Solar … Storage … Bugging Out Tomorrow

Americamps KOA — Ashland, Virginia
TEMPS: LO 69F / HI 91F [feels like 96F] (20.5C / 33C [35.5c])

We’ve accomplished what we came to do here in Ashland, Virginia. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that there is a big storm heading in our direction. We were going to stay two more nights at the Americamps KOA, but have decided to leave tomorrow morning instead. (The campground refunded the fee for the fourth night; that’s a bonus we were not expecting.)

We considered heading south, but we’d have to drive 400-450 miles (640-720 km) just to get out of the red zone (bottom half of the collage). Not only would we be risking getting caught in the storm while still on the road, but the storm is projected to cover much of South Carolina by Thursday night, so we’d be in the same boat.

No worries about tonight (top photo); we’re outside the red zone … can’t say the same about tomorrow night.

So, even though Virginia Beach (near Norfolk) falls in the highest risk area, we are going to head there. I can hear the gasps and everyone thinking we must be nuts. Not so … at least at Naval Air Station Oceana, where we have campground reservations, there will be a real shelter should the worst happen. Oceana is only 120 miles (192 km) from where we are now, so we should get there well in advance of the storm.

But enough about the storm. We have a plan in place; borrowing trouble in the meantime isn’t going to do us any good. After all, there’s still a good chance the storm will weaken as it crosses the mountains.

Tuesday, 11 June …

We came to Ashland primarily to have solar panels installed on the roof. We expect to take periodic vacations from our life on the road and wanted to have the means to trickle-charge the house batteries in our absence. Solar panels seemed like a good option, with the added bonus that they would allow us to boondock in mild-climates without being entirely reliant on the generator.

From top left: specs; a solar panel awaiting installation; the regulator;
back of the solar panel showing the branch connector and positive/negative cables.

After doing considerable research, Mui consulted with RV Service of VA, the company that worked on our satellite dish last December. They helped him figure out what we needed, and at our request, ordered three solar panels and a digital solar regulator from GoPower. The install went smoothly, and by the end of the day we were “solarized.” Provided we have a tree-free site at Oceana, we’ll put the panels through their paces and make sure they are operating as expected.

Solar install completed.

The digital solar regulator showing the batteries are fully charged.

I’m not going to include a whole bunch of technical specs in this post. If you have an interest in that information, drop us a note and Mui will be happy to provide details and answer questions.

Back to Today …

The second reason for returning to Virginia was to stop by our storage unit in Winchester. Having been on the road for 6½ months now, it was time to purge some stuff from the coach and return them to storage. More importantly, we needed to pick up some Arctic gear for our off-road vacation this fall. We debated driving to Winchester with the Phaeton and staying at a campground in that area for a couple of days. In the end, however, we decided we would make a day trip in the toad instead.

120-miles (192 km) each way is faster to drive in the toad than it would have been in the Phaeton.

We were both up early, so we had breakfast at home and headed north shortly after 6:00a. Traffic was minimal — a pleasant surprise. Listening to radio reports of traffic jams further north on I-95 and delays due to accidents in the area where we used to live in Northern Virginia were all too familiar. Luckily, none of those problems had any impact on our drive and we arrived at the storage unit around 9:00a. An hour to take care of things, and we were back on the road by 10:00a … and back at the campground by 1:00p. A long drive to be sure, but a productive one … and one we don’t anticipate repeating any time soon.

Following four busy days since leaving Lake Greenwood — three of them driving in either the Phaeton or the toad — we had hoped to chill tomorrow. But thanks to the forecasted storm, we’ll be driving to our next campground a day early. I guess we’ll just have to chill after we get there.

Fire hydrant

We may have a colourful/romantic/bloody history. We may have whisky and a national dish made from a stuffed sheep's stomach. But we completely fail to have interesting fire hydrants. Greg at Liege Daily Photo has just posted a nice contrast in 'fire and ice', featuring a Belgian fire hydrant. Sue at A Corner Garden has posted about the changing colours of her very own fire hydrant, which occupies one of her flower beds. But this is the best we can do. A little yellow plate on a wall to locate the hydrant, which lies under the iron plate in the pavement. It says a lot about the Scottish climate: we don't expect to have snow for any length of time that would hide the yellow plate. We don't even expect our fire crews to have to do much digging or chipping away at ice to be able to attach the hoses to the hydrant itself.
Small wonder then that when we were in British Columbia a few summers ago we came back with holiday photos not just of soaring peaks and the mighty Columbia river and glacier-fed lakes, but fire hydrants. We have shots of hydrants from Miranda's territory at Here and There Slocan. We have some particularly fine shots of hydrants near Kelowna. You can perhaps understand why we got so excited.
Edited to post links to other fire hydrants around the world:
Here and There Slocan, British Columbia, Canada
Inukshuk Adventure, Toronto, Canada

An Odd Combo...

