Hot Days at the Prewitt Reservoir

Tuesday, April 21

I woke to a temperature of 42°F at 7:30am so I knew it was going to be a warm day as forecasted by the weather guessers. 

The plan wants to hang out at the campsite, enjoying the warm weather, and doing some minor cleanup on electrical contacts on Yagi. 

The high temperature would end up being 96° F reported in the nearest town though my RV thermometer reported 82°F/87°F inside the RV.

In the morning, I was visited by locals: 

Canada Goose

Red-winged Raven....in flight, they're distinctive red circles with yellow 

trim reminded me of Japanese aircraft insignia during WW2.

Blue-winged Teal Ducks, male+female 

Around 3PM, a fisherman showed up and parked his car lakeside across the inlet from me....it was quite warm but he felt a need to sit by a fire he started.  You have to wonder.  

Seen but not able to photograph:  a Bald Eagle soaring overhead and later on what appeared to be a snake swimming on top of the water!  Quite fast too as it left a visible wake behind it.  Google Gemini said it was probably a Northern Water Snake, not venomous.

This YouTube video shows the type of snake I saw, except the one I saw must have been much bigger since I saw its body doing the S turns from at least 200 feet away!

Wednesday, April 22

I woke to an outside temperature of 57°F.  The forecasted high was 90°F.  It was going to be a hot one.

I watched a couple of small ducks fly up onto the higher branches of a nearby Cottonwood tree and perch there.  I didn't realize they did that, figured them for ground level waddlers when not afloat.

Some more test riding with the TW200, it was failing to start again but I think I narrowed it down to a loose connection after thoroughly cleaning the positive terminal on the battery.  6 miles of testing, stopping and restarting the engine every .2 miles.  That's 30 starts in a row with no issues.  

I had to make do with misc nut/bolt for the POS terminal as I managed to lose the nut while cleaning things up.  The replacement bolt had a narrower width and it required a lock washer to keep the battery cable tight to the battery terminal.

I'll get proper sized bolt/nut once I get home, no hardware store near me here at the SWA.

The place really emptied out today, which was great for me. I think there are only two van campers and myself in the area.  There are no campers within line of sight of camp!

True to the forecast, it started getting very windy here which precluded the u. se of the awning!  The winds are supposed to last now till noon tomorrow.  Red Flag Warning conditions: strong gusty winds and low humidity, a fire can quickly grow and get out of control in these conditions.

On the plus side, the winds kept the hovering clouds of gnats away!

Wednesday's sunset concluding a pretty good day.

The high temperature reached only 82°F, warm enough but not even close to the forecasted 90°F.

Hanging Out at Prewitt Reservoir

Monday, April 20

4/20 day, greetings from the Stoner State.

I woke early, as usual, and caught a decent sunrise shot:

Sunrise

View from inside while I wait for warmer temps

I woke to 33°f but things warmed up gradually and around 10am or so, it was already in the low 60s!

I walked over to the next campsite to get a view of my campsite:

My campsite from neighboring site

Didn't do much of anything, some minor chores in the RV, a lot of audio book listening.  I might have even caught a brief snooze or two as I sat under the awning shade warmed by the sun.

Only glitch so far, besides fishermen picking nearby spots for fishing, are the clouds of some small flying midges/gnats that appear as the temperature rises.  Luckily, they're not biting insects....just annoying as they hover in clouds near you.

I did a quick ride with Yagi, my Yamaha TW200, and saw the place is about 65% occupied in terms of campers.  Most of the people I saw, were fishing.

I decided to ride to southern edge of the SWA, the Prewitt Inlet canal.

Right after the above pic was taken, I got back on Yagi only to find she would not start! Damn it.  I could hear a buzzing noise coming from the starter relay and it reminded me of the time I had starter issues and it turned out to be corrosion on the terminals. 

I tried bump starting it but to no avail and quickly tired of that. Sighing heavily, I huffed and puffed as I pushed her along the 1.3 miles back to the campsite. Luckily, the way what's mostly flat with only very very slight inclines to deal with at times.  Temperatures were warm enough that I was sweaty by the time I got back to camp so a quick shower was due. On the bright side, I got my exercise points for today!

