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Lake Louise

As I mentioned in the prior post, we arrived in Lake Louise without reservations.    As we drove toward the first campground around 11 am, the sign said,  “Campground full.”   But it was the type of sign someone would need to physically walk to and change the placard.   I was hoping they were too lazy or it was always left that way.  Turns out my hopes came true.  They had lots of open sites.   People were coming in till after 8 pm that evening and I don’t think it ever actually filled up.

The gal at the check-in kiosk mentioned there has been a grizzly in the camp often this year with a few cubs, but that she was “friendly.”   Whatever that means?   We never saw them for my disappointment, and to Kathy’s delight.

Now, the reason this campground probably isn’t top on anyone’s list is the trains!   They seem to come by every hour or just slightly more often.   The westbound trains blew their horns just a moment before passing behind our coach.  The tracks were about 150′ from the back of us.   The eastbound trains blew their horns on the other side of the grade crossing, so it was much further away and almost pleasant.

We weren’t really sure we wanted to stay the two days I signed up for once we experienced the trains, so we decided to see as much as we could that afternoon just in case.

When we got to Lake Louise, the parking lots by the lake were full; so we waited till around 5 pm to take the drive up so we didn’t have to take the shuttle bus.   There was a steady stream of cars coming down the mountain as we drove up to the lake. There was no parking issue when we arrived, so we walked over to the lake, and it was surprising how much ice was still on the lake.  There were also quite a few tall snow banks scattered about for June 1st.   The elevation was less than 6,000′, so that latitude makes a big difference.   I know there isn’t snow at 6,000′ in San Diego now.

We walked around for a little bit, but I didn’t head out the path along the lake toward the mountain that evening.  Kathy walked down a ways and reported that the water color was magnificently teal after you got past the area with the slush and ice.   We headed back to the coach to listen for more trains that evening. They didn’t disappoint us; there were plenty of them!  The next morning I realized once my head hit the pillow, I didn’t hear one of them.   I’m pretty sure they didn’t stop running so we could sleep.

We got an early start this morning and headed up toward Lake Moraine, but its lot was already closed and they wouldn’t let us make the turn toward it; so we headed up the hill, back to Lake Louise.   Parking was a bit of an issue, so I let  Kathy off at the Chateau to look around inside, and Dusty and I went off to find a parking spot.  It took a bit of circling, but I finally got one and we headed off for a walk around the lake.   It was a gorgeous day to walk out to the other end of the lake.  I was even more surprised today as the ice on the lake was about 1/2 the size it had been last night.   Probably due to the different angle of the light today, the color of the lake was an incredible teal blue.   It got even prettier the further out on the path we walked.   I’m not sure how far the walk was, but it seemed a lot further on the walk back.

 

 

By the time we got back to the car, we were famished and we were going to head back to the RV to fix some lunch; but on the way down the hill, I spotted a patio with umbrellas at the Deer Lodge.  So we traveled down the hill a bit till I could find a place to turn around.   When we pulled into their parking lot, a guy with a clipboard came out to greet us.  He said we could park if we purchased a $20 gift card.  Skeptic me wondered if it was a scam, but he made it clear that it prevented anyone from using their lot to walk up to the lake.

We gave him the $20, parked and headed over to the restaurant patio.   We had a delightful lunch there.  We had something I’ve never had before, they put blueberry jam on the bison burgers.  I tried it and it was really good.   I was thinking that was odd, but that I would try anything once.. and it paid off.   And I was happy that the gift card worked when the check came..  🙂

After that fill-up, we headed out to find the Gondola.  It is on a mountain on the other side of the Trans Canada Highway..   We drove up to the the lodge, bought our tickets, and walked over to the ski lift to get on one.  (Note:  If you get there in the last hour they run, they give a big discount on the price of the tickets.  That was a pleasant surprise!)

It was pretty hot inside the gondola.   In less than a few minutes, I was wishing we had taken a chair lift up.   They had one gondola, then two chairs, then the next gondola on the cable traversing the mountainside.   To my surprise, Kathy appears to be more afraid of heights than I am while on the way up and said she wouldn’t go on the chairs on the way down like I was going to do!

Once at the top of the mountain, the view was spectacular.   Lake Louise off in the distance surrounded by the Rocky Mountains made the whole adventure much, much better.   There was a very brisk wind up there and the gondola heat was starting to seem a lot more appealing the longer we loitered up there.  We did take the chair lift down and it was an even more beautiful, unobstructed view!

We took the chairs back down to the lodge.   Once down we drove back to the RV to pick up Dusty for the drive to Moraine Lake.  By the time we got to the turnoff, it was open but they wouldn’t allow us to make a left onto the road.  So we had to drive up to a roadside picnic area to turn around, then we were able to head up the hill to this other lake.

