Housekeeping details

The camp hosts just came by to brief us on bears. Apparently there is a mother black bear with two small cubs that frequent this campground loop. We keep extra food in the bear box and keep things closed up anyway unless we are preparing our meals. We dont want the bears to get any food rewards because it means they will be relocated or possibly destroyed as a "nuisance" bear.

We spent some time charging a couple of our big batteries today with the solar panel. We have one big battery that runs our little refrigerator. While driving it is set up to recharge the battery from the vehicle "cigarette lighter" port, but when we are in the same place for several days without any electricity we need to boost it a little with the solar panel. We had to drive to a place where the trees were cleared enough to get sun.

Also, yesterday our 25 year old Coleman camp stove had an issue. The port where the gas enters the stove caught fire despite being properly connected. This means there's probably a pinhole in the connection allowing gas to escape. Fortunately, I was standing right there and just shut the gas tank off before anything else caught fire (or blew up.) At home, I would just order a replacement for that part, but that isn't so easy on the road. In the meantime, we will just use our gas grill or out little Jetboil water heater. It means we can't have pancakes on July 4 though as I had planned. I don't want to buy a whole new stove, but we'll see what is available once we are back closer to civilization.

It rained all night and a few hours this morning, but it's nice right now. Its 76 F. We are in a heavily wooded area so lots of shade. Tomorrow it is also supposed to be nice for the holiday.Read more