It's early February and you can see the days getting longer. Now that we are out of the rain and back in sunshine, this bodes well for producing electricity from the solar panels. This has not been the norm for the last several weeks. Short days, cold weather, and cloudy rainy days are a source of sadness if you are depending on solar panels for power. Our option? The campground.
When one drives a truck like ours, campgrounds feel weird. The entire point of getting this was to avoid campgrounds. However, there are some realities.
The trash doesn't just "go away". We need to get water and dump the cassette (toilet) periodically. And when the weather sucks, after several days, we need to plug the truck in (or go for a very long drive).
So campgrounds serve a purpose. We are also dependent on cell service for work. So sometimes we just have to find someplace that isn't a skanky KOA; and view campgrounds as a logistical break...get rid of trash, empty and/or fill tanks and charge batteries.
With frequency, we'll meet interesting people and sometimes make new friends. Not a bad thing at all.
The last week was punctuated by moochdocking in a friends driveway, while it rained most of the time. We had big plans for the next few weeks, but couldn't deal with day after day of constant rain. Which California desperately needs. So, we decided to make a radical change to our route and detour back into the sun for a while. We'll return to the Bay Area in March and pick up where we left off; hopefully in weather more characteristic of the Golden State.
We cycled back to the desert, and accidentally ran across an email regarding the Desert Rendezvous , a gathering of overlanders in Anza Borrego. I'd signed up many weeks ago and completely forgot about it. Turns out we were wait-listed, and later added to the group (150 vehicles are allowed). It starts tomorrow, and conveniently we are camping 10 miles away!
So we'll attend that, which ought to be fun. Monday, it was 50 something and pouring.
I'm sitting here in my shorts and t-shirt and its 82 degrees, with nothing but blue sky over our heads. THIS is what we were expecting!
Comments