type situations, but cannot really complain. In Fact I even have a funny story to tell about the day the transmission went in our jeep.
make no mistake it WAS a bad day…… We were going into Yuma from where we were camping, Ogilby road which is about 20 minutes drive out of Yuma. We just got into Yuma and Ken realized that he could not get the jeep in gear and with a whole lot of finagling, he managed to get the us parked right in front of a transmission lot. (most days we are off …. miles from any known roads, so at least it happened in a good place). We WERE going in to Yuma to have lunch with Kens cousin Morley and his wife Ruth. They very kindly came to pick us up while our jeep underwent “further testing”. After a wonderful lunch we came back to find out that all was good, as long as we had a spare 4900 dollars….. gulp… to spend on rebuilding the transmission….. and a week to hang around and wait for the “procedure” to be complete. SOOOOO. Morley and Ruth gave us a ride back to where our motorhome was parked. We got there and Ken realized that he had left the keys to the motorhome back in the jeep (at the transmission place in Yuma)
AND worse information, the only window that we left open was this tiny window above the sink
Ken felt quite certain he could fit through this opening (bear in mind it is only HALF of the shown window as half does not move) (I pointed this detail out to Ken, but he was STILL confident that he could get through the opening). So Morley backed his truck up to motorhome….
Now THIS is where medical knowledge comes in….in babies…. usually once the shoulders have been delivered all goes well…. and technically that may not be true for many of us……. but turns out it is true for Ken
Things look a bit iffy here…. but Ken was still quite confident.
SO the Shoulders have been delivered INTO the motorhome…….. and technically, I believe this is where I would get stuck… but not Ken…..
Now how many 69 year olds can you name who could pull this off….🤨🤨…. and slither down over the counter and onto the floor… YEA KEN
So we waited the week and got our Jeep back and headed north…. We have really enjoyed the wonderful places we have camped this year. I always am so impressed with the views, but rarely am I able to get pictures that reflect what I see. This year I DID get a few….. This is from Ogilby road, where we spent about 10 days this year.
…. and THIS ONE is another photo I got while a thunderstorm was passing. The desert is just SOOO BIG that you can get the whole half of the rainbow….
We shall see how soon we make it home and if there are any more adventures left in this trip.
Bye for now, much love Janet, Ken and the very bored Tucker dog….
We are now down on Ogilby road, which is in California, near the Mexico border, and about 30 miles from Yuma. We are about 6 miles south of a campground, where we can dump our septic tank and fill with fresh water. We have an amazing view 360 degrees and can see Mexico. Great sunrises and sunsets.
Oh and of course, most important of all, there are lots of rock locations near here, new ones we find each year.
…. and Tucker is now barking like crazy because a coyote came and checked out our MH…. He was just a little guy and I just let Tucker bark. Now he is MAD at me 🐶
What allows us to do this is our solar system, which we have had to ….renovate.. a lot… this trip.
Most people we know who “boondock” down here, have pretty basic solar systems and never seem to have issues. Our biggest issue is that Ken uses CPAP at night, to breathe well all night. SOOO, we are dependant on a good system that will provide power all night, and then charge during the day. When we were down in Washington in October, our batteries went. That is to say that they were totally down each night and barely charged in the day time. IT IS important for batteries never to get to zero.
We have had many solar systems over the past 10 years and have …. very gradually… learned a lot about them. We had a cabin on Adams lake that had no power so we installed a very basic system, and blew our first battery because we left the cooler plugged in and got stuck in a boat out on the lake for a long time and the battery went down to zero and never really worked again.
This is where we learned the importance of a charge controller, a devise that both protects your battery from too much charge from the solar panels and from becoming too discharged as in my previous example.
The diagram above shows how a basic system works. The solar panels, the charge controller to protect the batteries, the batteries to store the power ….. and the inverter that takes DC power and converts in to AC power, to you can charge your computers and phones.
So after our trip to Washington in October, we purchased a new battery, a large self heating lithium battery. The reason for the self heating mode is because apparently you cannot charge a Lithium battery when it is below freezing. We DO, on occasion camp when it is below freezing, so this function is important to us. This new battery is a 400 amp hour battery, with most of it, usable. ( a lithium battery can be discharged down to almost zero charge, whereas a regular battery is damaged if you take them to zero, they suggest only down to 50% at any time).
A battery cycle is from Fully charged down to the point that you can go down to, in the regular batteries, that is 50% charge, and Lithium it is close to zero. One difference between regular and lithium, is that the regular batteries can only cycle down about 300 times, and Lithium 4000. I guess it is a little bit like your car battery which you can only start SOOO many times in cold weather, you essentially wear the battery out. Usually started your can you only dip down maybe 5% from fully charged. SOOO that Ken uses CPAP at night and we do run the furnace of the motorhome at night, we do often run the batteries down to 50% often, which is why our previous batteries only lasted 2 years (warranty is only for one year)
The Lithium battery, can go down to about 10% and 4-5000 times. The previous batteries (we had 4) cost 1500 dollars, and the lithium one cost 2500 dollars. We NOW wish that we had gone with lithium to begin with.
