Camp

Getting to elk camp was a challenge this year. The morning of my planned departure, the first assistant concrete guy showed up saying the cement truck would be here in two hours - how do I want the forms. This is how they followed through on their assurance that we would be sure to go over and be satisfied with the layout before the cement is poured. In the back of my mind I kept saying this is how things got screwed up the first time. We made a stand and said we would rebid the job ($2,000 had be held back pending satisfactory completion). Soon the owner showed up to schmooze us over. I kept my cool and with lots of micro-managing the result looked very satisfactory.

That behind me, I hit the road at 4 pm. The camp called me on the cellphone and complained there were no eating utensils and they were starving (except for the nourishment one gets from alcohol). I arrived at sunset and all was copacetic. However, as time went on, I became aware of things I forgot in the rush - meds, power cord converter, underwear (note the hanging laundry on the right in the picture), rice and broccoli dish. The weather was good for a picnic but not for tracking elk which we never saw. I thought I lost the camera but found it in my vest when I got back home. Dix was mad that I forgot to serve up the strawberry muffins she had painstakingly made for us.

The solar cell performed well the first day, replenishing the 40 or so amp-hours consumed overnight. The next day I lost ground with a bad connection and had to make it up during the night by plugging into the truck. The next day was cloudy. We did some testing with my voltmeter (before blowing the fuse) and found the output from the solar cell decreased from 5 amps to 0.3 amps with cloud cover. It would take ten days to recover the energy needed to run the furnace blower enough to keep the judge from freezing overnight. And the tent dwellers would not let him return to sleep in the warm tent since he had slighted them when he moved into my upscale camper. There's always melodrama in camp.