Our site for the first night was out in the hot sun with absolutely no shade. Not a very good environment for working on the roof of THE POD and ROVER.
Around noontime we moved over to Site #75 where we will stay for the next week. It's very well shaded and sure makes the job of installing all those panels on the roof a lot more pleasant.
We don't usually spend a lot of our time in private campgrounds. But they do offer one perk that the National, State and County Parks do not, that is a discounted rate if you spend a week or more. Here you'll receive $5 a night off for staying 7 days or more, $40 instead of $45. Spending a month here will lower your nightly cost to around $26 a night and if you're wanting to stay for the entire 7.5 month season your nightly cost is around $15. That is very affordable and within just about anyone's budget.
This photo of the lake was taken at the beginning of her walk. It is part of the campground that occupies a small corner of the 200 acre property that the Huston Family owns here in the very rural Laurel Highlands Region of Pennsylvania.
Tricia made two new friends while out or her morning walk. One kept running just ahead of her on the pathway and the other kept running in between her legs as she tried to walk around the campground. I'll let you figure out which is which.
Our original plan was to take ROVER out today and do some sightseeing while THE POD was having solar panels and an additional battery installed.
Fortunately, before leaving the campground, we found out both locations are closed on Mondays so we went with Plan B, we went into town and did our laundry.
After I dropped Tricia off at the Tidy Whities Laundromat to tend to the launrdy chores I had a few things of my own to take care of. While driving through town during our arrival on Saturday afternoon we went past a roadside attraction of sorts.
For no apparent reason we happened upon an eleven foot tall elephant occupying the corner parking space in front of the Eat'n Park Diner, which is located right in the center of town. I just had to go back and park ROVER next to it and take some photos.
If you pass your mouse over the photo you'll see I not only took picturesof the "risky business end" of the elephant,
but also the other "less pleasant business end".
In case you were wondering, the sign says his name is Jackson.
After taking the photos I drove to the other side of town to the Tractor Supply Store to refill one of our three 30lb. propane tanks. It's the first time this year we've purchased propane because we've mostly stayed in parks that have electricity. That will all change next year after we upgrade our solar this week.
Almost forgot, I also had enough time to find a barber and have most of my unruly beard shaved off!
Instead of going into great detail about the solar upgade we just did I'll just give you the overview of what we now have to work with. I am in the process of developing a new tab page on this webiste where all of our modifications and upgrades will be listed in great detail for anyone who's interested.
We special ordered THE POD just the way we wanted it, so it came from the factory with 180-watts of solar panels, 200-amp hours of AGM batteries and a 1000-watt inverter. A modest system by all accounts and the only one that Airstream was offering at the time we purchased our trailer.
We also purchased a separate 200-watt portable panel to add to the system when needed and a propane converted 2000-watt generator.
Now we have 1000-watts of solar panels (700 on THE POD and 300 on ROVER) plus we still have the portable 200-watt panel and the propane generator. We also now have 900-amp hours of lithium batteries, a 2812-watt inverter plus the original 1000-watt inverter.
And if that isn't enough, we had a 30AMP DC to DC charger installed on ROVER to connect to THE POD while we're traveling down the road.
Like I said, details will eventually be found under our modifications page.
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Until next time
