Tag Archives: Off-the-Grid

About our vacation home atop a northern Arizona mesa.

Ah, For a Good Night’s Sleep!

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Jack the Dog defends his territory.

I’ve been living at Howard Mesa for almost a full month now. And it’s been almost a full month since I’ve had a good night’s sleep.

The problem is Jack the Dog. You see, he feels as if he has to protect me from animals of the night. I’m talking about coyotes.

Howard Mesa is home to a wide range of wildlife, including rabbits (cottontails and jackrabbits), antelope, elk, coyotes, ravens, hummingbirds, nighthawks, and a variety of other birds. Since our property is fenced-in, we don’t usually see antelope or elk. This year, we haven’t seen any coyotes (yet) either. But that doesn’t mean we haven’t heard them.

Every night, packs of coyotes on various parts of the mesa, howl. They do it around sunset and then at various times throughout the night. The sound is distant and rather pleasant in a wild sort of way. It doesn’t usually wake me. It isn’t usually close enough to be that loud.

But it’s loud enough for Jack the Dog to hear, even in the dead of night when he, Alex the Bird, and I are sound asleep. And every time he hears those darn coyotes, he reacts the same way: by barking.

So, in the middle of the night, I’m likely to be awakened by my own dog barking at least two or three times.

The other night, he barked so suddenly that I heard Alex the Bird fall of the perch in his sleeping cage.

I don’t know why he barks at the coyotes here. He doesn’t do it at home. There’s no threat of coyotes attacking us in our camper. And they really aren’t very close.

Tonight, I’m bringing a cup of water to bed with me. When Jack barks, he’ll not only get yelled at, but doused. We’ll see if that makes things any better.

I’d like to sleep a whole night through.

The $25 Top Off

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I top off my water tanks without making a call — or a drive.

I’d just finished a snack of blueberries, bananas, and vanilla yogurt when I thought I heard the sound of a truck’s engine out on the road. Jack the Dog confirmed that something was out there by letting out a half-hearted bark.

I grabbed my shirt, put on my shoes, and left the screened-in room. A water truck was backing up to the only house within view of our place at Howard Mesa, a rather ugly doublewide across the road. The house has been for sale for years and lately, since the association finally made the road drivable for ordinary cars (as opposed to high-clearance, 4WD vehicles), Realtors have been popping in once in a while, trying to sell it. Last week, there was a car and a truck there for several hours and I figured it was sold. But the sign remained and no one has been back — at least not while I was here. But now water was being delivered. What did that mean? Had it been sold? Would it be occupied again soon? Although I cared about all that, it wasn’t what interested me today. What interested me was the water. Would there be any leftover in the truck, and, if so, could I get it?We have two tanks on our property. The first one we bought was a 550 gallon tank, which we originally had filled for $60. Back in those days, we’d come up on weekends in the summer and camp in our pop-up camper. It was very rugged, but quite pleasant. Not having any plumbing, we didn’t use much water. In fact, the horses drank more than Mike and I used for showering, washing dishes, cooking, etc. The next time it needed to be filled, we had trouble finding someone who would come up to fill it for us. It seemed that no one wanted to drive “all the way up” here unless they were going to pump in at least 2000 gallons. We offered to pay for 2000 gallons, but they wouldn’t hear of it. So we went out and bought another tank, a 1550 gallon tank. With 2100 total gallons of storage, we could get water delivered.

Photo
This photo shows the big tank, with Jack the Dog posing in front of it. You can see the little tank and the shed in the background.

When your water is in a tank (or tanks, in my case) rather than connected to a city utility or well, you keep close track of how much water you use and have on hand. I checked the water levels just yesterday and figured I had about 800 gallons. My water usage (including the horses) is about 40 gallons a day. That gave me a 20-day supply. I figured I’d make a call for water when the big tank was empty; the small tank had about 300 gallons in it. By the time someone came up, I’d be able to take close to 2000 gallons.

The last time we had both tanks filled — last year; I wrote about it in a blog entry because the unusual circumstances surrounding the refill — it cost us $150 for 2000 gallons. That’s 7.5¢ per gallon. My friend Matt, who lives year-round on the other side of the mesa with his wife, says he can fill his 425-gallon pickup tank in Valle for $9 or in Belmont for an unbelievable $1.50. That’s just over 2¢ or well under 1¢ per gallon respectively. Their water usage is much higher than mine and he winds up making a water run at least once a week. A water run means driving to Valle (9 miles away) or Belmont (about 40 miles away) with the pickup and its tank, filling up, then returning with a load weighing approximately 3,400 lbs. He must then attach a pump to the pickup’s tank and start a generator to pump the water from the pickup tank to his storage tank. I figure a water run to Valle probably takes him an hour and a half total.

I’ve been thinking about hauling my own water to save money but the investment in that pickup tank and pump would be at least $300, so I wouldn’t start actually saving money until I’d been able to haul at least 5000 gallons. (You need to count the cost of the water and the cost of the fuel used to haul it. I’d like to count my time, but my time is pretty cheap these days, so I’ll skip it.) Mike doesn’t think that $150 to fill the tanks is all that much and I know darn well that he has no desire to haul it himself.

Back to the water delivery across the road.

With 800 gallons on hand, water was on my mind, but not as a pressing issue. But when I saw that truck, I saw an opportunity to get the tanks topped off. So I put on my shirt (it’s hot here and I tend to lounge in my sport bra) and made the 1/4 mile walk to my neighbor’s front yard.

The driver came right out of the truck, where he was enjoying the air conditioning. He was a kind of grizzly looking older guy wearing the dirtiest national park cap I’d ever seen. He was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette — and yes, it was tobacco.

I asked him if he’d have any water left over when he was finished filling the tank. He said he didn’t know. My neighbor’s tank is underground and neither of us knew how big it was or how empty it was. I told him that I’d take anything left over, provided the price was right.

“Isn’t it better to go back with an empty truck and a few extra bucks in your pocket?”

He agreed that it was.

We spent some time chatting about the area and about the kind of people who live five miles off pavement, off the grid. We shared some gossip about my neighbor and other people he delivered water to. He said most people don’t last long out here. They come in thinking that it’s going to be great to be so secluded and then they start disliking the inconveniences of hauling water and depending on solar panels and generators for electricity. Then we marveled at the house’s big roof and lack of gutters. Around here, it’s common to collect water off your roof with gutters and leaders into your water storage tank and run it through a filter before using it. My neighbor’s house didn’t have gutters. With the size of that roof, they could easily keep their tank filled if they’d set it up properly. Maybe the new owners would wake up and take care of it.

We both heard the water reach the top before it started gushing over the fill port. The water man flipped off the pump quickly. He consulted a sight tube on the side of the truck and told me he had about 900-1000 gallons left. I asked him how much he wanted for it.

“I don’t know,” he said. “How about $25?”

“Sold.”

I climbed into his truck and he started down my neighbor’s driveway. Jack the Dog, who had followed me over, led the way on foot. The man drove very slowly — so slowly that I figured it probably took him the better part of an hour to get from the pavement to my neighbor’s house — a distance of just under five miles. I opened our gate, he drove through, I closed it, and I climbed back on board.

He asked me if my helicopter was a Hiller. I told him that it was a Robinson. He asked me what I did with it. I told him. He asked if I flew it. “Sure,” I said. He told me he’d been a helicopter pilot in “the war” — probably Vietnam. He had that kind of look about him. Not the pilot look. The Vietnam vet look.

He rigged up the piping and was pumping water into the big tank within minutes. We chatted some more. I could feel the water level rise in the tank. Soon, his tank was empty and mine was filled. The big tank had swallowed it all.

I fetched $25 from the trailer and gave it to him. Then I showed him the work I’d done in the shed. He told me he was going to build a house out of block on some land he had in the area. I told him about the house we planned to build in the future.

I rode with him down to the gate. He told me he had most of an old gunship that he’d picked up at some kind of sale. Said he needed a swashplate and some other stuff to get it flying again. His eyes sparkled mischievously. I hope he gets those parts and gets the thing flying again. Valle needs a bit more excitement and a Vietnam-era helicopter gunship would be just the ticket.

I let him through the gate and watched him drive off. With a lighter load, it shouldn’t take him more than 30 minutes to get off the mesa.

And me, I figure I got 900 gallons of water delivered for 2.8¢ per gallon. Not bad!

Is There No Escape from the Heat?

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The temperature hits 102°F at Howard Mesa.

Yesterday, it hit 115°F in Phoenix. The meteorologists expect the same today — which would break a record.

Temperatures hit 100° in Prescott yesterday. I can’t imagine 100° in Prescott.

I don’t know what the temperature in Wickenburg was yesterday because I’m not there and haven’t been there for three weeks now. But I can tell you the high temperature in the screened-in room beside my trailer at Howard Mesa: 102°. It was not a happy time for me — or for Alex the Bird.

