Rain, Rain, Go Away!

Where was I?  Oh yeah, last Monday we went on a hike.  Now it is Saturday and what a difference five days does make.  On Friday, we moved to Juniper Campground in the Ririe Reservoir Recreation Area near Ririe, ID.  Sites are $16 with full hookups, including 50 amp service.  Talk about luxury; now with the electric side of the hot water heater going, long hot showers are a possibility.   The down side is that we are in a brand new loop on the campground and the “soil” on the site adjacent to the asphalt pad is MUD; wet, nasty, dirty mud, and it is raining.  We came back from a laundry, shopping trip today and the sprinklers next to our camper were going full blast, and it was raining steadily.  That mud is not going away for awhile.  Makes it really tough to walk the dogs to do their business.

I finally gave up on trying to figure out why our batteries were draining so fast.  On Wednesday morning we moved to an electric site back at Palisades.  The electric sites there are $8.00 per night vs. the $5.00 for non-electric.  Rosie and I decided lesson one was if you can get an electric site for less than ten bucks, take it and be happy.  We are glad we did experiment with boondocking for a few days.  We learned there is something wrong with our battery storage/drain system, we just don’t know what yet.  I took all four batteries out of the rig and into Idaho Falls to the Big O Tire store where I bought them 2 years ago.  They tested all in good condition and fully charged.  So it isn’t a dead cell in one of the batteries.  Maybe we are using too much electricity off the inverters; meaning unreasonable expectations on our part (maybe too much TV?).  This coming Friday we will move again to a nice, no electric campground about 10 miles from here; and experiment with different levels of usage.  We also asked our RV guy, Tim, to put on his thinking cap since he did the installation of the whole system, and knows a heck of a lot more about the intricacies than I do.

Our current site is really great from a scenic viewpoint.  The sites are all pull through on this loop and we cannot see another camper from our street side view; just junipers and a rolling hillside.  I will post pictures when the sun comes out in a day or so.  Weather forecast says rain through Sunday night.  Monday is supposed to be better with lots of sun for the rest of the week.