A Sudden Displacing to Yuma, AZ

Monday, February 13

We woke to overcast skies and cold rain after a gloriously sunny but windy day yesterday.

By late morning, and given the high winds advisory published for the next day, we decided to cut our stay in the Barry Goldwater AF Range short.

We left after 1 PM and were in the Yuma area about two hours later.  As we all had chores to take care of in Yuma, we chose a couple of spots in a very crowded BLM area near the VFW location north of Fortuna Hill on the outskirts of Yuma.

It was crowded, noisy with passing trains and planes, but for one night it was fine.

Tuesday, February 14

Left the VFW BLM site just before 8AM to work on errands.  The first one was signing up for storage for Scarlett, my 2014 Ural Patrol and the Aluma 638 trailer I use to haul the sidecar rig around on.

Shortly after 9AM the paperwork was done and I left Scarlett and trailer in storage for the next couple of months or so.

The Z's and I will be stashing more stuff into this space before we head south into Baja California next week.  

Next was the printing of all the paperwork we needed to get a Tourist Visa aka FMM in order to be in Baja California.  We also printed out the insurance policies we got for our respective rigs and TW200 motorcycles.  Lots of money spent, but the chance to do this explorative travel into Baja with the Z's could not be passed up by me.

Final chore for the day was picking up pre-ordered Mexican Pesos from the Wells Fargo Bank.  Nice exchange rate of almost 18 pesos to the dollar!  I hope to be able to use the credit card where possible, but having cash will be handy I think.

I finished slightly ahead of the Z's with chores so I headed out to the Ogilby Road BLM Dispersed Camping site about 20 miles away.  It's located just over the border between Arizona and California, so I made sure to gas up the VRRV before leaving Arizona!

Found a nice spot for our rigs and set up camp while awaiting the arrival of Lori and Chris:

Here's a time lapse of the above scene to show the fast moving cloud conditions we had this afternoon.

The above pics and movie were shot with my Pixel 4a's camera because I managed to drop and damage the 16-50mm stock lens that came with my Sony A6000!  I was switching between it and my telephoto lens you see, clumsy!

The lens didn't crack but the housing split

and there was internal damage.

Luckily, the camera and lenses are covered by my existing insurance policy and they'll be cutting a check for me to cover the cost of my buying a replacement via Amazon.  

The replacement lens will be here Friday this week so my clumsiness will not impact my ability to shoot pictures with the Sony camera while in Baja California.

As I typed this, strong winds and dust storms were buffeting the rigs!  After the peak winds, I went out for some shots of the dust storm conditions.

Bought a Replacement Camera: Sony A6000

Last month, in a sad demonstration of how careless I can be, I managed to leave my Sony A5000 Camera on a park bench in Minnesota: LINK

That camera was actually a replacement for the Sony A5000 which went up in the fire that caused the loss of Fiona, my '99 Ural Patrol Sidecar Rig with the R80 BMW engine: LINK back in November of 2020.

I'd debated just sticking with the camera that comes with my smartphone, a Pixel 4a.  It shoots very nice photos for the most part, does great with panorama situations and for most of the pictures I shoot, would have been fine.

It does, however, not do a great job in low lighting, sunset shots are just "OK", and for long distance objects, it doesn't work.

I decided today, after some soul-searching, to buy a used Sony A6000 camera from a private seller here in the Metro Denver area.  I like the Sony interface, their APS-C sensor and I still had a recently purchased 55-210mm telephoto lens that would work with the A6000.

What with the upcoming trip to Hawaii, the US Sidecar Association's National Rally in Hotchkiss, CO in a few days, I figured the time was right.

The camera is in great shape as you can see in the above pic.  Its shutter count was 461 when I bought it, so its barely used.  It's got some improvements over the A5000 I lost:

• 24 Megapixel sensor vice 20 on the A5000
• Dedicated electronic viewfinder 
• Electronic sensor cleaning option
• A more tilt able monitor screen

It comes with a standalone battery charger with two extra batteries and a small camera case as well.

No real learning curve with using this camera as the UI is 90% the same as the one on the A5000.

Now if only I can manage to hold onto this camera and keep it working.....

For shots which require more powerful zoom capabilities, I have the Nikon Coolpix S9900 that CCjon of Riding The Horizon generously gave to me.  It's got a 30X Optical zoom, and its digital option is actually better IMHO than the one on the Sony HX-80 I previously replaced the first A5000 with; and which recently gave up the ghost.  (I'm apparently hard on cameras)

On the home front, Martha continues to recuperate from Covid-19 with only mild symptoms.  Patrick, aka Thing One, has reported an impacted molar and so its off to the dentist I go with him tomorrow morning hopefully.  Finally, I got my second Shingles shot today at the VA clinic, my upper arm is sore and stiff.

I'm thinking all this will probably delay my departure for the sidecar rally. 