While consulting with Chris Z., since he had helped me with the last episode of the starter not working, I tried hooking up a jumper cable from the RV battery to the terminal on the starter. Yagi fired right up, so it wasn't the starter.

I did some clean up on the negative terminal of the battery which did have some corrosion. I also cleaned up the other end of that cable that connects to the engine for ground. That connection was oily, so that's my theory at this point in terms of why it wouldn't start. Regardless, I'll be carrying jumper cables with me in order to start Yagi in case the starting problem resurfaces as I work to regain trust in Yagi.

Monday's Sunset:

Small Camping Fix-Prewitt Reservoir

 Since the weather is forecasted as very warm the next 4 days, I decided to get a little camping in and myself away from the city.

This was very much a last minute decision, as it had snowed just one day ago!

The temperature is supposed to hit the mid-80s for highs!

The drive to Prewitt Reservoir was without incident and by 4 PM I had done a good recon of available sites.  

The reservoir is located in a State Wildlife Area, I've camped here once before and liked it.

Some sights as I relaxed in the stillness of the area.  Once in a while acar would roll by and there's several people fishing all along the shore.

My neighbor 

Sunset was nice, cloudless but nice reflections made up for that.

Adding a Bigger Inverter to Umarang

Over the last few days, I worked on installing a Renogy 2000 Watt Pure Sign Wave Inverter in my motorhome: Umarang or Uma the VRRV.

What is a inverter you ask? Well, it basically takes 12 volt DC electric power from the house battery and converts it to 110 Volt AC electric power.  I stayed with a pure sine wave system in order to continue to provide clean electric power to Starlink and my electronic devices from my house battery while boondocking.

Previously, I had used a 500 watt inverter since I basically just used it to power the chargers for all our electronic devices, and lately, Starlink.  It worked fine.

Theoretically, if I had the battery capacity, this larger inverter could be used to power just about all the appliances in the RV.  For the foreseeable future though, I installed it to have a quieter working inverter since these smaller inverter's cooling fan ran all the time when the inverter was on.  A bit annoying.

I almost ended up not installing this inverter since it was so much larger than my existing 500 watt inverter. Finally figured out a location for it with Martha's help. I got the inverter from Chris and Lori of BlazeourWay.

I ended up using the lower pantry cabinet to the left of the stove where basically I have been storing consumables, bags, junk in a unorganized manner. 

Here's what the cabinet interior looked like after I removed the panel in the rear to expose the wiring runs and heating duct run by the manufacturer of the RV. The inverter would end up extending slightly past the panel.

Here is the new inverter extending slightly past the rear panel, clean air will be sucked in from the blue panel in the front and blown out into the wiring run compartment behind the panel.   The white short extension cord connects to a four foot extension cord that connects to the existing extension cord that goes to the power outlet in the front half of the RV.

Top down view of the inverter showing the battery cables, both of which go off through an access hole to the right and connect to the rear of the existing 500W inverter.

I placed a thin fiber board panel on top of the inverter leaving perhaps a half an inch of clearance or so. This way I can stack stuff on top as well for storage. 

Finally a shelf in the middle for better organization of items within the entire cabinet. 

I mentioned that the battery cables from the new inverter go to the power terminals on the 500 watt inverter.  From that location, the previously in use battery cables go directly to the house battery underneath the floor.

This shows the 500 watt inverter, the wall it's mounted on is the wall to the right of the new inverter.  The new inverter's cables aren't installed yet.  The red and black 4 gauge cables coming from the rear of the inverter and into the floor go to the house battery. 

The extension cord plugged into the front of the 500 watt inverter goes outside via the same hole as the battery cables, runs along the right side frame of the chassis and underneath and into the rear dinette seat bench where there's another dedicated for 110 via the inverter.   It now plugs into the four foot extension cord from from the new inverter.

I chose to do it this way to easily switch to the 500 Watt inverter should the new inverter fail for whatever reason.  Not to mention, I didn't have to cut any cables, or use the butt connectors I had purchased previously and so was able to return them for a refund.

Testing confirmed everything appeared to be hooked up right.  Starlink went online with no issues.  I'm a big fan of redundancy so two inverters give me peace of mind.