Well, as the saying goes, it has “been a minute” since my last post and update, Dec 14th 2025 to be precise, so I’ll try to catch up with some of the key things that have happened since then in the next few posts here.
I’ll start with this post that will provide you with a quick summary of the phenomenal time we had eXploring the Baja peninsula of Mexico from end of December to beginning of March. Sure helped us get 2026 off to a GREAT start.
and yes, I can see those eyes rolling when those who know me hear Wayne saying “a quick summary” BUT in this case it is actually true because my awemazing wife, travel partner and best selling author (pen name Christine Kling) wrote it! Christine regularly writes an article on her Substack called “SailingWriter” and she did her typically awemazing job of summarized our two months in Baja in an article there she titled “Curiouser and Curiouser in Baja” Click on this link to read the whole article and see all her phots. And trust me, you will want to be sure to stay to the end to see the abfab video she took while we were out on the whale watching tour that she had gifted me with for Xmas this year.
While I will plead guilty as charged to being “narratively generous” and Captain of the Good Ship sv LongWinded, when you read Christine’s article you will learn that I am not being my typical grandiloquent self when I tell you that she is an awemazing woman, writer and person and has been from a VERY early age. For example, the last time she was traveling the Baja highway was just after it opened in 1974 when she rode her bicycle from Tijuana to La Paz to at the age of 19. As you’ll read she not only pedaled her way to La Paz, she “… had this crazy idea that you had to do something extraordinary and write about it in order to get published. It was crazy, but it worked and my very first publication was in Bicycling Magazine in July, 1975.”
NOW go ahead and tell me that I’m hyperbolic embellisher!
Hope you enjoy this all too brief detour to well written articles and that you’ll still bravely continue to read mine such as the next update on my latest progress this year converting “Lance” our 2016 Kenworth T270 ex Medium Duty ambulance, into an eXtreme RV. I’m writing that newest update now and should have it published later today. (10 May, 2026)
Thanks so much for joining Christine and me on our adventures and be sure to add any comments and questions you have in the “Join the Discussion” box below.
We had a fabulous week in Portland Maine for my niece Julia’s wedding on June 21st and several days catching up with family and friends who were in attendance, which is where I left off in last week’s update which if you have not read yet is here; “Life is what happens while making other plans!”.
From there we started our trek back to our place on Saturna Island BC for the rest of the summer and then most recently back down to our place near Searchlight down in the southern tip of Nevada and that’s what I’m going to do my best to summarize in this week’s update. As you can see in this map of all our travels (click to enlarge any photo), that’s a LOT of miles or clicks 17,250 km/10,720 miles to be exact, so it will be a bit of a whirlwind marathon.
So Get comfy and here we go ………………………..
Here’s the map of our travels after we left Portland and made our way back to Saturna Island.
On June 24th, after saying goodbye to the bride and groom and all our friends and family gathered in Portland ME, the four of us (Christine, Zoe, Razz + I) got back on the road heading north up the coast of Maine and crossed into Canada and the province of New Brunswick. While Lance was far from finished and a bit “Spartan” for living in shall we say, he served us very well the whole trip and I continued to work on the eXtremely long To Do list as time allowed on our travels. In next week’s update I’ll get back to covering the work I’ve done over the past months on Lance so stay tuned for that. This photo is taken looking aft with the two Galley countertops in the lower left and right and the L shaped Settee behind. The Queen bed is up in the ceiling thanks to the four linear actuators on each corner that lifts it up there each morning with the push of a button. More on all of this to come in future posts.
Back to our travels after the wedding, as many of you might know, I’m a Canadian Army Brat as my Dad served over forty years as a chef in the Service Corps and we moved to a new posting every 2-3 years. We were posted to northern Germany from 1957-59 and returned from there to Camp Gagetown near Oromocto in New Brunswick where we lived in the house you see behind me here in the PMQ’s (Permanent Married Quarters) on the Base. Other than the new siding covering up the original red brick I was absolutely blown away to find that everything was exactly how I had remembered it when we left in 1961. Unless they close down, things on Canadian military bases don’t change much. So it was great fun to go back there for the first time in all those years since and be able to regale Christine in all the misadventures I had as a young boy. This was also the home that my brother Bruce had come home to when he was born so there were a lot of memories here. I had gone on to be a shop teacher at the High School on the Canadian jet fighter base in Baden Baden Germany from 1980-84 and I have retained very close friendships with many of the awemazing teachers who were there during these years. Christine had also done here share of traveling both growing up and in her adult years and as a result we both had a lot of friends all across the US and Canada, many of whom we visited on this latest trip and our routing was largely driven by all those the “mooch docking” we did as we drove Lance from one set of dear friends to the next. You’d have thought this would be high season and very busy but for most of our trip it often seemed like we were the only ones on the roads and places we camped out in Lance. Like the one you see on the left looking out the side door of Lance one on our way from Gagetown over to the province of Prince Edward Island or PEI.
I had been in touch with one set of dear friends from my days in Germany, Tony & Anna, and they had said that Tony was giving a talk at a Poet’s Conference at the University of Charlottetown on PEI, another spot I had not been back to since the 50’s. Since then they had put in the Confederation Bridge from the East end of New Brunswick over to PEI so that was a whole new experience for all of us driving over to PEI rather than on a ferry.
After meeting up with Anna and Tony at the University, we spent a few more days camping at the PEI National Park and exploring more of the island. One stop was here at Richards, a famous local spot for VERY fresh fish & chips. ……………….. and a beer with a view for my thirsty Bride while we waited for our fish & chips to arrive. For a change of pace and a different experience, we decided to take the ferry off of PEI and over to our next province on the itinerary; Nova Scotia.
More Moochdocking (parking in the driveways of your friends) with teaching friends from Germany, Blaine & Jill MacDonald, one of the three sets of friends we had in different spots in Nova Scotia. And you can’t be in Nova Scotia and not have a good lobster feed right? And BOY, did Mike and Cindy ever treat us to a feast with the lobster we picked up with them earlier that day. By now it was the July 1st Canada Day holiday which we were fortunate enough to have another great moochdocking spot with Christine’s sailing friends Dick & Deb who were both retired Canada Coast Guard Captains. On to yet another horribly crowed camp spot on our way back through the north side of New Brunswick as we made our way over to Quebec City. Along the way tried out lots of different ways of finding great spots to live out of Lance and one of these was by using Harvest Hosts. As their web site puts it “Harvest Hosts is a network of farms, wineries, breweries & distilleries, golf courses, community hosts and more that invite RVers to stay overnight, giving Members safe, convenient, and unique places to stay during their travels”. Having paid our $100 annual membership fee we were able to find spots like this little out of the way winery in Ontario. Harvest Host sites only allow one or two RVs per night and no facilities which is a Goldilocks combo for Christine and I.
At the other end of the spectrum, sometimes you do just need to be a tourist and how could we pass by Niagara Falls for a quick visit as we travelled westward across Ontario.