We'll see how tomorrow goes I guess.

A Restive Sunday, Riding the Shafer Trail and the Sony HX-80 Camera is Toast.

 Sunday, April 24

Woke to find someone had parked their popup camper near the tent.  Fortunately, he decided to leave shortly after I had breakfast.  He was a loud music player too, good riddance.

I went with Scarlett down to Moab for a grocery store run, came back to find may other campers had left the Dalton Wells area as well.  Again, good riddance.

By late afternoon, it was much less crowded and much quieter for the most part, and my soul felt more at peace than during yesterday's congestion and weekender crowding.

You'll noticed I repositioned things to better occupy the spot that used to house two RVs and a tent.  Just trying to keep some isolation until I leave here sometime this week.

Note to self: The Moab area is just too popular and crowded.

Monday, April 25

A "mo better" day in terms of crowding in Dalton Wells.  I've only one camper van within easy line of sight now.  Good enough.

Rode into town to get something from NAPA and then headed up on Potash Road towards the Shafer Trail.  I usually do it from the top down, using Canyonland's N.P. as the starting point.  Today, I rode it from the bottom up.  I think it's better in terms of spotting good picture backgrounds.

I liked the mushroom capped rock pillars

You can see the upper portion of Shafer Trail

The road has been improved greatly, its not as rough as I remembered it on a Ural but then again, that was years ago.

Once up on top, it was 31 miles back to Moab, about 33 back to the campsite.  I got back around 2:30 PM or so, oiled the chain on Yagi and rested the rest of the afternoon.

One short ride though, the La Sal Mountains were so clear today, I had to get another picture:

The last picture by the Sony HX-80

The Sony HX-80 camera, with its pretty great 30X zoom capability is toast.  It had been giving me trouble with its lens deploying the last few weeks.  So I made a claim to Sony since I'd bought the extended protection plan.  Turns out, Sony said it would cost more to fix it than to pay me the cost of the unit!  Sad.

So, they refunded me the money I paid for the camera.  The camera still worked, kind of, for a bit but today nothing I tried could get the lens to extend properly and seat.  Oh well.  So, bottom line, the Sony HX-80 isn't robust enough for motorcycling usage, at least, my type of motorcycling usage!

Camera troubles and displacing to a nearby site

Thursday, Jul 9

Went riding on Yagi, my '06 TW200 to further explore a  set of trails located near the southern end of the dispersed camping area within the Pike National Forest within which I'm boondocking.

Nice set of trails, with further stuff to explore at the end of the main trail within but I ran into technical problems with my camera.

I had been taking pictures of possible future campsites when I got the "camera error turn off power" message on the LED screen.  Dammit.  I tried removing the battery, waiting a few and then reinserting the battery but no luck, same error.

I didn't have good signal where I was at so I packed things up and headed back to camp where I did have a good signal.

I noticed, back in the URRV, that the shutter screen was down when I took off the lens.  Hmmmm.  Some googling later, it turns out to be a pretty common problem.  One suggestion before I tried a system reset was to shake/tap on the camera body to get the shutter to release from whatever obstruction was keeping it from moving.

I tapped the camera from the bottom and top, nothing.  But then when I re-inserted the battery and turned on power, the shutter screen retracted!  Yay.  I shot many test shots and everything seems to be working fine.  I guess all the dusty conditions I ride in at times finally took their toll?  

Must come up with way to shield camera from dust I guess.  Closing up the zippers on the tank bag would surely help eh?  Such a PITA sometimes though.  Oh well.

I was relaxing outside in the shade of the URRV's awning in the afternoon when I heard truck engines coming nearer.  I looked around and saw not one but two trucks with travel trailers in tow, parked near my campsite and looking like they wanted to settle in!  WTF.

Given, my campsite was at the eastern end of a rather wide open field suitable for group camping but dammit!  So I kept an eye on them and after some discussion, I guess they decided to leave me alone and headed off elsewhere.  Good riddance I thought but after a call with Martha decided to displace to a different site.  The weekend campers were coming you see.....

I'd seen the site empty during my morning riding so after confirming it still was with a short ride with Yagi; I hurriedly broke camp and claimed the smaller site.  Its clearly a one camper site but not cramped.  It's even farther from the main road (Rock Creek Hills Road aka CR39) and I think has a better view of the mountains to the west.

 Shot from access road which parallels the area's main road
(FR392A)

 Some nice trees for shade

Pretty close to the view I had before, but more of 

Mount Boreas is visible; its the rightmost peak.

Did some light riding on Yagi in the afternoon to check out my neighbors.  The place is indeed starting to fill up.  Still, breathing space remains for now.

Had a visitor come by, got as close as perhaps 50 ft from the URRV.  He munched away at the grass nearby, mauled a tiny pine tree using it as a scratching post and finally meandered away.  

Then, the Golden Hour started:

A clear skies sunset: