next relo and winter plans

next relo

I suspect it’s going to start freezing overnight within a week here at 9200ft. If that happens I’ll likely move on to the Santa Fe area where daytime highs will be in the low-to-mid 70s in town.

I’ll stealth in town a bit and boondock outside town on NF and BLM land.

wintering

I’ve always wanted to try out one of the BLM’s Long Term Visitors Area (LTVA) winter sites and this might be the year:

• I have the $180 to buy the pass up-front
• there are proposals to increase the fee 3x
• our Canadian friends are avoiding the US this year due to tariffs and general US belligerence.

The Imperial Dam site is about 20mi outside Yuma so I could make supply runs on the scooter.

I have VA appointments before Christmas but I could leave for Yuma after that. I’m guessing by late Feb or early March it will start getting warm and I might move up to Quartzsite’s LTVA for a bit before that warms up, too. There are things I like to do there in Q.

economics

Let’s say I get 2.5 months at the LTVA (last week in Dec to first week in March). That’s $72/mo, about what my “one gas tank a month” fuel costs are while doing relocations.

connectivity

Verizon is supposed to be spotty at Imperial Dam, and ATT is reported to be nonexistent.

I’ve been considering upgrading the Cudy LTE router to a GL.iNet Spitz 5G router It’d be a significant investment (~$360) but has some significant advantages:

• 5G support for greater connection opportunities. I am not concerned with higher 5G speeds.
• external antenna options - cudy’s are attached
• physical eSim support. The Spitz interface allows one to pick a local eSim-based data provider with functional signal. This would also be expensive but better than having no connection (or a full-time Tmo backup, for example).
• dual-sim support¹ with failover (useful to me) and load balancing (not so useful to me)
• ongoing firmware updates - the Cudy is EOL
• the GL.iNet’s excellent wifi repeating interface would allow me to retire the [Opal wifi router](https://amzn.to/42m0yFR from active service. It could still be a backup.

It’s a tough decision. The Cudy works 90% of the time and there is no guarantee that the other 10% would be covered by the new router. I do think external ants would make a big difference.

Reminders to self: ttl 65, record original personality before alternation

1. although using the physical eSim would take the 2nd slot ↩