Christine had never been so it was even move special for the both of us and well worth the stop. Onward to the west side of Ontario in Kingsville on the north side of Lake Erie with Detroit just across the river to the west, where we stopped in for an extended stay with our longtime friends who are more like family, the Alonso Clan. I am honoured to be the godfather of their four children and Christine knows them eXtremely well too so it was a very special stop after not seeing several of them for some time. John’s Dad Juan is an eXtremely skilled craftsman of many trades with an eXtremely good selection of every tool and machine known to man which he kindly shared with me and helped me finally build this prototype table top for the settee in Lance. It was a much appreciated replacement to the temporary loose piece of plywood we had been using for a table up to that point and has its own electric pedestal so just like the bed it too goes up and down from dining table to coffee table height or all the way down to create a lower bed for infrequent guests. More on all this in upcoming posts so back on the road again for now…… We both love to live for eXperiences an this was our next one. After a quick dip down across the border to Valparaiso Indiana for a quick visit with Christine’s brother Steve & Susan, we decided to backtrack east a bit for an experience that Christine had found taking a ferry across the middle of Lake Michigan. Click to enlarge and read that this is not just any ole ferry, this is the last remaining coal fired steam driven public ferry in existence. And my oh my was it ever an experience. One part of which was that in the photo above that is NOT us driving Lance OFF the ferry, this is one of the ferry crew members BACKING Lance onto the ferry, which was their requirement for EVERY vehicle going on that ferry! I could go on with more stories about that ferry ride but we need to keep driving onward …………. Off the ferry we headed due North and crossed the border back into Canada at the very south western corner of Ontario and headed West across Manitoba, Saskatchewan and into Alberta.
Another one of our Harvest Hosts stops was in the back of this great little out of the way restaurant where we had a great meal and evening before moving on. There is no fee for your stays at a Harvest Host site and instead you are encouraged to partake of whatever that host is selling from meals to wine. A fabulous deal in our opinion and we thoroughly enjoyed them all. As we made our way across Alberta we wanted to see more of the HUGE Dinosaur National Park. Several years earlier on one of our many cross country drives, we had visited a part of this park further west near Drumheller that had the truly awemazing Royal Tyrell Museum which we would consider a must see for anyone any where near the area. This time we wanted to explore more of the wilderness side of this sprawling National Park. Truly an other worldly type of place as you can see.
Middle of July and so once again the campsite were eXtremely overcrowded!! Of course this might have kept a few people away, but we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and will be back for more on another trip. Growing up I had spent many summers at my Uncle Roland’s farm just east of Calgary which my cousin Dale now runs and is always extremely generous with his time and knowledge every time we stop in on one of our trips. It is just SO fascinating having a modern day farmer take you on tours of his farm answering the litany of questions we always have for him and being in awe of the advanced tech that has become the norm for running a family farm these days.
Making our way across the Rockies through Banff and into BC, we dipped South a bit to take the ferry that is part of the Trans Canada Highway to Ainsworth. On one of our first cross country tours not long after we had met, we had been snowed in there for three days after a record snow fall. Much warmer weather this time and we also stopped in for a dip in the Ainsworth Hot Springs. However this was all easily upstaged by our overnight free camping spot just a few miles north of Ainsworth at Fletcher Creek Falls.
Just stunning to see.
Oh, and the falls weren’t bad either! We had several stops ahead to see friends in Vernon and Salmon Arm but the night before we stopped in at a brand new Harvest Host that was a working ranch. In spite of being very new and still a work in progress they treated us to an evening BBQ with their family. With these views out over the valley for our early morning coffee. And the leader of the pack and our new BFF donkey “Mitch”. Inching ever closer to our far western destination on Saturna Island, we were invited in for an overnight visit by our dear friends Rick, Sherry and son Colin at their family property on Gambier Island just north of Vancouver. How could we say no?!!! During our conversations Colin wanted to show me what he had done with a 125 year old Cherry tree that had fallen down in a big storm several years ago. Colin is an eXtremely talented and self sufficient young man and he had a fashioned his own mill and used it to cut this enormous Cherry tree into these 2+ inch thick slabs. Very impressive!
In ensuing conversations I had mentioned that I was on the hunt for some nice hardwood I could use as both solid edging and veneer on all the doors and drawer fronts in Lance and Colin thought, quite rightly, that this Cherry would be ideal for the job and that I just HAD to take it with me! Everyone pitched in and we managed to move these planks down to the dock and onto Rick’s boat as this is the only way on/off Gambier. Back over on the mainland Rick helped me load it into Lance and in some future posts I’ll take you through what has happened to this magnificent wood since. For now I just want to say THANK YOU! to Colin and Rick for their incredible generosity. The next day, August 2nd, we were back on the road, onto some more ferries and just like that, Lance (and us) were back where we had started months earlier at our little sanctuary “Ravens Ridge” on Saturna Island. While there, Christine had heard that a local couple had started up a business renting some very capable eBikes which they delivered to you wherever you wanted. So they dropped off these two in the morning and we spent the rest of the day exploring spots on Saturna such as this favorite at the top of Mount Warburton, one of the highest spots in all the Gulf Islands and literally in our back yard. After making the VERY steep climb up the mountain we wanted to push the bikes harder and see what they were capable of so we headed down and back up another even steeper set of climbs over to the Feral Goat Bistro at Sage Hayward Winery and enjoyed THIS delicious spread along with some flights of wine. We both love eggs Benedict and had many of them for breakfasts on this trip but still enjoyed making my own version once we were back home. Christine was happy to be reunited with one of the green frogs that seems to have adopted us. We were going to stay on Saturna to enjoy the warmer weather of summer there before heading back down to Nevada when things cooled down and so a few days after we got back I flew down to Vegas to go pick up “Totu” our 2006 Toyota Tundra truck and drive him back up to Saturna so that we had more than Lance for transportation for the next few months. I had a fabulous drive making my way over to Pacific Coast Highway on roads I’d not tried before and
1520 miles, 2446km later I was back on Saturna. This is already getting long so I’ll condense the rest of our travels since then and just say that we had a wonderful few months on Saturna.
Having friends ……… …….. and more friends ……
….. and family over and just enjoying this magical spot on the planet.
But soon enough it did start getting chillier and some members of the family had to break out their Canadiana winter weather clothes and it was time for us to pack up and start our migration south for the winter. We needed to get both vehicles down to Nevada so Christine drove Totu and I drove Lance and we found some more new ways to get from Saturna to Searchlight. This time we took the ferry out of Victoria over to Port Angeles, down the PCH and then west along the north or California on fabulous Hwy 36 that I had found on my drive up with Totu a few months previous. It was a truly wonderful Summer and Fall for all of us and we are now settling back into life here on our winter base at Road Runner Ranch, out in the BLM lands just north of Searchlight NV. Christine has just come back from a very eXciting writers conference in Las Vegas all this past week and she will soon be flying off to Ft. Lauderdale to enjoy American Thanksgiving getting in some much needed Gramma time with our Grandson Liam who just turned TEN a few days ago!!
Meanwhile, I’m busy working away at getting Lance’s transformation more and more complete and ready for our retreat to warmer weather down in Baja Mexico for the winter months in the new year. We’re delighted to be spending the Xmas week down in the LA area with equally fast growing Granddaughters Brynn and Blair and so I’ve got my work cut out for me to get Lance MUCH more completed and ready for our next “test drives”.
