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Old 01-24-2023, 09:17 AM   #41
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Tuesday
My previous post yesterday got lost with the spotty internet.
We are having good fun here at the ham radio quartzfest. The girls are studying for their ham tech license and that would be nice if they can pull it off. Yesterday was super windy and with the low temperature it was somewhat unpleasant. Nevertheless the ham people pulled of a couple of nice seminars., One one the image was about gold panning, nice fun
The chickens produced an egg , most welcome.
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Old 01-24-2023, 07:24 PM   #42
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we spent the windy day cooped up at skoolie and ended up changing plans.

skoolie was fun, but we decided to go coastal. tonight we're camped at Huntington Beach, CA for a couple of days and then we head home.
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Old 01-25-2023, 01:46 PM   #43
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Tuesday
My previous post yesterday got lost with the spotty internet.
We are having good fun here at the ham radio quartzfest. The girls are studying for their ham tech license and that would be nice if they can pull it off. Yesterday was super windy and with the low temperature it was somewhat unpleasant. Nevertheless the ham people pulled of a couple of nice seminars., One one the image was about gold panning, nice fun
The chickens produced an egg , most welcome.

Ham radio is (was) fun.. I regret letting my license expire and now i need to go get it again.. I do miss it.. when my work got busy i somehow got away from going to hamfests and no longer storm chased on weatherNets.. I really need to get back into it.. it was really a lot of fun even though i didnt do much more than 2 meter and 440 stuff..
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Old 01-25-2023, 08:55 PM   #44
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Turff, to bad we did not hook up,. Chris, yes get it again, kids and of nice to play with once in a while.
We met some nice people out here and our girls studied hard and passed the ham exam.. since they are young and girls that caused some nice excitement.
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Old 01-26-2023, 07:15 PM   #45
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A couple of entrepreneur electronic designers and ham operators made a vhf radio with gps positioning info. They set up a dragon game with a gps grid and a remote game computer. We got one of their radios and played for a long time.. very cool..
This morning we went in quartzsite for breakfast.. it is very busy here . Then we picked up water at a gas station , groceries and went to the flea market to buy some goodies.
Back at camp we took a try to wash with our washer we had taken along.. I need to make some mods so it uses less water.
Elfie's cluster had decided to not work so I spend some time to chasing wiring. One bad ground, one loose connector in the cluster and one bad fuse contact.. a royal pain.
Late in the afternoon there was happy hour with a lottery drawing,. No luck for us in that field.
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Old 01-27-2023, 12:46 AM   #46
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Turff, to bad we did not hook up,. Chris, yes get it again, kids and of nice to play with once in a while.
We met some nice people out here and our girls studied hard and passed the ham exam.. since they are young and girls that caused some nice excitement.
Congrats to the girls!
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Old 01-27-2023, 08:19 PM   #47
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Thanks Rock and Ruth,

We woke up on empty batteries so that was a bummer. The link10 battery monitor pulls of some tricks that are not handy. After some jumper wiring and restarting the solar chargers all started working again.
We are still at the hamfest. This morning early there was a swap meet and I scored some goodies.
After that we left to downtown quartzsite to celebrate Leena s birthday. Also Tanya needed internet to do some online in person school work..Then we drove with Elfie to Ehrenburg and checked out skoolie palooza.
More on that later.. we may get stop there for a couple of days.
We were back around 4 pm and found that we charged 120 ah at 25 volt.. not bad..
In the evening I started dory to let the alternator help out a bit as well.
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Old 01-27-2023, 08:33 PM   #48
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Some birthday
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Old 01-28-2023, 08:34 AM   #49
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driving across the country, getting a HAM license, seeing all kinds of cool sights... that *IS* a REAL EPIC birthday celebration!!!
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Old 01-28-2023, 12:36 PM   #50
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Hi Chris,. Yes I think we are pretty fortunate, hope it will last. I am sure the chaos theory will set in at some moment.
This morning we had another swap meet. Got a better antenna for the baofeng radio and then there was the balloon launch.. pretty cool
Then we felt hungry and did not want to load our battery with the induction stove this morning so we decided to drive back into quartzsite and go to a Mexican breakfast restaurant.. now picking up some more water and help cleanup the ham fest camp area and off to skoolie palooza site

Johan
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Old 01-29-2023, 10:34 AM   #51
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Wow, what an epic trip so far! All I see are some amazing memories made for your family. I need to take Chris' advice and stop working on mine and just go somewhere. With business slowing down, I may just have to do that. I showed Marie your pics and she was all smiles. Living vicariously through your travels! Ironically Quartzite is a hop skip and a jump away for us. Keep posting pics!
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Old 01-29-2023, 04:19 PM   #52
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He Simon,
It would have been nice to see you at skoolie palooza. Or still can,
We broke up camp at quartzfest and are now taking a shower at the shell fuel station at exit 5. Then a couple of miles to Ehrenburg skoolie palooza site.. curious how many will still be there..
The kids gathered left and abandoned firewood from the ham fire rings so we can do some outdoor cooking.
This morning we went back in town for breakfast since it was now my wife's birthday. Then some more water fillips and a quick flea market stop. Back to ham camp loading bikes and cleanup..
Time goes fast with this life style.
Some pics from the way out of quartzsite...
Quartzsite was put on the map because here they experimented with camels for desert warfare..hence the camel's on the sign for the city.
Then there is the RV show..