Once there, we parked and walked out toward the lake.  It was a similar color to Louise, but no where near as pretty.  I guess the Moraine part should have clued us in.   It was cool to walk around, there was a large “beach” area with rocks and driftwood strewn about.   There was also a large hill of boulders that folks were doing scrambles on to get to the top.

We headed on down the hill after about an hour wandering around the lake so we could listen to the trains for the evening while we enjoyed beer and wine sitting outside of the campsite.   A couple that was traveling back to Palmer, Alaska, stopped by for a chat.  They had just picked up a new Rpod trailer in Minnesota and were bringing it home to Alaska.   It was interesting to talk with them about living in Alaska.   He was a hospital administrator and his wife a teacher.   They had lived in Fairbanks for a number of years, till they got tired of the heat and cold there so they move to Anchorage as it’s a much more temperate climate than Fairbanks.  Things I never knew..

We were going to pack up and head out in the morning for the Columbia Ice Fields in the morning so we bid them adieu and headed inside to get ready.

 

 

 

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Banff

Kathy wanted to get to Banff as quickly as possible to sightsee, so we left Calgary a day early.   That morning I called Parks Canada and was able to procure two nights in Tunnel Mountain II campground.   I was hoping for three nights, but since the sun stays up until almost 10:30 here, we could probably fit in everything we wanted to see by starting as soon as we got set up in the campground.

On our way into the campground we spotted a clone of our bus using the dump station.  I assumed they were on their way out, thinking that it would be interesting to talk to them about their bus.   There is a saying in the RV world that no one knows your RV better than someone else that has the same thing. To my surprise they weren’t leaving and ended up parking about 50′ behind us.  I had to go over and see them after one of our ventures out and about.

The town of Banff was about 5 minutes down the small road.   It’s beautiful but very touristy.  It was so nice it got me wondering if there was an ordinance to keep your exterior wood polished.  There are a lot of cars in the small town, so the going can be painfully slow.   Also, if you stick the nose of your car an inch into the crosswalk, you get a lot of angry stares from the passersby.

We went out for pizza the first night at a small place on Bear Street.   Pizza was Ok.  Can’t really expect too much in a tourist town.   After that I wanted to go for drinks at the big hotel in town.  It really looks like a castle and it’s huge!  But parking for nonguests was pretty lacking, so we left to look for Bow Falls.   We found it just a few minutes away.    They have a lot of water here with all the snow melt from the mountains that ring the town, so all the rivers are running full tilt.   Snapped a few pics of the falls and headed down the road to see what was there.

After a few minutes we came to a bridge where a gate was being installed, but seeing the arm hadn’t been put up yet, we took a drive out there.   I went along a 27-hole golf course that went for miles along this small roadway.   By this time it was close to 9 pm and we saw a few golfers playing the fairways.   Some of them would have a very long walk back to the clubhouse, and I bet most of it was going to be in the dark.  Hopefully they have their bear spray!  We saw 2 very large elk in the meadows, but no bears, luckily for those golfers!

The road turned out to be a loop.   We then drove around the town a bit more and ended up on a road on the other side of Bow Falls and up above it.  There was a large platform we climbed up to with Dusty pulling Kathy up the stairs.  Very nice view of that large castle-like hotel and the falls below.

By this time it was close to dusk and we headed back to the bus.   You cannot believe how dirty the bus is.  All the rain and subsequent mud has it looking like we were back in Quartzsite again.

The next morning we headed out early looking for a car wash, which we never did find.  Although we did find one we could have driven the bus thru; but it was supposed to rain some more, so I decided to wait a bit longer.    We headed out of town toward Vista Lake and found the overlook where we ate a picnic lunch and then headed out to find Johnson Canyon (JC).

On the other side of the Trans Canada highway was the Bow Valley Parkway.    On the way toward JC, we stopped at a small campground called Castle X .  It appears to be named that for the large mountain above it that looks like a fortress.

Not far past there where the parkway ended due to lots of road construction we found the parking lots for Johnson Canyon.   So far Canada parks allow pets on all the trails.  Way different than America’s National Parks, where if they are tolerated at all, it will only be on one or two designated trails.

We decided to do the short hike to the Lower Falls in Johnson Canyon.   It was a beautiful hike, about 1/2 mile in each direction, the temperature a nice 25c.

I think the Canadians were trying to pull a fast one on us Americans.   There was a sign for the falls that said it was 1/2 a mile…  and 1,500 meters to the Canucks.   1,600 meters is a mile..  I hadn’t looked at the meter sign till we hiked what I thought was half a mile and a passing ranger said we were  halfway to the falls.