I’ll leave it at that for today and next week I’ll get back to covering the work I’ve done on Lance since the last of those kinds of updates back in May.
My sympathies and thanks to those of you who have endured and made it this far and please do add any questions or comments in the “Join the Discussion” box below.
Thanks and hope you’ll be back for more next week!
Back on May 5th I ended my last post here by saying “I will do my best to get out another update before we start on our newest adventure heading to the East Coast and back.”
Hmmmmm, given that this is now the 3rd of November, I think we can safely say that has turned out to be an eXtreme failure! And I do sincerely apologize for any angst or concern this may have caused some of you. However I’ll do my best here to rectify the situation by finally making some time to put together this update, which I will again endeavor to be the first of many more to come.
The short answer to the questions many of you sent asking along the lines of “What’s been happening?!?!” is in the title of this long delayed update and a favorite quote of mine if that wasn’t already painfully obvious.
BTW, that quote of ‘Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans’ is widely remembered as John Lennon’s, thanks to his 1980 song Beautiful Boy. But the phrase first appeared decades earlier, in a 1957 Reader’s Digest piece by Allen Saunders. Lennon gave it wings, but Saunders gave it birth and I’ll just say thanks to them both.
“Life” in my case and Christine’s is lived based on what we refer to as “The No Plan Plan” and is one of constant curiosity and eXploration. These have been traits for both of us for most of our lives and the root of what led us both to become single handed sailors for so many years before our serendipitous meeting back on November 22, 2013 happily turned us into double handed sailors, lovers and life partners on sv Learnativity, mv Möbius and now the XRV Lance.
For those who may not know it or for those interested in a repeat telling of the whole story of how we came to merge our single handed lives into one, you can find all the details in my previous post several years ago “The simple comment that Changed My Life Forever Better”
But I digress………………… (some things never change no matter how long you wait) Both of those traits of endless curiosity and living on The No Plan Plan also helps explain the eXtreme delay in getting this new new update posted for you. Having been so long and with SO much having happened since that last update I think I’ll tackle this the same way as one would do trying to eat an elephant; one bite at a time! My intent then is to start by answering as best I can, some of those questions of “What’s been happening?!?” and “Why not updates for over six months?!!?” by providing a few details as context as to why I simply have not had any time to write any updates since I left off back on May 5th. Suffice it to say my first few posts will be travelogues indeed as since that last update, we have put on over 20,000 km / 12,500 miles on Lance’s first “test drive”.
All this driving time was also interspersed with visiting friends and family all across the US and Canada and it simply did not leave ANY time for writing blog post updates. Hope you can understand and I do sincerely appreciate your eXtreme patience with me for those of you still following along after all this time.
My intent with today’s blog is to provide you with a bit more detail on the four different routes we drove to make what turned out to be a giant counterclockwise loop from Road Runner Ranch (our place here in Searchlight NV) across to the East Cost of the US, up into the Maritime provinces in Canada, back across Canada to RavensRidge on Saturna Island and most recently our move with both Lance and Totu (our 2006 Toyota Tundra pickup) from Saturna back to Searchlight. So get a comfy seat and your beverage of choice and come along for the first leg of the “test drive” as we make our way from Searchlight to Portland Maine in time for Julia’s wedding on June 21st.
June 10-20, 2025 Searchlight NV to Portland ME 5021km/3120 miles
Picking up where I left off in the last post in May, we both had our noses pressed hard against our individual grindstones; Christine finishing the manuscript for her upcoming new novel and me pushing to get Lance further along with his transformation into a livable XRV. We had two hard deadlines to meet;
1. Get Christine’s manuscript sent off to the Developmental Editor in England she has hired
2. Be in Portland Maine in time to attend the wedding of my niece Julia on June 21st.
Oblivious that we had apparently become delirious from the stress and strain of these rapidly approaching deadlines “one of us” had the brilliant idea that driving rather than flying to Portland for Julia’s wedding was the perfect opportunity to take Lance on his “Maiden voyage” to see how well our designs would work out in the real world and return with all the new ideas for improvements and edits to the build. This iterative approach has been a common method for us with our projects such as when we were finishing Mobius and decided to spend a year cruising around the Turkish coasts on extended sea trials to work out the bugs and find out what was working well, what was not and what changes we wanted to make before truly setting off on the high seas.
These cross country driving trips were also in keeping with our past as over the years while we were out sailing the world, we would fly back and taken several similar large road trips all across the US and Canada in rented vehicles we outfitted to be mini RV’s. We are “bi-coastal Grandparents” with two Granddaughters in the LA area and a Grandson in Ft. Lauderdale and our son Skyler up in Vancouver BC. And dear friends and family literally spread out all across both countries and many more.
So I committed to getting Lance to the point of having a comfortable bed to sleep on, counters and cooktops to prep meals with and seating to eat along the way. So was born the agreement that I would get Lance as close as possible to this stage and as soon as Christine hit the button to send her manuscript through the ether to the editor in England we would fire up Lance and hit the road. As time ticked away Christine set a deadline to send off her manuscript the morning of June 10th and the race was on to be on the road by 10 o’clock on the 10th.
Portland Maine here we come!
Well, almost!
A few days before the 10th I had taken Lance into Vegas to put new front steering tires on him. All six tires (duals on the rear axle) still had a pretty good amount of tread on them but for a bit of added confidence and safety putting on a new set of steering tires was a good idea and this also gave me the chance to take Lance out on the highway for the approximately 160 mile round trip up to Vegas and back after he had been sitting here on RoadRunner Ranch for almost six months. Then after the wedding we could take advantage of New Hampshire not having any sales tax to buy the four new tires for the rear axle and give Lance new shoes all the way around for the rest of our marathon test drive up the East coast into the Maritime provinces and across Canada back to the Best Coast and our place on Saturna Island. That all worked out well as you can see as I jump the timeline a bit to June 19th when we put on the four new rear tires.
Meanwhile, back to the morning of June 10th, as Christine was putting the finishing touches on the draft manuscript of her new book getting it ready to sent off, I went out to finish stowing everything we had loaded into Lance for the big test drive out to Julia’s wedding. Of course our co-pilots, Razz and Zoe were even more eXcited and always ready to hit the road.
Just before 10am I fired him up in prep for leaving but turns out he wasn’t going anywhere as the air compressor had decided to stop working. Lance has air brakes and after the air pressure in his 3 tanks gets below about 90 PSI, all the brakes go ON and can’t be taking off until they get back to their topped up pressure of 125PSI.
I informed Christine of this new twist in the plot of my own novel and told her she had a bit more time if she wanted to send off her manuscript.
I had been having some problems previously with the air compressor not cooperating but had always got it going but it took me the better part of the day to find THIS problem with a split in the rubber elbow Not a stock part and too late to get one shipped in so MacGyver time it was.
A a bit of self amalgamating tape (the yellow stuff) and some zip ties and it was time to fire up Lance again and see if this had fixed the problem and the compressor was filling up the air tanks.
