The 49th High Point - Mauna Kea, Hawaii

Allen at the summit of Mauna Kea, summit cairn to the left, telescopes to the rear.

    When I first started RVing in 2003 one of my goals was to get to the highest point of each of the 50 states.  I joined the Highpointers Club and started climbing. In August 2010 I completed the lower 48 on Granite Peak, Montana.  That left Alaska and Hawaii.
    At one time I thought I might try the Alaska high point, Denali, but now a few more years have passed, I'm a lot older and no way could I make it. Hawaii, however was a different story; one can drive almost to the top - the biggest problem was getting to the island of Hawaii, and that we did on the cruise ship Star Princess.
    We rented a 4 wheel drive truck in Hilo and were on our way.

Dinah and our rented truck at the start of the Mauna Kea access road. The mountain, hidden in clouds, is in the background.

    Our guidebook had warned us that the access road, beyond the visitor center, was very steep and in poor condition.  The book must be out of date; we found the road to be no problem at all. There were a few miles of dirt road, but it had been recently graded and, other than a little bit of washboard, presented no problems.  Of course, if it had been snowing, raining, or icy, it would have been a different story.

Dinah, near the top, dressed for the cold wind.

    I left Dinah in the parking lot near the top and set out on foot for the summit, a short hike away. After a few minutes, and lots of huffing and puffing (the summit is 13,796 feet above sea level),  I was at the top of Mauna Kea - my last high point!

The summit of Mauna Kea, my 49th - and last - state high point.

The GingerBread House

My father was a great practical joker and when people showed him pictures of their grandchildren, he loved to say, "Let me show you a picture of my Pride & Joy" then open his wallet to this picture:

Dad with his Pride & Joy

I suppose this bit of my dad rubbed off on me as I was delighted when a friend sent me this picture of a Ginger Bread House:

I loved it and sent it along to my brother and sisters.  My youngest sister replied, 

"I personally would have expected YOUR house to be made of raisin bread!!"  What a great idea!

My Ginger Bread House

With Dinah & Sam

With Allen & Lily

We wish everyone a Very Merry Christmas 

and a Happy Holiday Season

Adding a rear entryway

Our cats love to try to sneak out the back door, and they have often been successful; when we open the door for a dog, out goes a cat.  So we added a rear entryway to provide an airlock, and keep the cats in.  It also will lessen sun heating in the summer, and provide a little solar warmth in the winter.

Guy, a friend and professional carpenter, works with the studs.

Studs are almost complete

Sheathing nearly finished.

Door and windows are in.

All done except stucco & painting.

Stucco guys at work.

Finished ! (except for inside painting)

Adding a new solar array

Back in March of 2010, we had 1.94KW of solar installed on the garage roof of our Las Cruces, NM home by Positive Energy Solar. In September of this year we calculated that we had generated 78% of the electricity used in the March 2010 to Sept 2013 period (We use power conservatively, and are often away during the hottest part of the year). The cost of solar has come down dramatically since then and we decided to expand our system. We chose to go with the same brand of panels and inverter so that we would be able to monitor both sets of panels as a single system using SunPower's website.  These pictures show the installation, by Positive Energy, of ten new SunPower 327Watt panels and an additional inverter. We anticipate the combined system will generate about 200% of our electrical power usage.

Marking the location of the panels

Installing the mounts

Close-up view of one of the mounts with bracket attached

Installing the rails

Installing the roof junction and roof penetration box

The first panel ready for mounting

Running the wires from the panels to the solar controls

Mounting the tenth and final panel

Moving the old 4KW inverter to handle the new 3.27KW array. The new 3KW inverter will handle the old 1.94KW array

Wiring the inverters, metering, and monitoring

Top left and center are the two inverters. Directly below them are the DC switches. Below the switches are the wiring trays. Between the trays is a breaker box where the inverter outputs are joined. Below that is a box containing the wireless monitoring equipment. The technician is working on the main solar AC breaker, and directly above it is the REC meter. From the REC (Renewable Energy Credits) meter the solar AC output is fed into the house main electrical panel which contains a bi-directional revenue meter.

The controls completed and ready to go.  The total system (1.94+3.27=5.2KW) generated around 25kWh the first sunny day after the new array was installed (It's November - I'm anxious to see what it will produce in May).

A story about the old system, with 9 months of operating results, can be seen at:
http://lifeisgood2.com/TravelReports/2011_1/SolarMagazineArticleFeb2011.pdf

A Caribbean Cruise

The Norwegian Sun tied up in Barbados

Dinah lived for several years in the British West Indies, and there were several Islands in the area she always wanted to see, but never got the chance.  So when she spotted a 10 day Southern Caribbean cruise at a good price, we decided to hop aboard. 

The ship left from Miami and spent the first two days at sea while we explored the ship and ate at the various restaurants. 

Dinah on deck in Miami

 Something new to us was towel folding; each evening our cabin stewardess left us a different animal made from towels.

 Our cabin was inside  (no windows) so we kept track of where we were by watching forward pointing ships camera on our TV.

The port of Philipsburg, St. Maarten as seen on ship's camera

A comedy act by the cruise director's staff

Entertainment on the pier by the crew as we return to the ship from our last island stop.

We visited five ports and I've covered each of them in a separate post.  We had a great time and are looking forward to additional cruises,  with one to Hawaii in February already booked.

Sunset at sea

Philipsburg, St. Maarten, Netherland Antiles

Funny little boats - more like dodge-um cars!

The nicest beach of the trip

This lizard was lounging ...

near this unique liquor store.

A not-so-fast Ferrari (for handling container ship containers)