It was a nice walk in the woods but mostly uphill heading to the falls.    When the canyon got narrow, they had built a walkway cantilevered into the cliff walls.   Again,  much, much nicer than anything I have ever seen in our national parks.

The falls did not disappoint.  They were awesome.  There was even a small cave that led right up next to the falling water.   It was a very low cave and I was glad I was wearing a hat as I bashed my head on the rocks.  Had I not had on the hat, I am pretty sure I would have been bleeding..

The hike back was mostly downhill, so it went quite a bit quicker; and at the end of the trail was a small ice cream stand which I was told we must stop for.   I think the ice cream negated the calories we had just expended.

After that we went over to check out the Banff Gondola.   We followed a large tour bus with a big sign on the back that said “Student Driver.”  I think it was real as we watched him drive over an orange cone making the turn onto the road leading to the gondola parking.

I headed into the building to see if the dog could come with us as we read he could, but the guy at the ticket booth said that changed late last year.   No more pets.   So I didn’t give them my $120 and we left.

Just then it started raining again.  So even if they would have let the pup on, it may not have been so much fun in the cold rain at the top of the mountain.   The sign had said it was 9c at the summit.

We headed on back to the coach, and on the way Kathy spotted some really nice wood carvings, so we had to stop and take a few of those pics.  We also spotted this unusually named street in Banff.  😉

After a bit I noticed the folks with our same coach were home and we walked over to introduce ourselves.   We met Roger and Helen, who had owned theirs about a year longer than we had owned ours and they were full-time living in theirs for at least the last year and a half.  Their home base is in Florida, so they were quite a bit further from home than we were.   They had a lot of great stories and Roger clued me into a few things that they’d experienced on their bus that we hadn’t experienced  “yet”.   We talked for hours until it was dark.  As we were probably leaving in the morning, we exchanged cards.

Since only two nights were available when I called the morning of getting there, I decided to ask if there was another night available at the kiosk on the way back into the campground.   Nothing, but said to come back at 8 am to see if there was more available then.   There wasn’t.  I had thought we would stay an extra day so that we would get to Lake Louise on Sunday morning instead of Saturday, thinking that Sunday is usually a better day to find a campsite at a crowded place.

Saturday morning we set out on our long trip of 57 km to Lake Louise sans any reservations as the only close campground was a first-come, first-serve.   No reservations can be made at that Parks Canada campground until after June 15th.

We had our fingers crossed the whole way there.

 

 

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to Calgary and beyond..

From Milk River we drove to Claresholm and stayed for one night.   It was a really nice community park in the middle of the small town.   Lush mowed grass all around,  a couple baseball diamonds and 22 RV sites.   It was Memorial Day in the States, but this little gem was practically empty.   The town provided the WiFi there, so it was pretty good till it dropped around 5 pm then showed back up at 8 pm.  I guess the AP’s needed a reboot or something.  Anyway, I was planning on staying there for a couple nights, but Kathy had a different idea.  She wanted to get to somewhere we could sightsee.  So the next morning we drove the couple hours to Calgary and are currently staying in a big grass field across the street from the Grey Eagle Casino.   We are boondocking in a pretty large field.  Lots of grass and practically no one here either.   Last night there was one 5th wheel trailer sans truck and two minivans.  This morning we woke up, only 1 minivan left and a Nissan SUV of some sort.   After touring the city, the other minivan is gone, so just the SUV and the trailer are here.

The first morning there, we drove downtown to check out the sky tower and Stephen Avenue.  Parking in downtown Calgary near Stephen Avenue is difficult.  We eventually got a space on the street only a block south and a block from the sky tower. The tower didn’t allow pets, so they weren’t getting our $36 entrance fee.  So we walked over to Stephen Avenue.  It is a few blocks long and mostly blocked off to cars. Oddly it’s not all blocked off though. One of the blocks in the middle had a car pass by us.

We arrived right at lunch hour and the street was packed with office workers heading out for lunch. There are lots of restaurants on both sides of the street and almost everyone had an outdoor patio.  Each one we passed had no empty tables and the food looked delicious!

We found this nice large park at the eastern terminus of the street.  There were lots of kids wading into the huge water feature/fountain.   After all, it was 25 degrees celsius  and everyone was walking around like it was mid summer.   One gal I talked to said we had just missed a snow storm.  (I’m thankful for that!!)