It was! It was late by now but we figured it would be psychologically best for us to still leave and put in a few miles just so we had officially started the trip. The weather had been getting hotter and hotter with daytime temps in the low 40’sC well over 100F but being in this dessert area it cools down nicely at night and makes for pleasant sleeping and evening drives.
Laughlin Nevada is about 60 miles south of us right on the banks of the Colorado River and we had been several times so I reminded Christine that I had said we’d leave at “10 on the 10th” but had conveniently left off the AM/PM detail!
And so it was that at 22:00 hours on June 10th, we pulled out of RoadRunner Ranch and headed south on Hwy 95 to Laughlin.
Portland here we come!
Well, almost.
Lance goes to Laughlin
We hadn’t eaten yet so we decided to go to the In-N-Out Burger place in Laughlin and go camp out on the river to enjoy our last night in Nevada for awhile. However, Laughlin sits about 3800 feet lower than our place near Searchlight which we were reminded of as the night time temperatures continued to rise the whole way there and turned out that Laughlin had set a new record that day of 116F/47C!
Just after midnight now and with fresh piping hot burgers and fries the night had cooled down to a mere 112F/42C so we were headed for the banks of the Colorado River less than a mile away as quick as we could. We almost made it to the intersection at the end of Casino Boulevard where we would turn Right down to the river when the low air pressure alarm when off! Drat! Apparently that MacGyver fix hadn’t quite done the job.
I knew we had less than a minute before the pressure would drop below 90psi and the brakes would all come ON so I pulled over into the right hand turn lane at the end of Casino Drive where there is a big boat launching ramp into the river. Just got into that turn lane when the brakes came on. Guess what dear!? This is home for the night!
I’ll skip most of the gory details and just say that I was able to go buy a cordless compressor and get enough air in the tanks to move Lance into that boat launch ramp parking spot that had been freshly paved. It took another two days to finally get back on the road again that involved a rental car to make a trip up to Vegas to get a new cylinder head to rebuild the compressor. Oh, and did I mention that it set a new record of 117F the next day.
My Brilliant Beautiful Bride knew what what we needed to cool down and survive was ELEVATION so once again at 22:00 hours on the 12th Lance was again ready to roll and we headed out of Laughlin bound for Flagstaff Arizona and quickly climbed up to over 4000 ft where we found an ideal little truck stop just after midnight where it was now under 70F/21C and all four of us (Zoe & Razz were along of course) had a much needed and much cooler sleep. By the next night we had climbed up over 8000ft and when we woke up that morning it was a very chilly 34F/1C so as Christine knew, elevation easily solved our high temp problem.
They’re going to get married and we ARE going to be there!
We were now a bit behind schedule so we had relatively full days of driving but enjoyed ever mile of it as the weather and the geography changed as we made our way to Portland for the wedding for sure this time! You can check out that map above (click to enlarge any photo) and see our route if you’re interested. And we still had enough time to get the four new tires as we passed through sales tax free Concord New Hampshire.
Most importantly though, we arrived in Portland the morning of June 20th with plenty of time to spare, by my standards at least and enjoyed the evening with all the other friends and family there for the big day tomorrow. It was very windy that night but we awoke to a beautiful sunny Saturday and Ben & Julia had perfect weather for their outdoor afternoon wedding. Julia is my sisters daughter and so I may be a wee bit biased but THAT is a Beautiful Bride! And they had the perfect backdrop of the inner harbour that included some gorgeous schooners and tall ships for that extra touch. Seems like a pretty ideal ending to this first leg of our test drive in Lance and I’ll be back in MUCH less than six months with the next three legs of this eXtremely wonderful set of adventures we had.
For those interested in the build of Lance I have continued to make quite a bit of progress since I left off back in May, both along the way of those routes and in the time we had at RavensRidge on Saturna. I think I will perhaps change from doing posts that are chronological and instead cover specific parts of the build such as plumbing, electrical, interior cabinetry, etc. Let me know what you think of that change and I’ll do my best to get back to posting a new update every week of so.
Lastly, my sincere thanks for your patience and my apologies for keeping you waiting and somewhat concerned for so long.
See you here again soon and remember you can add any questions, comments or suggestions in the “Join the Discussion” at the bottom of each post.
I always liked the John Lennon line from his Beautiful Boy song in 1980 that “Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans” and that’s a good summary since my last update here. It has been a very busy and fun six weeks with no shortage of projects, trips and milestones but not so much time for updates so thanks for your patience. Two birthdays in January, one for me on the 23rd and daughter Lia on the 14th. So we decided to make the relatively quick drive, less than 4 hours, over to the LA area to surprise Lia on her milestone Four Oh!birthday by delivering some some B’day flowers, champagne and hugs in person. As a bonus we went back for a week to see Brynn’s Talent Show at her school and then got to be full time Gramma and Grampa for the weekend while Brian & Lia had a fully unsupervised weekend away for Valentine’s Day. We continue to work away at getting things setup here on “Road Runner Ranch” and this arial shot from Christine’s drone video that you might have seen in the previous post, shows how we are setup so far. The 40’ shipping container above on the left is what I’m setting up for my workshop with Lance parked right beside. The matching container on the Right is what we’re using for storage and is close to our 25’ travel trailer that continues to provide a very comfy home for us and the two pups for now.
We recently got a good deal what they refer to as a “garage fridge” so we’ve now got that set up inside this container to expand the fridge and freezer space that is built into the trailer and keeps us well stocked in food supplies. This panorama shot (click to enlarge any photo) will help you get a sense of the setting we’ve got for our little sanctuary here and might help some of you make a bit more sense of why this is such a Goldilocks location for us.
Best news for me and many of you who I know have been waiting, is that I’m back to working on converting “Lance” our 2017 Kenworth ex medium duty ambulance into our eXploration RV. I’ve picked up where I left off building all the cabinetry framing using lengths of eXtruded ALuminium which I’ll abbreviate as XAL. Looking forward from about mid way inside Lance’s “Happitat” the blank wall on the left is the front wall with the cab on the other side and the main entry door that is on the passenger side PS in the right corner. I’ve put in a scrap of 3/4”/20mm plywood to create a desk for myself on what will eventually become one of the two galley countertops with a larger one yet to be framed on the opposite left or driver side DS. The XAL you see on the ceiling is where the forward side of the lifting Queen bed will go with a large L shaped settee below. Here is a sample of a length of the XAL with several different corner brackets that bolt into the T track grooves in the XAL which turn this into a giant adult version of the Erector sets I used to love playing with as a young boy, long before many of you were born! I’m working my way somewhat counter clockwise around the Happitat walls so my next focus was the XAL framing you see now in the front right PS corner. The Blue poles you see ratcheting cargo support bars that have proved indispensable to me for holding things in place as I build. This full height cabinet will have our fridge/freezer mounted inside the large opening you see here with lots of storage in the spaces above and below.
Shower will be in the middle on the left here and the head/toile over in the far left DS corner that I’ll move onto next. This front DS front corner is a bit more complex as the large vertical exterior access cabinet is also in this corner and it is where I’ll be installing Lance’s whole electrical system with three large lithium batteries on the very bottom and then all the other components such as 12VDC to 120/240VAC inverters, battery chargers, and much more mounted this exterior locker.
