I have a slight issue with the positive cable but for all intents and purposes, the battery and box have been mounted and are ready to roll. Will wire in the solar controller and finish up the wiring tomorrow so we’re ready to roll on the next camping adventure on Saturday.
So the new year is here and it’s time to start looking for a new job but that may take a bit so I need to keep moving forward so I’m working on the website and photo galleries and I’m going to take an actual class on Linux to work towards my Red Hat certification, just for giggles. Sandy and I did make it to the rec center for 30 minutes on the track so still trying to stay active. Tune in tomorrow for the adventures of installing a new batter and box on the RV!
Sandy and I actually made it up to see the old year out and the new year in. We made our annual journey to Razoo’s and took our picture at the tree in Sundance Square. Went and saw the parents and made it home by sunset. Spent the first day of the year relaxing and enjoying doing nothing. Tomorrow the year begins in earnest and there are things to get done and goals to accomplish. Best luck to all in the new year!!!
While Amazon is my first go to for finding stuff, I usually then find it cheaper elsewhere. I can’t find anything other than TNF on Prime TV and even Amazon said over the last 12 months I’ve saved $68 being a Prime member. So it was hard to swallow paying $139 for another year of membership. But instead of simply deleting my Prime account, Amazon will let you pause it. So it keeps all the settings but you don’t have prime and you aren’t charged. You can restart it with a click of a button. So we’re no longer Prime members.
I’ve honestly seen better ROI on the Walmart+ membership, ten cents off of a gallon of gas is a no brainer.
One of the things that we learned on our last trip in the RV is that we are woefully unprepared for boondocking with the main issue being that the battery wouldn’t hold us overnight. Also, I’ve got the wrong battery type, I needed to have one that doesn’t start a car with a high voltage/short time but has a long life with low voltage. A ‘deep cell’ battery. The other big issue was that we couldn’t charge said wrong battery without running the generator.
These issues have been addressed by the purchase of a rather large battery and solar panels. I’m not sure how this is going to work but I think that I have all the pieces I need to put it all together.
From an outfit called Eco-Worthy, I’ve ordered the following:
LiFePO4 12V 280Ah Lithium Iron Phosphate Battery @ $599.99
2 x 130W 12V Flexible Mono Solar Panel @ $205.89
30A PWM LCD Display Solar Charge Controller Regulator with USB Port 12V/24V Autoswitch @ $29.99
Also got the ladder to get the panels on the roof as well, and the connection to get the panels to the pre-wired solar port. I think that I need to hard-wire the controller in line with the system but I’m not sure how that’s going to work. More soon on that front.
I did enjoy this movie when I was a kid and we’ve had it on Plex forever and I wanted to get Sandy’s take on it. It’s still an amusing little show and it is empowering for women but it does kind of leave you hanging in the end and doesn’t really come to a conclusion. It’s kind of funny but this is one that kind of screams out for a remake or reboot but we’re pretty sure that just isn’t going to happen.
Because of the flat we had on the way back from the Grand Canyon, the RV needed new shoes. This is my first time buying tires for a trailer and they’re evidently a lot different than car tires in that they don’t drive. I got them from Walmart, here is the invoice.
I had them mounted at the local place for $20 a tire, I’m not 100% sure that I liked that because they weren’t spin balanced but they weren’t before either.
To make sure everything was working good I ran it up to Johnson Branch at Ray Roberts. It was a nice run and not an issue with them.
So apologies for the delay in the current content. I’m still struggling with managing content that was developed in the last expedition. And honestly, there’s been a bit of a lag getting back on the computers. It will correct itself in time.
More soon.
So with a day to kill we took the hour drive to Aberdeen, WA. The birthplace of one Kurt Cobain. We took a look at the memorial which was underneath a bridge that looks to be where the neighborhood kids met up to get high. I talked with a kayaker who went to the same high school, he was a nice guy. It was a quite trip. Sandy met her friend for dinner and we got laundry done and began to get ready for leaving.
As much as I wanted to get an early start to the day, the campsite we are at is under a pretty heavy canopy and it takes a while for the sun to find us. Long story short we got a late start to the day but we headed out to Mount Rainier. It’s a huge mountain in the same range as Mt Saint Helen, and yes it is also a volcano. So closer to the mountain there are volcano evacuation signs and away from the mountain there are tsunami evacuation signs. Funny dichotomy.
The mountain was beautiful and so were the trails, it was cold though, by the time we got to the main road for the upper elevations they had closed the upper road (3:30pm) but we hiked up and went off the trail to the river bed and had a great view, the river was dried up to a trickle but the rest of the bed looked like a debris field and you could only imagine the forces that left it that way.
