Season's Greetings

Seasons Greetings from Why, AZ. I'm thinking of friends and family, near and far. (mostly far...there's nobody close to here!)

Oho, Ajo!

Ajo, Arizona lies about 10 miles due north of Why.  I have gone there for groceries and propane, but at  a little over 3000 people, and with no Walmart, or Lowes’s or even a large supermarket, there’s not a lot of reason  to go there.  Except that there is no other place to buy anything within a hundred miles, aside from a couple of convenience stores, including the Why Not store.

I won’t go into a lot of detail about Ajo here, if you want to know more, check out the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajo,_Arizona.

Ajo has its pretty places. The plaza is very pretty, as is the Curley School and the churches.

Plaza: view one

Plaza: view two

Curley School

Catholic Church

Federated Protestant Church

Abandoned Dodge-Phelps mine

Food, glorious food!

For some reason, food just tastes amazingly better here.

 I don’t think that I’ve suddenly  become a much better cook, or that there’s something about the desert air that makes food tastier. I’m starting to think that it’s because I’m retired. I am focused on the food while I’m eating, not on tomorrow’s meeting, or staffing goals, or  who’s calling in sick…I can savor every bite, with minimal internal conversation. I am in the here and now with the food. Zen gluttony.

 My food is not always pretty, and I am limited in what I can cook, because I don’t have an oven, and I don’t want to cook things that have to simmer for a long time (propane costs!). But, it’s o.k., because it ALL tastes great!!

Kitchen hatch of Tiny Trailer open and ready for use.

Coleman propane stove...anything that gets cooked, gets cooked here.

Chickpea, potato, onion and peanut curry, with faux naan bread (pan grilled flour tortilla)

Not pretty, but it tasted wonderful!

Today's salad for lunch...bag mixed salad, with cottage cheese, celery, tomatoes,

 cashews and soy "bacon" bits. Ranch dressing.

I had the Yoplait yogurt for dessert.

Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument

Yesterday morning, I awoke fairly early (for me, these days) at about 6:00 A.M., showered , dressed ,and headed for the community pancake breakfast that is held every Thursday during the winter.  I got a short stack of pancakes and coffee for $2.50! 

After breakfast, I headed south to Organ Pipe cactus National Monument.  This is a beautiful park, located on the Mexican border, and is dedicated to the preservation of these cacti, which are found in this part of the Sonoran Desert.

 The park has a stark beauty, and if I had not been raised on stereotypical images of Saguaro cacti by Yosemite Sam and Wiley Coyote, I might have thought myself on another planet. I took the two driving loops that were appropriate for my PT Cruiser, which took a total of about three and a half hours

                                                          Visitors Center

Alien Landscape

Organ Pipe Cactus

Rock Formation

The bees love these!

Stark beauty

Tiny fire

Last night was the first night that I’ve had a campfire in the two months that I’ve been in Tiny Trailer. My fire pit is tiny, too…about 12 inches by 16 inches.  I enjoyed sitting by the fire for an hour or so, then further enjoyed looking at the stars for another hour, until I retired to my Tiny Trailer bed to read on the Kindle app on my Samsung Galaxy Tab.

Thanksgiving in Why

I arrived at Coyote Howls on Sunday November 23rd, and Thanksgiving fell on the following Thursday. I had mixed feelings about the holiday this year...I was thoroughly enjoying my new adventure, and the desert was beautiful, but this was to be the first Thanksgiving in my over 60 years of life that I had not spent with either family or friends who were like family. 

There was a community dinner scheduled at the Why Community Center, and the campground had provided me with a ticket, with the expectation that I would bring a covered dish. The campground (which is owned and operated by the Why Water District) was furnishing the main courses...as I understood it (this may not be accurate, but it was only my fourth day...)

I made a vegan Hoppin' John, and made my way to the Community Center. I was surprised at the number of people there...well over a hundred! The meal was delicious, and I felt welcomed. I still missed my friends and family, but overall, it was not a bad Thanksgiving at all...

Why Why?

I wish I could tell you exactly how I found out about this particular campground in Why, Arizona.  I’m not really sure where I read about it, but when I perused their website, it met almost all my criteria.  I wanted someplace warm in the winter, and cheap, with restroom and showers, and WiFi available.

Coyote Howls, East  in Why, AZ, has all that and more.  The one thing (things?) that it doesn’t have is hook-ups of any kind.  For the most part, that doesn’t impact me, but I had to make provision for at least some sort of self-generated electrical.  My electrical needs are minimal, mostly consisting of recharging my cell phone, recharging my tablet (which I use almost exclusively as an E-reader), and occasionally recharging my laptop battery. I chose to go with a minimal solar charging system, rather than a generator, for reasons of reliability, noise, and environmental concerns. My little system consists  of a 15 watt solar panel from Harbor Freight, a 100 watt charge controller also from Harbor freight, a 400 watt inverter, from guess where…, and a 100 amp/hour deep cycle battery from Walmart. Everything but the panel is housed in a storage bin which can be picked up and moved at any time. (See picture below)

The Sonoran desert  beautiful, and so far, except for one rainy day, the weather has been near perfect.

Coyote Howls office and clubhouse

View from campsite on day one

Butte to the Northeast of campground

Tiny trailer tiny solar charging system. Charge controller, Deep cycle battery 

and  A/C inverter are in the silver bin. Panel is only 15 watt, but meets my needs.

Tiny trailer compound, Coyote Howls. The screen room provides a living area, and the pop-up dome tent is for storage, so that I don't have to lug everything around in my car

I will be writing and posting about this corner of Arizona for a while, since I intend to stay until early March. Stay tuned for posts about the flora, fauna, and things to see and do in this area, as I see them and do them.

