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.