Lake Leatherwood and another day of testing our solar power

This morning was foggy along the White River that runs behind our campground on Beaver Lake. We would like to kayak down this placid river, and then paddle back to our camp site. But if they release water from the dam, this river widens to double its usual width and the current increases to something impossible to paddle back against. We found a web site of the water release schedule and saw that it is controlled by the need for electricity. When temperatures go up and customers need more electricity to run their air-conditioners, water is released through the hydro-electric turbines. A hot day was forecast, and we heard the siren blow at 8:09 a.m. That siren announces that everyone should get off the river because the water level will be rising fast. We walked the 200 feet to the boat dock near our trailer and watched as the river covered the sidewalk and boat launch area quickly. The 45-degree water released from 200 feet below the lake surface felt cool on a hot day. It keeps the trout happy, and people come to fish the White River to catch their limit of fish that are less than 13 inches or more than 16 inches long.

The White River was not a possibility for kayaking, and we also decided against the huge Beaver Lake with its heavy motor boat traffic. Instead, we headed to Leatherwood Lake in a Eureka Springs city park. The water was completely smooth when we launched our kayak.

We paddled the 2.5 miles around the outside edge of Leatherwood Lake. We love spotting wildlife from the water, and this green heron was mirrored in the shallow water beneath him.

The coloring and markings of the green heron was worth two pictures!

We also spotted a two-foot-long gar resting in the moss, and many more rolling to the top on this sunny day. After Mark's repairs on our aging kayak, we're watching for leaks on this kayak trip. The good news was we stayed reasonably dry.

After a very nice ride around Lake Leatherwood, we dried out the kayak. We saw a fluttering mass near the water's edge where we were rolling up the boat.

That fluttering mass was a large group of butterflies, enjoying something tasty along the soggy shore line.

When we see the detail and colors of a common butterfly wing, we are reminded that we continually wander into more of God's wonders.

We stopped by the city park office to get advice about the best hiking trail in the area. We were greeted by Sasquatch, sitting on a bench outside of the park office.

Sasquatch was too heavy for that bench, breaking it right in two.

The ranger's advice was to hike the 3.2 mile Miner's Rock Loop through the Ozark woods. It started at this rock bridge near the trail head.

We were in the forest most of the hike, but we enjoyed some nice mossy rock formations along the way.

Our hike took us to something called "the north hub of the gravity project trails." We didn't know what that meant until we did some research. An organization named "the gravity project" runs shuttles that take mountain bikes and their riders to the top of these mountains so they can allow gravity to roll them to the bottom. The north hub is close to the drop-off point for the mountain bikers.

From the north hub, a biker can choose how difficult the trail will be that they ride--or should we say gravitate--down. One choice is the easy green trail #6.

Another choice is trail #4, a medium hard mountain biking trail.

Only experts should choose trail #7, the double black diamond. If there's any doubt about how hard this trail will be, it starts with a rock jump platform that curves straight into a tree.

A map at the top outlined the green, blue and black bike paths down on the gravity project. We are on the Miner's Rock hiking trail on the outside edge of the map below.

We crossed the bike trails on our way up and down on the Miner's Rock Loop, and we found more jumps. Mark is standing where a bike would jump down to the dirt trail far below.

Even though it was 70 degrees and we were in the shade most of the hike, it felt warm. We found this deer also searching for the shade under a rock cliff beside our trail.

The lizards on the trail seemed to relish in the hot sun.

We scared up more than one lizard on this trail. Other than scaly hikers, we had this trail to ourselves on a weekday afternoon.

About a quarter mile before the end of our loop, we finally found Miner's Rock.

It was a nice shady place to rest and take a few pictures.

The holes eroded all the way through the rock, made for perfect peek-a-book pictures.

In our experiment to see if our solar power could keep up with our refrigerator power, we unplugged the trailer from our electric camp site before we left that morning. We were unplugged seven hours, and our solar panels kept our battery at 100%. That means we were making more electricity than we were using. We cheated on this test to check our boondocking skills, because we were hot after our hike. We plugged into shore power and ran the air-conditioner for a bit, and microwaved some things for dinner. We will miss both of these two appliances when we are truly without plug-ins, because solar power cannot run those two high-energy items.

On our last day at Dam Site River Campground on Beaver Lake, we enjoyed the beautiful clouds over the White River right below our camp site. We are blessed!

