Day: October 13, 2009

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Boondocking Success

I probably won’t be able to give a write up of my trip from Nugget City to Campbell River, complete with pictures, until I arrive, so in the meantime, I’ll just share my experiences with the house batteries this time around.

I noticed last spring that my house batteries were not charging while driving. I started by blaming the installation of the new truck battery, which proved to be correct as there was no voltage on the cable from the truck solenoid to the house batteries.

There were no loose wires around the truck battery, so I examined the connections from the solenoid to the battery and found them loose. I cleaned the terminals, applied conductive gel, and tightened the connections. After that, there was proper voltage going from the truck to the house batteries. But that only solved part of the problem as I found that the charging was not satisfactory, especially after long days of driving.

My next suspect was the refrigerator. I guessed that by putting it on ‘auto’ it was switching to battery power rather than LP and that I was draining the battery as I drove.

When I left Nugget City, I purposely left the fridge on ‘auto’ and when I arrived at my spot for the night, my voltage read 12.3. I had left with a fully charged battery and driven almost three hundred kilometres. This did not seem right. I switched the fridge to LP. The battery voltage dipped to about 12.0 overnight as I left the inverter on to recharge the laptop.

The next day, I stopped after about one hundred kilometres of driving and my battery was at 12.6, fully charged! This confirmed to me that my charging problem was resolved. When I parked for the night at the turnout, I still had a fully charged battery. However, I had no sooner turned on the furnace than my battery was at a 50% discharge evidenced by an 11.1V reading!!! I turned off the furnace and the battery reading increased to a more reasonable 11.5 to 11.6 range, more than enough for a comfortable night.

I had recently checked the distilled water levels for the batteries and found them to be satisfactory, but decided that maybe they did need a bit of topping up. They each took on a little water, not enough to make a difference I thought, but I was in for a surprise.

I parked in Prince George with the battery at 12.6V. I ran the furnace all night while recharging the laptop and the battery levels dipped down to the 11.6 to 11.8V range and stayed there steadily.

From Prince George, I returned to the Chasm. My voltage was at 12.6V upon parking and 12.1V upon going to bed after running the furnace and charging my laptop. I left the furnace on all night and awoke to a voltage of 11.8. During the day, the only direct use I made of my batteries was to charge my laptop and the voltage hovered in the 11.6 to 11.8V range. It was a nice sunny day and without doing any math, so take this with a grain of salt, I suspect that I was getting enough juice out of the 15W solar panel to compensate for the laptop charge.

I stayed a second day at the Chasm just for a rest and my battery remained at the 11.6 to 11.8V reading right straight up to my departure (so, two nights of running the furnace). I drove only about a hundred kilometres, including careening down a mountain, before my stop for the night where my battery was at 11.5. It was at 11.3 when the tow truck came this morning.

It seems that my batteries rapidly discharge into the 11V readings, but then stay there steadily. I was glad to be hooked to power tonight, but would have had enough juice for running the furnace.

The generator will be useful to help me boondock in one place for several nights, but I now know that I can boondock from place to place with a small of driving in between each and still be perfectly comfortable. This knowledge is very comforting. I’m starting to feel like a seasoned RVer. 🙂

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Still Shaking

Miranda will be getting her new brakes tomorrow, the process taking all day, so, being 130km from Vancouver and aware that I have at least one more ‘big’ hill ahead, I’m going to do the drive in the toad to see if I need to hire myself a driver.

I’m just not ready to get back on the proverbial horse. Oh, driving on flat, no problem, but I’m not ready to put myself back in a situation where I could find myself careening down a hill. I’ve received mixed opinions about the route ahead; some say that it’s ‘almost as bad’ as the road behind me while others scoff and say the worst is behind me. I want to hit the road feeling more confident than I feel right now.

I do seem to have lucked out with the mechanic; the estimate is fair and I’m being given a substantial discount on parts. The tire will also be replaced at no charge (a 250$ value on its own).

The brakes would have needed to have been rebuilt completely at some point during my ownership of Miranda, so the cost doesn’t hurt nearly as much as if I’d blown the engine or ripped the air conditioner off the roof ( 😉 to Croft) and I intended to give Miranda new shoes before leaving for Dawson in the spring. I’ve now got two bought. 🙂

I’m still trying to decide how I feel about my decision to take the Sea to Sky highway knowing ahead of time about its legendary grades. I think I was over confident because of the ease at which I crossed the Rockies last fall as well as my experience with some of the grades on the Alaska highway. What I can’t decide on is if the scare of my life was worth the breathtaking scenery and the excitement of taking a new route. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t.

But I will say that if I’d been stranded on that mountain last night in a car, it would have been a completely different experience than being stranded in my own home with access to a proper dinner, hot shower, heat, and my own bed. I was also grateful that the runaway lane had a small spur into which I was able to tuck Miranda (thank goodness for the emergency brake) so that I was not blocking this vital laneway in case someone else experienced a similar emergency.

I also learned just how easy it is to tow Miranda and was surprised by how small the tow truck was. The driver parked the truck at the top of the runaway lane, backed Miranda down the spur behind the truck, hooked her up, and just backed the whole kit and kaboodle up the highway until he was at the right angle to drive down the hill. *boggled*

Interesting fact: roadside assistance was going to send me a tow truck from Whistler, for which I would have been charge a 150$ premium. Calling someone local on my own saved me 30$. Thank goodness I had cell service on that mountain and that my GPS had the phone number of an auto place. They couldn’t help me, but at least the person understood my predicament and was able to give me the number of someone who could help. So many things went right yesterday for all that went wrong.

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Shit Happens

Shit happens.

I am disabling comments for this post and will not welcome emails about it, especially from people with recriminations and after-the-fact suggestions for how I should have dealt with the situation without them having been there. I know this sounds harsh, but the only reason I’m even sharing this story right now, when my heart is still in my throat, is that it’s part of my story.

It happened, it’s being dealt with, I’m alive, the cats are alive, my RV is fixable, and I’m going to have one hell of a story to tell my grand-children (should I ever have kids, of course).

Let’s just say that all the preparation in the world and all the doing of the right things in the right order did not stop my brakes from crapping out on me in the middle of the worst hill in British Columbia. Had someone not been blocking the first ‘runaway lane’ I encountered, I would have been fine, albeit shaken, but the lane was blocked (the car better have been in the middle of an emergency of its own). So, I had to do what needed to be done to get around two hairpin turns to the next ‘runaway lane.’

I arrived there at a higher speed than I would have liked, but safe, and except for cooked brakes and smoking tires, all wasn’t bad.

Then a tired exploded and burst into flames and made me grateful that I take fire safety seriously and had a fire extinguisher.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, so everything was closed. I hunkered down, endured one of the longest nights of my life, and was able to call for help this morning. I was grateful last night to have access to a hot shower, good food, and heating. Imagine how much longer the night would have been otherwise. Being close enough to a town with cell service was yet another blessing.

A tow truck arrived promptly at 8:30 today and took me to a garage in Pemberton, north of Whistler, where I will be comfortable until I can get new brakes and replace the tires. The estimate should be forthcoming.

A special mention needs to go out to my mother who is helping me manage this crisis. I’m a very proud person and it’s not easy to ask for help, but I suspected that it would take more time than I have to get access to my emergency funds, so I made call. Merci, mom!