logistics: kofa to yuma
I plan on staying in the greater Yuma area for 28 days, weather willing. To facilitate this I motored north to Quartzsite to do some errands and reprovisioning.
- dropped off trash at the landfill transfer station just north of town
- did a full month’s worth of laundry fit in one jumbo front-loader at Main Street laundromat for $5.75, and dried for another $1.50. I was literally down to the clean undies and shirt I was wearing
- I happily paid for another $9 shower there
- topped off with water for $2 at RV Pit stop
- bought what I could at a discount grocery, planning to fill in the gaps at a grocery store in Yuma.
the drive from Q to Yuma
Traffic was very light. No one was behind me so I reduced speed to 62mph instead of the marked 65mph to gain a couple MPG.
When I started the van it threw a P06DD CEL, which is a sensor attached to a solenoid on the two-speed oil pump. Basically the solenoid engages at certain times, reducing oil pressure when it is not needed. The sensor tells the van which position the solenoid is in. Note this is not a reflection on the function of the solenoid, only the monitoring of it. Sometimes the sensor fails, and sometimes it’s a bad connection.
Still under the 60k mile powertrain warranty so I’ll poke around to find a RAM dealer who can check it.
stealthed for a night in Yuma
Arrived ni Yuma and scouted out the Circle K with the Amazon locker where my package would arrive. About a block away was a water kiosk set up for RVs rather than residential users. It was priced 10c/gal, which is the lowest I’ve seen for a kiosk. I’ll keep that in my back pocket in case I ever need to buy water around town.
There was a Walmart a couple miles away so I went in and did a month’s provisioning; that plus the discount grocery was $148, though I bought a bunch of non-edible stuff, too: LED taplights (2pk for $10, good) , shower shoes, a package of HotHands for contact heat experiments ($1.50 for 4!), some narrow bolts to make a kind of breadboard for electrical testing, a bag of cheap combs for cholla removal, etc.
The 2.4gHz wifi was decent but teh 5gHz (like on my phone) was savage, so I downloaded everything I could on the phone will shopping and transferred it later.
By the time I was done shopping my package had been delivered and I went to pick it up. Then I looked around for a semi-industrial area to stealth for the night. Found a spot and put away the food and the clothes I’d stuffed in the bag earlier. I ran the newCity.sh routine on the pi mythbox and picked up a few OTA channels. About 50/50 english and spanish, the latter including broadcasts from Algodones.
Kool Corner
I found Kool Corner (?) on freecampsites and headed over. It’s on a series of plateaus overlooking hundreds or thousands of acres of crops. Lettuce, mostly, with some brussels sprouts for literal miles.
It’s more crowded than I’d like
It abuts a large irrigation project that feeds the local irrigation channels:
It was obnoxiously windy today; sustained 18mph with gusts to who-knows-what. Supposed to be bad again tomorrow, then calmer after that. Luckily there is very little cholla or litter. Not a lovely place but it’s free.