Poor Alex, stuck in his cage. He spent a good part of the late morning standing on his highest perch, wings slightly out, panting. At times, his eyes were half closed. I thought he was going to have heat stroke or something. So I took the only fan I have, plugged it into the inverter, clipped it to the door so it would point right at him, and turned it on. Then I took a wet washcloth and placed it on the back of the fan, so the moisture would be drawn through. I created, in effect, a mini evaporative cooler. Of course, I had to rewet the washcloth every 20 minutes or so. But it really made a difference for him. He came back to life.

There was no relief for me. I spent a good part of the day only partially dressed, lounging in the shade with a book. There’s no one at Howard Mesa to see me — I could have lounged in my birthday suit. I’d finished my chores — feeding the critters, adding water to the horses’ water trough, putting on the horses’ fly masks — before 7 AM. Then I’d spent about an hour or two working on the insulation in the shed. I’m about halfway finished now; just need about 12 more sheets of the stuff to do the ceiling. Then I retreated to the shade.

Jack, of course, spent the entire day under the trailer.

The heat wouldn’t have been so bad if there had been some wind. Howard Mesa is windy most of the time, but lately, the wind has been very calm. (Or “mild” if you talk to the folks at Wickenburg Airport.) There was a breeze yesterday, but it was blowing from the northwest. That’s behind the camper. So the camper blocked the wind and none of it came into the screened-in room. Or into the camper.

The sun beat down relentlessly most of the day. But around noon or 1 PM, enough clouds had built up that the sun slipped behind them once in a while. I consulted the thermometer I’d put on the table during one of our shady spells. The temperature in the screened-in room dropped 4° in a matter of minutes.

Today, I’m going to Flagstaff. I have a meeting to attend there and a bunch of stuff to pick up at Olsen’s Grain and Home Depot. The truck has air conditioning, so I’ll be comfortable.

But I do admit that I’m a bit worried about Alex the Bird. There will be no evap cooler for him today.

A Laundry Run

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Now if only there were a helipad in the Laundromat parking lot…

Our place at Howard Mesa is 40 acres with about 1/4 mile bordering state land. The lot is pie shaped, with the pie “crust” at the top of a gently sloping hill. About 5 acres at the top of the hill is quite level — certainly level enough to land a helicopter.

PhotoLast year, when I worked at Papillon, I had my R22, Three-Niner-Lima, up here with me. Sometime during the summer, we had a load of cinders (volcanic gravel which is widely available here) delivered and we — well, mostly Mike — spread it out to make an oddly shaped landing pad. That’s where I landed Three-Niner-Lima, and this year, that’s where I’m landing Zero-Mike-Lima. The pad is less than 50 feet away from our trailer and its screened-in room. It’s also less than 50 feet away from the horse corral, where our horses go to drink and to eat whatever we throw down to supplement their grazing. As I sit here in the screened-in room, typing this, it’s right in front of me. I put a little fence around it to keep the horses from wandering in. That’s probably a good thing, because they’ve been itchy lately and scratching themselves on anything handy: the corral gate, tree stumps, the BBQ grill shelf. I can just imagine them scratching themselves on the helicopter’s stinger and cracking a tail rotor blade in the process.

Today, I flew down to Williams to do my laundry, check my e-mail, and do some grocery shopping. I loaded up my laundry bag and a few small bags of garbage (no garbage pickup up here), did a preflight, and climbed on board. Cherokee was in the corral, munching on some timothy grass when I started up. He didn’t look concerned until I brought it up to 75% RPM for my mag check. Then he bolted. I don’t know where Jake was. Alex the Bird and Jack the Dog watched from the screened-in room as I spun up and took off.

I did a quick circle over our property to make sure the horses were together. Cherokee really freaks out when he can’t find Jake. They were together, gazing about 100 yards from the pad. I was already forgotten.

I zipped out over the mesa, then dropped down on the north side. I circled Larry Fox’s house; if he’d come out, I would have landed and offered him a ride. But he was nowhere to be seen, so I headed south, to Williams. I flew out over the town once before landing at the airport. I dumped the trash, added 25 gallons of fuel, then started up again and repositioned to a parking spot. Then locked up and lugged my laundry through the terminal to the parking lot out front where my faithful MR-2 is waiting.

As usual, it started right up. I really love that car. I mean, how could you not love a car that is content to wait in an airport parking lot days, weeks, or months before you come to put it to work? A car that always starts when you turn the key? A car with 132,000 miles and its original clutch?