 

 

I did get to stop and talk to the local constable.  I noticed he was packing a Glock and a taser that also looked similar to his Glock.  It appeared to me he was carrying two pistols.  He said they all (the police) carry guns in Canada and are allowed to carry them off duty, but not really.  He mentioned if you do carry it off duty, you will get into all sorts of trouble with the bosses.  Sort of odd, I bet if they stumble upon a robbery while off duty and don’t have their service weapon, they would also catch hell for not having it..  🙂

All the highways in Calgary are under major construction.  At least that is how it seems.  It’s a real mess.  I guess due to the weather it all must happen the few months of the year that it’s warm enough to work outside, but this is over the top.   We were planning on spending tomorrow at the Heritage Park Historical Village, but Kathy just read no pets allowed there either.  Darn, another $58 I am not able to add to the local economy.   Geez, but we liked the free camping.   I really like Calgary… just not all the road construction and detours that go with it.

After we came back to the RV, I decided to get started on the rock guard I am making that goes between the rear of the RV and the front of Kathy’s car we pull behind us.   For today I just painted the 6′ x 1″ square steel tubing, and after that dried I installed a rubber foot on each end so that when it’s mounted and I bang into it, I won’t tear my clothes or legs..   Next I have to drill 7 holes thru it to mount the large U bolt that will hold it to the hitch receiver and 5 eye bolts that will hold down the nylon mesh via many feet of bungee cord I brought.

Drilling the holes is going to be interesting as I don’t have a vice to hold the bar to drill thru it.   Now I am thinking I need to replace my drop receiver with a double receiver so I could mount a vice on the second receiver.   (maybe when we get home.)

I then moved on to hooking the Raspberry Pi (RPI) to the coach’s network so whenever the coach has internet, the RPI will be able to upload all the solar information gathered to the web portal.

Speaking of solar..  Today was really sunny and the roof-mounted panels created all the power to charge the battery to 100% by 7 pm.   Last night the sun didn’t go down here till around 9:40 pm.   If the sun never sets in Alaska, I guess it will keep charging all night.  Now wouldn’t that be really cool!

 

 

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Helena MT and on to Milk River, Canada.

We were in Helena for 3 nights.   While there I visited the Lewis & Clark Brewery for a pretty tasty growler fill which came with a free pint!   I also found the most stocked hardware store I have ever seen the following day.  They had at least 5 long aisles filled with specialty hardware.  I had never seen that much in one place.  Reminded me of the McMaster Carr catalog in a store.   Lowe’s sometimes has about 20′ of those trays of special stuff.  This place had over a 150′ of them.   There was a bunch I had no idea what they were used for, and I am a “hardware guy”!

I was able to pick up all the remaining parts I needed to construct my rock guard for the drive to Alaska.  I previously had purchased the mesh and 50′ of bulk bungee cord, along with ends for them,  but not the hardware to hold it all to the rear of the RV and the front of the car, as I hadn’t totally figured out how to do that; but during the first night in Helena I figured out how to make it work.

We stayed at the Lewis & Clark Fairgrounds campground,  22 spaces with electric only.   There was water a few hundred yards away near the office building, so we filled the fresh water tank there prior to parking the rig.   What was odd is there wasn’t a dump station on the fairgrounds, so I started looking for one on the web and found three.  I checked them out in the car the day before leaving and only one would work for us to get in and out of without driving over curbs.   It was just on the other side of the 1-15, a few miles away, and it was our first stop on the way to Canada the next morning.

While in Helena we got to visit the locals’ laundromat.  Kathy got to hear the owner’s whole life story.   His dad owned the bar next door, which I popped my head into and it was truly a dive bar.   Right around even with the worst ones I had ever been in.   There was an odd painting on the wall inside the laundromat, so I had to take a pic.   Here it is:

 

Below are a few pics of the fairgrounds campground.

 

We got out of Helena before 10 am and proceeded north on Interstate 15 toward the Canadian Border.    Luckily the rain waited till we were finished filling the water tank and dumping the other tanks before it let loose on us.

It rained the whole day and only stopped once we crossed the border.   The crossing was interesting as they never asked about the dog or about food we were bringing in.   So throwing out all our fruit and produce was apparently not needed.   For lunch on the way we ate what was left in the fridge… not much..  but it still was a lot to eat.   Reheated a large potato and topped it with spaghetti sauce with meatballs and leftover hamburger meat and leftover chicken tenders.    It was actually pretty good, but the rest of the drive we had that over-stuffed feeling like you get at Thanksgiving.

At the border they only asked for Passports, the RV registration, if we had any alcohol, tobacco, cannabis or guns.    Nothing about food or pets.   He also asked where we were from, and really wanted to know how long we would be traveling in Canada.   He wanted specifics.

After the 8 minutes chatting with the Canadian border guard, we headed a bit further north to Milk River where I had spotted a campground on the map the previous evening.   When I had called, no one had answered.  When I got there, I understood why, really laid back place.  The office didn’t look like anyone had been in it for years.

