Spring Camping

[Powder Hounds]

Hello,

Just a few pics of our first camping week at the base of Thunder Mountain in Alberta.

A note to fellow campers, the ticks were just incredible, we had to check ourselves constantly and decided to stop hiking, just not comfortable knowing they are trying to find a host. Luckily we did not see any black legged ones. Reports are that they are everywhere this year. Just one more thing to worry about.

Pics,  best  guess is a hind track of a younger grizzly, Thunder Mountain, wild flowers and a young black bear. The usual critters!

[DavidM]

We also took a shake down campout last night. See the pic below of me with some nice after dinner bourbon sitting around the campfire with Joan (who took the pic) and Abby our Sheltie. Not as dramatic as Powder Hound's pic of mountains and bear, but last night was wonderful and we really enjoyed sitting around the fire after dinner.

But the next morning the heavens opened up so we quickly packed up and left.

We try do do our first campout of the season close to home and Peoples State Forest Campground in Connecticut is only about 20 miles from our house. We did find one significant problem- no DC power to the camper. The battery was good as I had just taken it off of its winter trickle charger. I first suspected the Drok battery monitor I had installed a few years ago to measure amp hour usage so I disconnected and bypassed that. Didn't help. Then I got out out my meter which is what I should have done in the first place and found that the trailer side was only seeing 10 volts so probably a bad connection. At first I didn't suspect the battery terminal connection since I had just connected up the battery but sure enough- the voltage at the terminal was 12.5 but the voltage in the wire was 10. So I cleaned up the terminal which was pretty grungy as well as the spade connector, tightened it up and all was fine.

BTW, that terminal connection had to be really bad to show a 2.5 volt drop with maybe 0.1 amp being consumed by the trailer. If you have similar problems it would be better to turn on a few lights and drive the trailer current up to 1 amp or so. In my case that would have more than doubled the voltage drop and made it even more apparent.

David

[Merlin]

Sure is good to get out again!. We just returned yesterday from a 4 day spring shakedown trip (158 miles one way) to our favorite place to watch the spring bird migration on Lake Huron, Tawas Point State Park, Michigan. It was planned for a 6 day trip, but 42F degrees and rain on the 4 day had us pulling up stakes (so to speak) and heading home. The birds were spectacular! Everything worked fine with the camper and tow vehicle. I was relieved the new brakes/bearings/seals on the camper all worked perfectly. Not so much with our almost 14 year old border collie. He struggled with the trip and put a damper on our enjoyment from his obvious pains. Our upcoming long trip into Canada around all of Lake Huron and part of Lake Michigan in a couple of months may need some modification