It's time to test our new electrical system!

Mark spent lots of time ordering parts and installing all the things that were needed to make our new little trailer better at camping without hook-ups. We have a new lithium battery, another solar panel, and all the electrical connections and gizmos needed to make them all work together. We talked about that in the last blog. So it was time to have a shake-down trip to see if we could live without electrical hook-ups on the road. We'll be on the road for ten days this trip, with camp sites in three different states testing our new electrical systems.

On the way, we stopped by Ottawa, Kansas, at Funtown RV. This is where we bought our trailer and had the hitch installed on our pickup. Mark has been researching and decided that the hitch needed to be adjusted to distribute the weight as it was intended. They agreed, made the change he requested, and we were on our way with a better towing ride. 

We had our granddaughter's birthday party planned at Grand Lake in Oklahoma. Oklahoma seemed like a good time and place to start this testing trip! We celebrated a seven-year-old with some of our favorite people.

Our first stop was Honeycreek State Park in Grove, Oklahoma. We've stayed here several times as we often visit friends in town. Mark keeps a spread sheet of every camping spot we have ever camped in and we have been in site #RR29 in Honeycreek State Park every time. This state park is situated on Grand Lake, where boating and tubing is available for the hardy when the lake water is still cold in May.

All of Carter's grandparents and aunts and uncles met us in Grove for Carter's 7th birthday party. A cold front met us at the lake too, and we were wearing coats and bundling in towels for our boat ride. You would have to be crazy to get into that cold water on this cold day! Welcome to our crazy family when Eli wanted to tube and his Daddy was excited to go with him! 

Later both our sons and our grandson jumped into that chilly lake. Eli jumped over and over until even he had to admit (through chattering teeth) that it was indeed cold.

We used the electric hook-ups at our first stop, since we were partying with family and didn't have much time to monitor the new solar system. After two days at Grand Lake with family, we headed for our second camping spot of the trip where we'll do more solar. We drove from Oklahoma into the second state of this trip, Arkansas. On the way, we made a stop at Pea Ridge Battlefield National Historic Site. The friendly ranger at the visitor center recommended the museum and the movie, and then we headed out to the battlefield.

This National Historical Site is where an important battle between Confederate and Union forces was staged early in the Civil War. As we drove the seven-mile tour road, we listened to the park service audio guide to describe the battles and what we were seeing at ten different stops. One of those stops was the Elkhorn Tavern.

We got some exercise, as we hiked the trails at the West Overlook and the East Overlook and the tavern.

The two-day battle in 1862 saw the loss of more than 2,000 volunteer Confederate soldiers. Cannons are lined up in areas where fierce fighting took place.

We drove the pickup and trailer through the seven-mile tour road, but bikes are welcome too, and a hiking trail is also available. While we were driving, the pickup and the solar panels were charging our lithium trailer battery. We were at 100% battery power while we were visiting this national historic site.

Pea Ridge was right on our way to our corp of engineer campground on Beaver Lake in Arkansas. While we have electrical hook-ups available we didn't use them all the time so we could get a feel for how well the solar could keep up with us.

We spent three nights at the Dam Site River Campground. Like the name implied, we had a view of the river coming out of the dam, instead of the lake at this campground. We drove up the hill to get an even better view of the dam, with its hydro-electric plant. Water is released from Beaver Lake at a depth of about 200 feet below the surface of the lake.

The water found at a depth of 200 feet in the lake is cold! It is released through the dam to turn the electric turbines, and then continues down the White River. This keeps the river water chilly, and the trout flourish at these temperatures. Because of the spring rains overfilling lakes and the need for electricity, they are releasing water every day from the dam. When we first arrived, we found the river water was well out of its banks and was covering the sidewalk and boat ramp behind our campground. The current going down-river was fast.

On a different day when water was not being released from the dam, the water in the river was perfectly still. The sidewalk and ramp were visible and dry in this picture taken from the same location. This would have been a great time to do some kayaking on the White River! But when we were ready to kayak, the water was again being released.

Meanwhile, we're happy to report that even though we have some good shade at this camp site, our solar is doing a good job of keeping our battery topped off. We have to admit that we are "cheating" a little. We're using our electric hook-ups when we want to run the air-conditioner or the microwave. Those are the two appliances that we won't be able to use when we are boondocking with no hook-ups. But so far we're excited about the possibilities of living off the grid in our trailer as we test our new electrical system.