We spent one night at Milk River, 8 Flags Campground. (I counted 9 flags!)  Right next to the not very busy highway,  ( a car about every 10 minutes) and of course there was a not very busy railroad track just on the other side of that highway.   I only heard a couple of trains go by the whole time there and no train horns were heard.   So a pretty good spot for the night.

There was a sign on the office to boil water, so I didn’t hook that up.  I just connected up to the 30 amp shore power that didn’t have a visible circuit breaker.   I really needed to experiment with that power to see what exactly we can run in the coach at the same time when only connected to 30 amp shore power.   In the states we always seemed to have 50 amp power.  But we can’t do it here as we have no idea where the breaker is and if I guessed wrong, we would be unpowered till I could find someone that had access to the circuit breaker..   (Can we run the heat pump and the micro, toaster or coffee maker? )  I am guessing we can run two of them at the same time, if they are on different circuits; but I currently don’t know which circuits anything is on.

This campground only takes cash; so after finding a spot, I asked around where the nearest ATM was located.   Went there to get Canadian money as you could pay either 30 dollars Canadian or US.   Canadian money is only worth around 75% of US money, so it is a much better deal to use Canadian money.  ($30 Canadian is about $22.50 US)  And of course, most folks probably know this, but the best exchange rate you can get is  from an ATM.   Those money exchange places really take a big chunk of what you convert from cash.   And of course, when you get home, deposit the foreign cash in your bank for a similar very good exchange rate.  Last time, my bank wouldn’t take coins, only the paper cash I had when coming back from the Med Cruise.

The first ATM (and only one I thought there was nearby) said my card was invalid.  I thought I was going to have a real problem in Canada after seeing that message on the ATM screen as Google didn’t know of any banks nearby, and who knows, maybe my ATM card wouldn’t work anywhere in Canada…

I headed off to replace the produce and buy some meat to restock the fridge.   Milk River is a very small town, which means a very small market.   I guess they don’t eat a lot of veggies here in MR as the selection was lacking, and the meat selection was extremely lacking.   We will know more once we hit a larger town or city.   But the best part of going to the grocery store was they had an ATM inside.  You know the ones,  just a small kiosk.   Funny thing I found out, its fees were less than the bank’s ATM fees.  I always assumed those kiosks you find in a 7/11 or other places would really gouge you.   ($3 at the bank vs $2.50 at the kiosk)  So I was able to get cash and pay the campground in Canadian dollars.  Yeah!!   Their money looks really odd.  It’s got quite a bit of cellophane in it, so you can look thru part of their bills.   I guess it makes it more difficult to counterfeit.

The WiFi at our campground was almost nonexistent.   I could see a lot of AP’s from my roof mounted WiFi antenna , Mikrotik Metal AC Router (CPE), but not actually connect to any of them.

I must admit the Mikrotik has the most complicated interface I have ever seen.   Looks like something from the early ’90s.   My laptop could connect to one AP and it had very low power, but it was just enough access to look for the next campground.   None of the other devices could connect.  (iPad or iPhones.)  They couldn’t even see the SSID’s to try to connect.

That next morning we were off to Claresholm, Alberta, Canada

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SLC to Helena MT

It was raining as we left Salt Lake City at 9 am Thursday morning.    As we go further out of town, the rain slowed and eventually stopped.   The rest of the northern drive was dry.   I like driving the bus when it’s dry!   Just prior to Dillon, MT, the wind really picked up.   Had to fuel up there, so it was a bit shocking how windy it was when standing out in it filling the tank.   I ended up filling up at the same Sinclair station we filled up last summer.   Back then it wasn’t on Gas Buddy so I added it.   Was glad to see it was still listed when I started to plan the next fill-up.  $3.12 per gallon,  almost reasonable for diesel.   I pumped in $400 worth.   We will top up the tank once we get closer to the Canadian border as I am seeing their prices are like California diesel costs.

We stopped overnight in Idaho Falls at an Elks Lodge for $10 a night with  50 amp power and water.    It seemed pretty nice until around midnight when we woke up to someone screaming (presumably into a phone) about a fight he had with his girlfriend,  and he was pacing the parking lot around us.  He finally walked away and I fell back to sleep, but Kathy stayed awake waiting for the nightclub across the street to empty at 2 am.  She told me there was a lot of yelling and cars screeching about.   There were houses right across the street also.  Not sure how those folks deal with all the noise late in the night.  (unless they are the ones drinking in the bar)   So far we have stayed at 2 Elks lodges.   Neither place were peaceful at night.

