Winterset, IA

Saturday - A slightly longer drive day today ending at a city park just southwest of Des Moines, IA. The campground within the park has level gravel pads surrounded by green grass and included full hookups for a very reasonable price. The grass is a nice change from the dry “grass” at the Texas parks. 

I have another idea with the generator. Since the “PowerAssist” feature works great when plugged into shore power, I’m going to limit current from the generator on the Victron and see if the A/C starts and runs. Start at something like 10amps and gradually increase the current. We are here for several days. I’ll try this when we head out on Tuesday, Canada Day.

Sunday - It’s another one of those days. The rain didn’t start until mid-morning so I did set up the Blackstone to make breakfast.

After the rain, we went to the John Wayne museum in downtown Winterset. It was a well done museum though a bit overpriced at $19. 

After lunch back at the RV, we headed back into town to the Iowa Quilt Museum. I admit that I waited outside though I’m sure it was very well done. Just not really interested enough to pay the $10 admission. 

The courthouse across the street looked fantastic. You may be able to see the name of the county we are in and recognize it from the movie The Bridges of Madison County. I remember seeing the movie but can’t remember anything about it. As you might guess, there are a number of covered bridges in the area.

We went to Roseman Covered Bridge, which is one of the most popular from the movie. They had just restored the bridge and had to “distress” the paint to make it look older. Then repaint it after filming. 

Nevada, MO - HH

Friday - We are staying at a Harvest Host in Nevada, MO, for tonight. We ran the generator with the A/C running and the generator would shut down after a while putting all of the loads on the battery. I had the refrigerator running on AC since we had the generator running but that would increase the load above the 2000VA of the inverter. That could be the problem. I'm participating in a test session right now so I didn't want to play with the generator at this time. 

The StarLink antenna is sitting on a plastic box and just aimed up through the ceiling of the RV. It is showing that it’s “obstructed” but it’s still working great. SpeedTest shows 220Mbps down and 28Mbps up with no outages over 2sec in the last hour. Zoom worked great.

Later - I made dinner using the Instant Pot off of batteries and it worked fine. Starting the A/C on low cool caused the inverter to overload and shut down. It behaves the same with the generator running. On the same forum where I picked up the settings, someone mentioned that theirs did the same thing. After installing a SoftStart on the A/C, it worked. That seems like an expensive fix. But, if we want to boondock and need the A/C, then we may need to give it a shot. 

Checotah, OK

Thursday - Another travel day ending at an RV park near Eufaula Lake. Since it’s in the upper 80s (°F), we wanted power to run the A/C. I’m still playing with the Multiplus settings to try getting it to work with the generator. I found a forum post where someone has the same setup so I’m trying out his settings (listed at the bottom of this post). I’ll try it tomorrow once we get on the road.

Tomorrow is another modest travel day to a Harvest Host. One reason that I really want to get this generator issue resolved. Again. It had worked fine a couple of days ago.

Point, TX - TT

Tuesday - Today’s drive started out going through Austin, TX, on the interstate. Lots of traffic, lots of construction, and narrow lanes. We stopped at Buckee’s  around Temple, TX, for gas and to pick up lunch. For some reason, we are unable to run the A/C off of the generator. I thought I fixed this as we ran the generator and A/C a couple of days ago. I don’t think I changed any inverter settings but I guess I’ll check after we arrive at today’s destination, Lake Tawakani Thousand Trails. 

Wednesday - A beautiful cool-ish morning at 72°F. We actually turned off the A/C for a while. I tried out one of the pools and hot tub. It was nice. And almost deserted. Especially when compared to the Bay Landing pool at the last TT park. 

The rest of the day was spent watching YouTube, groceries from Walmart, and having a wonderful dinner at a local Italian restaurant. It was a good 10°F cooler today than yesterday. Much nicer. 

McKinney Falls, TX - SP

Saturday - We arrived in the middle of the afternoon. Too hot to set anything up. This morning, I set up our Clam (screen tent), StarLink, and the Blackstone as we will be here for several more days. We visited some with our neighbors, some will remember her as Toadmama from the motoblogger days. We had last visited them last March just after picking up the class C. 

Sunday - Another hot, muggy day. I opted to do all cooking outside. I set up a table for the rice cooker, sous vide, and the butane burner. And ran a separate extension cord from the power pedestal. The A/C unit, refrigerator, and ice maker were drawing over 2KW so I didn’t want to plug in cooking appliances. 

Monday - Today, we ventured into Austin for the day. The first stop was the LBJ Library on the University of Texas campus. They had three public floors, and the picture on the right is the non-public archives. That's a lot of papers. There were also a lot of recordings, some of them available in the museum proper.

It was a very well-done museum highlighting a long public career. The picture is of the UT campus, taken from the library's 10th floor.

We then went to the capital building. Another large, impressive building with a huge rotunda and, I believe, the largest dome of any state capital. Besides the rotunda and dome, there wasn't much else to see there. 

Still Packing Up

Thursday - Today was “run the Ural out of gas” day. I had 160km on the odometer and didn’t switch to reserve until 225km. I now have 240km and I’ll drain any remaining gas into a gas can including draining the carb bowls. I guess gas mileage is pretty good if you are just running back and forth to Hondo. So 80km of riding today and didn’t really go anywhere. The picture was taken at the nice rest area between D’Hanis and Sabinal. I stopped there to re-hydrate as it was pretty warm. 

Later - There was still almost ¾ gal of gas in the tank so 250-260km is possible. I’ve never run it all the way to empty before. So good to know, 25km after switching to reserve. Hopefully this will be a better storage location over the summer. The motorcycle cover I used to have was destroyed by the sun last year. 