Here on the inside is where I now need to finish the XAL framework above the battery frames I’ve built to support the three big batteries. This will give you a sense of the size and shape of the server rack style lithium LiFePO4 batteries that will provide all the 12VDC and 120/240VAC electrical power in Lance. For those interested in the details, this shot the label on one of the three batteries will give you all the numbers.
While 45Kg/90 lbs might sound like a lot when you consider that each one of these provides 5120 WattHours (400Ah @ 12.8VDC) the power density is pretty amazing. Having three of these connected in parallel will provide a total of 15.36Kwh (1200Ah @ 12.8VDC) which will will be more than enough to give us all the power we need for our all electric cooking appliances such as induction cooktop, coffee makers, toaster oven, microwave as well as powering our mini split Air Conditioner. As with all of this build, I had created very accurate 3D models using Fusion 360 of all the XAL framing and each of the components such as this Joolca separating toilet and the EG4 batteries and these have served me very well throughout the build.
I knew that the batteries were going to be a very close fit and I had built the framing for them back when we were in Klamath falls but now was the moment of truth to see if they actually fit?!! The “ears” of the server rack batteries were a few millimeters wider than the opening of the door frame so it took a bit of wiggling them in at an angle and some gentle persuasion, ……..
……. but they fit in snug as a bug in a rug as you can see here and put a big grin on my face.
These server rack style of battery are very safe and easy to work with as they have both an On/Off switch (silver circle upper right) that turns the BMS (Battery Management System) on/off as well as the high amp double pole high amp circuit breaker (White/Blue on bottom left) so I could keep bot of those turned Off and ensure that there was never any danger of a short to the terminals while I was wrestling them in place. Locating the batteries in this front DS location was ideal as it kept the weight down low, centered and on the opposite side from the fuel tank and also enables me to keep all the electrical system components in this one externally accessible locker.
However it did require me to raise the floor and design around them on the inside as you can see here. After playing around with the 3D model for some time, I ended up making this raised area inside be just the right height for the floor under the Joolca Gotta Go separating toilet. With the shower area in the center area the whole bathroom space becomes feels very large and open both when using it as a shower and when seated on the throne. I had my Beautiful Bride check it all out in person this morning and got the two thumbs up so the framing progress can now continue. I also checked in with these two scallywags, Razz on the left, Zoe on the right, and got their approval as well so I’m all systems GO now.
So I will continue to work my way around the DS corner as I move onto framing out the Galley/Kitchen area that runs down the rest of the Drivers Side and you’ll see that in the next update. We continue to get sunsets like this almost every evening and sunrises are pretty spectacular as well so we continue to enjoy our new location a bit more each day. That’s a wrap for this update and I’ll do my best to post the next one much sooner and try to get back to doing one every Sunday as long as “life” doesn’t interfere!
Hope you enjoyed the update and thanks to all who persevered to this point. Be sure to add all your questions and comments in the “Join the discussion” box below and hope you’ll be back for more in the next update.
As predicted when I left off in the last update here, it has been a VERY BUSY time the past month for us but we’ve made the move and are now settling into our new Southern Home Base down near Searchlight Nevada.
There are some photos and details about our new 10 acre property in that PREVIOUS POST back on Dec. 8th so you can check that out if you’d like and I’ll just pick up from where we left off.
BONUS: Be sure to read to the end to see the bonus video that Drone Captain Christine put together.
Our son Skyler flew down from Vancouver BC on the 23rd of December to join us for the holidays in Klamath Falls and he was a HUGE help getting all my tools, equipment, materials and such packed up from the workshop I’d set up in Klamath Falls. Along with our personal belongings and food we managed to get everything loaded into Lance and the beds of the two pickup trucks we now find ourselves with.
We were a bit sad to leave as we had really enjoyed our time getting to know Klamath Falls and the surrounding area of southern Oregon. This is the parting shot just after noon on Boxing Day (Dec 26th) as we bid a very fond adieu to what had worked out to be a great home and workshop and hit the road for the almost 700 mile drive down to our new Southern Home Base just north of Searchlight NV. We broke the trip up into two legs with an overnight stop in Fallon Nevada and it turned out to be a great drive with clear dry roads after we got about a hundred miles south of Klamath Falls and enjoyed the ever increasing temperatures as the miles rolled by. We arrived at the property late in the afternoon of the 27th with big smiles for all three drivers and both pups. And just in time to catch this beautiful sunset which we’ve now discovered is most every night here.
Christine has been getting her drone flying skills dusted off and this shot she grabbed a few days ago from up above the spot we’re setting up to live on for the next few months will give you an idea of the layout. Those two big white rectangles are 40 foot “High Cube” (9’6” high) shipping containers that came with the property along with a lot of great items inside that you’ll soon see. The other white rectangle is the 2012 25 foot travel trailer that will be home for us for now.
** See the Bonus drone video at the end. As Skyler and I unloaded the crates of our belongings and coolers of food, Christine got to work storing it all away and organizing our new home. As sharp eyes might notice, she even baked a loaf of banana bread! Looking aft in the trailer you can see that we’ve got everything we need with a nice U shaped settee and an adjacent full bathroom & shower. Then a separate bedroom in the rear with a Queen bed and even an office for Christine to work at just out of sight in the rear left corner here at the foot of the bed. And check out our views out the windows! This floorplan helps to show how the bedroom & settee are in a slide out section along the right side of the trailer that really helps open up the space.
Keeping in mind that we are both used to living full time in boats, for us this is HUGE!
Skyler started unloading all the crates and materials from Lance and I started to figure out where to put them for now in the two containers. The one you see here on the Left will be my workshop area and the other one out of site in this photo over on the far Right closer to the trailer provides storage for everything else AND houses all our fresh water and electrical power equipment that allows us to live 100% off grid. Could not have been a better present than all the time we got with Skyler and all the hard work he so cheerfully gifted us with to make this latest transition of the Nauti Nomadic Grandparents so memorable. Thanks Sky!
It will take me awhile to build workbenches and storage racks but for now all my tools and equipment are very safely stored away inside the two containers.
Part of what made this property such a Goldilocks just right find for us was that one of the things inside the containers was sixteen 305 Watt solar panels and so Skyler and I got to work setting those up in two different locations to try out for now. Eight of those solar panels we propped up against the wall of the container as you can see here which made it a short run for the power cables to go into the MPPT controller inside. Of course the HIGHEST priority was getting the new Puppy Play Pen set up for Zoe and Razz to enjoy. The other eight solar panels we propped up against the south facing side of the trailer to try out that orientation as I monitor the daily production to see what generates the most power to keep our big new battery bank fully charged every day.
All very rough and tentative till we live with all this for awhile and decide best location on the acreage to build on and then I will build proper ground mount racks for all these and perhaps more solar panels. In that previous post you may recall seeing this pallet full of boxes that had arrived at the Klamath Falls workshop which contained the other two key components of our off grid power system. this 15 kWh 54 Volt upright EG4 lithium battery and ………. …….. this EG4 6000XP all in one MPPT solar charge controller, inverter charger.
