Getting Caught Up (1/19/2017)

First off, HAPPY NEW YEAR!

It has been a crazy end to 2016 and start of 2017.  Going back to December, the last two weeks of the year, and let me start there.  I worked remotely the last two weeks and spent that time on the property with Sheralee.  The first weekend was wonderful, got to work on the cat house some more, making it really ‘usable’.

It turned out pretty good, but still some more ‘sealing’ to do to protect it from the weather elements, and siding on the two walls.  It has some visitors early on.

All in all it started out well.  Then the rain came…

Now, rain in Northern Arizona is not like Oregon rain.  Of course it is wet, but the ground is completely different in N. AZ. It is just pure clay.  When clay gets wet, look out.  It rained for about three days, then we caught some sun breaks…and then it rained more, before snowing.  We tried to get Sheralee out Christmas eve, with an epic fail.  The Jeep had mud/snow chains on the back and still failed.  We just made it back to our house and shut it down.

That night it snowed..

We got about 6″ of snow, which definitely made it easier to get out the next morning, except when we packed up to leave, Christmas morning, the mud was frozen around my wheels and the Jeep wouldn’t move.  We had to chip away at frozen mud/clay until we were freed up enough to leave.  We did finally make it out that morning and back to Henderson for a nice dinner and that was it.  I drove back the next morning…and it was beautiful.

It was gorgeous…frozen and super sunny.  So nice.  Sheralee then joined me the following morning, before it got above freezing, so getting in and out of the property was easy.

Then that all melted over the next week before New Years.  More on that in a second.

One other thing I got done was added a solar combiner box.  I will have two parallel strings, which go over the amperage allowed for my 10 gauge wire, so I added a combiner box and put each run on a 30A breaker.  Then they go off to the solar charge controller.  I only have strong on right now, but it worked out great.  Coming out of the breaker box is 6 gauge wire I think, which is rated up to something like 55 Amps.  Solar future looks good.

One thing we realized, not enough panels!!  We needed more power Scotty.  So, we ended up purchasing another 400 watts of panes, basically 2 190W panels, but have yet to mount them.  This will be the second string.

So, back to the story.  That lovely 6 inches of snow melted, with some rain helping it.  Yup, it started raining again for about 3 days.  Absolutely so frustrating, but overall we learned if you have to get off the property, then this rain is NOT good.

We decided at this time to try and get out and get back to LV to settle in again.  Re-think our approach to everything.  The dream lives, but we have a lot of thinking and planning to do.  We packed up the cats and what we could in the Jeep and barely got out on January 2nd, and I mean barely.  The Jeep is  BEAST…best vehicle we could own.  Still not sure how we got out of there.  We only brought what the Jeep could hold, which wasn’t a whole lot! hahaha  We figured we could get back up there and get what we needed.

Well, yesterday we had an awesome weather window to get up there and get out.


You can see how sunny it was…and not much wet mud.  Well, that changed today…

Yup, snowed up there last night and supposed to get up to 8″ through Saturday morning.  We had a great window provided to us, and we took it.


This is our bed, wrapped up for protection.  We got all of the goods/clothes we wanted and made it back to Henderson.  We actually slept on our other queen bed that was up there.  ohhhhhh so nice.  No more air mattress! haha

In these two weeks, which seem like an eternity, we settled back in Henderson, in a house, and are learning that all over again.

No, the dream is not dead at all…but being up there yesterday all of that seemed like another life.  We have some good planning to do for the future, and  A LOT of mulching to do…and I mean A LOT! ha.  Thankfully we have downed trees all over the place.

Until later this year…