Old Town, FL

Friday - On the drive yesterday, we heard a “bang” when a flock of birds flew in front of the RV. I thought we may have hit one with the front cap. Then Bridget noticed a sliver of light at the upper corner of the front windshield. It happened again for the sixth time. We were both pretty discouraged by this. 

Today, we are going into Gainesville to meet up with Matt and Kirsten, friends from Fairbanks, for lunch. We will be stopping at Walmart for groceries afterwards and I’m going to pick up some black urethane windshield glue to fill the gap between the edge of the glass and the rubber seal. And, I may try to work the rubber seal a bit with a little heat from the heat gun. The cold weather may have contributed to this reoccurrence. 

Florida is still going through cold temperatures. It was this temperature yesterday morning at the Harvest Host and had only warmed to around 41°F when we left at around 10am. We had gone through quite a bit of propane since leaving Hondo with a full tank. In 9 days, we burned through half a tank or about 19 gallons (~$69). We used the heat pump if the temperature was above the low 40s (° F) which shows how much cold nights we’ve had. 

The hot tub and pool are open. I didn’t try out the pool this evening but the hot tub was very relaxing. It was around 102°F. It felt wonderful!!!

Faribault, MN - HH

Tuesday - Another travel day to a Harvest Host in southern MN. During our lunch stop, I tried my generator “experiment”. I turned down the max current into the Victron to 10amps, started the generator, then turned on the A/C. Everything worked fine. 

I turned up the input current to 15amps and all continued to run. Between the generator, the solar, and DC-DC charger, the battery stayed at 100% for the rest of the drive. 

At the HH location, we continued to run the generator and the A/C. At 5pm, it's still in the 80s and the battery SoC is 99% without the RV engine running. Just the generator and the solar. Later on, I'll slowly ncrease the demand on the generator until it starts to fail. Right now at 5pm, it's up to 18 amps. Enough to run the A/C and charge the battery at about 15 amps. 

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. 

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.

Johnson City, TX

Monday - Some adventure a couple of night ago. At 3am, we had no power in the motorhome. No 12VDC or AC. The screenshot shows how many times the inverter was restarting. I used the small jumper box to restart the SOK batteries as the BMS had disconnected them. I then performed a hard restart of the inverter and it started to pass AC power and after a few minutes, the battery charger kicked in. But the AC power continued to reset. After getting HomeAssistant working, I looked at the history and on Saturday, it was happening every 1.5 hours. This convinced me that it was an RV problem not a shore power problem. The last time I needed to reset the inverter was in Yuma a few years ago and it was a problem with the Progressive Dynamics surge protector. I switched the surge protector to “bypass” and all of my power issues vanished. Not a single glitch all day Sunday while we were in San Antonio.

This morning, we got the class C packed up for a short shakedown trip to an rv park near Johnson City. It has full hookups so not much of a challenge. It is the first time we are towing the Jeep for more than a few miles. Also a check of the DC-DC charger and the solar panel mounting. The mirror mounted screen for the rear-view camera seems to be functional. All is good. I still have a few more tasks such as the TPMS and finding a better location for the GPS as well as routing all the power wires. (TPMS, dash cam, and GPS)

You can really feel the Jeep especially on hills and it does push the back of the RV around some. And, there is a lot of engine noise as it downshifts on every hill. The park is very quiet and nicely landscaped. I like all the grass after months of no grass.