How showksiers "put up" the solar panels :p The panels can angle either way (when we are stationary) to get the most sun. This is especially helpful to make the most of the low winter sun and the short daylight hours. Now that we've been on the road a few weeks we know we can rely on the panels for enough power for the lights, charging phones, computers, speakers & cameras, running the water pump, and the toaster :)
We don't have enough to run our small 1500Watts heater. But the independence the panels afford us is amazing! Our happy lil hippy camper ❤️
Sunrise Time-Lapse (35 sec)
November sunrise on Assateague Island, Maryland... It was nearly 7am, and very windy. But beautiful and worth rising for! The National Park on Assateague has beautiful oceanside and bayside campsites. We stayed oceanside, so we could have a true mid-atlantic East Coast sunrise. Loving being here in the off-season and just having the whole place to ourselves! Hashtag private island.
**Disclaimer - we had a pretty eventful 2nd day on the road that we will share as well. But let's wind it back to Day 1, written before things got too crazy......
Bonjour!! Comment ça va? In our second post, we are stoked to introduce you to our RHONDA! But first…. Where we are blogging from :)
Sunrise from our 'bedroom' window
Ouff. Parked and level in deep in French-land, Québec! On our first night in Rhonda. Its COLD! We are staying at Claude’s property, at cool little Organic farm in Nicolet that we found on “Boondocker's Welcome”, a cool website that provides a network of people who are looking for a place to “Boondock”,(dry camping, basically, staying anywhere, not a regulated campsite) with people who have land or space for campers or RV’s, and want to meet new people and help others out who are traveling. Claude is really nice, has a great spot here. We have met a few of his kittens. He’s doesn't speak much English, so Steph (my Bi-Lingual Beauty) is doing much of the talking. Gonna hang here for the night, then on to New Brunswick tomorrow for Moncton.
So Rhonda… we made a little video today kinda giving a once-over of the old-bird. She's a beauty. Loves it. She's an 84 model and we got her in pretty good condition. She's dry, which is great as I have excelled at drilling holes in her, from the roof, to the walls and floor. Done quite a bit of work to her: We have installed solar panels (video to come), 2 100Watt panels connected to a 12 volt 3 battery bank, to power the DC system and also a 2000watt inverter for our AC stuff. i.e. computer/iphone/camera chargers, toaster etc. Also had to re-caulk all our windows and doors. New freshwater tank connectors with lock. Plumbing, uff, what a nightmare, we waited for about 4 days for a simple T connector from an RV shop, so we could connect the hot water tank, only to get it from another shop and find out after it was all connected that we had a hole in the hot water heater. What a fuckaround. Had to rip out the whole tank and propane system for it. Lost a bit of weight which was nice but no hot water, which is gonna suck on these cold days in New England and Canada. Oh well… gonna have to tough it out, puts hair on your chest right? Propane fridge seems to be woking fine, fingers crossed. Furnace works, again fingers crossed (as I am writing all this, the furnace went out, cute). We have a Carbon Monoxide/Smoke Detector combo, which will be comforting when going to bed with this 30something year old furnace kicking-in throughout the night.
Fashion is cyclical right? We have done away with the 90’s cushion covers and brought back the OG, 80’s, plaid, rust-orange & brown covers. Lots of scrubbing and washing. Steph made a few new curtains with some thrift store fabric, using a sewing machine older than us all. SO Yea all in all its came together, with our long wait from the Visa people.
So tonight is gonna be a real test to see how long the DC system works for, throughout the night. The furnace can’t draw that much power from it, to run the little fan, but we will see…. nothing like a little body heat to keep us warm, right!?
Ok well we dont have any WiFi tonight so not sure when this will go up, hopefully soon! Thanks for tuning in and hope we can get some of these vids edited and posted as well!!