SO NEXT ISSUE IS SOLAR PANELS….. We quickly learned that this new battery, it takes a lot of power to totally charge it. It is better for the life of the battery to keep charged or near charged. AND we are not always guaranteed sun every day. So we needed more solar panels. A big issue for us is purchasing stuff along the way. We are seldom in a city, and things for Solar, tend to be ordered online because there are so many options, few stores want to keep so much stock. So we have learned this trip that most towns have both a UPS, and FEDEX office that accept parcels, so that you can send a parcel to the next town you are going to. I MUST SAY,… this is at times hard because we seldom have a clue where we are going to be …. and when.🙂…. but at times we have to comply with a schedule … for the sake of our solar system.
The cool issue about Solar panels, is that they have gotten better, in that they are now available smaller with the same wattage. You cannot simply piece meal the panels together. The panels all need to put out a similar amount of power because the system basically drops down the the lowest power panel. I must say that I am over simplifying this whole process, but it is how it makes sense to me and likely might make better sense to someone else. A year ago we could not add solar panels because there was not room to add another panel of the same power as the ones that are currently up there, but now because of this new development we ARE able.
So we add the new solar panels, (we had to pick up in Barstow)……. I should back up a little bit here to explain the inverter. It really is a side piece … just there to charge our phones and computers. Essential nonetheless. The inverter, it turns out, uses power itself….. so IF the inverter is on, and even when nothing is plugged in, the power DOES go down, and when the inverter is failing, it uses more power.
As you can see I have stolen all kinds of photos from Internet. What this diagram is lacking is the inverter, it seems that none of the diagrams include both power usages…… the things in motorhome that run directly off of the battery and the things that require an inverter. So the lights, the furnace, the thermostat in the fridge, and in our case, the CPAP.
So suffice it to say, we needed a new inverter, and this was important, because to have a good system, you do not want to waste power on an inefficient part. So we did get a new inverter as well (250 bucks). The cool thing about the new inverters is that they power down automatically when there is no load (IE when your computers and phones are charged and no longer drawing on the battery)
OK so we arrive in Quartzsite, and Ken is ready to get the whole system hooked up and ready to go and suddenly the entire system went……We had NO power at all. OMG, we panicked… after all of this we were expecting a great system and never need to worry about it at all.
The cool thing about Quartzsite is that there are thousands of people, out in the desert, all relying on solar power (or generators). SOOOO what that means, is that the store in Quartzsite stocks a LOT of great solar system parts. AND very knowledgable staff. So what had happened essentially is that our new solar panel system had blown the charge controller. ALL that power was too much for the charge controller that we had. A charge controller can only handle a certain amount of charge, and a charge controller for a system is set up to be compatible with the number (power of) your solar panels. Sadly the charge controllers are NOT cheap and this set us back 750 bucks.
We DID learn at this step…. that you need fuses between anything that has power…. So a fuse between the solar panels and the charge controller and a fuse between the battery and the charge controller and these essentially protect the battery and the charge controller.
SOOOO….. we are now out in the desert camping. Where we are, there are other people but they are mostly quite aways away…. someone 500 metres and the next person… a KM away (half a mile).
I am sure in reading this, you wonder why we would spend so much money, just to be able to camp for free? Well I guess it is clear that whatever we save by being self sufficient, we spend on our system. However it is really not so much about cost, it is about choices. Once we get down here we can camp almost anywhere. I guess we find that we likely would not do this winter travel if it meant being crammed into a campground the whole time. Going into Yuma there are thousands of RV in many many campgrounds, many of them semi permanent. I guess we have always felt that that is just not us. Perhaps it is like the way we live at home, we have always lived somewhat remotely.
The closest we have some to living in a town was in Scotch Creek, on a one acre lot with a neighbour who quickly took a disliking to me and was aware that I liked the peace and quiet. So he purchased large speakers and played 70s music VERY loud every day. I felt I had no control……..
I DIGRESS…….. just trying to figure out why we do what we do….. I guess in our world that we have seemingly no control over, it is nice to know that we can at least have control over where we choose to stay.
Anyways, I thought that our recent adventures with solar, in a way, have explained our very complicated system to me, and I thought perhaps that other people might also be interested in how the system worked, AND maybe might not make the same mistakes that we have made.
I guess that is what life is about, finding the places you are most comfortable and making yourself comfortable there.
Must love to all from Janet, Ken and Tucker, the coyote hunter.