The battery weighs a svelte 128kg/282 lbs. but Skyler and were able to get it wrestled out of Lance and into the container and get the 6000XP mounted above it and all secured to the steel walls of the container. These two smaller vertical boxes I mounted on on the side at the mid point are the isolation switches and circuit breakers for the high voltage power coming in on the Red and Black wires you see here which come from each of the two strings of solar panels (8 panels in each). We soon had everything wired up and in this shot I’m busy configuring all the settings before turning it on for the first time. Just amazing how far these kinds of off grid systems have come and we were able to go from no power at all when we arrived to having a full 240VAC split phase power system in less than one day. We had about 190L/50 USG of fresh water that I had filled up the trailer’s water tank with on my way bringing it back from where we bought it in Tucson so we had plenty of potable water for drinking, cooking and showers the first few days but now time for a more full time setup and another part of what made this property such a great find for us. These four 1250L/330USG IBC Totes as they are called (Interim Bulk Containers) also came with the property along with a fifth empty one that we’ll use in the future to bring more fresh water from the town water system in Searchlight that is just a few miles away. The pumps you see at the bottom here are now all set up to provide pressurized fresh water to a tap on the outside of the container and a hose from there to the trailer provides all the fresh water we need for day to day living.
It will take us a bit longer to get everything setup and be able to get back to working on books and Lance but we’re off to a great start and new year.
Can’t be all work and no play so in the midst of all this we also took time to celebrate the new year in our new home base. Christine and I adopted giving “experiences” rather than “stuff” to each other for gifts and this year I got us three tickets to go see the “Immersed in Van Gogh” experience in Las Vegas on New Year’s Eve which is less than an hour’s drive north from our property.
Then Christine had rented a boat for the three of us to go out on Lake Mohave for New Year’s Day. This shot is looking about due East from our place and off in the distance about center (click to expand any photo) you can see the Colorado River flowing South. Hoover/Boulder Dam is to the North and Davis Dam to the South which creates Lake Mohave in between. It only takes about 15 minutes to drive from our place to the marina on Lake Mohave. I will leave you with this shot of what our humble new abode is looking like with yet another super sunset that Christine loves to photograph.
I know many of you are shaking your heads and wondering what drew us here but perhaps these two days with New Years eve in Las Vegas and then New Year’s Day out on the lake both being minutes away from our otherwise eXtremely remote spot might help you understand a wee bit better what makes this such a Goldilocks place for us.
Location, location, location right??!!
BONUS VIDEO:
As promised, here is a short video that Christine has put together as she dusts off her drone flying skills for this quick flyover what we are thinking of calling “RoadRunner Ranch”. Although we have not yet spotted one here yet I hope this quick flyover part of our 10 acres will help you visualize this location and maybe help you see what we see. In any case do enjoy and thanks Captain Christine!
Hope all of you have 2025 off to a great start as well and I’m looking forward to getting back to regular updates in the next few weeks as I get my new workshop up and running and get back to working Lance. Thanks for joining us on yet another adventure and please leave any questions or comments in the “Join the Discussion” box below.
As I mentioned at the end of the previous post, both Christine and I have been traveling the past few weeks. Christine flew out to Florida for two weeks for some much needed Gramma time with our now 9 year old Grandson Liam and some time with her best friends and family in the Fort Lauderdale area. And I flew over to Tucson to pick up the new to us travel trailer and pickup truck combo we recently purchased to provide living accommodations on our new 10 acre property near Searchlight Nevada.
So this will just be a quick update on what little work I have been able to get done on Lance and a brief summary of what’s been happening as we start making the transition from our rental here in Klamath Falls down to our new Southern Home Base just north of Searchlight.
This sat view (click any photo to enlarge) of the southern arrowhead tip of the state of Nevada (NV state border is dotted red/white line) might help show you where we’re headed. Up in the top middle you can see the sprawling Las Vegas/Henderson area and Hwy 95 running parallel to the Colorado river heading South to the Laughlin/Bullhead City area at the bottom. Our new place is where you see the Green circle with the white flag about half way down Hwy 95. Zooming in a bit you can see the turn off of Hwy 95 onto the dirt road running East in the middle of this sat view over to our place with the Green Flag. That distance is about 1.5 miles/2.4km
Zooming in on that Green Flag, here’s the birds eye view of our 10 acres where you can see the two white shipping containers that came with the property. (the boat was just being stored there)
For the curious amongst you, all the black dots you see in these sat photos are Joshua Trees so we are literally living in a Joshua Tree forest!
(photo thanks to By Bernard Gagnon)
Meanwhile, IRL In Real Life, here is where I put our Lance home on wheels #2 (too funny right?!) after the drive from Tucson. The truck is a 2006 Toyota Tundra SR5 and the trailer is a 2012 Lance model 2385. For more details on Lance #2 the travel tailer, see the previous post for photos and layout. And yes, other than several hundred Joshua Trees that is ALL there is so far on our 10 acres. Many of you have sent a LOT of questions as to just what we are going to do for little things like power and water so here’s the deal on that. Having lived in boats as we’ve been traveling the world for the past few decades, we are accustomed to being eXtremely self sufficient and this newest adventure will be no different.
Part of the attraction and what made this property such a Goldilocks find for us was those two new containers AND what was inside of them. Here is a shot of the container on the Left where you can see these 16 new solar panels. These are 305 Watt PV panels which I will soon be setting up outside to give us a total of almost 5 kilowatts of potential solar power. OK, so those solar panels capture the sun’s energy, but then what Wayne??
Well, the other parts of this puzzle which I need to build our completely off grid power station.are inside this trio of boxes that arrived here in Klamath Falls a few days ago. Inside the wood box on the bottom is 128kg/282 lbs. of big beautiful battery power! 14.3 kWh (kilo Watt hours) to be exact, which comes in the form of our new EG4 wall mount 48V 280Ah lithium Iron battery. Being in very sunny southern Nevada those solar panels should provide more than enough power to keep this battery fully charged every day. The two cardboard boxes above that contain this equally beautiful and important EG4 600XP split phase off-grid inverter/charger which handles two critical tasks. First it takes all the 48 volt DC power from the battery and inverts it into 120 and 240 Volts AC and then there are two MPPT controllers inside which regulates all the DC power from the solar panels to charge the batteries. Together this will provide us with all our electrical power we need in the trailer and the workshop to power everything from air conditioner to induction cooktop to welder.
OK, so that looks after electrical needs, but what about water you ask? The solution to that also lies in the containers in the form of these IBC Totes (Intermediate Bulk Container) You may have noticed this one beside the 16 solar panels shown earlier. Then there are four more ICB totes stacked up at the end of the other container. There is a LOT of other equipment in these containers and I did a quick inventory of them after I took the trailer there and I marked this photo with the # of liters of fresh water in each one. These ICB totes each hold about 330 USG/ 1250 Liters and so when all four are full that gives us about 1320 USG/5000L which should give us about a year’s worth of water.