I did my Williams chores, angry with myself for forgetting the cooler. That meant I couldn’t buy ice cream. Not that I need ice cream.

The Laundromat was particularly weird for me. Laundromats are weird places, anyway. In Williams, the people who use the Laundromat fall into two categories: the usual folks who don’t have washers and dryers (normally apartment or trailer dwellers on the lower side of the income scale) and vacationers who have run out of clean clothes. Most of the folks there that day were in the first category. I was kind of a mix of the two, but I fit right in, driving up in my sad little Toyota, wearing ratty clothes because that’s all I had left. I was the only one who knew I hadn’t arrived in Williams in that car. And I’m pretty darn sure that I was the only one in the place who was living in a trailer with a helicopter parked 50 feet away from it. But I enjoyed the experience, especially listening to the tips offered by one woman about using the dryers: “Only put in a quarter at a time. Then pull out the dry clothes and add another quarter for the rest.” A quarter gave you 10 minutes of dryer time. She claimed that her clothes were often dry with only a quarter’s worth of time. She must have a lot of polyester and nylon; my 100% cotton clothes took 3 to 4 quarters to dry.

I bought a bunch of groceries at Safeway and a few odds and ends at the hardware store, then zipped back to the airport and loaded the helicopter back up. The broom and 5 4-foot lengths of half-inch rebar were particularly difficult to load up. (No, they didn’t fit under the seat.) By that time, the wind was howling at Williams — probably 15-20 knots from the south (where my tail end was pointed). I started up, warmed up, and hover-taxied over to the taxiway with a nice crosswind. Then I pointed into the wind, made my departure call, and took off into the wind, making a 180° turn as I climbed out. With the 30-knot tailwind I had, it took less than 10 minutes to get back. (Sure beats the 50 minutes it would have taken in the truck.)

Back at Howard Mesa, the horses were in the corral, hanging out by the water trough. I came in from the north, watching them the whole time. I think they were sleeping, because they didn’t seem to notice me until I was about 100 feet from landing. Then they walked out of the corral and stood beside the fence at the far side, watching me, ready to run if they had to. They didn’t have to. I set down gently and shut down.

It took a lot of trips to unload the helicopter. And a lot of time to put all the stuff away.

But at least I got my flying fix for the day.

Getting to Work

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I spend my first day “working” at Howard Mesa.

Sunrise this morning was extra beautiful. There was a line of light clouds just above the eastern horizon and, as the sun made its way west, it illuminated the cloud bottoms. First brilliant orange, then gray, then lavender, and finally pink. Then the sun was up, casting a golden glow over my “camp” before disappearing briefly behind those clouds. Then it was daytime.

It was surprisingly warm this morning: 61°F at dawn. That’s warm enough to have my morning coffee outside, in the sunshine. Alex went right into his cage and Jack, after scouting around a bit, retreated to his favorite hangout, under the trailer. The horses even put in an appearance for a drink and the alfalfa I’d left for them.

The wind started picking up right after dawn. I’d been thinking about burning some of the cardboard boxes we’ve been accumulating, but I won’t start a fire if there’s anything more than a breeze. By the time I was ready to do it, it was already too windy. I’d have to wait until tomorrow. I started work on the partition wall framing in the shed. The wall is 80 inches long and about 70 inches tall, and divides off a 44 inch portion of the shed that will someday be a tiny bathroom. I’d bought a book about basic carpentry, so I knew what to do: nail in the header, use a plumb bob to position the footer, and nail in the footer. Then position the vertical studs 24 inches on center apart.

Interior of ShedI didn’t have to cut any wood. I’d bought all the wood pre-cut to my specifications. There’s a hardware store in Wickenburg (Johnson Lumber) that is very nice about cutting wood for me and that’s where I bought it. I took measurements last time I was up here, so I had exact numbers. That was odd because the vertical studs each needed to be a different length. When I assembled all the pieces, they fit perfectly.

I used 2x6s for this partition wall. The reason: all the piping between the bathroom and kitchen will be in it and I wanted to make sure the wood was wide enough to drill through for the pipes.

Unfortunately, I’d neglected to buy the metal do-dads I needed to attach the studs to the header and footer. (There’s no way I’m going to be able to sink a nail on a 45° angle.) I debated making my trip to Flagstaff today — I even told Mike I would — but I decided to see how far I could get without them. Because the pieces of wood fit so snugly, I was able to wedge them into place. That made it possible to get accurate measurements for the horizontal pieces that need to go between them. I hope the folks at the Home Depot in Flag are as nice about cutting lumber as the Johnson Lumber folks.

