Day 1, Tuesday 19Mar2024 - Headed South.

Tuesday Morning after I got home from hockey we did the last minute packing.  There are a few items I  wanted to bring but just could not find...but nothing important. The weather was cold, 32F when I left for hockey and 27F when I returned, it is a good time to be heading south. 

We left our house about 12:45 and headed to WAGS  to fuel up and get ice for the drink cooler.  We picked a fine time to travel, diesel is $4.39 at WAGs, and from what we hear on the news, it is going up.....as Em would say "first world problem".

Our first planned stop was just an over night at the Cracker Barrel in Binghamton as we make our way to Virginia to see the Malloys.  The drive was uneventful, a few snow squalls along the way, the usual bumpy I88 but it was all good. Diesel in Binghamton is $4.49, yikes. 

We had a good dinner at CB. 

When we got up this morning it was 34F, still a bit chilly. We are looking for warmer weather in Virginia where we will de-winterize the LTV.  

This winter I upgraded the electrical system on our LTV, it was a complete upgrade of the electrical system to allow us to go longer off the grid and use all our appliances without running the generator. This morning was the first real test. We ran the microwave, the toaster oven, the furnace, lights, fridge and a few other small things simultaneously without running the generator.  Well for a little bit until everything went dark. The inverter apparently bailed and disconnected the power for about 10 seconds. Thinking about it, I don't think it should have. The Microwave is 1500W, the toaster oven is 750W, the furnace is about 100W and the rest is a maybe 100W, so that adds to around 2500 watts. The inverter is rated for 3000, it should not have bailed, I am still pondering it.  I did learn that you need to turn off the setting in your battery monitor that sets the battery state to 100% upon reset so it doesn't think your batteries are fully charged every time you interrupt the power.  Anyway, we turned off the toaster while the microwave ran and all is good. I will say it is very nice to not have to fire up the generator. 

"Battening down the hatches" for 0845 departure.