Not what we thought.....

7:10 am - Sunday - March 3rd - GNHS - 57° F, humidity 59%, wind 9 mph out of the west by southwest.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 69° F.  On this date in 2018 TLE and I met good friends Roscoe and Geni, whom we met while working in one of the General Stores at Yellowstone NP, for dinner at the Arizona Room in Grand Canyon Village.....

I previously wrote that we had a bachelor party group all day rental of four 4 seat RZRs on Saturday, however, that was not correct.....by a long shot.  I'm not sure how the person who set the reservation got that soooo wrong, but they did.  Instead, they were actually a group (8) of middle aged guys who work for a large, national window/door manufacturer at various locations around the USA, and were here for a company team building exercise.  A much different, and actually more preferable scenario.  It was an all day rental beginning at 9 am so TLE, Hunter and I were on the job by 8:15 am getting the four RZRs ready.  The customers arrived around 8:45 am, and by 9:15 am they were on their way.  Then it was a matter of awaiting their return sometime between 3 and 5 pm.  

You can cover a lot of ground in 4, or 5 hours here at GNHS, and we have noticed that many people renting a RZR all day only use it 4, or 5 hours of the 8 hour rental.  When we have gone out taking family and friends on rides we have typically been out anywhere from 2-5 hours, and by that time everyone is ready to be done.  

A while back TLE and I bought a 2000 watt solar charger from Bluetti via eBay.  The battery can be charged via cigarette lighter socket, via plugging into 120 VAC, or via portable solar panels, which was what interested us.  Initially we ordered just one portable 120 watt portable solar panel (folds down to one fourth is full size), but found out that we needed two 120 watt portable panels to charge it that way, so we ordered a second panel.  This was a refurbished unit fully warranted by Bluetti International. Once we got the second panel we connected the panels to the Bluetti solar charger, and found it would not charge that way.  Something was wrong with the control board.  Ultimately we returned the defective unit to Bluetti, and they sent us a replacement unit, which arrived Saturday just after our all day customers left the barn.

TLE and I quickly unpacked the Bluetti AC2000P unit, then connected the solar panels to the 'new' unit, and are quite pleased to report that it works!  We now have two ways in which to charge the Bluetti 2000 watt, lithium battery when boondocking now....via the portable solar panels, or by plugging it into the cigarette lighter 12 volt plug in the through bay of the Newell, using the solar panels on its roof.  Now, when we boondock, we will not have to run our small Honda 2000 watt generator as much, saving gallons of gasoline.  We can now power the trailer, and any power tools using the Bluetti, and not have to plug it (the trailer) into the coach, or the Honda generator to power it, plus I can now power the 12 volt ceiling exhaust fan (Fantastic fan), which I could not do before when we disconnect the trailer from the Newell.

Other than playing with the Bluetti, TLE and I spent most of the day reading while Hunter inventoried the new parts we received last week, so we can begin to repair a lot of the cosmetic damage our RZRs and Generals have sustained over the winter.

Our all day customers returned around 3:30 pm without incident....no flat tires, and no damage, cosmetic, or otherwise...perfect.  We checked them in, and closed the office about 10 minutes later.  A great rental day with no stress....lol.

The winds we were expecting arrived around noon time, and lasted until after 6 pm, but they were all out of the west by southwest, which is perfect for us as we have the Bombay Beach Bungalow, a large tree, and the Roadrunner building shielding us from the worst of the wind.  It appears we will get those same winds again Sunday afternoon, and then things will return to normal for the next week, or so.  We have just one 2 hour rental on Sunday, so it will end up being a nice, kick back kind of weekend after all.

Thanks for stopping by!