We headed out of Idaho Falls around 10 and drove the 250+ miles to Helena.   I called the fairgrounds and made reservations for a few nights just prior to heading out.   Now that we are here, $21 a night is a great deal.  It’s actually at the outskirts of the city but seems like we are in the middle of nowhere.  Trees and grass all around, extremely quiet place.   Dusty seems to really like this place.  No stickers in his paws so far.   In Montana it seems campgrounds near cities are few and far between.   I noticed this last year when looking for a spot in Missoula when visiting my Niece.

The ride to here was fairly uneventful except for the wind gusts in the mountains.   I think we saw at least 3 Continental Divide signs on the drive here from Idaho.  6000+ summits,  not too tall for the Rockies.   I remember driving to Denver a long time ago and the Eisenhower Tunnel on I-70 was close to 12,000 feet.   Mostly I just remember the Toyota I had was having a hard time getting enough oxygen to give me any power to climb to that point.   Thankfully it was mostly downhill after that.   I wonder what this diesel would act like at that elevation.

On to Canada…next Stop!

 

 

 

 

 

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Lost Wages to Salt Lake City

We drove from Vegas to Beaver, UT on Sunday.  It’s at about 6,000′ elevation.  Pretty cold for us San Diegans.  Was 33 when we got up that morning.  I haven’t seen temps below 44 in San Diego except once when it got down to 32 degrees and killed my Heliotrope plant in the front yard.  It was purple and red one day, the next morning it was brown and never revived.

Anyway, prior to leaving San Diego I had two of the three Air Dump valves replaced as they were getting stuck open occasionally and it was irritating to wait for the air bags to fill so we could drive.   I was just replacing the one that was leaking, but par for the course, as soon as that was replaced, another one could be heard purging air when it wasn’t supposed to.   I drove all around town to locate another valve and could only get one.  But I had the guy order one from LA so I could swing by some other day and have it on hand if needed.

All seemed well after the second one was installed till the morning we were leaving on the trip.   I hadn’t made time to pick the other one up, so as we were exiting San Diego I had to drive to El Cajon and get it.  (about 20 miles out of the way)

Monday morning in Beaver the rear bags were fairly slow to fill; so while I waited, I called Freightliner in Salt Lake City to find out about having the last one replaced.   They told me I would need to wait till the 30th., 10 days from now!

So I googled Diesel Mechanics around Beaver, UT.   There was one with almost five stars on Google’s Reviews.   I called them.  They said to bring it right over and explained to me they were 1,000 feet from me.   We drove over, showed the mechanic the part.  He crawled under the coach, said it would be a quick swap, and had me drop the air and raise the coach on the jacks.

He had it replaced in 35 minutes.   The last guy took 2 hours to do it.  Paid them $110 (1 hr minimum) and we were on our way in less than an hour.   That was utterly amazing to me.  I’ve got to make sure I write up a review of them!

So we headed across the mountains toward Salt Lake City and then the rains came.  Then they turned to sleet and hail to make it a bit of an edgy ride.   When it started to sleet, I slowed to 50 mph; but I was getting passed by lots of trucks still doing the 80 mph they allow there.   Seemed nuts to me as it was very steep downgrades and climbs thru long curves during all of it.   I never felt the coach slip, but I was waiting for it to occur.

Once out of the winter weather, it was smooth sailing into downtown Salt Lake City to a KOA we stayed at on our way to Yellowstone back in 2017.   It was one of Kathy’s favorite parks, lots of grass for Dusty! Thankfully it’s a lot cooler here than it was in June of that year and a lot less crowded.

Drove over to the big temple that’s in the middle of downtown and got pizza for dinner!   The next morning it was raining pretty good and continued all day.  So I spent a lot of the day redoing my playlists on my local pc in the front of the coach so we can have tunes in the great white north where an internet connection may be difficult to find.

We switched our cell phones to Cricket Wireless as it appears AT&T has more connectivity in Canada and we could get an unlimited plan that includes Canada and Mexico for $40 each.    Our current Verizon and AT&T hotspot plans don’t include any data outside the USA.   So we are good in Alaska, but Canada will probably find us looking for WiFi when camping.   I installed a new omni-directional WiFi antenna from Mikrotik Metal AC Router on my crank-up TV antenna.

I still have my NanoStation with us for longer range WiFi acquisition situations.

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Passing thru Sin City.

We were happy to leave the incredibly windy Barstow area and make the short trek to Lost Wages.   We dropped by the local Elks Club and they had open sites, so we are camping there for the next couple of nights.   We thought we would see a show while here,  Kathy’s choice was Celion Dion for tonight’s show, but neither of us want to sit in the audience and cough thru it all.   Unfortunately, both of us caught a cold just before leaving on the trip.

We took a drive down the strip this afternoon after checking out the local In-N-Out for lunch.   Had to pick up a Tee Shirt at the corporate store.   I had never seen one one of their stores before.  I didn’t realize In-N-Out sold so much swag.   

