Continuing our off-grid preparedness 3/26/22

As with all things, the good stuff never stays forever, and our mild days throughout the winter are no exception. It has been absolutely HOT out recently! 🔥🥵 Some of our Nomad Neighbors and Friends have already left for the cooler weather promised by the higher elevation. We hope to cross paths again when the weather changes and we all return to the pleasant winter of the Arizona desert. 🏜

We’ve been considering our next steps, too, as this is only the beginning of a Phoenix summer and we aren’t sure any of us will make it with our setup as-is.

My boss, Brian, mentioned that he had a portable A/C unit that he would like to sell (only used it one summer) and so we worked out it being part of my paycheck this past week. What a blessing it has been! We should get a thermometer to see the temperature difference between inside and outside, but it is DEFINITELY much better than it was! We hang a curtain across the hallway right past the washing machine and fridge as well as keep the green door closed so as to keep the cooler air to the middle of the bus.

We still have our window unit that we bought for the house last year; we are considering installing it in the back over the bed to run at night. What we’ve learned from the locals is that – while the temperatures drop significantly once the sun goes down – when it’s 130° out during the day, it’s still going to be 90-100° at night. Currently we just wait until about 5 pm and then open all the windows in the back and it’s cool enough to sleep. But come June and July, the windows won’t be useful.

While we plan and prepare for our next steps, we are enjoying our time spent with our Skooliepalooza friend, Konnie. It’s been nice troubleshooting things in our respective busses with someone else who is living the life, too. Konnie is really good with interior design and came with us to pick out some decoration aspects for our bus!

We also needed a cozier bed upgrade and with three new throw pillows and a few “Goodwill-Find” sheets sewn together to make a new bed spread, I think we did pretty well!

Some mornings we are woken up from sleep in our nice and cozy bed by the most obnoxious sound! Imagine a jackhammer being used on the bottom of a stainless steel pot and you won’t be too far off! After several mornings of this racket, we finally had enough of an idea of what it was to start Googling. Apparently the Gila Woodpecker, ever-so-popular in the Sonoran Desert for making holes in the Saguaro Cactus as nests and then leaving them for many other bird species to use in following years, has an obnoxious habit of “drumming” – the art of pecking on the most resonant thing around and being proud of the sound. Evidently, our bus with its steel roof was the most resonant thing around! That is, until Konnie got here with her bus and the woodpecker moved over there, terrifying her cats. 😉 Thankfully he has since moved on and we haven’t heard from him recently!

In our venture to be more sustainable in the long-term regarding our consumables, Jeff has made some very useful upgrades to our utility trailer. After welding on a double propane trailer-mount bracket, we now have an additional 15 gallons of propane that we can store on the trailer. Our little 5-gallon BBQ tanks last us about 10 days; we hope to get 15 days out of each of these puppies! Jeff also fabricated and welded on a spare tire bracket as to free up some space inside the trailer. It’s looking more and more like our off-grid auxiliary unit with each modification! We just need to add a water storage tank and a way to pump the water it stores into our bus’ fresh water tank. Hmmm…. 🤔💭

We will keep you updated with our plans to escape the heat as we come up with them. But for now we are enjoying every moment of the Arizona desert and loving the heat-induced gorgeous sunsets! Until next time…!