Joshua Tree National Park trauma

Just outside the small town of Joshua Tree is the Black Rock Canyon campground, one of many in Joshua Tree National Park. We got to test our RVing resourcefulness a bit, and so far are making the grade.

We learned when we dry camped in the Laguna Mountains that our bank of golf cart batteries was at the end of their life. They served us well – we bought them and I personally installed them in Brownsville Texas about 5 years ago. 4 years ago when we installed our solar panels I asked the folks there to install a set of AGM batteries – absorbed glass mat technology better matches the needs of RV battery usage when dry camping, and also make the batteries no maintenance as they don’t contain the liquid that a lead acid battery does. Well, the great folk at AM Solar in Eugene Oregon strongly recommended that we not because our battery bank was just fine. More than 4 years later, I now know how good their recommendation was!

Anyway, the first night we woke up to our fridge beeping – apparently we had so totally drained the battery bank overnight that there was insufficient charge even to handle the little bit needed by the refrigerator to run even when being powered by propane. So, we went to fire up the generator to recharge the batteries, and guess what? Not enough charge to run the starter to start the generator. Colectiva has a safety feature that comes into play if ever the 12V engine starting battery is too weak to start the Cummin’s diesel – you toggle a switch and the bank of 6V golf cart batteries will be linked to the starting batteries momentarily so you can start the coach. We decided to try if it would work both ways, and found out it does! Lo and behold, the chassis battery provided enough extra oomph to get the generator started.

Doing some experimenting, we now know that if we turn off the inverter – the equipment that will convert 12V DC current to 120V AC current so we can run our residential stuff (TV and such) apparently consumes a lot of power, even if it is only running the clock on the microwave oven – conserves enough energy that we can last the night, run the fridge and some lights at night, and still have enough charge for the generator to start up in the morning. Because of this discovery, we are able to limp through our time in Joshua Tree NP, which is also totally dry camping, and we should be able to get our batteries refreshed with some new AGM’s when we get back to Vegas – along with the broken awning!

Talk to you soon!