Doh!

6:55 am - Thursday - April 16th - Wittmann, AZ - 48° F, 44% humidity, wind 5 mph out of the north by northeast.....clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 83° F.  On this day in 2017 we were taking a bike ride in San Jose, CA.....

....we were able to snag a spot at the San Jose Elks Lodge for 3 days while visiting with our good friend Don Neff.

TLE and I began Wednesday opening up the solar panel boxes from A.M. Solar to be sure each of the four 170 watt panels was undamaged.  Based on the condition of the boxes we did not think we would find any damage, but we had to check.......

....and we were right......each panel was completely pristine.  Once we had confirmed the panels were fine we boxed them back up to protect them until we begin the solar installation.

On that front Glenn and Laureen left Ft. Stockton, TX and made it all the way to Las Cruces, NM by late afternoon, but not without problems.  Late morning I got a call from Glenn advising the gauge which indicates how many volts are being put into the batteries by the alternator was indicating 17-18 volts....that is way, way too high.  It should be 13-14 volts max.  Tom and I advised them to turn off the switch which connects the batteries to the alternator and continue.  That did not work.  A few minutes later they called again to say they had lost their turn signals, and headlights.....doh!  After more consultation we came to the conclusion that they needed to disconnect the alternator completely by removing one of the cables from the alternator.....↴

.....once they did that the overcharge ended, and they were able to continue their drive to Las Cruces where they overnighted in an RV park.  It is my suspicion that the 90 amp breaker button (left one in picture below) on the rear electric panel popped, and that is why they lost power to turn signals and headlights, as well as the fridge.  We'll see.....hope it is that simple.....

.....we are also hoping the alternator issue is that the voltage regulator has bitten the dust, which is a pretty easy fix.  When Glenn and Laureen arrive we will back their coach into the Newell House and remove the alternator to have it checked at a local shop.  We hope they will arrive here late Thursday, or early Friday.

TLE and I had an appointment at Walmart to pickup up another grocery order at 4 pm....accepting that pickup time was a big, big mistake!  I'll get into that in a few sentences.  We left home around 2:30 pm to drive to the Trader Joe's in Surprise to buy a few things......

.....there was a pretty long line to get into the store as they were letting one person in for every person who left.  It took about 25 minutes to get inside, and once inside we had the things we wanted pretty quickly....

.....our route over to Walmart took us down Bell Road and right past the local In 'N Out Burger place, so we got in the drive through line and ordered two 'protein' style cheese burgers.....

....of course, their dining room is closed, and that includes all of the outdoor tables, so we ate our burgers in the VW before continuing our drive to Walmart.  On the way there TLE got the email from Walmart advising our grocery order was ready for pickup, but several items she ordered were not available.....ginger ale, anchovies, and cranberry juice.  We decided to stop off at the local Fry's Supermarket to see if we could get those items there....they had the ginger ale, and cranberry juice, but no anchovies.....wait, what?  Are people hoarding anchovies? Apparently so, because we stopped at another Fry's, and then a WINCO, and finally a Safeway where we finally found anchovies....crazy, right?

At last we arrived at Walmart and found a long line of cars waiting to pickup up their orders......

 All the reserved sites are full, and we are behind 7 cars 

waiting for a reserved site to open

.....finally we were able to pull into reserved site #7.  It took another 30 minutes to get our order.....we did not leave Walmart until after 5 pm, and were not home until 5:50 pm.  Moral of our story......choose an early pickup time!

We watched the current episode of Survivor with Tom and Darlene, then Tom and I took a dip in the Jacuzzi.....a very nice way to end the day.....I slept like the dead.

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