What about that fifth empty one in the other container you ask? Well, they are pretty light when empty and so we load that into the truck bed and head into town and fill it up with the “city water” from Searchlight which is just 2 miles south on Hwy 95. Bring that back and use an electric water pump to fill the IBC totes in the other container. Rinse and repeat once a year or so and we’ve got all the fresh water we need. Our longer term solution is that we will use rain water catchment when I create a big workshop by moving the two shipping containers to be about 40 feet apart and build a large gable roof to span them a bit like this illustration. I’ll do the roof a bit different to have clerestory windows on the peak but I’ll leave that for another post in the future.
This large roof surface area will catch a LOT of rainwater that will be diverted into storage tanks in the ground. So that’s the near and long term plan for water. Stay tuned here for more on all that as it gets built.
Back to Lance #1 and Klamath Falls, the other big beautiful shipment we recently receives is THIS! Can you guess what’s inside? ……… Gold start to those who guessed it is the fridge/freezer combo for the galley in Lance. Left side is a 1.8 cubic foot freezer and 5.2 cu ft of fridge on the right with plenty of shelves, drawers and door space so should serve us well. I’ve been busy getting Lance ready for the 800 mile drive down to Searchlight and needed to get all the lights on the back of him working. I needed some wire for this and as you may recall from previous posts, I removed all the many miles of original wiring from inside the ambulance box and so with the help of my two assistants I tackled the sorting and spooling of all this wire. This is Zoe with her “cone of shame” after her spay surgery. Together the three of us were able to convert this into ……………….. ……..… this and another tubful. Twas a wee bit chilly doing this work for as the seasonal song goes ………. “the weather outside what frightful!”. But I’ve got a little electric heater when I’m working inside Lance and with all his insulation it was doesn’t take much to keep it all nice and toasty in there.
The snow doesn’t last too long before melting away but the temps have been down below freezing at nights and some days for the past few weeks and so on that wintery note I will bid you all adieu and close out with what is likely to be the last blog this year. Hard to believe that it was just over one year ago (October 12th, 2023) that we found ourselves on the dock in Portsmouth VA standing beside our beloved Mobiüs for the last time and beginning the transition from a life eXploring the world by sea to now doing so by land. So quite fitting that as 2024 ticks over into 2025, we are now making the newest transition to Lance and our Southern Home Base.
Hoping all of you enjoy the upcoming holiday season and sending our sincere thanks for all the time you’ve spent following along with our adventures this past year or years. Look forward to sharing more with you as the adventures continue into the new year.
I’ll start with this post that will provide you with a quick summary of the phenomenal time we had eXploring the Baja peninsula of Mexico from end of December to beginning of March. 
and yes, I can see those eyes rolling when those who know me hear Wayne saying “a quick summary” BUT in this case it is actually true because my awemazing wife, travel partner and best selling author (pen name Christine Kling) wrote it! 
Click to enlarge and read that this is not just any ole ferry, this is the last remaining coal fired steam driven public ferry in existence. And my oh my was it ever an experience. One part of which was that in the photo above that is NOT us driving Lance OFF the ferry, this is one of the ferry crew members BACKING Lance onto the ferry, which was their requirement for EVERY vehicle going on that ferry! I could go on with more stories about that ferry ride but we need to keep driving onward …………. 
However this was all easily upstaged by our overnight free camping spot just a few miles north of Ainsworth at Fletcher Creek Falls.
After making the VERY steep climb up the mountain we wanted to push the bikes harder and see what they were capable of so we headed down and back up another even steeper set of climbs over to the Feral Goat Bistro at Sage Hayward Winery and enjoyed THIS delicious spread along with some flights of wine. 
We both love eggs Benedict and had many of them for breakfasts on this trip but still enjoyed making my own version once we were back home. 
I had a fabulous drive making my way over to Pacific Coast Highway on roads I’d not tried before and
This is already getting long so I’ll condense the rest of our travels since then and just say that we had a wonderful few months on Saturna. 
We needed to get both vehicles down to Nevada so Christine drove Totu and I drove Lance and we found some more new ways to get from Saturna to Searchlight. This time we took the ferry out of Victoria over to Port Angeles, down the PCH and then west along the north or California on fabulous Hwy 36 that I had found on my drive up with Totu a few months previous. 
It was a truly wonderful Summer and Fall for all of us and we are now settling back into life here on our winter base at Road Runner Ranch, out in the BLM lands just north of Searchlight NV. 
A few days before the 10th I had taken Lance into Vegas to put new front steering tires on him. All six tires (duals on the rear axle) still had a pretty good amount of tread on them but for a bit of added confidence and safety putting on a new set of steering tires was a good idea and this also gave me the chance to take Lance out on the highway for the approximately 160 mile round trip up to Vegas and back after he had been sitting here on RoadRunner Ranch for almost six months. 
Then after the wedding we could take advantage of New Hampshire not having any sales tax to buy the four new tires for the rear axle and give Lance new shoes all the way around for the rest of our marathon test drive up the East coast into the Maritime provinces and across Canada back to the Best Coast and our place on Saturna Island. 
That all worked out well as you can see as I jump the timeline a bit to June 19th when we put on the four new rear tires. 
Of course our co-pilots, Razz and Zoe were even more eXcited and always ready to hit the road. 
Not a stock part and too late to get one shipped in so MacGyver time it was.
It was very windy that night but we awoke to a beautiful sunny Saturday and Ben & Julia had perfect weather for their outdoor afternoon wedding. 
Julia is my sisters daughter and so I may be a wee bit biased but THAT is a Beautiful Bride! 
And they had the perfect backdrop of the inner harbour that included some gorgeous schooners and tall ships for that extra touch. 
We continue to work away at getting things setup here on “Road Runner Ranch” and this arial shot from Christine’s drone video that you might have seen in the previous post, shows how we are setup so far. 
The 40’ shipping container above on the left is what I’m setting up for my workshop with Lance parked right beside. 
Looking forward from about mid way inside Lance’s “Happitat” the blank wall on the left is the front wall with the cab on the other side and the main entry door that is on the passenger side PS in the right corner. I’ve put in a scrap of 3/4”/20mm plywood to create a desk for myself on what will eventually become one of the two galley countertops with a larger one yet to be framed on the opposite left or driver side DS. 
Here is a sample of a length of the XAL with several different corner brackets that bolt into the T track grooves in the XAL which turn this into a giant adult version of the Erector sets I used to love playing with as a young boy, long before many of you were born! 
I’m working my way somewhat counter clockwise around the Happitat walls so my next focus was the XAL framing you see now in the front right PS corner. The Blue poles you see ratcheting cargo support bars that have proved indispensable to me for holding things in place as I build. 
This full height cabinet will have our fridge/freezer mounted inside the large opening you see here with lots of storage in the spaces above and below. 
This front DS front corner is a bit more complex as the large vertical exterior access cabinet is also in this corner and it is where I’ll be installing Lance’s whole electrical system with three large lithium batteries on the very bottom and then all the other components such as 12VDC to 120/240VAC inverters, battery chargers, and much more mounted this exterior locker. 