Interior of ShedTo see whether I’d be able to get my ever-growing butt past the bathroom vanity once it was installed, I took it out of its box and set it in place. That’s when I realized why it had only cost me $78 assembled with a sink basin: it was a piece of junk. It was falling apart and I had to use some skinny nails I happened to have to bang it all back together. Then I placed the basin in (partially to help hold the thing together) and moved it into place, trying to imagine a wall behind it. Yes, I could walk past it. Next, I worked on the ladder we’d use to get up to the loft. The loft is about 6-1/2 feet high, and just tall enough to sit up comfortably on. We’ll be putting a bed up there. Well, a mattress. And some carpeting under it. I positioned one 8-foot 2×4 on an angle against the edge of the loft, then took the precut 18-inch long pieces and a level and marked off where they’d need to be nailed in. The ladder’s rungs need to be parallel to the ground. This is something I learned when I built my first loft, back in college. The first ladder’s steps had been perpendicular to the sides and the ladder had been placed vertically. This made it very difficult to negotiate. So I put the ladder on an angle and then had to reposition the steps so I wouldn’t hurt my bare feet climbing up and down.

While in the process of nailing in rungs, I managed to bash the top segment of my left index finger really hard. It’s purplish and swollen now and tender to the touch. It’s a good thing that for some reason, that’s one of only two fingers I don’t use when I type. It just hangs out there in space, along with my left thumb, while the other eight get the job done.

There’s one thing you can count on just about all the time at Howard Mesa: wind. The wind picked up as I worked and kept picking up all morning. By 11 AM, when I stopped for a break, it was howling. I tuned in my aviation radio to Weather Channel 2, which covers northern Arizona and heard that a wind advisory was in effect for my area, with winds of 25 to 35 mph, gusting to 45 mph. Soon I began worrying about the trailer’s awning, which was taking a real beating. And Alex, in his cage, having trouble moving around without getting blown around.

I took a shower and had lunch. I ate outside on the picnic table to keep Alex company. Bad idea. My wet hair dried in seconds in a style reminiscent of Einstein. I really need a haircut.

By 1 PM, the wind was very bad. I set up Alex’s small cage in the back half of the trailer, with the connecting door open so he could see me. Then I settled onto the sofa inside the trailer and worked on the index cards I’m using to organize my novel. I turned on my PowerBook and fired up iTunes. Although my 12-inch PowerBook doesn’t have great speakers, I’d rather have 2,205 songs to choose from than listen to whatever’s playing on NPR or the local classic rock station. I mostly played Native American flute music, since Alex likes it. He didn’t like being in the camper’s back room and the camper’s constant shaking and rattling was making him nervous.

Every once in a while, I’d have to go outside and reattach one of the do-dads that keep the awning from flopping around. That requires standing on a stepladder and using a pair of pliers to twist a wing nut tight. I even had to adjust the tie-downs on the helicopter’s blades. They were flopping around far too much.

I made some baked beans on the stove. When I went to add the tomato paste, however, I discovered that the can I’d picked up included garlic, basil, and oregano. Not exactly what I had in mind for baked beans. Why is it that you can’t buy plain canned food? Why do they feel as if they need to add all the seasonings for you?

By 4 PM, the wind was calming down. I brought Alex back outside and came out with a book I’d bought long ago, Cause of Death. This Writer’s Digest Publishing book provides a lot of information about death and bodies for people writing about it. I learned enough to accurately describe the dead body my protagonists discover and get some additional information I may use in the future.

I went on my afternoon walk at 5:40 PM. I know the exact time because I called Mike and left a message for him on his cell phone just before I left. He called back when I reached the gate. Because I didn’t have much confidence in the cell signal, I remained rooted in position for the entire five-minute conversation. Then Jack the Dog and I walked down to “Four Corners” and back, a distance of about a mile. I walked briskly both ways. Jack ran. He chased rabbits, smelled things, and left urine samples here and there.

Back at the camper, I settled down with my PowerBook to write this blog. And that’s where I am now.

Tomorrow, I’m going to Flagstaff. I have a very long list of things to buy before the weekend and expect to spend most of the day there. I’ll stop in Williams on my way to publish my latest blog entries, collect my e-mail, and gather the incoming messages I’m expecting.