Smokey Mountains NP

June 22 2022

Back in Shenandoah NP we noticed the battery was not charging as fast as it should from driving, then a few days later the inverter died, also with the dead inverter the battery will not charge from shore power, what we don’t know is if the 2 are related and won’t know until we get the new inverter installed – Friday hopefully. With the new inverter the battery should charge from shore power so even if there is another problem with the charging system we can still keep the battery charged and run the AC, something we were afraid to do with the dead inverter.

Our rough plan had been to head down to Savannah GA and spend the day with our son. So with no inverter and the battery not charging as good as it should we still headed south, 2 days later in the extreme heat we realized that was a BAD idea, we had been in contact with the makers of the inverter and had considered having it sent to my sisters house in Florida, it turns out we didn’t have the proper paperwork with us to have the inverter sent to my sisters house (or sent anywhere) so we headed back to Indiana to get the paperwork out of storage.

Turned out to be a good thing we turned around, because the part is shipping from CA and won’t be here until Friday at the earliest and Mary has a DR appointment at the end of the month so that could have put us in a bind if anything went wrong with the delivery getting back to Indiana.

UPDATE (6/26/2022.) On Thursday the Friday delivery got pushed back until Monday requiring yet another night in a hotel. Then this morning as if some fluke of magic we found out that the inverter was delivered Saturday afternoon so we spent Sunday morning installing the inverter while not really hard, it was HOT,  but we survived and we now have a working inverter and the battery is up to 100% after moving to a campground, the first time it’s been 100% since we entered Shenandoah NP.

While waiting for the inverter we purchased a vent cover for the vent fan. Currently the fan shuts down when it rains which is a good idea but you don’t get any air circulation then. So after reading there directions one day I got out all the tools required for the job.  The directions called for drilling 2 different sized holes and needing a wrench, screwdriver, and a pencil along with the tools.  I climbed the ladder and received a pleasant surprise. The fan installed was pre milled to accept the vent cover, less than 5 minutes later I was done and climbing down the ladder. It took longer to get everything out and to put back up than it did to clip the vent cover in place.

Another small project we finished was to finish there small drop down shelf we made, it didn’t turn out tooooo bad all things considered.

And of course on our way back to Indiana the air bag warning light came on requiring a trip to Mercedes of Louisville to look at it.  (When it rains it pours!!) UPDATE Mercedes of Louisville was great to work with and it was fixed under warranty.

At the campground in the Smokies I caught a sprite or some kind of strange floating creature, it looked so fragile I was afraid I would squish it before Mary could get a picture. It flew away before she was able to get a better picture and I couldn’t catch it again before it got out of reach. If you have ever watched the Movie Avatar it kinda reminded me of one of the floating things from the movie.

It fluttered, couldn’t really see any wings, with it’s body vertical not horizontal like a bird or insect and looked soft and fragile.

Here are some more pictures, we actually continued south for 2 days before turning around  and I probably won’t do another post until we start traveling again, who knows when that will be – UGH!!!!

I should probably note because of the heat and uncomfortably warm night time temps we opted to spend 2 nights in a hotel most nights even without using the AC the van cools off comfortably cool at night provided it gets cool enough at night and the humidity isn’t to high.

These are from inside the park – more pics below.

The rest of the pics & the end