Today, I planned to finish loading up the van for my Arizona trip. Lots of little stuff to put in there and some stuff, do I really need that or not? I thought I’d just take my time and load it up and maybe go for a yak this afternoon.
Too many clothes
Clothes are always hard for me to figure. I want to make sure I have enough stuff in the van for all kinds of weather, but I only have so much room and it’s real easy to duplicate things, which I’d rather do than be without something, but again, that only so much room in there, gets in the way, so I have to be careful in my selection of things.
I put the bed and all the bed stuff in there, should I add another blanket? Yes, but where to put it. I found a place.
Did I want to leave tonight at six pm?
I made good progress and was pretty much loaded with everything except some of the cold food stuff that goes in just before I leave, so,………………..did I want to leave tonight at six pm? I still hadn’t decided which way to go?
Too darn cold out there at night.
I looked at maps, highway fifty to Carson City, Nev., down 395, I was thinking might be nice. Check the weather, looks ok, but……………………..22 F at night, Looked around some other places and it all looked real cold so I decided to stay home in my nice warm bed and leave in the morning, likely down highway five, as the nights looked better in that area as far as temperature.
I was feeling lazy so decided not to go kayaking and put the kayak and all the stuff that goes with it on the van. It’s all mostly loaded now, so I took a picture or two.
My old van, or,…….. my new RV.
I drive a 1967 Chevy van with a 250, six cyl. inline engine. I put four wheel drive on it about twenty years ago from a Chevy four wheel drive truck. Then I added a forty gallon gas tank to give it range.
That worked out for a number of years. A couple years ago, I decided I needed something different inside for my retirement, so I built in cedar cabinets and changed all the inside to make it nice and comfy, so I could live in it if it was storming outside. I added a under the van propane tank a couple months ago and a propane heater, a Wave3. It already has a propane cook stove.
I also added TBI fuel injection a couple months ago, which I will be testing out this trip. This should be a big improvement over the old carburetor, as it was temperamental and most always smelled of gas, not good in something you want to live in.
Below is a picture of my van from the front. Oh yes, it has a winch too and a kayak on top.
Below is a picture from the side of my van. I paint it with a spray can so it’s easy to touch up. It has a lot of desert pin striping on it already and some dirt too. :O) It should get a lot more of both, this trip.
The van was an old green telephone van.
This 1967 Chevy van used to be one of those old green telephone vans they used a long time ago, remember?
So, I’m taking it easy tonight resting up and will do some plotting on a route with my GPS maps. I have a bunch of plans for this trip, but actually don’t have any plans for my plans, I’ll just take things as they come and hopefully get most of what I have planned done, or not? :O)
I’ll post blogs when I can.
I’ll be posting my blog when I get an internet connection. My sorta plan is maybe to go by Congress, AZ. on my way to Quartzsite. It’s a little out of the way, but this is an explore type trip, so a little detour on the way down just might be the way to go? That will also take me by another part of the Colorado river, just below Vegas, which might put me in a place to kayak?
Anyway, a restful nights sleep and I’ll be off in the morning, bright and early, around ten am. :O)
There are over a hundred pictures that are served up randomly every time you visit or change pages. They are of earlier pictures of interest and also some just to remind me of things.
A Sony AX33 4K, a video camera that takes stills too. What am I doing with that? I take pictures from my Kayak a lot. I found I was missing interesting shots, because my pic was being processed in my camera, before it would let me take another pic. Since I like to take what I call action stills, I bought this camera to take videos, that I could make stills out of, but, as a bonus, this camera also came with buttons to just take stills and that's what I mostly do, unless something is real interesting or too far away for my still zooms. My digilat zoom setting for video goes to two hundred x, and sometimes I need that, but usually, I only use the 10x lens zoom. Because this camera is HD and 4K, the quality has to be real good and it has a lot of stabilizers on it which really helps out a lot for taking pics on the water.
The other thing it has that is a must is a view finder and I had to buy Sony's top of the line cam to get it. This is a must for taking pics on the water, as you must hold the camera as still as posible and putting that eye piece to the eye forms a tripod with your arms that helps a lot. The eye piece is also a must as it works way better than a LED screen to see what you are taking a picture of in the daylight as the LED screens wash out easily in sunlight.
I also have another video camera, a Canon VIXIA G30. I use them both to mostly take stills. The Sony takes higher resolution stills than the G30. That was a bit of a disappointment as I bought the G30 to replace an older camera I dunked in the river, but then had to buy the Sony to get higher still picture resolution that the G30 was lacking.
