well clearly I'm in a different spot out here this is pretty nice
case you're wondering how I found this place or how I got the idea to stay here
remember my Parker video when I was at the casino the blue water casino it's
actually right over there on the others the dam that I actually filmed with my
drone and as it turns out I started watching some of the drone footage and I
saw this land right here I saw the aerial shot of this and that's
what gave me the idea to find the access road you can kind of see some cars and
motorhomes out there that's California out there look at it this way that
that's how I found this place and I don't unfortunately I don't have any
information about it I don't even know who owns the land
I can't even promise that it's BLM land but clearly there has been camping out
here before there's a few fire rings by the Colorado River here and an old
abandoned restroom bathroom up there vault toilet so I don't know this isn't
one of those places where I will be providing GPS coordinates because I just
don't know sometimes you just find something and you're not sure but if you
get what you want out of it and what I'm looking for right now is just a little
peace and quiet a little alone time relaxed time I would
like to do some things not trying to make this sound mean but I would like to
do some things without being constantly having a knock at the door or
interactions I just need a break and then I'll be right back to normal
tomorrow so that's what I'm doing before I get too settled here one little tip
about boondocking out in the desert it's not really like snake season right now I
think it's just too cold for snakes so I'm not worried about scorpions or
snakes or stuff like that but certainly creepy crawlers and some spiders and
stuff like that and other insects and bugs from the desert can be an issue and
that's why I travel around with this as four times like these to keep the bugs
from getting into my RV I'll show you what I do so the only part of my RV
that's touching the ground are the rubber tires right so what I do is I
just build a little barrier around the tires with the spray
essentially it's okay to hit actual tires I'll hit on that side then we'll
go behind it like that we're just building a little bug separation between
my rubber and they'll never come up the tires because it's a insect killer
there's also been times or I've actually if I go into an RV park and I'm staying
there for a couple days I'll spray the cord that's plugged in so that ants
don't crawl from the ground into my compartment
I'll even spray the outside of my drinking hose with this so that they
don't crawl up and go into that section as well but just creating a little
barrier between my RV and the ground is a good thing it makes me feel safe I
guess one of the things I want to do is replace this plug for my RVs connection
here sorry about the low light I just I tried to fill them over in the Sun and
it's just too bright and blinding and warm over there so I'm gonna do shade
instead but this plug actually when I was in Florida what would happen is some
of the plastic yellow in here started to melt and these are all corroded in green
and there's black around the edges it's just I think that there's a lifespan on
these guys luckily I'm blessed with this cord is unusually long for an RV it's
over 16 feet long so even if I had to cut part of this and I'm gonna open this
up and see if it's corroded in here I don't know yet but it's easy - like I
said when I was in quartzsite, I got the replacement plug for 19 bucks and since
I'm installing the same exact one this should be an easy just there's four
screws right here so I'll take those out and we'll have a look at the innards
here forgot to mention there's also one screw up here so you got four down here
one up there unfortunately we're doing this the nomadic fanatic way which is
one of these screws is completely stripped in there for some reason before
I even put the screwdriver to it completely stripped so I've got most of
them off I am NOT going to be able to reuse this no matter what so since I
can't get that screw out we're just gonna and that's what we're left with in
there so all I have to do is remember how this is all hooked up and rehook it
back up before we get too far here you might notice this little Center thing is
in you can't get a screw in there and it was baffling me for quite a moment until
a light bulb went off in my head and realize that these all can just
pop out so you can actually get screw on it yeah how about that before I put this
back into the new connector here let me show you why I'm actually gonna strip
this back and start over first of all the white negative here has a nice
little cut right there showing wire you do not want any exposed wire below where
it's actually shaved off there so that's bad plus also see the positive wire here
the black wire with the green turquoise colors on the tips and back in here you
really don't want any of that so because I'm just doing this project the right
way I'm gonna cut back some of this insulation chop these off down here re
strip them and we'll get some fresh good-looking wire to go in my new plug
so I got it all hooked back in here you can see what's going on in there the
cool thing about the new ones is if you forget where the wires go it you've
actually got a black screw for where the positive goes and this one's clear for
the negative and then neutral goes up here so that is nice but the interesting
thing about this I thought it was gonna be an easy swap well positive and
negative are swapped on this one as far as the screws we're at but they put the
right wire in the old one just in case you saw that video and you're wondering
this looks a little different this is the way it's supposed to go
but yeah anyway gonna hammer in these it might be easier also to pull these out
and screw them in and then put them back in which is what I'm gonna do now and
then we'll seal this guy back up alright there we go all put back together
