Back to Yuma: Zephyr Comes Full Circle

Flashback…

It was June 2011, the first time we visited Yuma, AZ. We were on our bus hunt, looking for our next home on wheels. A nondescript Craigslist ad had lead our Amtrak train adventure to this desolate Arizona town to look at what we thought was an unlikely contender.

But we decided to endure the 115+ degree heat and make the trip anyway to look at this ‘Greyhound bus/camper’ that was advertised as a ‘cool way to go camping’.

The bus won our hearts and after a lot of blood, sweat & tears to get her off the storage lot we found her on – Zephyr became our home on wheels.  We spent what seemed like an eternity at a RV Park across the street figuring out just what we had gotten ourselves into by adopting a 50+ year old bus.

There were few people crazy enough to actually be in Yuma that time of year.

Present day…

After a lovely two week stay near Cibola National Wildlife Refuge, we hit the road south to Yuma. A winter in the southwest just wouldn’t be right without returning to see what it’s like in the prime winter months.

This time we returned with Zephyr fully ours – interior converted to our style, decked out with solar and lithium batteries and an engine rebuild.

We opted to try out boondocking off Ogilby Road, just west of town. Enough friends had been there, proclaiming it an easy place to get some space around you with great cell signal.  We found our own little slice of solitude, settled in and then headed 20 miles into town to stock up at a real grocery store after 2 weeks out in the boonies.

It was less then 24 hours however when we spotted a new neighbor settle in at a respectful quarter mile distance away.

But wait… they were towing a Mini Cooper too, and the setup looked familiar. We wracked our brains as to who it might be, and remembered the folks of RVLove.com who had joined our Mobile Internet Aficionados group, and we had recently advised them on their mobile internet setup.

We strolled on down and introduced ourselves to Marc & Julie. It seems solitude is a very rare thing in the desert this time of year. But we’re happy that serendipity led to making new friends, and we enjoyed several sunset happy hours together on their maiden boondocking adventure.

There were several very windy days during our stay, and some pretty toasty temps. Nothing like the triple digits we endured 3 summers priors – but temps spiking into the low 90s did tempt us into almost running the air conditioner off solar & battery for a bit. We quickly remembered the concept of siesta in the shade, and just toughed out the heat with a icy beverage.

Aside from a little social time, our days off Ogilby Road were mainly spent writing, working and chasing down geocaches in the desert.

The area is pretty much what we expected – more desert scrub landscaping and mountain views. It probably won’t rank as one of our all time favorite boondocking locations, but it did the trick to give us the isolation we needed to focus on our projects.

We got a map refresh done for our Coverage? app, and even a little update out to US Public Lands – both apps will now display correctly on iPhone 6 and 6+. Apple should have them approved soon, and available as free updates in the App Store if you have the apps already.

But the big task was a refresh of The Mobile Internet Handbook for 2015… which turned into a minor re-write. So much has changed in the past six months, and we had so many ideas of ways to improve the book just a little bit more. The re-write is now done and we’re working on formatting for print, Kindle, PDF and iBooks. We hope to have it on the shelves by the end of the week (we’ll update soon!).

After wrapping up the book, we stopped at Starlight Solar to meet Larry, the owner. We’ve conversed for years about solar & lithium, and now that they’re installing the same cells we used for our install – it was worthwhile stoping in to say hi. Definitely a fine operation he’s running and we got to see a lithium install in progress.

They also happen to be just down the street from that storage lot where we first met Zephyr.

We drove by on our way out of town .. proud of where we’ve come in the 3.5 years since last we were last in Yuma.

At least this time we had the smarts to visit in winter.

What’s Next?

We’ve relocated to a boondocking spot outside of the lovely Ajo area – re-converged with friends. We’ll wrap up the book re-fresh project and enjoy some exploring around. We’ve had way too many long work days lately.

Our next stop will likely be moving into the Tucson area later this week – where we’ll be tooling around for a few weeks before the Escapee’s Escapade starting on March 6.  We have a lot to get accomplished in the coming weeks, not the least of which is preparing our three presentations (Working on the Road, Tech and Travel, and Social Media the Enhance a Mobile Lifestyle).

We’re presenting on March 11 in Tucson, which is also free entry day to the Escapade – stop on by if you’re in the area. We’d love to meet you!

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Bonus: Free Tickets to The Wireless Generation – San Francisco / Thursday Evening

Drew Gilbert, filmmaker of the new documentary called The Wireless Generation is currently screening the film across the country. It’s all about digital nomads – folks taking their careers on the road and working.. wirelessly. They filmed us for the documentary back in 2010, and we apparently made the final cut representing RVers amongst the global digital nomad community.

The next screening is this Thursday evening in San Francisco, and they gave us a few tickets to give away.

When: Thursday, Feb 19 – 7pm

Where: Ninth Street Independent Film Center – San Francisco

If you can make the screening (and would like to go), just be in touch at contact@technomadia.com and let us know how many are in your party.  We’ll get you a code to get your free tickets.  First come, first serve.

If you’re not in San Francisco, screenings are coming up in Los Angeles, Denver, Austin (we’ll be at this one in early April), Boston and New York City. Check out the full film tour schedule and get your tickets.