The Proverbial Wall and a visit to California

When I was researching this new lifestyle, I heard it said many times... 'this lifestyle will make or break your relationship'. Well, we hit that wall yesterday. In all fairness to both of us, this heat has been terribly difficult on us both. We now know why people don't get this far south until November. Today we finally broke the 30's(Celsius) and had a freezing temp of 27C (80F), it is said by those in the know that we will be maintaining this temperature for the next couple of weeks - likely story, but we'll see.

In any event, yesterday we woke up and all was fine. Then Brad made himself a Keurig coffee and the machine turned off during heating. We then realized that we had no power. None, zero, zilch. After checking all the stuff we know to check, I called the boys at Discount Solar. Could they have a guy look at it if we brought it in. Yes, Larry says. So we packed her up and off we went, Brad following in the Jeep.

When I arrived Larry came out and checked this and that, I've no idea. To cut a really long story short (and lose a great punch line), it turned out that the Solenoid in the engine compartment has a breaker on it and that had flipped. (your welcome ;) ) Craig (owner) was the genius that figured that out, went right to it once the guys told him what was happening.

We are so appreciative of the great service and friendly staff we have received at Discount Solar here in Quartzsite. These guys know their stuff!!

Anyway with that stress AND the heat, when we returned to our campsite we had a rather large argument. A make or break argument. Can't imagine what the neighbours think of us! In the end, we have chosen to make it work. We have been through much worse in our 12 years together, I have the best husband ever.

I can only speak for us - but it seems that this lifestyle changes the way you do things. You know how you break things down at home? He does the garbage, She does the dishes... whatever it is. It changes when your living this lifestyle, at least it has for us. The Ying/Yang that makes us work has been fluctuating the last couple of weeks and yesterday it exploded.

Everything is fine now and we have agreed to change things up a little to accommodate the new lifestyle but anyone considering doing this with a spouse should be aware that the way things have worked in sticks and bricks may not work so well on wheels. When your camping there are no obvious his/hers breakdowns.

Today we went for a drive to the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge, its just a portion of the valley set aside really but the landscape has more and different vegetation than the part of the valley we are staying in which was interesting since its only a couple of miles down the road. I can only assume it is a lower altitude thereby gaining much more of the water run off from the hills.

Entrance marker to the Kofa Wildlife Refuge

Kofa Wildlife Refuge Information

Notice of former mining and munitions

We got pretty close to the hills we have been looking at for the past week or so

View of the Refuge

Pretty Cacti

It was still early so we decided to go and check out Blythe. Of course this means crossing into California! Yay! Well, turned out not to be so Yay! Blythe is done, like dinner. We drove all over the place and I even went in to a couple of shops to see about getting something small for lunch but only found rotting vegetables and dried up bakery goods in the two places we stopped. Perhaps it was a bad day, but we were sorely unimpressed with both Blythe and by extension California today.

About to cross into California

Entering California you have to go through this check for produce and stuff

A Canal in Blythe, prettiest part of the trip

Appeared to be a cotton field or something white and puffy anyway

All in all we had a great day out getting familiar with our surroundings. I'd like to find out what there is to do around here, I've checked a couple of apps and other than GeoCaching with snakes I can't find anything. I'll be doing a more indepth review of the AllTrails app because I think there may be more there than I found the first look I had.