Garden complete - Almost

We managed to get our garden planting finished on Sunday, but then yesterday an order of seeds that I placed weeks ago arrived...... so....

In this corner we have:

Asparagus, Sweet peas, several different Tomatoes and Romaine

In the main body we have:

Old and New potatoes, Butternut squash, Cauliflower, Broccoli, Green/Red/Yellow/Orange/Jalapeno Peppers, Celery, Dill, Parsley and Cucumber

Here I have Sunflowers, Dill, Oregano, Carrots, Onions and Romaine

Not sure yet how we will fit these new additions in as the garden space is pretty full but we'll have to find a way -- especially for the Romaine as we eat so much of it.

We also received an order of 2 cords of wood yesterday and we managed to get a good chunk of that stored into the wood shed before it started to feel like rain so Brad went to the shops for a part for the sink repair (hang on I'll get there) and grabbed a tarp while he was there. Good thing because we barely had it covered when the weather guessers were wrong and it bloody rained!! It will take a few days to get this put away because I am clearly still recovering from my Thyroid thing even if I do feel fine and with Brad's injuries we're a right pair.

Now about the sink. About a week after moving in I realized that the drain pipe under one side of the double sink was not attached (yes, I found that the hard way). We've been so busy with everything else that I was just using one side until we could get to sorting it. Yesterday was sink sorting day, now both sinks drain properly but there is a missing stopper so I'll have to pick that up as each of the two sinks have different stoppers -- no idea how that happened, but.... there you have it. Oh, and the dishwasher, which we don't actually use (not enough dishes, so easier to do by hand) doesn't drain.

As does (not) the washing machine (new washer and dryer expected to arrive on Friday, btw) I am able to do laundry (did it yesterday) by washing in the washer (bang/clang/boom), wringing the clothes out and then hanging them on my laundry line on the back deck to dry for a couple of days. There is a better laundry line in the front (in the sun) but I can't access it yet because the grape vines need to be redirected off the deck so I can get out there and we just haven't gotten to that chore yet. First world problems, I know.

I don't think I mentioned it but I am back to Pickleball. I started back on Thursday and went again on Sunday, today is the 3rd scheduled play day of the week... The club has been very welcoming which is nice, like me they seem to just want to play - not become professional picklers, so that is awesome. Playing with pro wannabe's is stressful, so having a club where everyone just wants to have fun (such as Salt Spring) is fantastic. So the Covid-19 protocols for play require that each player has their own ball and no one touches another players balls (never thought I'd write that on this blog - haha!) This is a pain in the arse but is easily adapted to and its all for fun anyway so who cares?!

Laundry Day

We could have bought a proper used laundry set, but then if we leave the island we'd have to sell it or leave it behind. I had seen many RVers with washer spin dryers and I had one myself when the kids were small, but in winter and rain I'd need a way to dry.... so to find something we could take with us should we decide to move on.

I found these:

Washer/Spin Dryer

Hanging Dryer

There was no tracker on the washer, so best guess was Jan 11-23rd!!! However, it did show that it had crossed the border when I checked it on Wednesday am and since it was coming from California I didn't think it would take too long to arrive so we held off going to Duncan and having already received the dryer - I chose to wash a few things by hand (yes, red raw hands) and hope the washer came through in a couple of days.

By that very afternoon, it arrived. The wonders of Canada Post!

Washer/Spin Dryer

When I ordered it I thought it was orange so was much relieved when it arrived brown.

For those unfamiliar:

Clothes go in the left side, water enters through the hose at the top left and the clothes are agitated clean. You then drain the water out and move the clothes to the right side (to rinse, the hose is attached to the right top) and spun very rapidly which removes 95% of the water. 

Obviously 35 years ago the one I had wasn't plastic, so I was a little concerned about this concept (Brad was too) but its actually working well - so far.... had it now for 2 days and have done several loads as I need to catch up.

13 lb capacity. I checked and a typical washer does around 20lb, so not too far off.

This is the dryer.

 It is essentially a clothes rack with a zippered enclosure, there is a heater at the bottom which puts heat up through and dries the clothes, quite well I might add. Roughly an hour and its all dry. However when I was wringing the clothes by hand it took about 2 hours to dry them, fortunately that didn't last but a few hours before the washer arrived.

There are 6 cross clips (here used for socks) which you can then hang things on with a coat hanger. I have found it helpful if I turn the hangers half way through, for speed to get both sides dry when doing a full load but if I leave it to dry long enough, say an hour and a half, it will all be dry. 

