Wed 3/9: We set the propane furnace to keep us just under 60 degrees inside last night, and we stayed nice and warm. However, propane tank #1 ran out of juice around 3:00 in the morning and it got a bit chilly, so Kenny had to get dressed and go out to switch the tank over to tank #2. We’ve been using tank #1 since we bought Limbo, so we don’t really know how much was in it at the beginning of the night. In any case, he decided that he would take a trip into town to fill tank #1, and purchase tank #3 to have as a spare. They are 4 gallon tanks?. We’ll set the thermostat a little lower tonight to try to conserve. We just need it to keep the frost off our noses, right? Oh! And by about 11:00am, our little solar panel had already charged our batteries back up to full!! That’s sweet!!
While Kenny went to town, I stayed at camp. We didn’t want to leave Kawi out unattended. He needs parental supervision in case he might decide to try to wander off. So I did some housekeeping, organizing, and made some sketti sauce for dinner. It really turned into a decent day… a bit windy, but not too chilly. While I was cooking, I had the door open, so that was nice. Kenny was back before noon, so I made some samiches, loaded our little cooler, and we peeled out to go explore. There are lots and lots of roads and trails here!! This is the map in our OnX app for offroading. We bought Sammy the Samsung to use for navigation in Kawi. The only problem is that I needed to plan ahead better, because Sammy does not have cellular connectivity. So….. if something isn’t already downloaded, we have no way to get the info onto Sammy. WOOPSIE! I forgot that step, because I’m so used to Gladys and her cell connection. So – we had to use OnX on my phone, which worked out ok.
Much of this BLM land is open range for cattle, and we saw several beefcows (as compared to moocows) just hanging out.
It was fun cruising around and finding different terrain. We did find a few hills to climb. And Kawi just cruised up all of them.
Lots of desert with not much for plant life or hills to obscure the view. We actually got to take off our jackets. with a nice reasonable temperature.
The hill looked more challenging that it was.
There were a few places with red dirt and a change in scenery.
When we stopped for lunch, we realized that there was some wind blowing, so we tried to find a place between a couple of hills. I look dorkier than normal with wearing my gaiter over my hat to try to keep it from blowing off.
As we approached this downhill, we had to get out to take a look. It was steep, but not wasn’t terrible for Kawi. He just cruised on down. He has engine braking, so we don’t have to press the brakes and skid the tires.
This one was pretty steep, but eazy schmeazy. I don’t know what the pipe is – perhaps a water line for the cattle?
Another view of our playground.
The loose rocks make me a bit nervous, and not knowing what is at the crest of the hill, too! What if it is a cliff on the other side? Kawi takes the rocks easy, and we can crawl over the top and take a look. It was good.
Time to head back after about 20 miles and three hours. We did lots of cruising around (the blue track).
You can barely see Henry & Limbo on the horizon. We are still the only ones crazy enough to be out in the cold desert. 😉
We had yummy sketti and salad for dinner, and saw a beautiful sunset. I stepped out well afterwards to take a look at the stars in the sky. There were lots of them, but surprisingly, there is enough light around us at all of the petroleum wells that it wasn’t truly a “dark sky”.
We’ll try to stay warm tonight, and go explore some more tomorrow!
*****
Thurs 3/10 – We’ve had really weak cell signal, so it’s been difficult to finish this! It was a very pleasant day, with a bit of wind. But the forecast said it’s going to be really cold again tonight, and possible snow tomorrow!? Are you kidding?! 😳 As I recall, we slept pretty good last night. Our furnace doesn’t have a ‘set temperature’ on it, so we just try to put it in a place where we’ll be warm enough, but not waste too much propane being set too warm. It’s a guessing game every night.
Today we rode around on all different trails from yesterday, and we found a really cool gully!
This was just the beginning of it, and see those branches hanging down on the right? As we came through toward where I am standing, they ripped our desert flag AND BROKE our flag pole! 😬
Yea – dumb branches!
So we pulled around into this big turn around spot which is apparenlty made especially for rigs that need to fix stuff after the branches mess things up. It is a panoramic shot, but it really was curved like this.
And would you look at that?! Snapped that fiber pole right off! Kenny said that he probably should have bought a ‘doinker’…. or a ‘springy-thingy’, but he thought that one of those would be too springy. Maybe not? 🤔 Oh well.
Here he is, assessing the damage and trying to get that little stubby chunk out of the hole. No such luck. It’ll require a drill.
So…. back on the path. There was one spot in here where our fenders rubbed on both sides, the walls were so skinny narrow – but we made it.
There are a lot of cattle guards out here in the desert, and some are barely big enough for big-bertha-butt-Kawi. He’s like the DC-10 of side-by-sides… he is a wide body!!
And along with the cows, a lot of dino-pumpers. Lots of them are just open like this, with no fence or anything, just pumping away. There are random petroleum smells too. That took some getting used to – I kept thinking Kawi was leaking something.
We found a few hills to climb. Kawi just tootles up like no big deal.
And….. there were some cattle guards that were way too skinny for us.
No way, Jose. There was a whole big area on the south side of the road that we could not access. Oh well.
One of the trails that we were on was like a video game, twisting and turning through these sticker bushes. The trail was barely wide enough, and we had to take some corners just right. This stuff has two-inch thorns!! and it was all along both sides of the trail.
We had a fun time, it was dusty, so we had to wear our gaiters. I should have bought Kenny one of those smiling skeleton ones. 💀
Back at camp, Kenny got out a drill and drilled the chunk out of the flag pole hole, then had to turn the flag pole around because the broken end was all frayed. But hey! We’re good as new!! Kawi was a total dust bunny!
So… since we’re so good at conserving water, Kenny got out his little portable pressure washer. It really doesn’t use much water, and it cleaned Kawi up pretty good! It’s kind of a pain that we have to put him into our bedroom to transport him around, but this will help keep the dust down.
We had a lot of fun braaping around Hackberry. We never saw anybody else out here. We don’t have solid plans or reservations for anything until next Friday, so if it is snowy here tomorrow, we may just stay put an extra day. We’ll see! All-in-all, we covered a lot of territory here! (Blue, pink, and purple lines are the ones we did.)
