Give it a Day and Things Will Change

Knowing that changes were comin' we walked a couple miles down the "trail" yesterday mid day.

From a nice sunny camp... Yesterday...

*Looking toward Jerome (just above the truck) from camp*

We walked down this road that passes the camp headed for the river... and sees little traffic this time of year... (nothing passed us either way going or coming)

*Access road to the Verde River below our boondock camp*

 Before this came in during the night...

 The same view from camp but standing behind the rig between squalls...

*You Can't even see the mountains let alone Jerome*

Nope... can't even see the mountains this morning...

It's about a mile to the Verde River from camp. The difficulty for lazy folks is that it's all down hill. Easy going down... doubles the distance coming back up! :)

It flattens out near the bottom...

... and allows for a pleasant stroll in the winter sunshine. The sort of quiet walk that lets your head slow down and the knots unwind... The sort of walk that's good for your mind... not just your body.

Once you're in the bottom, if you look back to the east a ways there's a hill that sticks up... Up on top, if you look real close you can see the posts of a new vineyard that's being built... Alcantara I think is the name of the place...

It'll be easy to find... just go down the Thousand Trails road east of Cottonwood and follow the signs. There's supposed to be... or going to be a "Tasting Room" there... hmmmm.... guess maybe I should do more of those Brewery tours and get in on some Beer Tastings! ;)

Down along the Verde River in late winter... even if the trees aren't leafed out... it's a quiet and nice place. The spring run off is already filling the streams coming off the high country of the Mogollon Rim to the north.

*Late winter along the Verde River in Arizona*

Lily had a bit of excitement the day before this walk... Heidi took the dogs for a walk while I was riding to Jerome...

They were right about here... or at least Lily was

Heidi was walking farther on, just the other side of that lil' tree up the bank ~ when she heard a PLUNCK! When she looked back; "Where's Lily?"... and then she saw her floating down the river...

In the flat it don't look to be flowin' hard does it? Looks can be deceiving.

She brought up 75' or so down stream against the bank in that lil' eddy on the right side just before a lengthy section of choked down pretty quick water. It's maybe three or four feet deep in that hole...

A lil' bit of a close call. Apparently she leaned over the bank to catch a drink... her back end let go and kerplunk! in she went. Trouble is THAT dog don't care for the water and has NEVER gone swimming. The most she'd ever done was wade ankle deep. ;) got herself a bit of a swimmin' lesson at 14 years old!

As quiet as this stream might look now... if you look around the evidence is pretty plain that she ain't always... quiet...

If you look at the trash hangin' in the trees in the picture of the spot Lily got back to the bank... and the following pics...

... You can see the high water marks of the gully washers and major winter run offs... Now THAT would NOT be a good time to swim in this lil' bit of Arizona riparian paradise! :)

... and is why it's a poor idea in this desert country to set your camp in river bottoms, gully country or narrow drainages... a cloud burst miles away will send your camp downstream in a most uncomfortable way. ;)

That's ok. I'm not much into swimmin' anyhoo... and we still had to have the ambition to climb back up out of the river bottom to get back to camp!

*River bottom trail along the Verde River*

Today and tomorrow, according to the weather man will be a pair of days, tailor made for staying inside, in camp... writing... Unless you're one of those rare souls who giggles and dances in the rain...

Me? Not so much... Many thanks for the invite... but I'll stay dry and close to the coffee pot.

Well...except for... during yesteday's chore run to be ready for the couple days of stormy weather ahead... somebody forgot to take the gas can for the generator...

I expect I'll need to run ol' squeal and belch a time or two since it's chilly and overcast... and between the heater keepin' us comfortable and the clouds keeping the Solar Panels from doin' much... We'll need a lil' electrical assistance... So... I'll have to carefully wade out through the Arizona mud to get a tank full...

Tap Tap Tappin' the keyboard with Arizona Rain on the Roof
Brian

Mining Towns, Ancient Ruins... and Dragon's Breath

Me and the Raider went for a short ride yesterday morning. It was good to be out in the sun on the open road climbing up into the mountains... Though I didn't go all the way up. There's still snow atop Mingus Mtn! ;)

That's a fun ride. Just a few miles up hwy 260 through Cottonwood from our camp east of town and then turn off on 89A for the climb up into the Black Hills of North Central Arizona to the town of Jerome.

What can I say 'bout Jerome, Arizona that's not been repeated a thousand times already? Jerome is one of those interesting spots that isn't especially photogenic. It's the remains of an old time copper mining town that was reborn from a ghost town into an artists colony.

The place is perched on the dry slopes of the Black Hills west of Cottonwood straddling Arizona 89A. Just a worn old place fighting to preserve it's personality.

Miners, gamblers, a soiled dove or two all called this place home for a while. Another of the towns too tough to die. This one nearly did... Now it's found new life as a tourist magnet.

They make their money three ways... first, selling their mainly artist type wares to the public... Second, feeding you in a small selection of cafe's and such in between your shopping circles.