Stopover in Amarillo, Texas

In order to head southwest to the Arizona desert, I first headed northwest to Amarillo, Texas. My daughter, sister, and mother all live in Amarillo, and I wanted to spend some time with them before I headed into the desert for several months.

I arrived on Saturday evening, November 15^th, and awoke to snow on Sunday morning.  I realized after I got up that I had left my “personal  hygiene box”, containing shampoo, deodorant, toothbrush, toothpaste, etc. in the car, so I went outside, and  started down the exterior stairs  to get my stuff. As it turns out the footing was slippery and treacherous, and I fell…hard…right on my tailbone.  I spent several days hobbling around, and making some revisions to Tiny Trailer (I added fenders, which are not required for a trailer that size in Texas, but might be elsewhere, and I didn’t want to find out where required, alongside a road, illuminated by red and blue flashing lights). I also put together the components of my solar electrical system (more on that next post)

I had a really nice visit with my family (we had early Thanksgiving and Christmas, since I would not be back until almost spring), and on November 22^nd, I headed southwest through New Mexico to Arizona.

                                          Tiny Trailer amid the melting snow in Amarillo

Trial Run in Lewisville, TX

I lived at the City of Lewisville campground from October 5^th, 2014 until November 15^th, 2014. The campground is only about eight or nine miles from the home of my friends in Denton, so it was a good place for my entry into full time tiny trailer living…a little like camping in the back yard. It was a quick drive to all that was familiar, both in Lewisville and in Denton.

The campground is really very pretty, and has all the amenities that I require. I do not have a bathroom or holding tanks in Tiny Trailer, so it is imperative that I have access to restrooms and showers.  Also, laundry facilities and WiFi are nice to have, and really desirable, if I’m going to stay over an extended period.

I spent almost 6 weeks at the Lewisville campground, and will return in the spring.

 

The Rebuild

There are people and companies who build beautiful and finely crafted teardrop trailers. Mine is neither. I was limited in both time and funds, so my trailer is a slapdash affair, which still meets my needs. My purpose in chronicling the rebuild is to give the reader reassurance that If I can build an ugly trailer, so can you…

After I bought the partially deconstructed teardrop trailer, I had to rebuild it into something I could use, tow, and live out of for an extended period. I’m not sure at this point if I’ve achieved all of that, but it seems to be working so far.

When I bought the trailer, it had no roof, the door was lying in the sleeping area, and the frame for the back hatch was detached, and resting loosely against the back. (See picture above) We tied the hatch in place, hooked the trailer up to my PT Cruiser, and I drove the 30 or so miles to the storage facility where I could keep and work on the tiny teardrop. (I could not work on it at my friends’ house, due to HOA restrictions).

I first covered the roof with FRP (fiberglass reinforced plastic) sheets, like is used in inexpensive shower surrounds. It’s cheap, flexible, and waterproof. But it is not UV resistant, which wasn’t an issue here, because I planned to cover the whole body of the trailer in canvas and paint.

I bought two 9x12 canvas drop cloths at Harbor Freight, a gallon of Titebond III waterproof glue, and a gallon of Cabot polyurethane spar varnish.  Then I proceeded to glue canvas to the sides first, then to the roof, overlapping the sides by a couple of inches. A couple of coats of spar varnish (I had to buy more), and a couple of coats of Rustoleum, and the exterior was covered.

I had wanted to add a couple of porthole windows for more interior light, and a more "retro" look, but could not afford round, tempered glass, domed windows, so I bought a couple of cheap frying pans with glass domed lids, removed the handles, and replaced them with a short bolt, and siliconed the windows into holes I jigsawed into the sidewalls...Viola!

The previous owner has used a flat piano hinge on the “kitchen hatch” which leaked. I replaced it with a “hurricane type hinge, which also leaks, but hopefully less so. I am in a caulk and recaulk mode as far as the hatch is concerned, and the leaks now are minimal, and only occur when it rains.

A Reluctant Blogger

I am currently residing in a tiny teardrop trailer, in Why, Arizona. How I came to be here is a story unto itself, which I will explain below. It is my intention to chronicle my travels in a blog, but I am a bit reluctant to do so, mostly because that requires a commitment of time and energy, which I’m not sure that I’m willing to make at this point, and because I may go significant periods without doing much actual traveling.

 But, I’m here, and might as well make a beginning. I officially retired about 2 months ago, although I had actually not worked much during 2014. I reached a point where I was tired of the changes that had occurred in my chosen profession (nursing), and no longer felt any joy in the work. So, even though I was far from financially prepared to retire, I did so anyway, vowing to reduce my needs to meet my now much reduced income. Also, I wanted to travel, but hotels and airfare were suddenly outside my budget. I had once built a large log home, but had recently become interested in the Tiny House movement, and was fascinated by the clever uses of space. It was a natural progression to begin to look at tiny trailers to meet my housing needs, and travel desires.

 I had looked at different commercially available teardrops from Camp-Inn and Little Guy, which were very nice, but also out of my current price range. I looked at some used trailers on Ebay, and on Craiglist, but none were quite what I wanted. I finally found a teardrop that a young man in a nearby town had built, then had some issues with, and had partially disassembled. I bought it “as is” for $700.00, on September 14, and began a rebuild process. I put a new waterproof membrane on the roof, then covered the entire trailer with canvas, using a waterproof glue, and then coated it with exterior polyurethane spar varnish, followed by three coats of Rustoleum, silver over black, opposite what the factory paint scheme on my tow car, a 2010 PT Cruiser.

 On October 5th, I finished packing, and left the Denton, Texas home of my good friends and housemates, where I had lived for four and a half years, and towed the trailer a grand total of ten miles south to a city run campground on the shores of Lake Lewisville. Thus began my “full-time" tiny trailer life.