The unexpected can be a good thing.....

 7:24 am - Friday - October 30th - TWW - 52° F, humidity 82%, cloud cover 92%, wind 15 mph out of the south by southeast.....heavy cloud cover today with rain on the way, and a forecast high of 54° F.  On this date in 2015 TLE and I were in John Day, OR....

....at the fairgrounds.  We've been through John Day twice over the years, and it has always been in October when the leaves are changing.  The view this morning....

.....supposed to be raining by now, but it's not, and that's okay by me.  More rain equals more weeds, and we've got enough.

We're not usually outside working before 10 am, but Thursday we were out by 9 am.  We wanted to be sure we were able to complete the installation of the new bank of solar panels by the end of the day Thursday as we were pretty sure it would be raining Friday.  TLE was on hand every step of the way first helping me carry the solar panel rack we had assembled Wednesday over to the site we had chosen.  Then we moved the four 195 watt Eco-Worthy solar panels over so we could begin to attach them.  Frankly, I thought this was where the 'Hockwald Way' would intervene, but it did not.  Within an hour we had the panels attached, and wired together in 'series'....

.....next I ran the 100 feet of solar cable from the solar panels over to the Newell.  It's only about 65'  between the two, so at some point I will shorten them.  I had to install MC4 connectors to the solar cables coming out of the house battery compartment to complete the connection with the 100' solar cables, which came with MC4 connectors already installed.  The spot we chose for this solar installation gets the morning sun about 30-40 minutes sooner than where the solar tracker is placed, so we think it it is optimal location.  Only time will tell.

About the time we were finishing the installation Charles and Phyllis arrived, unexpectedly with a trailer full of shelving, cabinets, etc. they had been gifted by a food bank which was closing down.  We weren't expecting them until Friday morning.  We have needed more shelving in the garage, so we spent the next couple of hours unloading everything, moving around stuff in the garage, and inserting the new shelving and cabinets.....

We moved all of our emergency food supply to the new shelving unit (far right).  You can also see the new to us cabinet between the shelving unit and the yellow shelving

It used to be there in the corner where the gas cans are now sitting on two new to us tables

We moved a lot of stuff off the yellow steel racks and now have more room to store stuff

....all of the pieces they brought up from Phoenix fit perfectly the spaces available, and what a difference they make!  By the time the four of us finished it was early afternoon, but our day was not done.  

It's been over 6 months since we visited Dawn and Matt's place, which is a little over 2.5 miles away.  We've been buying free range, unwashed eggs from Dawn for the past two winters, and we were just about out of eggs, so around 12:30 pm TLE and I headed over in the Yamaha to buy 5 dozen.  Since we were last there in early April she and Matt have completed the new goat pen they began building last December.  We visited for a short while, then headed back to TWW.

By this time I was totally ready for a snack, and a nap.  After a brief rest I headed outside to finish putting away the tools we had used to finish the new solar rack, moved the Jeep back into the garage, put away the Yamaha, and then called it a day.

Around 4 pm we headed over to the house for scrambled eggs and hash browns with gravy courtesy Phyllis, and one of the 5 dozen eggs we had just bought.  Phyllis scrambled the eggs, and Charles fried the hash browns.  We talked and ate for over an hour before heading home for the evening.

For the first time since we returned to TWW almost two weeks ago our house battery bank reached 100% charge rate late afternoon, which can be attributed 100% to the extra 780 watts of solar power we installed.  Combined with the 620 watts on the roof we now have 1,400 watts of solar panels charging our house battery bank.  Combine that with the 600 watts on the Eco-Worthy dual axis solar tracker, and the two 330 watt panels charging the trailer we now have 2,660 watts of solar power.

As I write Friday morning around 8:15 am, the forecast rain has arrived....thanks for stopping by!