When we ended our trip last year, our goal was to head to Alaska in 2020. “Our plan” was to leave March 1, 2020, head to Tucson for a FMCA Rally, then slowly head up to Washington State, enter Canada on May 1, then enter Alaska June 1. We wanted to stop at every Visitor Center and Museum we could. We had plenty of time to really make this the trip a slow visit of Canada and Alaska.
Then we heard of this little thing called the Covid-19 Virus. This would change everything.
Our “start” day came and went. Guess you have to have the RV packed before you can go. Due to rainy weather, it took us longer to get ourselves ready, but by March 14 we were ready to get out of town.
By March 15 a new term had found its way into our lexicon – social distancing. The virus was getting very real – events were being cancelled, people were supposed to be staying away from each other, businesses were closing down. After prayer and much discussion we decided that by being in our RV we could social distance and quarantine as necessary.
Our first stop was Quartzite, Az. In January there can be as many as 500,000 RVers boondocking there. In March the numbers were way down and we had plenty of room to hang out by ourselves. We stayed in the Las Posa South LTVA (long term visitor area). We have stayed here several times with Ned & Melissa Nickerson and their family & friends, so it was a known area for us. It’s $40 for 14 days and includes dump station, water and trash. Boondocking at it’s finest with close by facilities.
My brother, Rick,and his wife Jill, had just purchased a new 5th wheel and were camping in Lake Havasu. We drove up there to visit them for a day, maintaining our appropriate social distancing (ok, maybe we did hug briefly). Their RV is fantastic and as always, it was great to see them. I think we found the last restaurant still open for sit down business and enjoyed some good Mexican food.
Our plan was to stay out in the dessert for about a week. We had done some upgrades to our power by adding 600 amp hours of lithium batteries and 2 panels of solar power. We knew the 400 watts of solar power would not be enough to fully recharge our batteries, but the 2 panels were a test to see if it really worked. We had to use our generator to recharge the batteries up to 100%, and all was going well – until it wasn’t. The third day we had the generator on but noticed after a few hours our batteries were still very low. As it’s getting dark and knowing I need power for my CPAP machine, we closed up everything and went to a local RV Park for shore power – and everything worked fine.
The next day I was trying to find a place to take it in with no luck. I did talk to a mobile company who had me check a couple of things – who knew a generator had a circuit breaker and just because it runs doesn’t mean it’s producing power. Well now I do. We decided to go ahead and stay in the RV park another night, since we were leaving the next morning for Tucson.
Up early and took off for Tucson.