Vent holes at the top allow excess hot air and moisture to escape - making the old stinky shed smell fresh and clean. 

We will be putting a proper laundry line in the yard somewhere for nice days but this will be great for wet/cold days.

Brad gave the windows a good going over and now we can see out 

Its been raining dogs and cats here the last week or so but apparently we've come out the other side of it and now we can get some stuff done around here..... and hang a laundry line, too.

Well now, that was a day!

We woke up this morning with nothing to do... then remembered that the slide topper guy was supposed to be coming today. Brad was going to run into Quartzsite and do something or other while I still had to get myself put together, then the topper guy called. He was at the front entrance to the LTVA... where were we? Cutting a long story short, we were happy with the result of the topper guy's visit. He will return on Wednesday (not happy about that as we were hoping to go somewhere else soon) and the cost of the repair will be $169.78US. Not great but atleast its not crazy expensive.

For the record the topper guy is Ron Butts with Shade Pro RV Awnings. Nice guy and sounds like he knows his stuff.

After this we figured we go to Quartzsite and do a bit of laundry, fully intending to bring it home wet and hang it on some contraption that Brad has planned and I know no details of.

And we did - go to Quartzsite and do a bit of laundry, that is. It was a cool, cloudy day today so we left Robbie at home and the two of us drove in. He dropped me off at a new laundromat the Palm Plaza Laundromat since I was so thoroughly unimpressed with the last one. I loved it. It was clean, quiet, the other users were friendly and the price was great. $2/wash and .25 for 7 min on the dryer I put it in for 45min and it was dry when it finished. Not sopping wet. Well worth the price. So a huge thank you to the management of that place, we will be back.

Our Laundry Hamper

Saw this notice of the upcoming Farmers Market and I'm excited to check it out on Tuesday.

While I was doing laundry, Brad went to go have a chat with the solar boys again. We've been finding that its not keeping up with our energy usage, so he wanted to see what we could have done to it to correct the problem... perhaps another panel and upgrade the controller... the boys suggested tilting the panels and they could fit us in right away. So he came back to the laundromat to pick me up.

We rushed home and packed up the rig for moving and off we went. Dropped her off at Discount Solar yet again for the boys to fix her up. They removed all the panels, put tilting feet on them and replaced them moving one into a better position. We are not able to tilt them for a few days (5 apparently) to allow time for the lap sealant to set up well before the wind hits them. $482US for today's little add-on but apparently it will give us the 20% extra we seem to be missing.

Kendon on the roof of Ace once again

Obviously we also need to cut down on our power usage. We'll have to limit ourselves to a morning and late afternoon charge of all the gadgets on generator power until we are able to tilt these babies. Even after that we will be watching our energy usage much closer, killing the Keurig will go a long way towards that. Brad drinks about 8 cups of coffee a day... yes, I've told him - he doesn't care. So when we were watching Moving Forward the other night and they were showing their Presto MyJo K-cup coffee maker, we knew we just had to get one. THIS alone will save us enough power over the course of a day to send Armstrong to the moon and back. I ordered him one the very next morning along with a new collapsible kettle for both of us.

After returning to our campsite, having dumped the black/gray tanks and reloaded the fresh water we set the rig to better orient her for her new solar setup. Brad promptly began patching the holes left by the atrocious placement of the panels by Woody's RV in Red Deer. He is none too happy with them at the moment and I try to remind him that they are Dealers not Solar guys but he is mad at the hack job they did to our roof and thinks they shouldn't be doing solar if they don't know what they're doing. We have A LOT of patches up there now with the original 4 that came from the previous owners satellite dish, 14 now. 

He managed to get 4 of them patched and sealed today but has 6 more to do in the morning. We specifically told the guys at Discount Solar we would do them ourselves so that we can be absolutely sure they are done correctly given the high number of them. All this patching will undoubtedly affect any future sale should we choose to upgrade and we will likely have to replace the entire roof. Long time readers will remember we have some experience with this. Somewhere in all of this we also order 4 new tires for the Jeep ($914US) Gulp!!!

By this time it was 5:30pm and the steaks we had out for supper while tempting were not enough to entice the effort required to cook them from either of us so out for dinner we went. Remembering that someone (sorry don't remember who) recommended Mountain Quail Cafe, that was where we went.