Well we have “found ourselves” somewhere half way down the Oregon coast at Christmas.
You can see from this picture how MUCH the agates just pop out when they are wet AND the sun is shining. The Sunshine gets behind them and I guess through the refraction of light they emit light in all directions, little lightbulbs. We have been SOOO Lucky to have been here for 4 days and 2 of them have been Sunny and no wind. I am sure that this is the sum total of our allotment of sunny wind free days, so time to move on🌞. Finding agates on a beach has a unique kind of pleasure that goes beyond the simple finding of another rock. I believe that it hits you smack in the middle of your pleasure centre, and lasts for awhile…. I am on a page on Facebook called Oregon beach gravel reports. The reason for this is that a totally sand beach is of no interest to a rock collector. That is mainly the case in the summer. However after a few of the winter storms get their claws into the sand and drag it out to sea, the gravel gets exposed, and agates are part of that gravel. Each day the high tides wash over the gravel rearranging the stones and putting some of the agates on top to be found by rock hounders like us.🙂
We DID find ONE gravel beach up here. This is Taft beach in Lincoln city. One of the few beaches we hunt for agates where there are lots of other people. I guess because this beach is so easily accessed right in the middle of a city.
We are usually tied to campground camping while in Oregon, because with our solar panels and batteries, there is not enough sun, this time of year to keep the batteries charged. But this year we have a new battery, a self heating lithium battery, so we can make better use out to the sun on the solar panels. A full charge on this batter can last several days with very little sun. We do not prefer boon docking (camping OFF GRID) just to save money from Campgrounds we also prefer to stay out in the open, not crammed in with other RVS. We find that we usually get better views and tucker is such a “country dog” and does not always “play well” around lots of other dogs. 🐕🦺🐕🦺🐕🦺
Oddly, my obsession with crocheting toques has continued… (often obsessions wear out over time 🙂 ) But I DID get bored with one colour toques so have expanded into multicoloured toques and am working on improving the transitions between colours without leaving irregular lines. It really is trial and error for me. We did sell several of them over the summer at the farmers Market in Sorrento, and pretty much all of my family and friends have one or two of them, and of course I have now a special part of my closet that has been made into a place to store different colours of yarn…. and all the toques I have made… What can I say… it is just how obsessions go.
Now THIS was a very surprising place to see a new house coming up. With all of our walks down beaches, we are seeing more and more places that seem to be on the edge of falling into the sea, it just seemed odd that one could build in such a precarious, at risk spot. I guess it is a sacrifice to the sea gods🐟🧜🏼♀️🪸…. or …. to Mother Earth to appease her.🌎🌎.
I just have to post a tiny video of the snowy plovers, always love watching them and the way they skitter around the beach
Merry Christmas from somewhere in the Oregon coast from Janet, Ken and tucker the beach dog….
When what is happening is just so horrific that we must stop it, we must do something. Ken and I took to the streets of Portland yesterday to protest what Israel is doing to Gaza. People have always said that it was complex and used that as an excuse to ignore it. It is not complex, it is simple. Right now 2.1 million people are imprisoned and Israel is bombing them. Does that sound familiar? Imprison millions, kill them while the world does nothing?? Well it is just that simple. These people have done nothing …. in fact what could they do, they have been imprisoned for their entire lives in Gaza. Half of them are children. THIS IS NOT RHETORIC, this is exactly what is happening. The world is doing nothing and the US is wholeheartedly supporting this…. with money,…. with weapons.
I struggle to think of a time in my lifetime that something THIS horrific has happened and I cannot. I was born in 1956, after the holocaust. … I have never lived in a time when millions of imprisoned people were being bombed…. and starved and dehydrated. Now they have been cut off from the outside world, so Israel can commit their war crimes without the pesky internet.
Yesterday Ken and I joined in on a protest in Portland Oregon. It was totally a wonderful experience to spend a few hours with people THAT human that they would take to the streets for the love and caring of something going on half way around the world.
While we were marching I looked around at all of these people and was so proud to be with them, to be part of such a passionate group of people. It was a multicultural and young, and it felt so good to be one of them. I must say, I felt a bit old, the antiwar protests back in 2003 were mostly a grey wave, these people were much younger. It was very peaceful
I am a dual citizen of Canada and the US. I pay taxes in both countries and both countries are shipping weapons to Israel. So I am doubly ashamed. I have written several letters to Trudeau, and this is the most recent …. please consider writing to your government representatives. Feel free to use my letter or whatever part of it you want.
This letter is to strongly encourage the government of Canada to speak out against the genocide that is going on in Gaza. We did nothing back in the 1940s, so PLEASE PLEASE let us do something now to end the slaughter of innocent children that is going on. It is a total lie that speaking out against Israel is antisemitism. What they are doing is wrong and for Canada to remain silent is complicity. This is not the country that I grew up in. I have always seen Canada as a peaceful country “peacekeepers” we seem to have become war keepers. PLEASE do not let Canada be part of the problem. I am so ashamed that Canada is not speaking out against these crimes against humanity. thank you.
