I am sitting on a couch, right next to a bathroom where I could jump into the shower at any time, while dinner is cooking on the stove in a well stocked kitchen. It is winter in Colorado, and in order to be with our local friends and family for the holidays, we are housesitting for a couple of weeks. We make smoothies every day since there is electricity to run the blender, the kids can take a bath whenever they want and there is no need for double or even triple pajamas at night. I am probably most enchanted with the possibility of taking a shower first thing in…
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Naval Undersea Museum
On our way to the Olympic National Park in Washington, we make a last-minute decision to visit the Naval Undersea Museum and manage to make a U-turn while towing the Avion. When we get to Keyport, the museum turns out to be on a naval base. We arrive after closing time and have not decided yet on where to sleep. The parking lot of the museum is pretty big and Antoine and Finn walk over to the heavily armed guards of the base to ask if we may spend the night here. I am hugely surprised when they tell me that the guards responded with a simple “why not” and…
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“Mama, we have a problem!”
“Zoe Zoe, it is snowing!” I am slowly waking up and calculating how many hours we can drive today, and how far we can get. But after Finn’s exclamation both Antoine and I are instantly completely awake and looking outside. Indeed, the landscape around us has turned into winter wonderland. Overnight, and quite unexpectedly are we facing the narrow Cassiar Highway covered with several inches of snow. This road has no shoulders and drops off 5 feet straight down at places. The hills are steep and as far was we can see from here, nobody is plowing the road. Last night we barely made the first 50 miles onto this…
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Learning about solar power. Rookie mistakes?
For about ten days now, we have had the luxury of borrowing a generator. We prefer to run our life solely on solar power (and some food), so adding a gas guzzling machine to the setup is certainly not a perfect solution. But what peace of mind has it been for me. To be able to reliably have electricity when I need to charge my laptop has changed my world. We went so far as to add the expense of a generator purchase to next month’s budget. If the solar panels are not cutting it, we have to find a solution. Being completely powerless last week did not feel very…
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Power is out in our Avion trailer
It’s the middle of the night when I hear the furnace fan blasting away. Usually it stops within a few minutes but not this time. Slowly it dawns upon me that this is not a good sign. Our battery must be nearly dead. The trailer has no power. We have been here before, about a year ago when we went camping off shore power and pretty much wanted to try out how far we could go. Maybe not the most intelligent thing to do, have we learned since. It really is not good to let your battery go below fifty percent of its capacity. At that time, we were on…
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Naval Undersea Museum
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