This will give you a sense of the size and shape of the server rack style lithium LiFePO4 batteries that will provide all the 12VDC and 120/240VAC electrical power in Lance. 
For those interested in the details, this shot the label on one of the three batteries will give you all the numbers.
I knew that the batteries were going to be a very close fit and I had built the framing for them back when we were in Klamath falls but now was the moment of truth to see if they actually fit?!! 
With the shower area in the center area the whole bathroom space becomes feels very large and open both when using it as a shower and when seated on the throne. I had my Beautiful Bride check it all out in person this morning and got the two thumbs up so the framing progress can now continue. 
I
We continue to get sunsets like this almost every evening and sunrises are pretty spectacular as well so we continue to enjoy our new location a bit more each day. 
Christine has been getting her drone flying skills dusted off and this shot she grabbed a few days ago from up above the spot we’re setting up to live on for the next few months will give you an idea of the layout. Those two big white rectangles are 40 foot “High Cube” (9’6” high) shipping containers that came with the property along with a lot of great items inside that you’ll soon see. The other white rectangle is the 2012 25 foot travel trailer that will be home for us for now.
As Skyler and I unloaded the crates of our belongings and coolers of food, Christine got to work storing it all away and organizing our new home. As sharp eyes might notice, she even baked a loaf of banana bread! 
Looking aft in the trailer you can see that we’ve got everything we need with a nice U shaped settee and an adjacent full bathroom & shower. Then a separate bedroom in the rear with a Queen bed and even an office for Christine to work at just out of sight in the rear left corner here at the foot of the bed. And check out our views out the windows! 
Skyler started unloading all the crates and materials from Lance and I started to figure out where to put them for now in the two containers. The one you see here on the Left will be my workshop area and the other one out of site in this photo over on the far Right closer to the trailer provides storage for everything else AND houses all our fresh water and electrical power equipment that allows us to live 100% off grid. 
Could not have been a better present than all the time we got with Skyler and all the hard work he so cheerfully gifted us with to make this latest transition of the Nauti Nomadic Grandparents so memorable. 
Thanks Sky!
It will take me awhile to build workbenches and storage racks but for now all my tools and equipment are very safely stored away inside the two containers.
Part of what made this property such a Goldilocks just right find for us was that one of the things inside the containers was sixteen 305 Watt solar panels and so Skyler and I got to work setting those up in two different locations to try out for now. Eight of those solar panels we propped up against the wall of the container as you can see here which made it a short run for the power cables to go into the MPPT controller inside. 
The other eight solar panels we propped up against the south facing side of the trailer to try out that orientation as I monitor the daily production to see what generates the most power to keep our big new battery bank fully charged every day.
In that previous post you may recall seeing this pallet full of boxes that had arrived at the Klamath Falls workshop which contained the other two key components of our off grid power system. 
this 15 kWh 54 Volt upright EG4 lithium battery and ………. 
…….. this EG4 6000XP all in one MPPT solar charge controller, inverter charger. 
The battery weighs a svelte 128kg/282 lbs. but Skyler and were able to get it wrestled out of Lance and into the container and get the 6000XP mounted above it and all secured to the steel walls of the container. 
These two smaller vertical boxes I mounted on on the side at the mid point are the isolation switches and circuit breakers for the high voltage power coming in on the Red and Black wires you see here which come from each of the two strings of solar panels (8 panels in each). We soon had everything wired up and in this shot I’m busy configuring all the settings before turning it on for the first time. Just amazing how far these kinds of off grid systems have come and we were able to go from no power at all when we arrived to having a full 240VAC split phase power system in less than one day. 
These four 1250L/330USG IBC Totes as they are called (Interim Bulk Containers) also came with the property along with a fifth empty one that we’ll use in the future to bring more fresh water from the town water system in Searchlight that is just a few miles away. The pumps you see at the bottom here are now all set up to provide pressurized fresh water to a tap on the outside of the container and a hose from there to the trailer provides all the fresh water we need for day to day living.
I will leave you with this shot of what our humble new abode is looking like with yet another super sunset that Christine loves to photograph.
Zooming in a bit you can see the turn off of Hwy 95 onto the dirt road running East in the middle of this sat view over to our place with the Green Flag. That distance is about 1.5 miles/2.4km
Zooming in on that Green Flag, here’s the birds eye view of our 10 acres where you can see the two white shipping containers that came with the property. (the boat was just being stored there)
For the curious amongst you, all the black dots you see in these sat photos are 
Meanwhile, IRL In Real Life, here is where I put our Lance home on wheels #2 (too funny right?!) after the drive from Tucson. The truck is a 2006 Toyota Tundra SR5 and the trailer is a 2012 Lance model 2385. For more details on Lance #2 the travel tailer, see the previous post for photos and layout. 
Part of the attraction and what made this property such a Goldilocks find for us was those two new containers AND what was inside of them. Here is a shot of the container on the Left where you can see these 16 new solar panels. These are 305 Watt PV panels which I will soon be setting up outside to give us a total of almost 5 kilowatts of potential solar power. 
OK, so those solar panels capture the sun’s energy, but then what Wayne?? 
Inside the wood box on the bottom is 128kg/282 lbs. of big beautiful battery power! 14.3 kWh (kilo Watt hours) to be exact, which comes in the form of our new EG4 wall mount 48V 280Ah lithium Iron battery. Being in very sunny southern Nevada those solar panels should provide more than enough power to keep this battery fully charged every day. 
The two cardboard boxes above that contain this equally beautiful and important EG4 600XP split phase off-grid inverter/charger which handles two critical tasks. First it takes all the 48 volt DC power from the battery and inverts it into 120 and 240 Volts AC and then there are two MPPT controllers inside which regulates all the DC power from the solar panels to charge the batteries. Together this will provide us with all our electrical power we need in the trailer and the workshop to power everything from air conditioner to induction cooktop to welder.
The solution to that also lies in the containers in the form of these IBC Totes (Intermediate Bulk Container) You may have noticed this one beside the 16 solar panels shown earlier. 
Then there are four more ICB totes stacked up at the end of the other container. There is a LOT of other equipment in these containers and I did a quick inventory of them after I took the trailer there and I marked this photo with the # of liters of fresh water in each one. These ICB totes each hold about 330 USG/ 1250 Liters and so when all four are full that gives us about 1320 USG/5000L which should give us about a year’s worth of water.
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Left side is a 1.8 cubic foot freezer and 5.2 cu ft of fridge on the right with plenty of shelves, drawers and door space so should serve us well. 
I’ve been busy getting Lance ready for the 800 mile drive down to Searchlight and needed to get all the lights on the back of him working. I needed some wire for this and as you may recall from previous posts, I removed all the many miles of original wiring from inside the ambulance box and so with the help of my two assistants I tackled the sorting and spooling of all this wire. This is Zoe with her “cone of shame” after her spay surgery. 
Together the three of us were able to convert this into ……………….. 
……..… this and another tubful. 
Twas a wee bit chilly doing this work for as the seasonal song goes ………. “the weather outside what frightful!”. But I’ve got a little electric heater when I’m working inside Lance and with all his insulation it was doesn’t take much to keep it all nice and toasty in there.
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