November 6th, 2022
My whole plan of camping and traveling, while staying just ahead of the seasons, has hit a snag. It became apparent when I left Utah and spent my first night in Arizona. My son often calls on his way home from work about 4:15 p.m. When the phone rang as I was setting up camp near Grand Canyon National Park, I looked at the time on my Garmin watch and knew it was him, as it was 4:15. We talked for a few minutes and then disconnected. A while later, the sun started to set. I looked at my iPhone and it was 5:45. Something wasn’t right. It was dark to early. When I check my watch, it displayed 6:45 p.m. Welcome to Arizona, where Daylight Savings Time has not been adopted (about 30 minutes later, the Garmin synced up). I had lost an hour of daylight.
In my life, the Daylight Savings Time switch has never been of much importance, other than you got an extra hour of sleep on Saturday night or lost an hour. I am not aware of any other personal effect, other than spring, when my son suddenly had enough daylight after school to get in his baseball games. However, I noticed now.
When you are living in an RV or trailer, “dark” changes everything. There are limited things to do after dark. You can sit by a campfire. But when alone, that is not something worth your while. There is usually no TV signal, so no torturing yourself with sitcoms or Thursday Night Football. I guess you can cook and eat dinner, but that doesn’t last very long. Anything you do, probably requires lighting. But, while that is not even a thought when living in a home on the grid, it is when you are off grid and living off the power provided by 2 lithium batteries that are needed to keep your refrigerator running all night until the next day’s solar recharge. That leaves reading. Modern LED lighting doesn’t use much power to light up the page of a book. Better, you can read by the light of your e-Reader.
I read quickly. If I were to use my Kindle for winter’s 5 months or so of long evening hours, my reading budget would surpass that of my groceries. Also, it must be a very good book to keep me reading for 4 or more hours straight.
There are many things of which I can imagine to pass the daylight hours, but evening? My sister suggested taking up drawing again. That might certainly help. But I need to figure out more. These last couple of weeks, I find myself falling asleep by 8 p.m. or so. Even a young person’s sleep period of 9 hours would have me awake at 5 a.m. That is almost 2 hours before daylight now and will be worse late in December.
All this time I was thinking about what I should do during my coming 5 long months here in Arizona. I am going to have more difficulty with 13 or 14 hours of dark every day.
Zach, Tyler, Connie and mom, Dawn, Sai, Alekhya, Kavitha, Cheng, Mark, Tony – Call me AFTER it gets dark!
Starting All Over 