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By Katrina Kane, on December 30th, 2015  Having lived at sea level most of my life, I am very familiar with high altitude sickness. For awhile, I had an issue living at just 3000 feet up but that passed after some time and a short break/trip back to sea level. Now I’m good to around 7500 feet. No, I won’t be going to Rocky Mountain National Park or Pikes Peak ever and I had to be careful about the areas I spent much time in when I visited Yellowstone. I’m glad to see that I am not the only one since I have had people roll their eyes when I refuse to visit places above my limit. It’s really no different than people being more comfortable in temps and humidity similar to where they have lived a long time except I get nauseous and a headache when I go too high for too long. This can actually be dangerous and deadly. All RVers should be aware of the symptoms and what to do. For excellent info on this topic, see this new article by our friends at IRV2: http://www.irv2.com/blog/2015/12/avoid-altitude-sickness-when-rving/
By Katrina Kane, on December 15th, 2015 I noticed when I disconnected from the electric at Triple R to move to the gate that my TV turned off. Since it is rigged to run off batteries when not connected, that should not have happened. No time to fix it then so off to my new gate I went. I was on the gate for a couple of days running off a generator as usual and everything was working fine until I noticed the LED lights all over my trailer were dim and randomly blinking. Uh oh! Since they were all acting up, I knew it had to be a power issue. A quick check of my batteries showed their output well below normal. I maintain the water in them every month so I knew that wasn’t an issue. I next checked the converter with a voltmeter. It was dead! Power was good at the plug going in but nothing was coming out.
Being out in the middle of nowhere as usual, there are no RV shops nearby and I can’t leave the gate to go fetch parts anyway. Calling a mobile repair man was an option but we gate guards keep them pretty busy so it would take a few days to get one out here to do what I am perfectly capable of doing if I only had the part. There was also the huge service call charge to think about. I had been seeing UPS and FedEx trucks going into the ranch across the street so I checked with the gate guards there via our Facebook group to see if they had an address I could use to ship a new converter to. They were happy to help and do have an address there they use. I jumped on Amazon and ordered my new converter in. In the meantime, I disconnected everything I could from running on the batteries like my TV, DVD player, satellite dish box, and the satellite dish itself. All those things can run directly off the generator instead. I also used a flashlight instead of the DC lights but have 2 AC lights I could still run in the living room.
Meanwhile, my 4 6V golf batteries needed fed to keep my refrigerator going. I can run the fridge on either AC or propane but it has to have DC to run the controls. I disconnected the batteries, cleaned up the terminals, topped off the water, and began a round robin of charging each with my auto charger. I tried charging them with a jumper from my truck too but that really didn’t seem to help that much. For a couple days, I kept one pair of batteries online to run the refrigerator while I charged the other pair and went back and forth. That was fun… I sure wished then that I had solar panels. At the very least, a battery monitor would have been great both for charging and to catch this issue sooner. Definitely going to add a monitor soon and considering adding some panels too.
My new converter arrived and the other guards rushed it over to me. Pulling the old one out was very easy. Putting the new one in took a little longer as I had to modify the stand it sits on because the new converter is wider which I knew when I ordered it. I added a 1/2 inch square piece of wood to the side and drilled new mounting holes. Once it was done, I reconnected one pair of batteries that I knew were at equal charge while continuing to charge the other set manually one at a time. A day later, I added in the now fully charged second set, checked the water again on all, and closed everything up again. All are working fine. Whew!
