Ernie, our motorhome, sits at the campground in Harrison. We disconnected water and sewer a few weeks ago, but he’s still hooked up to 50A shore power to run the ACs and keep the batteries charged.
Before we left on our journey over two years ago, we equipped the bus with a security system — not one designed for motor vehicles, but a full-on home system monitoring intrusion, smoke, carbon monoxide and cabin temperature. If anything unusual happens, an alert comes to our phones.
We got a text message around 8:30pm last night that the coach had lost power. We’ve seen that alert hundreds of times, usually due to weather or other explainable causes. When it wasn’t immediately restored, however, Deb got in touch with the campground hosts to see what was up.
There was no outage at the park. They didn’t have a key to Ernie, so all they could do was check connections, breakers and so on. When that didn’t fix the issue, there was only one thing to do.
We drove to Harrison.
My night vision isn’t what it used to be, and I don’t like driving after dark, but at least the route was familiar, the roads were dry and traffic was light. We covered the distance in a little over an hour, arriving before 10:30pm.
First I confirmed that the pedestal was supplying 50A and that the connections were secure — check. On the opposite side of the bus, I made sure that no breakers were tripped on the inverter — check.
Inside the coach, I noted that the air conditioners were working but the wall outlets were not. I’d seen that once before and remembered that it reflected the curious way the inverter manages circuits. That sent me to the master control panel.
The “fault” LED glowed red. The display reported “unknown fault” and the house batteries weren’t charging. I checked other settings and parameters and found them all normal. The next step, it seemed to me, would be to remove power and see what’d happen when I brought the system back online.
I went outside to the pedestal, raised the cover and flipped 50A breaker. I left it off for a minute, allowing any residual charge in the inverter’s circuitry to dissipate, before switching it back on.
That simple reset did the trick — the fault readings went away and all circuits functioned normally.
What caused the fault? I have no idea. It could’ve been the result of flickering power from storms the night before. But rather than fearing that there’s some deeper problem, I suspect that the inverter did its job perfectly — it detected a fault and initiated a partial shutdown of the system, awaiting a reset.
I have no nagging concerns, and neither should Ernie’s next owners.
Deb and I hung around the campground for a little while and chatted with our helpful host before turning back toward The Mountain. We rolled up in front of the fifth-wheel at midnight.
Today, all is well. No more alerts.
The shore cord connecting our fifth-wheel wheel to the 50A outlet on the meter pole stretches across the driveway. It’s hell-for-stout cable, for sure, but it’s not meant to be driven over — and so we haven’t.
That, of course, chops the driveway inconveniently in half. We knew we needed to either build or buy a protective channel for the cord.
Building such a thing would be easy enough — several two-by-fours, a sheet of plywood, a few dozen nails and maybe a can of high-viz paint. When I priced those materials, however, it became clear that I could buy a ready-made “speed bump” a lot more cheaply than I could make one.
The one I chose is ten feet long (three interlocking 40-inch sections), constructed of hard rubber with a hinged plastic lid covering two channels. Nothing fancy, but it’ll do the job for less than 50 bucks.
That job doesn’t include standing up to dump trucks and excavation equipment, by the way, only my Silverado, Deb’s Jeep, the Ranger and the odd visitor. Anyway, it’s temporary.
The woman who lives “next door” messaged Deb an image this morning — in the spot where she looks for chert points and flakes after a rain, she’d found an arrowhead.
The Mountain and the area around it once was home to Osage, Shawnee for a time and, briefly, displaced Cherokee. This point, based on what I’ve been able to find, is consistent with Osage.
I think that’s pretty cool.
Time will tell if our 20 acres hold any Indian artifacts. We know they were here. I strongly suspect that they considered The Mountain as special as we do, perhaps even sacred.
To wrap this today, I want to address a question I’ve heard a lot lately — “When will World War III start?”
That, it seems to me, is like asking, “How soon will America descend into civil war?”
Just as this country has been in a state of civil war for five years or more, World War III already is underway. It’s only a matter of when proxies will become direct combatants, and how soon its effects will send the wider world into panic.
Put your affairs in order.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable
#LetsGoBrandon #FJB