Johan
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Old 01-29-2023, 08:00 PM   #53
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wow quartsite is like a big camping Mecca it sounds like.. I gu8ess if its sunny all the time it makes a good place for boondocking with solar
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Old 01-29-2023, 08:09 PM   #54
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Old 01-30-2023, 01:45 PM   #55
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A nice relaxed day at skoolie palooza, or the remains of it . People are leaving. It is pretty spread out. Large diversity of busses, rv's and cars.
Fortunately we parked pretty far from the music, a bit of sand storm and a nice sunset. We slept ok.

Johan
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Old 01-31-2023, 08:56 PM   #56
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Yesterday afternoon I made a last tour of the remaining busses. Found this one with some artsy doors. In the evening before the wind picked up Smita made dinner on a camp fire.. yummy.. during the night it was storming and in the morning we were kind of sick of it. Did not look like quick improvement in the weather so we broke up camp and started direction of Joshua tree national monument..
On the way out we stumbled upon an unFORDunate "expedition" traveler. I needed a Tee to fool our washing machine water level switch into a lower water level and decided to rob this poor vehicle of a the windshield washer tubing and tee piece.

Tried to get a shower at the local truck stop but there was no easy access to turn around so we drove on to Blythe and did some food shopping.. even found my favorite black box wine..our first experience with self locking shopping cart because we were on the end of the parking lot.
The next stop was BB truck stop.. here we got coffee, water and a hot shower.
The kids started a blog .. elfhut.wordpress.com... Incase you want a more nuanced opinion of this trip.
Then we moved back on i10 .. a couple of stops to reduce some charge of the lithium batteries since the alternator acted up..
Made it to the BLM land south of Joshua tree. Good cellphone reception.. still windy ..but the weather promises to be more pleasant tomorrow.
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Old 02-01-2023, 06:37 AM   #57
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Hey Johan, Kat and i have been following along, it looks like you guys are having a great trip! enjoy j-Tree, this is the best time of year to be there.
-Ellis
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Old 02-01-2023, 06:53 AM   #58
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cool stuff!! do people take care of the land well at quartsite? I always hear the horror stories of the trash and junk from burning man thaty have to be cleaned up.. always hope that these quarttsite gatherings and shows clean up and leave the land pristine for the next visitors..


I remember our 4 wheeling trips as a kid out west, everyone was extra careful to make sure there was no traces when you cleaned up and left so others could enjoy. other than of course if you cleared trees and debris out of a pathway you of course left it clear.
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Old 02-02-2023, 12:33 PM   #59
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Hi Ellis and Kat, hope all is well back east. We have moved from Ehrenberg to Joshua tree BLM land , just between the south entrance and I10. During the night and yesterday was very windy.
In the morning I decide to modify our close washer for less water use.. the water level sensor is inductive and not a normal switch so no easy bypass. Ended up reducing the spring rate.. after much putzing and testing I got some reduction but it still uses a lot of water.. one wash --3 rinses total 12 gallon.
In the afternoon we decided to explore ladder and ropes canyon in mecca ,ca.
It is about 20 min drive from our boondocking place and the last 4 Miles are washboard dirt road.
Ladders means no dogs so we left rosie and chickens at / in dory and took kylo along in Elfie.
Had a great time although Smita runs out of air pretty easy. The ham ht radios were great so the kids could go ahead and still stay in easy contact.
Ultimately we started to late and did not finish ropes canyon and still came out to late for dirt road driving.
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Old 02-03-2023, 02:35 PM   #60
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February 2nd Thursday.

In the morning we had some nice breakfast with solar tea. The girls needed to take some time to get caught up on school work. Tanya had a phone conversation with her Math teacher.. internet is good here.

I worked some on Elfie. The exhaust was vibrating against the transfer case and slowly grinding material away..last year in a hurry to get to the outer banks I did not take the time to fix , since it meant taking the rusted exhaust off. Still did not want to do that so I pulled the exhaust away with a piece of nylon rope.. no doubt a semi permanent solution.

Noticed some other issues when I was inspecting the under side... Missing rubber bushing in shock absorber and missing bushing in front stabilizer. Both kind of known before we left but with no time left I decided to leave Pennsylvania like that.

In the afternoon we drove into Joshua tree national monument.. became annual senior member ...$20... A great price.. 4 years ago I still had to buy an $80 pass.. but was able to sell that again after 4 month since we did not sign the co-passenger location..

Anyhow, this is better.

Picked nice tasty water at the ranger entrance.. got immediately annoyed that the only dog friendly trail they had was now unfriendly with zero trails available and at the same time you were not allowed to leave your animal in the vehicle...

The campgrounds in joshua did not seem full. Probably the weekend will change that.
To the center of the park is about 30 miles.. 60 Miles round trip. About 4 gallon dieselx$5 = $20. Probably cheaper and more time effective to stay inside the park.. of course here at BLM we have more freedom and less cramped with " neighbours"


Nevertheless we drove into the monument and played at the skull boulder formation. Then it became dark, we were back "home" around 6.30 pm. Some nice dinner and then hit the sack.

The first picture is us coming out of the dirt road trail to ladder canyon.
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