Saturday, July 17, 2010

HARNESSING POWER...




As the slogan once said...We're cooking with gas! The propane tanks are filled, the water tank is filled, and we even hooked up the solar panels, and they worked like a charm!

So that's the skinny on our last four days...now here's the expanded version...

Got into Quemado about dinner time so we stopped at the Largo for a burger and grilled cheese sandwich. For being about dinner time, there just wasn't a lot of folks in and around Quemado.

Noticed a new business...The Green Door Store, across the street and up Hwy 60 a block or so. Not sure what that business is about, but the waitress at the Largo seemed to think it was a plant place. The El Sarape restaurant is now called something else, obviously under new ownership, but forgot the name. It was just pretty quiet.

Did notice that the new convenience store was opened, but we didn't stop it to see what was up there. We heard there's just a lot of bad blood in town now with that new convenience store being opened up, but one thing is for sure, it dropped the price of diesle by a quarter, and has kept gas prices competitive in town.

When people have to share town folk's money, like the new convenience store/gas station is having to do with the older establishments like the Country Store and J&Y Auto....neither one of them will come out a winner, and possible both will end up losing their businesses due to the "sharing" of the customers dollars.

We tried to get water at the water company in Quemado. If anyone is in need of water in the future, please feel free to stop by our place. We've got a hose hooked up, so take what you need. Whatever you do, don't bother Barbara at the water company. She is the water companies ONLY employee at the moment. The other guy that was helping her quit in May and it will probably be weeks before another person is hired. Also, they have leaks at the water "faucet" at the water company. And Barb is just plain tuckered out with all the work, and she also got stepped on in three places by her horse. She could probably still out-sprint me to the corner, but yeah, just don't bother her, for anything.

Instead....definitely go see the great folks at Catron Concrete for water. It's Town water, potable, and it's 10 Cents a Gallon. They also have a larger hose to fill your tanks up with so our 500 gallons took a mere 15 minutes if that to fill up. Nice folks, really nice folks. We probably paid more for the water than what the water company would have charged us (more talk about that one evening around the campfire perhaps) but it was just worth it.

The folks at Sierra Propane are just fast and efficient. Not terribly talkative, but they definitely get you on your way in minutes. And since they are the only game in town for propane, enough said.

Now, on to the solar! This is a great little system that we picked up at Harbor Freight for $150, I think, on sale. We did get the warranty, which brought it up to $200, which I think was the normal price. Bill just noticed that I think he said he saw the unit for $100 on sale now, which runs for the next month, I think. This little unit kept the battery charged. Great unit, highly recommend it so you don't have to run your generator to charge up your battery.

More later...we're just trying to collect ourselves...do some laundry and readjust to the change in altitude.

Good, but tiring four days out on the Santa Rita!