It’s the beginning of the end of our stay in the forest south of Flagstaff. I like it here, but the temperature is cooling off, and the party is moving south, one by one. I would have left today with a forecasted low of 38º tonight, but it’s quite windy and I don’t want to be on the road. It’ll be a good test for my heater and insulation, the coldest I’ve experienced yet in this van, and the coldest I wish to experience. The strong winds aren’t bad among the trees, though the occasional gust rains so many pine needles down on us that it feels like I need an umbrella at times.
Yellow Wolf left this morning. She had things to do in Flagstaff, and the elevation was getting to her. We’ll keep track of each other and meet back up at Wayne’s, if not somewhere along the way. I’ve pretty much packed up my own camp. I’ve even hitched up the trailer and loaded the motorcycle so I don’t have to think about it when I’m trying to get on the road tomorrow. Amanda is slowly packing as well and also leaving tomorrow.
I woke up to 12.78 volts in my house batteries, once again approaching critical levels. I ran the engine for a little while to get a boost to avoid entering the danger zone that could damage my batteries. On a whim, I decided to try starting my generator, despite not having the high altitude kit the instructions say it needs to run up here at 6,500 feet. It was a bit hard to start (mostly because I haven’t run it in a few months), but much to my surprise it did start, run, and work just fine! So I plugged it into my van, made sure my AC charger was set to its maximum 20-amp setting, and let it run for a couple of hours. I’m up to about 60% now, which is plenty to get me through the rest of today, tonight, and tomorrow morning. From there, I’ll have the double whammy of solar and alternator charging to fill the batteries back up over the next two days of driving.
I’ve thought about selling my generator, but now I’m having second thoughts. The “high altitude kit” is simply a different jet for the carburetor, tuning it to run properly at higher elevations where there’s less air. If I install that, I can simply run the generator for an hour or two each day while camping in the forest like this, and not drain my batteries to the low levels I have this past week. It won’t run as well at lower elevations, including the Arizona desert, but I have enough solar to charge me up (if not, I can add more) and enough battery capacity to get me through several rare cloudy days there. The generator is already paid for, I don’t need the money from selling it, and the high altitude kit isn’t expensive. It sounds like a good project to tackle over the winter.
The weather looks excellent for tomorrow’s trip to Casa Grande, halfway to Sierra Vista from here. It will be a cooler day than usual there, with a high of 85º and a comfortable low of 60º before returning to the 90s after I leave. Sierra Vista looks like 80s during the day and 50s at night, which I enjoy. Quartzsite is still in the 90s next week, but I’m not in a rush to get there, especially because I’ll be reuniting with much of my nomad family at Wayne’s. We’re putting the band back together…
Smokey Da Van 