By Katrina Kane, on December 2nd, 2015 A couple of gates finally opened. One was the same one I had been kicked off of twice which I told them not to send me to again. That actually worked out well because they were able to get a guard who had done that gate before, was very familiar with it, and liked it. I took the other gate south near Cotulla, TX. I left the campground early in the morning and drove down following only some general directions until I got stopped by a flag man for road work. I knew I was very close to the gate and would have to drive slow to find it so as soon as the pilot car came back for us, I pulled over to the side to let everyone else pass to keep from slowing them down. The last person to pass me was my support guy with my support trailer. LOL! He spotted me and waited for me to pull out behind him. He guided me right to the gate nearby. Unfortunately, the previous guard I was replacing had not gotten ready to leave yet so I had to pull over to the side and wait for a couple hours. He had been there for 3 years so he had a lot to get ready. The tires on his trailer were flat, he didn’t have the bar to crank up his jacks, and he didn’t have a truck to tow the trailer. I loaned him my tools to take care of most of the issues while we waited for his cousin to come with a truck.
Once the previous guard left, I drove up to the first drill pad to turn around and then pulled into the guard space and started setting up. Naturally, I was a bit gun shy by now so it took a week before I really started to relax and pull things out to fully settle in. The traffic here is pretty slow. They’re just monitoring gauges and pulling out oil in tankers so not many vehicles coming in. Sometimes I get a few water trucks. I get woke up at least once every night, sometimes more, but I still get plenty of sleep. Crossing my fingers that this will be a long gate. As soon as I felt comfortable, I cleaned up the trash in the area and cut down all the crap growing up through the cattle guard. I have to walk a long cattle guard to open and close the gate which is hard enough without getting tripped by that stuff or wondering what is hiding in it. I rigged up a rope to help me open half the gate and walk the cattle guard less. At least the gate is right next to the highway and across the street from 4 other gates with guards on them. Their gates are very busy at all times so I’m glad to be over on this other ranch.
To celebrate, I made Jell-O brand cheese cake that comes almost completely from a box. I had my doubts as to how good it would be but had to try it since it didn’t require much extra added so it would be a perfect dessert to keep on board. I was very surprised. It was delicious! The texture came out perfect too and it was very fast to make. As you can see, only one piece managed to survive for a picture and that was short-lived. This is a good dessert to take to pot lucks. I altered it to use fat free milk (not powdered), Olivio (1/3 fewer calories) instead of margarine or butter, and Stevia instead of sugar. Now that doesn’t make it low calorie but it does make it lower. Every little bit helps!
By Katrina Kane, on December 1st, 2015 Since I usually have to go 35+ miles to get groceries, getting ice cream home in a solid state on a 100 degree day is very difficult. Recently, I discovered how to easily make my own at home. Did you know you don’t need an ice cream maker or rock salt to make ice cream? You don’t have to wear yourself out cranking either. Homemade ice cream only requires 3 ingredients, a hand mixer, and a loaf pan. Making your own also gives you the freedom to experiment with flavors!
Ingredients:
1 pint heavy cream
1 14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk
1 tsp. flavoring (vanilla, cherry, chocolate,…)
Pour cream into a bowl and whip till thick with a hand mixer.
In another bowl, combine sweetened condensed milk with preferred flavoring, nuts, cherries, chocolate chips, or whatever else you wish.
Combine cream and milk by gently folding in together. Do NOT stir, just lightly mix by hand so as not to lose the thickness.
Pour into 9” loaf pan, cover, and freeze for at least 2 hours.
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Having lived at sea level most of my life, I am very familiar with high altitude sickness. For awhile, I had an issue living at just 3000 feet up but that passed after some time and a short break/trip back to sea level. Now I’m good to around 7500 feet. No, I won’t be going to Rocky Mountain National Park or Pikes Peak ever and I had to be careful about the areas I spent much time in when I visited Yellowstone. I’m glad to see that I am not the only one since I have had people roll their eyes when I refuse to visit places above my limit. It’s really no different than people being more comfortable in temps and humidity similar to where they have lived a long time except I get nauseous and a headache when I go too high for too long. This can actually be dangerous and deadly. All RVers should be aware of the symptoms and what to do. For excellent info on this topic, see this new article by our friends at IRV2: http://www.irv2.com/blog/2015/12/avoid-altitude-sickness-when-rving/