As for the terrorist attack by Hamas. They killed 1400 innocent in cold blood. How many people can Israel kill to make up for that? 3000 people were killed in 911, and the US war on Terror killed a million people. Is revenge really a concept worth supporting??? Can Israel kill a million people and get away with it? These are people just like you and me. All they want in life is a place to be where there is peace.
Much Love from Janet, Ken and Tucker and thank you for reading this.
For all the people say about Liverpool, in a negative sense, we have found it to be extremely interesting. Our son Josh is adopted and his birth father, Steve, lives in Liverpool, with his wife Chis. Shown here on the left, him and Josh are working out their “road trip”, down through Wales, to get to London where Josh flies home from a week from now.
Although we have met Steve several times over the years, those meetings have been brief, so this is the first chance to really get to know him. It has been wonderful to see the little similarities, perhaps to better understand Josh. It has been an experience for me. PLUS, and this is a smaller, but not insignificant plus, he has lived in this area for most of his life, and so is a great tour guide, with lots of little tidbits that I always love.
It turns out that Liverpool is more than the Beatles home town.
I was not aware that Liverpool was bombed is WW 2 , but alas, being a port city, it was a main target. Liverpool was the largest working port on the west coast, thereby critical to the British war effort. In 1941 the city was hit by a devastating 7 day bombardment, and this church, St Luke’s, was hit causing a large fire that destroyed the centre of the building.
It was an Anglican Church and the bishop of Liverpool pressed for it to be left as a memorial to the war . So it sat for 60 years becoming quite derelict until it was revitalized in the early 2000s, and is now used for events, such as the market that we walked through
Steve here
Oh and a statue outside to commemorate the Christmas in WW I when the soldiers on both sides put down their weapons and played soccer.
Certainly points towards the inherent stupidity of war.
We then went to a pub that has earned a special title for being perfectly preserved.
It is particularly famous for the “gents” bathroom. Josh snuck a photo for me.
I did check out the “ ladies loo”, but it was clearly an after thought and following the directions to the “ladies” I got the distinct impression that I was being escorted out. 😮
We then visited England’s largest cathedral
It was started around 1906 and completed 1978. I struggle with the enormous amount of money that goes into these kind of structures while poverty is so rampant.
And what trip to Liverpool would be complete without seeing the cavern club famed for being the site that the Beatles played early in their careers. The regional club is no longer open across the street are a few clubs with the name cavern so it’s a bit confusing. The street felt a little bit like bourbon street in New Orleans with music blaring from every door.
What tour would be complete without a beach walk? Ahead of Ken‘s hair, you can see a statue to the right. Then, if you look further and more closely, there are two others, further out. Apparently, there is a total of 100 of these statues and you can watch them appear and disappear according to the moon to the tides.
Another interesting thing about this beach is that just north of here is where they dumped the rubble from all the buildings destroyed in the bombs in ww2. So the beach is mostly made up of bricks that have been tumbling around in the ocean for 70 years. It would be wonderful to be here and take some home and build a fence or a cottage or something with them.
You can see a lot in a day with a good guide
Of course we found some cool sea glass. I guess from the windows that were part of the rubble
The British certainly seem to know how to do autumn up in style. It is raining and cool, and the air is clean, and it is not even officially Autumn yet. We seem to have forgotten how to do that in Canada.
We are done our walk along Hadrians wall path, and have spent the night in Newcastle on Tyne. We have train booked for Liverpool this morning. As the name suggests, Newcastle is on the Tyne river, and though it is hard to see from this picture, there are 5 bridges crossing the Tyne here. The one in the foreground is a foot bridge.
Newcastle apparently developed around a Roman settlement called Pons Aelius. It then took the name, Monkchester. It was finally named Newcastle on Tyne after a castle built by William the conquerors oldest son Robert Curthose. Newcastle was one of the world’s largest ship building centres during the Industrial Revolution.
Newcastle still maintains its medieval street layout, so it was nice to be walking vs driving. Who knows the medieval right of way?
The very tall statue here is for Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey and prime minister of UK from 1830-1834. His term was famed for the great reform act of 1832, an act that reorganized the voting system increasing number of those eligible to vote. (But not women)😔😮
Apparently, the lesser known fact is that the tea, Earl Grey tea was named after him.
Not to belabour the point, but this IS a very tall statue, so we figured it MUST be a pretty important person
Here is us just before we finished the hike. We did the last day backwards so that we could find accommodation. Instead of walking east from Newcastle to Wallsend to end hike , we took bus to Wallsend and walked back
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