Home Sweet Second Home, At Last: and RV Solar Install Finale

I am proud of my childhood "trailer trash" roots, all twelve years of them. Everything from a 16 foot Shasta that served as our "home" for about a year in the late 50's, to a 14 by 65 foot brand new Magnolia in the 60's that seemed like a millionaire's mansion to me, and probably Mom, too, given what she'd been living in up till then. If someone would have told her that she'd be leaving her "mansion" to move back into an 8 by 40 foot piece of crap—that the Lord's Will was going to call our family out of the Arizona desert we had grown to love, all the way to Missouri's insufferable humidity, and that Dad was going to tow—not a "travel" trailer, mind you, but a swamp cooled cracker box with axles and wheels that were designed to come off once you plopped it down on permanent dirt—behind a well used 57 Cadillac...such that we looked like the Beverly Hillbillys movin' to Cal-i-forn-i-aay, hitch draggin' on the ground and shootin' sparks with every bump in the road...it would have killed her right then and there. Thus were the roller coaster days of Feast to Famine, and the ever crazier forage for God's purpose in our lives.

Kids didn't know if they were poor or rich back in the days before television. I thought it was pretty cool being home schooled and living on the road in a 16 foot Shasta travel trailer. I knew I was loved and that's all a child needs. Besides, life seemed like one big adventure after another; things most families would call tumultuous seemed perfectly normal to me. 

But, thanks to the Tele, I began to realize that most people live in houses without wheels, and that while we were not dirt poor like some of our relatives in West Virginia that still used outhouses and had no indoor plumbing, we just couldn't seem to break free from the lower middle class. Something would always happen to set us back, usually God, telling Mom or Dad or both to drop what they were doing and go elsewhere...which is nothing short of saying, "start over."

Finally, after years of throwing dollars at the perfect RV, always new, some three or four pop up pick up campers, an Arctic Fox travel trailer, an Excel Fifth Wheel, a Chalet A-Frame, I came to my senses when I stumbled upon Goldie, an old 1994 motorhome that now qualifies for "Antique License Plates." After making a solemn promise to Bobbie that she could bury me in that box, that I had seen the light and was ready to re-embrace my trailer trash roots and live out my RV days in a clunker so long as I could follow the Lord's will for my life, which is to get out of the larger portion of Lovely Ouray's winters and frolic in the playgrounds of my Arizona youth, she agreed to the "investment." Good riddance to the days of depreciation! Hell, I might even make a profit on Goldie. Oh wait...I can't sell my coffin. Darn.
God works in mysterious ways :)) 
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Reader Dee asked if I would show the new solar panels in the down position. I realized that I hadn't shown the mounting brackets that well either...so here are a few more exterior shots, then I 'll get to the interior.

I don't know if you are supposed to do this, but I'm leaving the extension arms for tilting the panels toward the low winter sun attached to the panels where they are handy.

Getting up and down from the roof of Goldie is made easier by all the hand holds available...

Still need to add Dicor to seal around the roof brackets and screws. Maybe I'll do that in Utah...

I mounted the remote readout on an upper cabinet for easy reading. Being in the shade of the house, and under a tree, defeats the solar panels about 95% :((   I'll get to the sun eventually...

I mounted the Controller box in the entry way on the back of the dinette booth seat. The battery box is just  one foot away underneath and makes a short run for wires  

I was able to tuck the panel wire behind existing shade valances...it shows a little so I may trim it out...or not.

The Control box...underneath the dinette booth. The hump in the carpet is the top of the battery box

I ordered an new AC cover...125 bucks for a piece of plastic!!!!

The skylight over the shower is going to have to wait till next year to get replaced...that's why God made Duct Tape.

This is our rental home...would be nice if we could sell it. Doesn't somebody out there want to live part time in a lovely ouray vacation home? Please?