Sunday. A perfect day to take a break from the pace we’ve been keeping for the last week. We drove zero miles today. We didn’t even start the engine. Instead we used the day to catch up on a few things, to check out this area, and to participate in the worship service of our church.
Although it’s a whole lot better to participate in person at church, streaming the service makes for a decent Plan B for road warriors that are away for weeks at a time. We at least can keep up with the teachings. So we listened in from our location here at Buzzard’s Roost.
This campground is on a bluff above the Ohio River. Unfortunately, the thick tree cover does not allow any vistas except for a small platform where the trees had been cut away. From here you could see a section of the river and a bunch of tilled land on the Kentucky side. It was really quite beautiful.
I dug my drone out of the basement and launched it a couple of times for a bird’s-eye view. On one side of the river--the Hoosier National Forest with glimpses of the campground (and our RV) in the lower half of the picture. On the other side, Kentucky farms.
Today was a welcome break from the heat of the last week. We were able to sit outside for a while, enjoying the breezes while working on Bible study materials. A couple of times, we could hear the rumble of engines come slowly by. I launched the drone again and chased a barge down the Ohio river for a while. This barge was full of coal. I was tempted to fly close to the bridge and take a picture of the captain of the boat, but I thought the better of that.
Leaves are falling here, not the pretty reds and oranges one would expect from these trees, but more of a yellow and brown, probably started early by the heat and the draught. So we may not see much color this year.
We took a couple of short hikes today, in between the downpours. The next few days are looking very rainy so we may be exploring and hiking in the rain. We’ll camp here overnight then head west early tomorrow. This is a very nice location, very quiet and isolated. And the price was right.
RV life always has its challenges. Over the last couple of trips, we have noticed that the refrigerator has started randomly turning itself off. And we don’t notice until several hours later when the fridge is getting warm and the ice cream is soupy. No warning, just lights-out. I could not figure out a pattern so I eventually replaced the control board. Camping World still had a couple boards for a 17-year-old fridge in stock so I drove down there one day before we embarked on our circle tour of Lake Superior and picked one up. Set me back $200, but it appeared to work fine for that entire trip until the last day when we arrived home and I found the fridge turned off and the freezer starting to thaw. Next trip, same thing. Fridge was off upon return.
This presented a challenge and I accepted that challenge: build something to detect when the fridge was turned off and automagically turn it back on again. I spent a pleasant several hours reverse-engineering the fridge control board, designing a microcontroller circuit to watch for this condition, and then writing some software code to make it happen.
This was a chance to use some of those engineering skills that I haven’t used much in retirement, and I had some fun with this project, in a nerdy sort of way. The board in the upper right of the picture is the new watchdog circuit, waiting patiently for the fridge to turn off.
The red light on the board blinks out the status, and I have checked it several times over this trip to see if anything happened. Up until now, everything has worked like a champ. But when I checked just now, the light was blinking differently, telling me that the fridge shut itself off twice between now and the last time I checked a couple days ago.
So it worked. The circuit kicked the fridge back into action and we were none the wiser. I love it when a plan comes together.
I also love my ice cream cold and firm.
No comments:
Post a Comment