Then, mixed in with all that touristing, the town's black and white lays hidden amongst the parked cars, waiting to catch you bending the rules so it can mine some more revenue from your pockets! ;)

Take your time. The streets are snug, drives and roads coming in from odd angles... and you never know when one of them snowbirds is gonna throw a door open in their haste to get that trinket before some other tourista beats 'em to it!

This morning I just played biker and rolled through the town  and on up to near the top of Mingus Mtn.

Twists and turns and light traffic on a sunny day make for a good ride.

I got back to camp in time to take a quick lunch then we loaded in the truck to roll it over to the Montezuma Castle and Montezuma Well country.

The ruins in this area were built by who the fellas that have studied such doins call the Sinagua People.

***A lil' sidebar here; In the visitor center at Montezuma Castle there was a LONG list of the research projects going on in the area.

I'm not one for inhibiting the pursuit of knowledge. That's a risky position to take up... but... considering the general situation of soh-sigh-uh-tee... would it be possible that studying the sexual responsibilities and parenting abilities of leeches in Arizona is juuuuuuuuuust a small mis-allocation of  assets in short supply? ... Just sayin'... ;) ***

*The critical study of parenting ability of Leeches*

...hmmmmm... on second thought... might could be the results of such a study might could provide us with a bit of insight for dealing with the politicians we're afflicted with! ;) ZING!!!

Ok... back to the Castle Touring...

This area, the Verde Valley, is one of my favorite parts of Arizona. There's a bundle of creeks and rivers. The Cottonwoods and Sycamores provide precious shade to lay up and sip a cool beer on a hot summer afternoon...

*Sycamore Trees waiting on Summer leaves*

 A lot of this country and that just over east, just under and above the Mogollon Rim is the country Zane Grey wrote about in a lot of his westerns.

*Montezuma Castle*

The "Castle" was actually not the largest of the ruins along this river, only the best preserved. Just around the corner of the canyon are the remains of a much larger dwelling.

8 or 10 miles or so and a bit north is the place called Montezuma well. It's a sink created from some sort of collapse of what amounted to a big cave. The odd thing about this place is, no fish. The water is heavily laced with Sulfur Dioxide.

Too much for fish... but thousands of leeches call it home! Hence the "Study". ;)

 

I'm looking at this hole and reading on one of the sign boards that a steady unending daily flow of 1.6 million gallons runs into this sink from vents on its floor.

The thought immediately occurred to this old desert rat; "That water level looks pretty stable... if that much is flowin' in... where the hell is it going. It looks like a bowl?"

*Ruins above Montezuma Well*

Well! ;) A lil' farther on was another sign that pointed the way to the outflow! You have to go down a set of rock steps through a notch in the rocks...

... to a small channel of water flowin' along the base of the canyon wall...

 

Follow along the narrow path for a few yards in the shade of the rocks and trees and the stream disappears around a corner of the wall...

1.6 million gallons a day flows out, mainly through this lil' stream coming almost silently out of a hole in the wall... No cascading waterfall, but it's an awful pretty and peaceful spot. I can only imagine how sweet a retreat it would be on a hot summer afternoon... shaded up in this spot with the water gurgling...

*Montezuma Well outflow*

... and Beaver Creek just a few steps away... on it's way to the Verde River... Some sweet Arizona Homeland country...

*Beaver Creek flowing past Montezuma Well*

Arizona ain't nearly as dry as some would lead you to believe. There's not the water for all those lawns and golf courses down in the valley... but it's a fine place for a lot fewer people to live! ;)

Made a wide circle around by way of Oak Creek and Sedona pulling back into camp just before sunset... of which there was none. But, in the morning we woke to the sound a Dragon Breathing...

A Hot air balloon sank out of sight below the rim of the hill. A couple minutes later, with the roaring of a Dragons lungs it rose back into view...

*Hot Air Balloon Rising over Cottonwood Arizona*

 

We'll need to run some chores today to be ready to hunker down again for a couple of days. Another western storm is slotted to blow through this weekend... with a promise of the possibility of more snow! grrrrrr... ;) ... this camp is on soft ground so we'll be pretty much held to camp till the ground firms back up... if the precipitation actually materializes...

On the Arizona High Desert
Brian

P.S. Dealing with the Spam; Changing the blog to "registered users" (your google account or Open I.D.) seems to have curtailed the spam assault. Hopefully signing into your account to leave a comment will be less hassle than having to sort out that "Word Verification" puzzle.

From One Camp to the Next With Minor RV Solar Tribulations

The night before last, after a week, we were treated to a fairly nice Arizona sunset as we were shutting down tram operations at Phoenix International Raceway.

*Arizona Sunset over the PIR Tram Operations Office*

It was kind of an Off week. Part of it got off to a bad start when in the first two days they found two NASCAR fans dead in their rigs from apparent heart attacks... kind of a downer and to tell the truth crew, fans seemed a step off the whole week... even poor lil' Danica went from bein' in the front row in Daytona to crashing out in Phoenix. ;)

Then it really started looking up close and personal like a;  "Pick up boot... thump on head... repeat as needed" sort of a week! When our Solar Power system went down.