looking fresh looking clean no corrosion or anything that was a I almost said
simple project it's never simple when I start doing something but in the end we
got her fixed up I got a lot more projects I want to do out here in the
desert so I'll kind of sneak some of those in here and there between doing
stuff alright back over here in the Sun just to help the shot here for you guys
I don't do this very often but sometimes if I'm gonna be parked for the entire
day it's a little warm I'm getting lots and lots of solar right now I mean more
solar than I know what to do with what I can do and what some of you guys can do
is tap in your main RV system into your solar system so what do I mean I mean
I've got solar on the roof and then I've got five batteries of
storage with an inverter this in order in order to get power through all the
outlets and to be able to use everything in my RV this needs to be plugged into
what we call Shore power but what if I plug this into my inverter which comes
from solar basically I will be able to use all the lights and everything off of
solar while I'm here it's really cool it's really easy to do what I'll do is I
will swap my 30 amp prong connection with this adapter which is basically 20
amp but we call this 110 or 120 volt plug that into my extension cord and
then we'll go inside what I was gonna say is we're going to plug this end into
the inverter in my RV so basically that's what we're doing but I actually
don't have to because if you know me I actually have this yellow cord which
comes out of my compartment here is plugged into my inverter so this is
solar power right here so when I plug this in what I will have done I don't
know if you heard my microwave click on in there but basically I'm running my
entire RV as if I'm plugged into Shore power but I'm running it off a solar and
we'll go inside and take a look at something so again as you see we are
fourteen point one volts it's 20 amps coming in here with the Sun here at the
Colorado River that's a lot of Sun right but this means essentially I can go over
to this big massive air conditioner right here and I can turn on the fan
there we go we're getting a nice cool air blowing this way blowing that way
let's go back over here to the readout now we're dropped to thirteen point
seven but still bringing in 25 amps with those two panels some of you have asked
me can I run the air conditioner well guys guess what I cannot run my air
conditioner the reason why I cannot run my air conditioner is because this pure
sine inverter here is only a 1000 water I believe I would need to have a 4000
watt inverter here in order to run my generator which is not to say I don't
have the battery power to do it but I certainly don't have the capability to
do it with the system right now so we'll just reset it 1000 watts is really what
I'm limited to peak so I can't run the microwave and I can't run the coffee pot
and I clearly cannot run the air conditioner but you know what just
having the fan on low like that really really helps in here keep it cool on the
plus side I have all of my normal outlets in here working so anything I
wanted to charge right now or power it is important to note that since I am
basically plugged into Shore power here my converter inverter it's going to be
operating inside here so what does that mean this is going to send the trickle
charge about one to three amps voltage to the batteries from the batteries
which might not be a good thing if you think about it if you wanted to you
could turn the breakers off but that defeats the whole purpose of being able
to use the outlets and use the fan from the air conditioner but just so you know
you are technically charging batteries with inverted power from the batteries
so your yeah just so you know okay it's nice and convenient and was reading over
here now yeah still thirteen point three volts and 22 amps coming in here at the
river not bad huh you know it's just another
option kind of a pain in the butt to hook it up that way I never intended to
make it work that way in an easy way actually it was very important for me to
make my solar system separate from the on board system because I don't need to
keep the other part of the system charged all the time it operates the
lights inside the RV and the the water pump itself to pump the water to the
shower and the igniter for the actual water heater other than that it doesn't
really matter I don't do this too often it's just kind of a convenience thing
also if I'm no if I absolutely no one would be boondocking somewhere for more
than a week which has not happened too often in my life but if that happens
having it set up this way actually makes it so that my fridge is gonna run off of
electric because all I do is I set it to automatic and then since it knows I'm
plugged in to power what it thinks is normal Shore power actually it's solar
power being inverted for it but it's going to cut it off and not run it on
propane which saves my propane for my oven and my water heater and my stove
that way I'm running my fridge off of solar instead out in the desert which is
kind of cool I set it up that way I know a lot of people don't do it that way
it's a couple chords I got a plug-in to make it
work but you know it's kind of nice also this spot I'm at right here this is the
Parker dam here and I thought about going down to the water because there's
there's no signs that say no swimming down here whereas the casino over there
there are clear signs that say nope not allowed so it's really steep right here
to the water but maybe we'll just go walk around and see if we can find some
access what just got my sandals and they actually opened it looks like three of
the five dam locks are now open so the waters gonna be a little higher and move
it a little faster downstream still gotta find a path down there though well
there's the water guys we've got some palm trees down here by the river's edge
found some nice spot to jump in the water
you save you
they could bring us up
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