Getting Packed

Friday - This morning, they were looking for volunteers to load broken tree limbs onto a trailer then into a large dumpster.

Saturday - Today’s task was installing a UPS for all of the electronics up front. I figured that the electrical “blinks” weren’t good for them. Since there are three cabinets up front, which includes the space behind the television, I ran outlet strips to the other two cabinets. Hopefully, this helps extend their lifespan.

Sunday - A few more tasks done today. Replaced the Jeep wiper blades and found bug cleaner washer fluid. The underhood reservoir takes almost a full gallon! The Shelly WiFi switch for the chassis battery charger needed to be rebooted. This was because the WiFi SSID it connected to got bumped before we went to IL and it timed out looking for it. IMHO, a poor design. It should keep searching forever…

Monday - This morning, I brought the class C to our lot to start getting things packed. I put in the portable refrigerator/freezer to see how much power it drew. 

The UPS was a good addition. With all of the short power outages we’ve been having, I think our electronics may last longer. 

Wednesday - This morning, we went to the San Antonio Shoe factory. This place actually makes high quality shoes branded as SAS. I wasn’t shopping for anything but they did have soda for 10¢ and popcorn for 5¢. Bottled water was $1 if you didn’t like/want Coke products. It was a large store with a lot of shoes priced at more than I am willing to spend.

We still have the class C in front of our lot and plugged into an outlet on the class A. Between them, we have three A/C units running as it is really hot at 94°F with 51% RH.

Last night, I checked the portable fridge and the GFCI was tripped. I didn’t check after our power was shut off to inspect our electrical boxes. That may be when it tripped. 

Deciding what to bring on this trip is more challenging than last time as we will be gone for a while. 

Heavy Rain and Wind

Wednesday - Really strong winds last night along with several hours of rain. The neighbor had 3½" of rain in his rain gauge this morning and one of the other residents mentioned that their weather station had wind gusts of 80mph. We had a branch break off of our tree. Fortunately, it didn't damage anything. 

The other casualty we had is a bent windshield wiper on the RV. The wind blew the MagnaShade off of the windshield and it caught on the wiper arm. I simply removed the wiper arm and bent it back using the neighbors bench vise. All of this happened right around midnight and the storm lasted several hours. I probably should've brought the slides in but didn't think of that until we were really getting dumped on (rain and wind).

This morning, I rode the Ural into town and there were quite a few crews out cutting up tree branches that had fallen into the road. One of lots here had their tree completely blow down. It didn't hit their RV or shed.

The Ural gets used to haul yard debris again. It’s easier than hooking up the trailer but requires more trips. We were told that someone would pick up yard debris but no time was given. We only had the one branch.

In San Antonio

Monday - An early morning drive into SA this morning. Not much traffic at 5am, which is a good thing. And no horrendous storm like the last early morning trip when I flew up to AK. 

I think there are only a couple of tasks before our next RV trip. The repeater for the TPMS needs to be installed. The challenge is to find convenient 12V power. The Unistrut on the passenger side roof still needs a couple more screws. Locating the metal roof “beams” is proving to be difficult. I was talking to someone else in the park who installed Unistrut on his RV last fall, and he said it was trial and error. And he patched a lot of “errors”. It would be great to avoid that.

Tuesday - We got back to the RV around noon. Traffic was moving and we only needed to stop at Walmart on the way back. 

Later - Here we go again. It’s ~10:30pm and the lightning show is going yet again. At least it’s supposed to be just heavy rain and not tornados. 

Repair Projects

Thursday - I brought the class C over to our lot to plug it into shore power to run the A/C. The thin paneling in the bedroom was loose, so I stapled it back to the underlying wood frame. The wall was thin enough that the tips of the staples stuck through the bathroom wall. These were 1⅝" crown staples. This wall may need to be rebuilt as it isn’t straight. I also moved the kitchen sink as it wasn't centered in its opening, and water leaked from the countertop into the drawer. I need to pick up some silicone to seal the edge of the sink to the countertop. The flange on the sink barely covers the cut opening in the counter.

While working on these projects, I ran the A/C and it cooled the RV off nicely.

Friday - We needed to drive into SA again today for another appointment. The humidity isn’t as high as it’s been so it was “not bad” outside. I really need to figure out a good way to move the water softener somewhere out of the sun. The water temperature coming into the RV is pretty warm. 

We are planning to head out in about two weeks so I need to focus on class C projects. 

Saturday - There was an early morning test session with an overseas candidate. After the test, I replaced the pressure relief valve on my Lowe’s air compressor since it was releasing all the air at around 100psi. The max pressure of the compressor is 125psi. I also added caulk to the kitchen sink. We’ll see how well it works as the sink rim is barely larger than the countertop opening. 

It’s too hot to do much outside especially with high humidity. This morning, it was 80%. And, it looks like things won’t be getting much better over the next several days. 

Lots of Running Around

Monday - I saw a garter snake near the clubhouse this evening. Just worked on chores today in between the test sessions. 

Tuesday - We went towards San Antonio this morning and one stop was near Duck Donuts. They serve custom donuts decorated to order. This was chocolate with peanuts and toasted coconut. I don’t remember the name but it went well with some coffee. 

We then headed to Costco, Kohl’s, Walmart, and a diner somewhere and in the middle. We were back by mid-afternoon and it was hot and humid. At least there aren’t any storms on the way. 

Wednesday - We went into Kerrville for an appointment and stopped at Brewdawgz Grille and Ale for a snack. We ended up having dinner. I had their spicy brisket sandwich with onion rings. It was phenomenal! The barbecue brisket was fantastic and piled high. Even the onion rings were exceptional. We’ve passed this place dozens of times but have never stopped. 

Kerrville was a good 10°F cooler than Hondo. And possibly less humid.