More Rain, But We Got Out Of The Fiver - (Mammoth Cave, KY)

Well, I'm not sure what happened overnight, but we woke up and have no internet signal.

Where it was sporadic with the rain and wind, it's now too weak to get connected.  Maybe the rig settled a quarter of an inch or something.  :)

We cranked on the generator so Linda could make coffee and so we could re-charge the batteries.

Then we packed up both laptops and wandered over to the Mammoth Cave Hotel.  We had breakfast in the Cyrstal Lake Coffee Shop.

The service was okay as was the food.  But everything is always made better by a server that calls you "Hon" in a Kentucky drawl.  :)

Now, if you love pancakes and you like them big and fluffy, this is the place to come.  I swear my two pancakes covered the plate and they were each an inch thick.  Never in my life have I had to leave half my pancakes on the plate 'cause I couldn't eat 'em.  :)

After breakfast we set up shop on a desk we found and got both laptops connected to the very good and very free Wi-Fi in the hotel.

So we got the Journal entry done, checked and returned a bunch of emails, and Linda got her fix of that Ball Lines game.  :)

Oh, she also called an old college friend that we know lives nearby.  She was out, but her husband was home.

He is about our age.  He had a nagging sore throat for a couple of months earlier this year, and finally went to the doctor.  It turned out he had cancer and has been home for a few months now and on a feeding tube.

We were shocked.  But the good news is it sounds like the radiation worked and he is just starting to feel better.  Hopefully, he will get off the feeding tube soon.

Wow!  We hear stories like this about once a month, and every time we thank our lucky stars that we made the decision to live this lifestyle when we did.

We are hoping we get to go visit them on Friday.

After that sobering phone call and finishing up a few emails, we went to the Visitor Center to get cave tour schedules and pricing.  Also, we talked to the rangers about hiking and canoeing.

It looks like the hiking is out.  They said the trails would be in horrible condition after the nine inches of rain over the last three days.

But the canoeing should be good since the water levels had been so low.  We think we will do that on Saturday when it is supposed to clear up.

In the meantime, I guess we can do a cave tour or two since the rain really won't affect us if we are underground.  :)

In addition to the rain, today was a little windy and it got cooler.  So the rig was pretty chilly when we got back.  I turned on the generator and the furnace while Linda went to the bathhouse to get a shower.

We decided that we would just conserve the little water we had in our fresh water tank rather than pull the rig out of our spot and fill up.  Since we don't have the internet signal anymore, it wouldn't matter if we moved, and it's not like we have to disconnect from hook-ups.  :)

Still, we opted for bathhouse showers .... even at $2 for a hot ten minute shower.  Okay, so this is our somewhat irrational decision for this week.  :)

Now Linda said she had a good shower.  Mine, on the other hand was not so good.

My shower was either cold or scorching hot.  There was no way to regulate it and it was too cold for a cold shower and not cold enough for a really hot shower.  Not to mention the fact that I didn't feel like peeling off my burnt skin.  :)

After the showers, we determined the nearest place to get propane was about six miles away.  That alleviated some worry for Linda, who is certain we will run out at the worst possible time.  :)

Then we turned on the generator one more time so Linda could microwave leftovers.  And we ran the furnace one more time to give us a blanket of warmth for the rest of the evening.

We're starting to get the hang of this battery management, generator, no-hook up thing.  Linda commented "I'm so glad we did that electrical upgrade."

I have a feeling we will still end up with solar panels some day, but there is no hurry and they certainly wouldn't help us here.  :)

We watched local TV the rest of the evening while I played my new poker game.  Hey, I'm getting better at the strategy.  :)

Unfortunately, we don't get the World Series channel, so I have no idea what happened there.  Oh well.

We went to bed and wrapped up.  It's only going to be in the low 50s or upper 40s, so I don't think we'll freeze.  :)

Guess we will find out in the morning.  :)

Comments

[Tom Warfield]

Sorry to hear about Linda's friend. It sounds like he was lucky, though. My dad had throat cancer and ended up loosing his larynx and gaining a stoma (hole) in his throat so he could breath. Getting to understand his speech when he used his hand-held electro-larynx took some time.

I'm anxious to hear about the cave tours. My wife and I really like doing caves. We did 4 tours at Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico and some day will be getting to Kentucky.

I tried Ball Lines and can see that it could become addictive. Linda might also like Tetris. I see that there is at least one free on-line version.

[Fred Wishnie]

We've been thinking of getting an inverter like yours to allow us to go off grid more often, but I'm confused after reading your blog the last few days. You seem to run the generator every time you need 110 volts. What gain is there from the invertor?
Regards,
Fred

[Snackmaster & Jan]

Hi Howard;

Sox won - Rockies lost :-(

JanC

[Phyllis East]

Got my Good Sam magazine HIGHWAYS yesterday with an article on Mammouth Cave. I did not know they had so many tours to choose from. Many years ago I went on one. Plan to get there again one of these days.

[Graeme]

2-1 Red Sox, so they go to Colorado with a 2-0 lead. Go Sox!!

[Morris Rucker]

Howard, if there is a lot of rain between your dish and the satlite it will block the signal even if it's not raining at your location.

Morris

[Howard]

Fred,

Sorry to confuse you. :)

We run the generator for two reasons.

First and foremost is to re-charge the batteries. And we re-charge when our monitor tells us we have used between 150 and 250 amp hours. We definitely don't want to go over 300 amp hours which is half of our 600 amp hour battery capacity.

The second reason is to run AC appliances that would just drain the batteries too quickly.

So we try to "kill two birds with one stone" and run the coffee maker, the microwave, and the furnace at the same time we need to charge the batteries. That way we are charging batteries AND keeping the high wattage appliances from draining batteries at the same time.

The inverter lets us run all our AC appliances without the generator or an electrical hook-up. So we run our TVs, computers, and other low wattage items with the inverter.

We can run the other heat-producing, high wattage items with the inverter as well, but it would draw down the batteries much faster and we would need to run the generator more often to keep from discharging the batteries past 50 percent capacity.

Basically, the inverter keeps us from having to run the generator constantly just to watch TV or use the computers. And we can do that longer if we use the generator to run the high wattage appliances while we are re-charging.

We could conserve more and run the generator less in a serious "off the grid" situation.

Also, we have to run the generator a little more often than we expected because our inverter only "bulk" charges our batteries down to about a 100 amp hour deficit. At that point, the charging slows down as it goes into stage two charging, and it is not cost effective to use the fuel to run the generator at the slower charge rate.

Yikes. Reading back over that, I think I repeated myself a couple times. But maybe some of it makes sense. :)