Mountain Quail Cafe

Well, let me tell you - I'm no Gordon Ramsey but I hope that wasn't how you remember it. Not anymore anyway, the business is for sale and while the atmosphere was clean, quiet and the staff were very friendly and happy, the food - well there was some of it that even Brad couldn't eat (he ate in ditches in the Army). He also didn't drink the coffee. I had chicken fingers and when I couldn't rip them apart I picked up my knife and fork but couldn't cut them with those either. It was bad. Just bad.

I've become quite the critic lately. Not sure I like it, but I have been writing quite a few Yelp! reviews. Most of them are good experiences so I guess that balances things out but when we have an experience like we had at the laundromat last week and today's dinner, I just think its important to let people know. Not just potential Customers of these establishments but the Owner/Managers as well. If they don't know there is a problem, they can not be expected to fix it... this is my view on this. Feel free to correct me if you feel different, because I don't like writing bad reviews but...

Well tonight when I was reviewing today's laundromat a Google something something popped up asking me to become a 'Local Guide' doing reviews of the places we experience. I have taken it on, mostly because I can take it off if I should choose to.

I sure wish I used these reviews myself, I must get better at it. Usually when we are going for dinner we just go and see what we see, we don't Google to find out what other people's experiences are at a place. I need to do this more - at all actually.

Generally it was a good and productive day that just ended badly but tomorrow is another so...

Onward and Upward my friends, Onward and Upward.

Solar, Laundry, Pizza & TV

This morning we realized that while our inverter was working, we were not bringing in any power to the batteries. So our day of chilling out was out the window once again. I called Discount Solar and let them know we were on our way, what the problem was and that we'd get the buzzer done at the same time. Turned out that a connector was bad on the roof, so about 45 minutes there getting that sorted and the low battery buzzer installed. 

Figured we'd go for pizza - what else do you do when its 35C?! Yes, we're odd. Off to Silly Al's where I saw this recipe on the wall, not sure it will all fit in the Instant Pot though. 

We always get a larger pizza than we need so we have lunch the next day, but we order the 'gargantuan' literally that's what its called (20") clearly we didn't give much thought to just how big that would be. So we had lunch yesterday, a snack last night, likely breakfast this morning and lunch again today. It won't all fit in the fridge, so eat it we must.

Over to the laundromat where the washer was $1.75 and the dryer was $4.50, 20 min for the washer, 25 min for the dryer. As you might expect it wasn't dry and I was mad as hell. $4.50!!!! and its not dry... how much would it cost me to get it dry? I wasn't prepared to find out.

(This is the GoodYear Blimp flying over Quartzsite today)

Back to the RV and Brad strung up some rope for me and we got the laundry out to dry. 2 hours later I checked and all but 4 pieces were done so I brought in the dry and reset the damp stuff. Actually its currently 6:30am and I just realized I didn't bring them in last night. Oops.

This was a couple of days ago, we were trying to find a GeoCache, without success unfortunately, but since I didn't get to do any GeoCaching yesterday I thought I'd throw in the pic that I have been trying. Note the hat I mentioned in a previous blog. Sexy Mama, Right?!

We also stopped at a Satellite/TV place (when I say we, I mean he), and picked this up for around $80 we were able to pick up 30+ channels. My husband it turns out is a techy guru (not), but it works so who's to argue?

Called the AZ DMV yesterday and was advised that all we need to plate a vehicle is the Title, an AZ address (slight hiccup but doable) and within 30 day have AZ insurance (specifically Arizona Insurance, why I don't know - money grab I suppose).

Called Insurance Brokers of Arizona and was assured that we could get AZ insurance, they do it all the time. Even for Canadians. Well, Okay.

Spent most of last night searching for Jeeps, hence I didn't get this blog posted last night and I was up at 4:30am thinking about the Jeep I found and want. We booked a place to stay just outside Phoenix area for Sunday, so we could spend a couple of days searching and doing the paperwork.

When messaging the guy who currently owns the Jeep I want he advised he was taking it to Tucson on Friday to show a couple who want it as a Toad! So at 4:30am I'm awake thinking we should get there before he goes and save him a trip... not to mention, get us a vehicle. Of course, this will require a couple of days of boondocking before our park reservations kick in. 

Have not discussed this with Brad yet (he, apparently can sleep), so will let you know what happens in tonight's post.

Here is a picture of the TV antennae gizmo since kelly at The Bayfield Bunch asked.

$50

The necessary poles and whatnots were purchased seperately at one of the tents (EEZ RV Store, I think) on Kuehn St in the South West Quadrant (southside of highway 10, that is) for approx $30.