September 15, 2021
Took a few days off this last week to do stuff and scout around the outskirts of Portland. The first thing we did was go to a Boondockers Welcome about 10 min from Wilsonville. It was a nice place although we had a little scraping getting in and out of the drive. Certainly need a smaller rig or something to go back. The host there was a wonderfully friendly guy. Like many of the gardeners in this area, we got some produce from his garden both when we arrived and some when we left.
We did have issues with our battery bank while we were there. I think all of batteries went bad and the Autozone tested all three batteries. Two tested bad and the third they couldn't test because of a low charge and was assumed bad. Luckily at least one of them was under warranty, so we got that one for free and purchased a second one. So we are down to two batteries right now. Since we had two 65 amp-hour batteries and one 85 amp-hour battery, and you only get 50% of that marine batteries it was only 107.5 amp-hour effective. The new bank is two 85 amp-hours which gives us 85 amp-hours effective, so we only lost about 22 amp-hours. We shall see if that's Okay or we need more. I think we will get a third battery at some point, but hard to say when.
We also had some wiring issues with the charge controller when I switched out the batteries, hopefully, I have that sorted.
We arrived at out new Boondockers Welcome host on the September 13, 2021. This place is crazy. Full hook-ups including a dump. It is some sort of farm or ranch or something. There are chickens, llamas, peacocks, and we saw at least two rabbits. They have a huge enclosed backyard area that the dogs can run around in and a huge outdoor cooking area / eating area with an outside toilet. I have to say this is now the nicest places we have stayed at.
Well we are only here until Saturday and then right now who knows where we are going. We need to plan that this week.