Solar Saga Days 4 and 5–another hike

Tuesday and Wednesday May 20 and 21, 2014
French Creek State Park Campground
Elverson, Pennsylvania

 

TUESDAY May 20

 

Since we do now have shore power, Greg comes back at 1:00 to discover mislabeled solar panel leads from the manufacturer on one panel.  Good grief, you can’ trust anyone.

 

Time for another hike!

 

I take another and longer hike.  I’m no help and I just worry.  I’ll finish the hike that got interrupted on Sunday. All of the pictures on this post are from that hike.

I go backwards so I’m doing the part I missed first and redoing the part I did.  Yesterday I was on the blue trail.  Today I do blue/green and green/yellow as well as the blue.

 

 

 

I start out on an even rockier path.  The trail is quite hilly. But it’s a lovely walk.

 

One man’s weed is another man’s flower and this dandelion looks like a golden sunburst to me.

 

 

Wild Azalea in bloom

 

 

 

Jack in the pulpit line the path.

 

 

 

This loop takes me by both lakes in the park. I arrive first at 22 acre Scott’s Run Lake where the bank is lined with fishermen and there are small boats of folks casting their lines.

 

 

 

The dam flows through an outlet channel into Scott’s Run which after the intrusion of the dam goes back to being a very lovely stream.

 

 

 

 

 

I’m really excited to find true Solomon’s Seal with it’s bells hanging down off the stalk and beneath the leaves.

 

 

 

 

 

False Solomon’s Seal has the same looking leaf and thus can trick you.  But its flower looks nothing like the bells and comes from the end of the stalk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On I go past carpets of ferns and reach the main lake 68 acre Lake Hopewell.  I’m now on the opposite side from yesterday’s hike.

 

 

 

Just past the boat dock I come upon part of the disc golf course.  Sure wish we would have had time to play.   And to kayak the big lake for that matter.

 

 

 

On around the end of the lake I find a LARGE lake side swimming pool.  Good Grief.  This is some state park!  The pool is not open of course but since there is clean water in it, I’m imagining that it will be open for this coming memorial day week-end.

 

 

 

 

The smell of Wisteria is wonderful.

 

 

And then I come to the other side of the dam.  I’m almost to the point where I turned around yesterday and I see they are making a huge mess ripping the place up.  What is going on here?  Really large trees just hacked down.

 

 

 

 

 

Looks like they didn’t bring the boardwalk quite far enough.  I’m in sneakers not hiking boots so to avoid the  mud I walk the plank and some the other little boards and manage not to fall in.  

 

 

 

 

Carpets of bluets line the final segment of this trail.  I’ve walked 7.78 miles in 4 hours and I’m not really all that tired.  But my legs are ready for a rest.

 

 

 

I get back and everything is working but………..

Greg leaves at 6:30 with everything working but the battery monitoring module of the inverter/charger monitor. 

After calling the Magnum, he finds they sent him, a defective monitor.  At least he knows what the problem is. This is equipment problem #2 for today.  None of this throws him at all. He maintains his cheerful positive disposition. He just laughs. He’s learning a lot he says.  Magnum is sending another one over night. 

 

We decide to boondock. 

 

 

We decide to boondock tonight to see how things go so I go out and pull the plug. David turns this on and that on and this off and that off and checks to see what the inverter is doing in terms of voltage and amperage as he does. Things seem fine. We will have a lot more data when the battery monitoring kit is working. Hopefully that’s tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

WEDNESDAY May 21

Boondocking goes fine assuming that draining your batteries down to 50% when they are AGMs is OK.  It rains all night. In the morning it is cloudy but the panels are making some gain.  Even so, we plug the coach back in since we have paid for electric.  

 

 

Time for the monthly blood draw.

 

David sets out for his blood draw appointment in Pottstown about 13 miles away.  He has a CBC and CMP done every month to monitor how things are going.  The major myeloma test is only done every 3 months and this is not one of those months.  July is the next one and the two year anniversary of his stem cell transplant.   Today, he also has to pick up a prescription at CVS and get some vitamins.

I work on the blog, answer emails, comment on blogs, enter expenses, read – It’s raining out (are you surprised?),  what else can I do? 

 

 

Greg arrives at 1:00 with the new monitor.

 

 

Halleluiah, it works right out of the box, but then, he discovers it is only reading one pair of batteries.  Back on the phone to the company. Turns out to be an easy wiring fix but he has to make a run down to Lowe’s since he needs a longer wire.  This is no just run down the street deal.  The closest Lowes is 15 miles round trip.

Meanwhile the off and on power business over the past few days seems to be having an effect on our refrigerator display panel and the new LED lights in the ceiling which is now coming off and on and driving me crazy. 

We disconnect the fridge from everything hoping it hasn’t been damaged. We try to turn the lights out whenever Greg is disconnecting the power but we aren’t always successful even when I am here which hasn’t been all the time. 

Greg returns The install is finished but the flickering lights remain.   He patiently answers all of David’s questions before he leaves.   There is clearly some problem and we stay up until 1am trying to figure it out. 

Finally David tests the light sockets themselves and finds that the voltage is very low 7.5 amps actually.  Ok then, what causes low voltage?   A short somewhere?  A loose ground.

David emails Greg with all the information we have gained.   We are two plenty tired folks when we FINALLY hit the bed.

The answer to the question ‘will we be on the road as planned on Thursday is clearly no.  But this park is booked totally for the memorial day week-end Friday- Sunday so the plot thickens.

If I’d known it was going to be this much trouble, I’m not sure I’d have signed up.  I wonder if anyone else has ever had so many problems with a solar install.