Juuuust a lil' "ooops!" in the middle of the night when I slid down the bed to shut off the inverter I'd forgotten to switch off. Sliding across the bed I collected enough static charge to zap things when I touched the panel... Dang!

That xantrex 60 amp charge controller and monitor had been doing great work for us for a long time! It was installed with the intention of adding two and possibly three more panels. Life has got in the way and those haven't been put on yet. The thing is, with all the computer time I spend... we've been living full time, with little generator time, on only TWO Kyocera 130watt panels controlled by that xantrex/trace engineering controller.

...and now I was fearful I'd totally fried it with a tiny lil' static spark... arrrrrggggghhhh.

I got  RV Solar Electric on the phone first thing Monday morning. They're the outfit that sold me the hardware for our RV Solar Power system 6 and a half years ago. You know what? A crooked or even just incompetent outfit, after talking to me and hearing my description of the difficulty would have said; "Bummer, that sure sounds fried to me. You need to order a new one. Just $180 bucks!"

I want to blow their horn a bit, 'cause that's not what they did. They asked me a couple of questions and sent me off to run another procedure on the jammed up system. His last words were; With any luck I'm pretty confident we won't be hearing from you again!"  That to me is Customer Service, trying hard to Not have to sell you more equipment ... customer service and honesty. They were in no danger of any "warranty" work, yet were more interested in taking care of their customer than squeezing out another sale.

I couldn't do that "reset Procedure" right then since we needed to get moved out of the track. I didn't want to get things taken apart and then have something leave me twisting... So I waited till we got set up in a new RV boondock camp to go to work.

*Boondocked near Cottonwood Arizona*

We pulled into a decent enough camp up near Cottonwood that we were pointed to by friends from the tram crew. This should be a pretty fair base to snoop around this country for a short while, before we roll for Death Valley.

Soon as we got set up... I went to work.

What I needed to do was completely disconnect the solar charge controller from any power. That meant both the input and output sides.

What it was doing was; it was frozen in a state that said the batteries were fully charged, so it wouldn't let any power pass from the solar panels to the batteries. I'd tried the "Reset" button on the controller in several different ways... but no go.

It's kind of like when your laptop freezes up and nothing but "crashing" it (turning the power off) will break it loose. For some reason it hadn't occurred to me to pop those wires. DOH!

Now the way this thing is wired in... and where... breaking the panels loose from the controller was a bigger pain than I wanted to subject my tired and cranky but to. SO... for the panels I just covered 'em with the heavy wool blanket you can see in the picture above. Result? No sun on the panels means Zero watts/volts/amps to the controller, same as disconnecting the wires.

From the other side I disconnected the positive wire that runs from the charge controller to the batteries at the batteries where I have plenty of room to work. So... zero power flowing back to the controller from the RV solar power battery bank.

Then... the thing that I didn't know was to leave that all dormant for at least an hour. I figured since he said at least... I'd leave it two. Ha! That made plenty of time to sit and chill with a sweet bottle of Land Shark Beer! ;)

When I got into the battery box I did find something unexpected. I hadn't seen it in six years... Corrosion! Yuck! At least it was only on that one single post. The crud really bloomed! It wasn't there at all just a few weeks ago last time I checked things...

*Uh Oh! Battery Connection gone ugly!*

... the rest look pretty near as clean as the day I installed 'em.

*Clean and Stout 6 1/2 years old RV Battery Bank cables*

Today I'll go through and clean the contacts with soda and reseal. To tell the truth, even though we plan on replacing the battery bank in a couple weeks; There's a part of me urging me to wait it out to see just how long these Trojan T-105 batteries will perform. At six and a half years, they're still doing the job. We barely go below 12.4 volts, with pretty much Zero generator use between about this time in March and November... and very little use really, three or four hours a week maybe through the winter.

That's with making my coffee every morning and a few hours of charging laptops and such on top of that nearly every day. Pretty awesome performance of a solar power system if you ask me.

Ha! You're still wondering about that controller aren't you? :)

SuhWheet! It did just exactly what my guys at RV Solar electric said it would do. It reset! I hooked it all back up in the dark and it seemed to be back to normal. Couldn't get the final GOOD TO GO until the sun came up this morning... She's convertin' sunshine and running like she always has. No New Controller Needed! HooYa!

If you read the comments yesterday you'll see that others recommend other controllers and companies. A couple speak highly of the Blue Sky controller unit. Also the Northern Arizona Wind and Sun Outfit up in Flagstaff. (I've heard good about them before) I can't recommend those only because I haven't used 'em. BUT... the experience of readers here is as worthy as mine, so that gives you a selection to choose from! ;)

Powered Back Up and Converting Sunshine
Brian

***Sorry, but the spam is getting out of control. I have turned on "Registered Users" to comment. I've been getting 200+ spams a week and lately, far too many have been sifting through bloggers filter. Hopefully this will take care of it and I won't have to turn the "Verification Word" gadget back on***