A couple of days ago, there was a theft, but today, I've retrieved the merchandise, which would be my blog! A number of you asked for my Christmas doggie cookie recipe, so I'm going to slip it in between our makings of this recipe and a show-and-tell of my day at the Cow Palace fun match yesterday. An odd coupling indeed! The recipe is called "Peanut Butter Dog Bones." The ingredients call for:

2 cups whole wheat flour (but you can use 1 cup flour and 1 cup of whole oats)

1 T. baking powder

1 cup natural peanut butter (I used crunchy)

1 cup skim milk (but I used beef broth - or you can use chicken broth)

You can also add 1 cup of shredded cheddar cheese to the recipe, which I did.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease cookie sheets (I used parchment paper); stir flour and baking powder together. In medium bowl, mix penut butter and skim milk (or...?); slowly add flour mixture. Turn onto a lightly floured surface; knead until smooth. If sticky, add flour until stiff enough to work with.

Roll out to 1/4 inch and cut into shapes. For smaller breeds, make into mini-peanut butter cookie shapes or little dog bones.
Meanwhile, I'm waiting, in between helping. We put the cookie cut-outs onto the parchment and then stuck them in the oven for 25-30 minutes until lightly browned.

Mmmmmmnnnn. We took them out and boy did they smell good! But we had more dough to roll and shapes to cut out!

More baking time... yawn...
Can I have one pleasepleaseplease??? Well, after they cooled, I got to test one and it was yumzers! I still had some decorating to do! For this, you can use yoghurt chips (around here, must get online), or what we used - white chocolate chips and also carob chips. We used pastry bags to pipe out decorations on the cookies. (We melted the carob chips in double boiler - don't overheat these seemingly delicate chips. We then added some veggie oil to thin - just a tiny bit at a time - test! We melted the white choc. chips in the microwave, but watched with an eagle eye. Then we added some veggie oil to these as well, stirring drop by drop. Enjoy!)
Voila! It was lots of fun to do, but I had the best fun of all testing them out heheh! (And I had a great time at the Fun Match!)
I hope you enjoy making and eating these doggie cookies as much as I did!

I Was to Be Exchanged For 100 Turkish Delight Wrappers

I was born in an upstairs bedroom of a terraced house, 3 bedrooms, two living rooms, no bathroom, just an outside lavatory! It was in the days when the 'front room' was kept for best and we spent most of our time in the living room, there was no central heating, nor was the kitchen like those of today, being much more like a scullery, but it did have the benefit of a fitted bath!! The toilet was outside - no puppy-soft rolls of loo paper then, quite often it was simply squares of cut up newspaper threaded on a string!

Apologies for the awful image, I really struggled to find anything better,

I was born in the top left room.

It had the advantage that Nana and Grandad lived right next door. Grandad was a retired trawler man - he had a wonderful Yarmouth accent and wore full dentures, which he used to deliberately leave out sometimes, so that he could 'gurn' to make us laugh.





Nana was a tiny, very round woman, she used to wear those old-fashioned wrap-around aprons and was stone deaf. She had been kicked in the head by a horse and was deaf from that day on - so everything had to be written down on scraps of paper for her.

My older brother and I with Omo, the black cat, in the back garden

I was always animal mad, we had a couple of cats - both black, one was called Sooty, the other was Omo. They mysteriously disappeared before we went abroad. We also had a canary which we soon moved on to someone else as it had a very nasty habit of pecking at me.
We were not allowed to have a dog (the house was pretty small) so I was forever borrowing them. This one was Kim.

My glamorous mother on the left, with her friend, Audrey

Audrey owned Kim the black spaniel

Tut, tut, my mother with a cigarette!

Owl aka Ian

In those days babies spent a lot of time outdoors, they would be well wrapped up and put outside in their pram, in all but the worst weather. This bonnie baby is Ian,Owl, he survived the treatment and after years of therapy he is gradually starting to enjoy the outdoors again.

An outing to Cleethorpes Beach!

