We took it easy this morning. There was an almost-solid layer of thin clouds. J made a big breakfast of Denver omelets and potatoes that was great! We each had some orange juice, and J had her Lucile's tea and I had my lavAzza coffee. We sat and talked for quite a while, mostly about the movie Birds of America that we watched last night. When I finished the dishes around 11:10, it was only 59°F (15°C) outside. For the past several days, it had been about 70°F (21°C) by that time of day.

I did some computer work, then started working on a blog entry. We left at 12:10 and ...

Walked to the entrance road and took the road back. J was really dragging on the way back. We saw some Gambel's quail near the big water tank, and I think they're the first ones we've seen since our neighbors with the dog arrived.

We returned to the RV at 12:57, and I had lunch while finishing a blog entry.

I went outside around 2:00 to hook up the solar charge controller so it will charge the chassis battery. Our Heliotrope HPV-30DR solar charge controller takes the power from our six solar-electric panels and charges our 12VDC house batteries. It can also charge the chassis battery, which is useful for installations where the RV is parked in storage for long periods of time. It's generally not required for full-time RVers because the chassis engine is run frequently enough to keep the chassis battery topped off. Well, if the operators forget to turn off the headlights when they stop for the night, or gremlins get into the system, then the chassis battery can run down. The chassis battery got run down after we arrived here at Elephant Butte Lake State Park, and we had to jump the RV when we went to dump the tanks on November 8, 2009. The battery may have run down because we had set a switch in a different position than it's usually in. We have a switch that lets the cab radio and dash lights be powered from either the house or chassis batteries. Recently, while boondocking and with the Jeep still attached to tow, I discovered that the house battery was getting charged, and surmised that the Jeep battery was being drained. When I flipped the switch so that the cab radio was powered by the house battery, the charging stopped. I was quite happy that I had discovered the reason why the Jeep battery kept getting drained when we towed for several days in a row. Unfortunately, I think having the switch in that position caused the RV chassis battery to be drained here at Elephant Butte.

Anyways, I had already run the wire to charge the chassis battery from the Heliotrope HPV-30DR solar charge controller down to the battery compartment, so all I needed to do was route the wire up to the engine compartment and the chassis battery. It was a fairly easy, but dirty, job. The existing corrugated wire conduit I borrowed to run the wire through was filled with dirt and grit that fell down onto me as I was installing the wire. While I had the battery compartment open, I also checked the wiring for the Link 10 battery monitor and tied up some wires differently. I went back in the RV around 3:30 and tested the solar charger. It was in fact connected to the chassis battery. :) Then I tested the Link 10. It was still showing 0A (no amps to or from the battery) even though I had turned on a 12VDC light to create a drain. Then I turned off the power converter (110VAC to 12VDC) to make sure that all 12VDC systems were operating off of the house batteries, and the Link 10 showed that there were amps draining from the house batteries — whew. I guess the power converter supplies instantaneous 12VDC on demand when we're plugged in, and the house batteries were completely topped off so it was no longer charging them.

J showered, then I showered. I started to do the final editing in Capture One (C1) of my images from Denali National Park when I camped at Wonder Lake.

We had dinner at 6:00 of a bake-your-own frozen supreme pizza that was tasty.

I finished the final editing in Capture One (C1) of my images from Denali National Park when I camped at Wonder Lake, then finished off the blueberry pie that J had baked recently — mmm. My mother called and we talked for a while. I did some computer work.