What do you do on your 7th day snowed in? First, count your blessings that you have a couch to curl up on after shoveling ump-teen feet of snow again this morning. Then, you write a blog, a blog about the sunny days you had in Utah just a couple months ago exploring the canyons…
I will start off by saying, we have now spent 8 days in 4 walls and plumbing thanks to our kind friends who are letting us flop in their condo in Mammoth. We had planned to be here just a few days last week, but Mother Nature had other ideas. I’m not even sure on the storm totals, 15 feet, maybe more. I think once you hit the 2 foot mark its all just too much white stuff, so much that you can’t even ski, walk, snowshoe, or barely get out your front door. I grew up in a snow belt area in Michigan; I have no words to express how much MORE snow this is! The Mammoth area is experiencing the brunt of the “Atmospheric River” and we were lucky enough to be here to experience it. This morning Miren, Dizzy and I put on our snowshoes, did our morning routine of shoveling and tromped up to the van to see how she is doing. We are both feeling a little homesick and missing our cozy little home. Yes, we are crazy! but it is home. Prior to this week, we had only slept outside the van two nights since April! Creatures of habit and I guess even though our scenery has changed daily, our little van and home had not.
Let’s think about the warm sunny days we had in Escalante-Grand Staircase, Utah. Haha, I have to laugh at myself because even there, our time started with a 2 day rain storm that washed out Hole in the Rock Rd. We had to back the van about 1/2 mile up hill and around corners to find a spot we could turn around after coming upon the road being washed out. So we changed our hiking plans and ended up meeting Jessika and Sebastian, a couple our age from Germany who took a year sabbatical and are traveling the US in their Land Cruiser. It was fun to have them over to the van for drinks and the next morning see their vehicle over coffee. Miren and I realized we have it pretty good in the Van. They can’t even both be sitting in the back of their land cruiser at the same time and the pop up roof area for the bed is pretty tight and cold they say.
…a week has passed since I was writing this post. My computer crashed and I am just now getting around to finishing up fixing it, fingers crossed. I will have to post the Utah pics in the future when I rescue them hopefully. Miren and I just can’t seem to escape the blizzards. Everywhere we go it seems to follow us. Great news is, our Inergy Kodiak Lithium Generator is performing very well. Hope we had expected our goal zero to preform. We are so happy to be rid of that piece of poo. In short, we went from a 110 pound piece of crap that would not maintain a charge, shorted out, and the display was inaccurate to a 20 pound! Yes 20 pound smaller generator that has been holding a charge for many days in below freezing temps and what really rocks; if we can’t get sum to charge, we can easily carry it in to a house, coffee shop, wherever and plug it in. AND it charges so much quicker than the Yeti did. It has been a huge relief for us. Now if we could just escape the blizzard dumps of snow! 🙂 Also like to report, the van drives like a champ in the snow and the chains have been getting a ton of use.
twodustysoles 