This photo would have been taken in the late 1950's (pre Ian) and showed my Mother, dark cardigan, my older brother and I, with some friends. We had travelled on the train from Grimsby to Cleethorpes to spend the day on the beach. It was quite a treat, try telling the kids of today that...




A few doors further along the avenue there lived a boy called Richard, he was about a year older than me, he used to walk me to and from school.

Richard was pretty sweet on me and asked my father if he could marry me. Eventually a price of 100 Turkish Delight wrappers was agreed!

Borrowed Image, I couldn't find a 1950's one, sorry!

Poor Richard, he had saved quite a pile of them before we moved away to spend three years in Hong Kong! I was seven years old when we left. I never saw him again.

Escalante River Hike

We were a little tired after our hike back up the hill from Upper Calf Creek Falls, so we decided to stop in the nearby town of Boulder for a snack. As luck would have it, we found a nice little store that sold bagels and smoothies. This was the perfect refreshment after our morning hike! After that we headed a few miles down the Burr Trail to Long Canyon, which I thought might be perfect for a short bike ride. Indeed it was, and we had a blast cruising down the canyon on our cross bikes. Our final adventure for the day was a hike upstream along the Escalante River to Escanlante Natural Bridge and Arch. This hike had a LOT of vegetation along the way, included some beautiful giant cottonwood trees and tons of sage. The trail also crossed the Escalante River several times, which was fun and refreshing each time wehad to cross :-)



After about 2.5 miles we came to Escalante Natural Bridge, which was fascinating to comprehend but really not all that photogenic, since the bridge blended into the background cliff and was not standing out against the sky like some other natural bridges. We contemplated the bridge for a while, then continued on up the trail to the arch. The arch was awesome, certainly unlike the other arches we've seen on this trip. This one was not very big, but it was extremely high up on top of a cliff. The lines in the rock running down the cliff were mesmerizing, and the bottom of the cliff was lined with beautiful cottonwood trees. After another full day of outdoor adventures, we were ready for a good meal so we headed back to the Escalante Outfitters and this time tried their calzones, which were just as goodas the pizza we had last night! This has been such an awesome trip already, I wonder what cool sights and experiences tomorrow will bring?

Work, work, work

During a previous set-up at Cottontails
My first spring craft show will be Cottontails next weekend.
I'll be in normal chicken-with-head-cut-off running around mode this next week, working on all those last-minute things that I think will take 10 minutes and invariably end up taking 3 hours.
So, of course it is the perfect time to start a new project! A page on Facebook for the soap biz.
Come be my fan. See behind the soapmaking scenes. Get special deals on my handmade soap and other lovelies. Help me expand my "fan base" beyond just relatives who owe me money.
I'll endeavor to be at least 50% less annoying than a telemarketer, and I promise never to call during dinner.
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Not calling during dinner offer does not apply to relatives.
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My booth at Cottontails will be Azalea 1202. Come see me!

Qld Comp Cont'

The team here at jjobrienclimbingare currently out of the country on a non-climbing holiday.Here's a post I phoned in from Bali. Someselected scenes from the Qld Lead Comp

Meanwhile climbers,if you need more style updates,I've been guest blogging over at redphoenixstyle.blogspot.com

An honor and an awesome responsibility, they havecatwalks of followers and a good post will push the google servers into the red.

Qld Lead Comp Who else found themselves getting all inexplicably nervous?A few quick asanas tosooth the jitters.

That would be me in the qualifiers.



There's room on the route for a Rastaman. Liam keeps the vibrations good. Haile man!

Climbing was not compulsory on the night. Elise came along to keep the vibe up.The dynamic Team Cujes in "Boulders and Nuts" gear from upskillclimbinggear.comLee and Sam Cujes have recently launched their slick newonline store with some fresh ideas about hardware and clothing. I still can't believe how cheap those Climbtech ascenders are!And the girls tell me the Boulders and Nuts halters are excellent quality.



Lee in the open finals. Something about you have to clip the draw from the black"X" and no higher.

Where I come from you clip if you can, you go if you can't. Rules! What are they good for...



Post comp noodle box - Eddie, Kaylee, Joe, and I forgot...Kaylee sports a kooky coolowl bag she bought at the South Bank market.



Loesje Fletcher,looking supercool under pressure,uses unfair advantage with Red Chili Caronas.

Guaranteed to win any comp, if the judges know anything about style.

Nate, my preciousblogstar, you know you are just here to push up my blog stats. Even the super styled

Elie Moubarakcouldn't bump you off the popular post top spot.