On the way back to the strip, we found a large sculpture made up of only boats.  Most looked like canoes, but there were a lot of them all wired together.

As we drove down the strip, I was amazed just how much more crowded it is. It’s like they just never stopped building in the 15+ years since I was last there.  It’s a zoo now.  But it’s all mainly down at the south end of the strip right around Cesar’s Palace.   Get much further north and it peters out till you get down to Fremont Street downtown.

On our way toward downtown, we passed the Pawn Stars shop and the little chapel a friend of ours got married in back in the early ’90s.  I sure missed that velvet Elvis above the alter.

We drove on down to Fremont Street so Kathy could get a gander at the spectacle that is “Las Vegas.”   It didn’t disappoint, even the rather plump almost naked gals posing for pictures wanted to pet our Dusty.  Unfortunatly I missed that picture..

 

 

 

A new to me thing on Fremont Street are the 4  ziplines overhead.   They travel the whole way under the FSE overhead structure.   Our hour parking space was just about up, so we headed back to the car and off to find a fill-up station for the car, Nevada gas is quite a bit less than home.   I filled the RV with 130 gallons at $3.15, probably 75 cents less a gallon than anywhere in California right now.   And the car gas was more at $3.34, still about 50 cents cheaper than the gas in CA.

Oh,  you San Diego folks will get a kick from this.  Last night I was able to stop at a local Roberto’s Taco Shop.   I never thought there were any outside of San Diego, but this one used the same TM Logo.    If you get here and need a fix, it’s at the corner of Pecos and Las Vegas Blvd N.

And yes while we were here I was able to fix the camera and GPS feeds.

 

 

 

 

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Alaska or Bust!

We set out for the great adventure Wednesday afternoon making it a ways north on I-15 about three hours to just past Barstow, CA.   To my delight right before the exit I saw the sign for Calico Ghost Town.   I had seen that on a map back in the 1980’s and wanted to go there since.   I guess I forgot about that till that sign reminded me I never made it there.

I had been planning on just an overnight, but I paid for two after the gal at the desk mentioned CGT was 3 miles away, and am glad we did.   The ghost town was way better than expected.   There is even a campground inside the park which turns out to be a county park.   From what I read, the guy who created Knotts Berry Farm restored that town back in the 1950’s then donated it to the county.   This is a must see if you have never been to a ghost town, but I would probably not go there in the summertime.  It’s in the middle of the Mojave Desert.  It was a beautiful 70 degrees and a bit windy while we were there.  I can only imagine what it would be like in July. (probably 120 in the shade)

That evening the winds were blowing so wildly I considered pulling in the slides to move in the center of gravity for stability.   Everything was howling that night,  not much of a restful sleep for either of us.

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Reducing the 24×7 power draw on the RV batteries

During our 8 days of boondocking in Tucson last month I was monitoring the constant power draws on the batteries.   One thing I noticed was the Inverter was drawing a constant 6 amps of power from the battery 24 hours a day.   The inverter is what creates 120v AC power from the 12 volts of power the house batteries produce.  It has a few amps of overhead and there is also a conversion loss there, not to mention the power conversion loss that also happens at low power devices we have plugged via wall warts.  (those little black transformers you plug into wall outlets)

My solution was to find DC-DC power converters that will use the 12v direct from the batteries to change it to the voltage a particular device needs.   Some examples are:  8 Port Gigabit Switch   It actually runs on 5v so removed the wall wart and used one of these 5.5mm Power Adapter barrel connector coupled with a 5v power supply and also tied in our HDhomerun to that same power supply via another 5.5mm barrel connector.

A note on that power supply, the width around the terminal screws was so small I had to grind down the crimp on connectors.  And they were the smallest (Red) connectors I have seen.

I also switched out my 120v POE supply with one of these 12v models:  Gig DC-DC POE power supply My WiFi device is passive POE (24v) and this device converts 12v to 24v and injects it into the Gig Ethernet cable to power my  Mikrotik Metal CPE   The Mikrotik is a CPE WiFi device with an Omni Directional antenna attached that I use to grab WiFi signals when near WiFi Access Points I can logon to.    That WiFi signal, once connected to the internet provides a connection to my internal  TP-Link AC750 WiFi Access Point via Ethernet cable thru the gig switch.  That access point also runs from 5v, but it uses a micro USB cable for power.   I power that from one of these 12v to 5v power micro usb output

My DVR (Sage-TV) runs on an Intel NUC  in the RV.  I found this 12v NUC power supply

I tied these all together with this Fuse Box. I also added one of these 3 port 12v power outlet switch box to allow for the Dash-cam and new NUC power supply to connect.    I have one left over to power the NVIDIA Shield Android TV device if I ever find a 12v adapter.   Is appears that no one makes one yet.  And no one makes a decent replacement remote for it either.

