Surprise!

The clear blue skies continued Saturday morning, and I was opening the front door and windows by 0720 hours to let in the balmy ocean air laced with the early morning sun.  Where we are parked there is a range of low hills that blocks the sun until just about 0720 when we go from barely any solar panel activity to 4-5 amps input, and within minutes of that they overcome the passive 2.1 amp draw that is normal to our coach, and begin to restore amp hours to our house batteries.  So, as I have written previously, our solar window here is from 0720 to about 1600 when there is no longer enough sun light to overcome the passive draw and we go back into discharge mode.  During the first day of recharging (Friday) we regained 12 of the 15% we lost the prior 15 hours of discharge 1600 hours Thursday afternoon to 0720 hours Friday morning) getting us back to 97%.  Saturday we regained 11 of the 14% we lost getting us back to 94% for the same period.  The bulk of our discharge during those hours occurs between 1600 and 2200.  We typically only lose 5-6% of the total discharge when everything is turned off from 2200 until 0720.

So, the bottom line is we have not used our generator yet to regain any amp hours, and that was our goal when we added the two additional panels.  Now, obviously, we still lose a little ground each day, but consider this........while we were getting our house batteries back to 94% Saturday I was watching college football all day.  If I hadn't been doing that I think we might have gotten back to 97%, or higher, again.  

  Watching Oklahoma State barely hang on to win over Iowa

Just after I got up at 0710 and turned my Samsung Note 3 back on I immediately got a video call from my brother Philip via 'Chatheads' on Facebook....very cool!  Before I go into why he was calling I have to disclose something.....for about the last 10 days before arrived at Rincon Parkway I have been trying to entice friends and family to join us for a few days while we are here, but had been completely unsuccessful.  Until Philip's call I had given up......and that is the rest of the story about his video call.....he called to tell us he and his wife Jeannie were coming up Saturday afternoon to spend a couple of days with us.....YAY FOR OUR TEAM!  Before we began our nomadic wanderings we used to go RV camping with Philip and Jeannie several times a year, and one of our favorite repeat spots was Rincon Parkway.  This was to be the first time we have camped with them here since 2011!

Around 1000 hours TLE and I decided to ride our bikes south to Emma Woods State Beach to see if they had made any improvements over the past 5 years.  About that long ago we had a pretty severe winter storm that caused a lot of damage to the camping sites, and made the already in poor condition paved road through the park even worse.  We had heard they had been putting some money into the park again, so were curious to see what that meant.  Emma Woods is strictly dry camping......there are porta potties, but no water, no dump, and no electricity.....BUT you are parked, just like Rincon, 30 feet from the surf....sometimes even closer......close enough to get spray from the breaking waves on your RV.  We never camp there for two reasons.......there are maybe one, or two sites that would fit our length, and it is $40/night as opposed to $28 at Rincon Parkway where there are a dozen, or more sites that will fit us.  As it turned out they had repaved about 75% of the interior roads, and repaired the various campsites.....it looks much better than the last time we saw it back in 2010.

In all our ride mileage totaled 12.2, and we were back at the coach a little after 1130.....this the first time TLE has ridden her bike since SLT back in early August, so this mostly flat 12 mile ride was the perfect first ride in a long time for her.

Around 1530 hours my brother and his wife arrived, snagging the site behind ours for two nights.  We had a wonderful evening of laughing and talking around the fire, and for dinner we had TLE's famous chili and corn bread........

Rincon sunset #3

The after glow with haze....we have an offshore wind that is pushing some smog from the inland valley offshore

By 2100 hours we decided it was time to retreat to our respective RV's for the night.....more hugs were exchanged, as well as 'thank yous' to Philip and Jeannie for joining us her on the Rincon.

Thanks for stopping by!