Now Boondocking at near the Town of Walden, CO

 Sunday, June 2 

As mentioned in the previous post, I spent the morning working on the configuration of items on the roof of the VRRV.

After a quick lunch, I rode out on Yagi, My TW200, and took Manhattan road AKA Larimer County 69 down towards the small settlement of Rustic, CO. 

It was about 13-14 miles and it will give me access to Colorado Highway 14 which I plan to take westward towards Walden, CO probably tomorrow.

Monday, June 3

I displaced from the Red Feather Lakes area at 10:30 AM in increasingly windy conditions.  The winds would get so bad that a couple of times it threatened to push the VRRV out of its lane as I drove on CO Hwy 14 towards the town of Walden.

Walden, advertises itself as the "Moose Watching Capital of Colorado", we shall see.  I've been in the town before:  LINK1 LINK2 

On the way to this town, one passes by the Nohku Crags and the Seven Ute Mountains near Cameron Pass.

Nohku Crags on the left and the Seven Ute Mtn on the right

I spent a bit of time at the city park in Walden, taking advantage of the provided RV dump and water resupply.  They ask for donations instead of charging you so covered that.

Afterwards, it was a short drive out of town to the Walden Reservoir and my camping spot by the water for the next few days.

I set up camp under very windy conditions.  Temperatures were in the low 60s but with the wind chill it wasn't great to be outside.  So I spent the afternoon cleaning up under the RV's stove top and the heavily carbonized burners.  I'll not publish the pics, suffice to say it was quite disgusting under the stove top.

The overcast skies and winds made for rather dismal lighting conditions in terms of photography.   Hopefully, I'll get better pics of the reservoir tomorrow.

Figuring out Rooftop options for Solar and Dishy

It's good that I went camping this week, apparently there was a big hail storm Thursday night in the Metro Denver area.  Got an email from the storage yard people where I normally store the RV and there was apparently damage to multiple rigs there! 

About the Sony telephoto lens that I found to have a rattling noise Friday; all is not lost perhaps.  More to follow as I experiment with the field expedient solution I'm testing over the next few days. 

Saturday was spent puttering inside the RV doing chores and small modifications to accommodate the ingress of the Startlink cable and the propane gas line for the catalytic heater.

Heavy rain sometime overnight, woke me briefly.

Sunday, June 2 

After breakfast, I started working on the roof of the VRRV to ensure the waterproof conditions for the connector linking the two solar panels. 

For now, I will use a small Tupperware container to keep the rain off the connector: 

After this task, I moved the starlink dish (aka dishy in the SL community) onto the roof and worked out how to secure it in case of high winds. 

Previous testing had confirmed what I had read online, that the Gen 3 dish works while laying flat.  Ran some tests, here's a representative example of the speeds achieved this morning: 

Not too shabby eh?  More than enough for our internet access speed requirements. 

The starlink app reports that the dish is misaligned but otherwise it works fine.

Rotated to the north.

Here's a view of the rooftop this morning: 

I turn and rotate the solar panels to maximize perpendicular exposure to the sun as it moves about the sky during the day. 

Hanging Out at Camp and a Ride to the Lakes

Thursday, May 30

Pretty lazy day, spent mostly lounging and reading.

Campsite visitor

View from a nearby hill

Spooky shelter now surrounded by water.

This is near the campsite.

A view from a different hill, note the overcast skies

Found this dead hummingbird while doing

a police call (picking up litter)

I think the auto focus feature on my telephoto lens is wonky, all the long distance shots I've taken recently have come out blurry.  The chipmunk for instance.  

Update:  the lens assembly rattles, not a good sign.  

Friday, May 31

After breakfast, I replaced the original kitchen faucet (18 years old) with one I got from Amazon a while ago.  I'd been fighting sporadic small leaks if one didn't close the faucet handle with some force.

The task was easy, hardest part was snaking my arm under the counter holding the sink to get at the mounting fittings and water connections.

The rest of the morning was spent reading in the gazebo, it was a bit cool until perhaps 2PM or so.  Then the skies cleared somewhat and the sun warmed things up into the mid-60s!  

I rode out on Yagi, my TW200 to check out some of the lakes of the Red Feather Lakes area.

Dowdy Lake, above and below

Letitia Lake

Snake Lake

Parvin Lake

West and Twin Lake

(Martha and I had camped at the campground here before)

Starting to see more rigs and campers driving up and down the road, seeking a spot for the weekend I guess.  Luckily, I picked a small site so hopefully no one will show up asking to "share".

Another shot of the rear of the campsite, this time

under sunny conditions.

The original site I'd picked is now sporting three separate campsites all within shouting distance of each other.  Mine is "mo better".

Relaxing while doing chores on the VRRV

Wednesday, May 29

A very nice and sunny morning leading to an overcast afternoon with gusting winds.  Got some major minor tasks done with a bit more riding of Yagi, my TW200 thrown in for good measure.

The gate to Deadman Road remains closed though I see work trucks go to and fro along the road leading to it.

As to the major minor tasks:

I finally figured out what was causing the water pump to cycle on and off for no apparent reason. It had started doing this in the previous camping trip and this time out I'd taken to turning the pump off when no using it. The sound of it cycling on/off unexpectedly was quite annoying to me.

As I sipped my coffee, I looked again at all the valves and connections.  No leaks that I could find which would cause pressure to drop and activate the pump however.  This time though, I spotted what looked like a air stem cap on top of the accumulator.  Hmmm.

The accumulator's role is to keep the water in the lines under pressure, to help move it when one opens a faucet.  I didn't know, until I read its manual, that you're supposed to check it's stored air pressure!   That's why there was a cap you see and I deployed a portable air compressor to fill it to 30 PSI as per the manual.

Once I got the pressure back to spec, no more unexpected cycling on/off by the water pump!  Success!

Another major minor task was figuring out why there seemed to be connectivity issues between the solar panels and the solar charge controller.  There's two 100 watt panels now you see, and its no longer a simple one-to-one connection as I combine the two panels into one charge controller.

I started off just twisting the wires together but this didn't lend itself to easy disconnects for storage and for sometimes using only one panel.  For example, only one is needed while the VRRV is in storage to keep the batteries topped off.

Enter this connector I found on Amazon:

Easy peasy to use and to connect/disconnect.  You just have to make sure no copper is exposed as the possibility of unwanted contact increases of course!  Now, when I just need one solar panel, I just disconnect the unneeded one by flipping the levers up as appropriate....

Finally, now that we're using Starlink for Internet access while camping, I'd had a slight worry (yep, I overthink things) of the darn dish being caught by wind gusts and flipped over, getting damaged.

I'm using a tent stake similar to the ones used by the gazebo, driving it into the ground first, leaving just enough room to slide the "dishy"'s flip stand under the hook.  I think it'll work just fine, and it's so low to the ground to start with....

No plans to mount it on the roof, I want to retain the flexibility of being able to move it around to clear obstructions like when camping in a forested area.

The riding with the TW200 was enjoyable in the sun.  I rode it on trails seeking high point area access for pictures; since this place is so forested.  I found a nice hill with boulders at the top that gave me this view of nearby houses:

Not a bad location for one's weekend house eh?

Finally, another shot of the campsite, showing where I'd moved the gazebo to get it somewhat out of the wind.

The skies turned only partly cloudy in the later afternoon, with warm sunshine somewhat offsetting the occasional gusty winds.

I walked over to a nearby copse of Aspen for this shot: