Day 23, 24, 25, 26 - Chehalis, WA - TT

Sunday (23) - A cold, rainy day. The furnace is running a lot. The SeeLevel II gauge still says 72% or 0.57th of the tank. The gauge on the tank says 9/16 or 0.56th. I’m glad they agree. The black tank indicator is still inconsistent i.e. It works fine for the first half of the tank but not the second half. Sometimes. 

It rained on and off all afternoon and evening. We watched YouTube videos and a series on Netflix called Away, which is another series on a trip to Mars. We watched the whole first season over the last couple of days. Not bad but there were several things that probably would never happen. 

Monday (24) - Having some friends over for lunch. We originally met them at the Seaside TT and Russ is the one who got our windshield temporarily reset. I have chicken thighs in the sous vide to make enchiladas. 

Last night during the heavy rain, we heard a “thunk”. I think I found it. There was a chunk of wood inside of the A/C unit. These covers get pretty brittle due to exposure to the sun so I don’t think it would take much to break it. There were a lot of pine cones, leaves, and branches on the roof. 

We picked up a plastic container from Walmart and I cut a patch from the lid. For now, we just used Gorilla Tape as it’s supposed to be raining this evening. A more “permanent” fix would be Eternabond tape. I guess I need to start looking for a replacement shroud. The plastic lid is probably much stronger than the thin plastic shroud. 

Tuesday (25) - Another breezy day with more pine cones dropping on the roof throughout the day. Since we will be dry camping for the next couple of days, I plan to disconnect from shore power and just run the furnace and fridge on propane and DC power. I want to see what the house battery is at in the morning and, more importantly, try starting the engine. It’s been around 50°F in the morning so it shouldn’t be a problem but I noticed that the last shop had a battery charger on the chassis batteries. I should’ve done this weeks ago when I first thought about it. 

I’m making dinner for good friends here in Centralia this evening. Bridget wanted pineapple fried rice with chicken instead of shrimp and I’ve added pot stickers. I made the chicken thighs in the sous vide as the marinades really make their way throughout the chicken. 

Wednesday (26) - By morning, our battery bank was down to 63%. Most of our power consumption was the front furnace blower motor as it runs almost continuously. Tonight, we will be dry camping possibly in a rest area and I’ll try just using the rear furnace as it seems to put out more heat. And maybe turn the front furnace way down. We need to figure out this dry camping bit again. 

The chassis batteries look like they may need replacement as they didn’t turn the engine over really well now that the grid heater is working again. I used the “battery boost” feature to add the house batteries while cranking the engine. By 12:30, the charger was in float. The Magnum inverter/charger was putting out 85amps @12VDC. 

The engine block heater was turned on at 12:30. 

We ended up at the Ilani Casino south of Woodland, WA, for the night. Bridget wasn’t sure of the rest area. The casino had a security guard at the entrance. I only put down two jacks on the passenger side and the passenger side slides. The drivers side sticks out a lot further.