What has Mark been doing with all that Electrical/Solar stuff in the trailer?

Denisa wanted to include a blog post about the work that Mark did to get our trailer ready to do more boondocking without electrical hookups. She couldn't convince him to write a blog. So instead of getting a very informative technical piece that might be helpful, you're going to get a very layman's understanding of the work that Mark did, from Denisa's perspective.

Our Rockwood Geo Pro came with two regular lead-acid RV/marine deep cycle batteries and one 200-watt solar panel. The fact that it had some solar was helpful, but Mark wanted to add more solar and change the battery to lithium ion. That involved moving some of the parts and wiring and lots of planning.  Denisa kept finding pieces of paper laying around the house that looked something like this:

It was also a little disturbing when Mark started cutting holes in the walls of our new trailer, and also cutting wires. But we should probably start from the beginning of the process.

Those two lead-acid batteries were in a box on the trailer hitch. But Mark wanted to move the new 280 amp-hour capacity lithium battery to a new location.

He did research to find that he could install a lithium battery on its end, and then it would fit in one of our side storage compartments. Lithium batteries need to be housed in an inside compartment that can be heated, because they can't charge when the temperature is below 32 degrees. Also, people are more prone to steal lithium batteries, so he wanted it inside a locked compartment. He also had to devise straps and latches to keep it up-right and secure when traveling.

With a new battery location, he had to run different cables to the new battery. But when he saw the trailer manufacturer's wiring layout, he called it a "rat's nest." Mark's an IT guy that has wired computers and telephones all over a college campus, and he likes neat wiring!

So he ended up moving all the wiring. He moved the battery on/off switch and circuit breakers and ground wire all inside, instead of out on the hitch. Now he could use shorter cables from the lithium battery switch to the inverter. He also relocated the ground, and added a class T (bigger) fuse for the lithium battery. He also had to move all the wiring to the solar panel. When he finished, that rat's nest looked much better.

Remember that hole in the wall? It became a cabinet for the solar panel circuit breaker.  Before, there was no way to disconnect the solar panel from the controller. So adding this circuit breaker switch gives him the ability to kill all the power generated by the solar panel so he can work on things without getting shocked. That's also good when you have to remove the lithium battery in the winter, or when working on the solar panels.

At some point in moving things around, a fuse broke, and he found another one was cracked. So he had to buy new fuses.

Meanwhile, his drawings are getting more detailed and he's adding more notes. This is a complicated process!

Inside, he also added a shunt to the new victron monitor for the lithium battery, and relocated that wiring. Mark also had to lengthen the trailer jack wire.

The trailer came with a controller, mounted on the wall. After changing the batteries, Mark had to manually set the controller to let it know it is now monitoring a lithium battery. That involved setting the parameters to a different charge cycle. When Mark found out the firmware was on an older version, the company had to send a new controller that he had to install. This controller shows the voltage and amperage of the electrical system.

Mark found that getting the converter/charger to recognize the lithium battery was a challenge. He had to discharge the battery all the way, then charge it part way, stick out his tongue, stand on one foot . . . He was trying to explain to Denisa more technically, but she just understood that it was not an easy process.

Then Mark had to move to the roof. It's a good thing he had his electrical engineer grandson to help him!

While our trailer came with one 200-watt solar panel, Mark doubled that by adding a second solar panel on the roof. That involved ordering the mounting hardware, more cables, connectors, and sealant. And of course, getting all that on the roof properly.

All of that had to be tested with devices that Denisa doesn't understand or recognize. 

Mark also installed apps on his phone to monitor how much electricity the solar panels were producing, and how much charge the battery has. He was studying screens and writing himself notes about what changed when he turned different appliances on. That gave him a better understanding of the electrical usage and production.

When everything was finished and seemed to be working, it was time to document his work. So he labeled the pictures he took of some of the new cables and the old ones so he would know where they were leading.

The same goes with the new wiring closet that is no longer a rat's nest. Now he knows where all those cables are going.

Once again, Denisa doesn't understand all the work that Mark has been doing. But she certainly appreciates it! If anyone has any real questions about this project, Mark is obviously the one to contact.