In its current form it appears I have reduced the current draw from 6amps to about 2.5amps.   A reduction of about 80 amp hours per day from the always on stuff.  That’s a lot of amps to replace when not connected to shore power!

Other things I want to change out will be the two TV’s.   Until then we will need to run the Inverter only when we use them.  Or maybe look into a couple low wattage individual inverters.   For now we can just turn on the main inverter to sit in front of the boob tube…

 

 

 

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Updating my Solar install to allow Web Portal Access

Having the Bluetooth (BT) connectivity to my solar controllers was to me a necessity so I went with the Victron line of controllers after looking at what was available.   The issue that came up was very short range for the Bluetooth connectivity.  This was due to mounting them inside the electronics bay, a metal compartment at the rear of the bus!  That all aluminum bay is acting as a Faraday cage which made the connection from a phone or tablet a very short range affair.   Basically I can only connect to it from the RV’s bedroom located right above that bay.  I found that I could also add a Victron Bluetooth Dongle to one of the charge controllers and mount that up inside a bedroom cabinet allowing my phone to access it from the front seat of the coach.  That was nice but now that we have two controllers and the Victron Connect App cannot view both controller screens at the same time.  The App allows only one connection at a time.  That’s very limiting in my opinion when you have two controllers charging one set of batteries.

I had read about the Victron VRM portal that allowed a couple of their accessory devices, the Venus GX or the Victron Color Control GX to upload the solar data from multiple devices like controllers, battery monitors and many other devices Victron Energy produces to a website that you can access from anywhere with an internet connection.

I looked at buying one of those devices but they are pretty costly and didn’t feel the need to spend that kind of money just for the convenience.  So I starting looking around to see if there was another way to do the same thing.

Turns out there is.  Those devices firmware (actually their OS) is in the public domain. (GNU) so I looked around and found to find a device someone has ported it to.  I found it ported to Raspberry Pi (RPI).   Currently they are $38 so I pulled the trigger and ordered one to see if I could make this work for me.

I had a few old 2 GB microSD card (had a bunch of them from over the years laying around)  So I downloaded the Venus OS from a repository on the web.  I then burned it to a microSD card and once the RPI arrived I pushed it into the slot on the underside of the little board (RPI) and then plugged in a micro USB adapters power cord into the power port and an Ethernet cable into its port and powered it up.

Bamm, it booted up and finished with the Victron Logo on the screen and stopped at the command prompt.  I typed in ifconfig hit enter and it showed me the IP address it had received from my home networks router.   I walked back to my desk and put that address into my web browser and connected to the device.   (It was a bit more complicated for me because at first I downloaded a version of the OS that didn’t support that new RPI device.  v2.30 or above is needed)

That is the required version to run on the B+ device (newest device available when I did this, early 2019) is here in the development folder:   https://updates.victronenergy.com/feeds/venus/develop/images/raspberrypi2/   Those files change often so by the time you read this the working version may have been release to production and be here: https://updates.victronenergy.com/feeds/venus/release/images/raspberrypi2/ in the Released area.

I also had to get a couple USB to VE Direct cables that connect from the RPI’s USB ports directly to the Victron Controllers.   I used a phone power supply i had laying around to power it until I could get a power supply to hard wire into the bay.     Hard wired 12v to 5v power supply

In order to burn the image I downloaded I needed a minimum of a 2 GB microSD card.  If you don’t have any lying around this link will give you two cards for very little money.  SanDisk 32GB MicroSD HC Ultra Uhs-1 Memory Card, Class 10   2 GB cards might be found on EBAY.  But these new 32 GB ones are extremely cheap.

First thing I had to do to the card is format it, I used SD Card Formatter, the  newest one from there. I always scan new downloads with all my virus and malware scanners prior to running and unzipping them to my laptop.  After a  successful card format I used this free tool to burn the downloaded VenusOS image to that card.  Win 32 Disk Imager.   In all, I have $109 into the install now that its done.  1/3rd the cost of a Venus GX and 1/5th the cost of a Color Control GX device.   There may be a way to use Bluetooth to connect to the controllers negating the need for the special USB cables but I am not sure how to do that yet.  Maybe someone else can try and let me know.   We were leaving for the 59th Escapade the following week so I took the easy way and bought the two inexpensive cables from Bay Marine here in San Diego.

I was able to look at my charging information while attending seminars at the Escapade in Tucson.   I had setup my device to upload info every 5 minutes, you can lower that to every 1 minute but I only did that while testing it, then I moved it back to every 5 minutes.    Now I want to get my battery monitor talking to it before we head for Alaska this summer.