Prepping for the Desert

My time here at the Escapee's Benson, AZ facility is slowly drawing to a close.  Plans now are to take the Mini further west to Quartzsite for the Big Tent RV show and two weeks of boondocking on the BLM land south of the town.  I've got a couple of years experience with desert boondocking and I've come to a couple conclusions about what it will be like staying there in the Mini.  First, it can get really windy in western Arizona in January and winds can come up in a hurry.  When I camped there in the Tank it wasn't the biggest deal because the Tank didn't have an awning.  The Mini has a large awning and it really helps shading the sunny side of the trailer from the sun but a strong wind could easily make it act like a sail and flip up, possibly damaging the awning and also the roof of the Mini.

The Mini's awning shading the sun from the wall,

Camco, an RV after-market parts vendor, sells a couple of awning tools that can help secure an awning in at least moderate winds.  I ordered both their Awning Stabilizer Kit (tie downs that attach to stakes that screw into the ground) and their Awning De-flapper Kit (attaches to the awning material in the middle where winds coming from either end of the Mini could cause intense flapping which could rip the awning material if it was intense enough.)

The two awning kits and a awning mat in the middle.

The second major problem you experience when boondocking in the desert is the amount of sand and dirt you track into your RV (it is the desert after all!).  With the Tank I can recall having to sweep it out several times a day which was a pain after a few days.  I also bought a 6 foot by 9 foot awning mat that I plan to deploy under the awning and in front of the steps up into the Mini.  The mat comes with four stakes to secure it to the ground and is made up of a fibrous material that allows sand and dirt to drop through it instead of remaining on the mat's surface.  We'll see, I guess.  I'll post pictures of the gear after I've deployed it after I pick my campsite at Quartzsite.  Plan is to depart from here January 17th break the four and a half hour drive in two by stopping and getting a few more things I'm going to need at a Home Depot in Tucson.

Thanks for reading!

The Last Meal

Happy New Year, everybody!  I'm really looking forward to camping in some awesome locations in 2018.  On the last day of the year I always have a "Last Meal" (of the year) and here's what this year's looked like:

Diet?  What diet?

The T-Bone was grilled medium rare on the Mini's gas grill.  The baked potato was microwaved to perfection in the Mini's microwave and the salad...well, salad is pretty much salad.  I was too full after finishing to even think about desert!  Have a safe evening!

Thanks for reading!

Merry Christmas From Arizona!

Merry Christmas!  I finally made it out to Arizona, Benson specifically, where I am staying at the SKP Saguro Co-Op for a whole month.  It's unusual for me to stay so long at one location but the Co-Op offers a full hookup site for $310 for a whole month.  It's the height of the Snowbird season in Arizona and getting a full hookup site in a nice park for $10 a night is crazy, so I couldn't turn it down.  I reviewed the campground in 2016 here:  SKP Saguro Review .  I got here a week ago and the weather has been unseasonably cool with nightly lows getting into the upper 20's so I've been grateful to have electrical hookups to enable my space heater to run at night.  Today though it's a perfect 72 degrees and next week is supposed to be warmer too.

When my month here is up it'll be just in time to drive west on I-10 to the annual Quartzsite RV Big Tent show that starts January 20 - 28.  Here's my Yule fire:

Thanks for reading!