We woke up to cold temps of 28 degrees! The wind is blowing horribly. At least we have our satellite secured so hopefully it will not go anywhere. We got up around 8.30 AM and got ready to head to town to get water, propane and gasoline. Gotta be ready for one more cold night and then the temps are looking to head up and up!
Since it was a chilly and windy day we got home and decided it was a lazy day to stay inside in the warmth of our comfy home. Even the dogs didn’t want to go out until they just had to. Watching the news tonight the weather man said it was official .. it was the coldest temps in AZ history! Yep .. Ole man winter has found me again! I’m thinking these snowbirds would probably pay me to head back to Illinois and take this cold weather with me. I’m thinking I better stay hid before they try to run me out of Arizona 
We were not sure how we were going to survive our first long term boon docking in the 5th wheel. I am happy to report that we have done great! We started out just using our generator for our electrical needs. Today is day 9 and so far we have put 5 gal of gasoline in the generator. Not bad huh? Now that hubby got our batteries setup we should use even less this coming week as we will not have to depend on the generator to keep our frig, TV and laptops going. We’ve purchased 18 gal of gasoline so far and we still have a full generator (about 3 gallons) and 2- 5 gal cans full. We figure with paying for propane, water and gasoline were averaging about $3.85 to park our home here .. not bad huh? Deep well water is .25 cents per 5 gals (we use that for our fresh water tank – to shower, do dishes and flushing the stool) and filtered water is $1.00 for 5 gals (we use that for drinking and cooking). We came with our tank full and all of our water jugs, we’ve had to purchase 2 – 5 gals just fill up our fresh water tank from our showers and 1- 5 gal to fill up our drinking water jug.
Getting our inverter, batteries and wires was a bit on the expensive side but they will last several years so we have not included that expense in our cost per day. The total cost for everything was $480 but you add that with what we paid for our electric frig and it was still cheaper then a new RV frig and I love my electric one. It’s bigger and it defrost itself! We knew putting a electric frig in that we’d have to do this install and figured that cost in replacing our frig.
We do believe this is going to open up lots more opportunities for us on new places for us to stop and park our home. We are now making plans to stop and boon dock in national parks and other places we’ve wanted to visit but I didn’t want to pay the high price for RV parks close by. YESSSS .. I’m a tight wade and hate paying for some thing I don’t need and the best part of it all .. is that we are not in an over crowded RV park and have a beautiful view. We have found that with our new setup parking without full hookups is not a problem at all. In fact, since today was a stay home day, we’ve run our refrigerator (which hasn’t ran much due to the fridge temps) our TV and satellite, both our laptops and internet and our batteries are still on good. The furnace ran off and on a few times but since I had put a roast in the oven to cook for dinner, the heat from the oven was enough to keep it nice and warm in here. We set the thermostat on 70. So far propane has been our most expensive thing. We had one of our tanks filled up before leaving Carlinville that had run dry at the end of last winter. We didn’t the other tank as in Carlinville it didn’t go off gals but by tank and we couldn’t see filling a tank that had fuel in it. We had the other tank filled before leaving Twin Lakes Campground, but we did some mooch docking and it was cold so we used our furnace most of the time. That makes 3 tank so far this year .. can you say brrrrr and ekkk!! This year is the most we’ve ever spent on propane. With the 5th wheel we’ve had to use the furnace more as our water lines are in the basement unlike a motor home. It’s cheaper to fill the tanks then freeze our pipes or water tanks.
Hubby started the generator around 8 PM and will run it until around 10 PM to charge our batteries back up so that they are in good shape to run our furnace all night long. We have one more cold night to get through with temps around 28 and then it’s going to start warming back up after tomorrow. The rest of our evening is going to be spent continuing to be lazy and watching TV.
Even though it’s cold here in Q we are still enjoying our stay and we are looking forward to exploring all that the tents and shops in town when it warms up. The big tent show hasn’t started yet. We should start getting more neighbors in the next few days before the big events start.
Hope your all staying warm where ever you are .. stay tuned to see what we are up to next …
