Ajo summary

The trip to Ajo and Buenos Aires helped me focus on some issues.  Some of these are technical matters about what needs to be done to the Beast before I undertake more extended travel.  Near the top of that list is an issue I discovered as I was prepping the rig for the trip home: the drivers' side air spring isn't holding air.  That's not something I feel like I can deal with on my own, so it goes on the list for either Buck or Merrigan's.   Sigh.

The other items have a much more DIY cast:  There's a cheap little fitting that will let me refill the little 1-qt propane bottles which fuel my grill and the heater.  I can buy in "bulk" in the bigger bottle which is for the patio grill, and then decant into the smaller bottles, saving a ton of money and avoiding tossing out the metal and plastic they're made from.

I need a longer cord for the solar panel: Unless I park right, it can be hard to get it positioned in full sun all day.  This will involve getting some 10ga wire and some Powerpole connectors and fabricating a cable, but that's do-able.

The list goes on.  Those are near the top, and fortunately not all that pricey.

Part of the agenda for last weekend's trip was to see how the solar panel and the dual batteries worked in boondocking situations.  Well, in a word.  As long as I had a few hours of direct sunshine, the solar panel topped off the batteries just fine.  I had plenty of water: The tank was 1/3 full when I left, and there were several bottles of drinking water in the fridge.  Resource issue:  internet data.  I used a lot when there was a good signal.  Not a problem this month; it's comfortably within the minimum I'm paying for. But an extended trip, particularly with a lot of time boondocking, might require some planning.

This leads to a prior question:  What's the future look like for me and the RV?  I think that'll be a separate post.  What projects I undertake depend on whether the Beast is a semi-permanent member of the household, or not.  I got it about a year ago, and told myself that I'd re-evaluate the whole RV thing after a year.  That would be about now...