"Bill's Excellent Adventure!"

8/28/07 - I've been taking it easy since pulling into Albuquerque Saturday. Yesterday I completely unloaded the car and hauled everything to the room and took the car to a full service car wash and had the works done to it. Did some shopping at Wal-Mart and restocked just about everything I needed including food, 6 propane bottles, bought a pair of small binoculars for star gazing and creature watching. Need to take the sleeping bag to a cleaners and have it dry cleaned.

My big purchase was a small solar panel and a deep-cycle marine battery. Why you ask? Well, while at Bluewater SP, I managed to drain my car battery listening to the radio in late evenings for hours on end, running my laptop (battery when out on it), and in general using the car battery a lot without driving the car to keep the battery charged. The good park ranger folks gave me a jump. I decided that if I couldn't pick up a used or third party battery for the laptop within the week (don't have time to buy off ebay and get it before I leave or order a new one from Compaq), I'd go a head and buy this solar panel set up for less than a new laptop battery would cost. I stopped at a used computer store I used several months a go to locate the "laptop king" out here to fix my computer and they didn't have a battery. Called the laptop king and he didn't have one sitting around either. They suggested going to a Batteries + store and they could at least check the cells. Did that and they couldn't do it and would have to order a new one for about $130 bucks! No thanks...walked next door to Checkers auto parts and purchased the solar set up that gives me more options to operate and charge other devices. These set ups are quite common among RV'rs out here and it makes since...a simple way to trickle charge their backup batteries for their rigs given all the sunshine out here.

I've been reading more novels than I probably have ever read in a year. Bought two more...another Clive Cussler novel called "Golden Budda" and a double western paperback. I have about 100 pages to go in "The Bourne Ultimatum. " Would like to go see the movie while here.

Mailed my Chaco book and DVD and two 4 Corners tee shirts to my sons.

Bout froze myself out of the room here on Saturday...I'm so used to being outside 24/7 it was very uncomfortable and actually found myself shivering a lot when I went to the grocery store! I really don't miss the AC or the TV. Hardly turn the TV on anymore.

Well, that will do it for now.

Everybody take care.