Saved by all star liquors

We made it through our first week back in the van, albeit having to stay at a state park for the electricity – as there would be no solar to speak of all week. Things weren’t too bad with the campground pretty much all our own, practically hourly Moose walks, and free hot showers just a few yards away. I would spend the week getting a few odd jobs done on the van, but leaving the larger re-organizing of all our stuff until Kerri completed a side-quest; purchasing liquor. No need to organize if that large of an influx was coming on the weekend, right?

Even though we had electricity, we were running our house battery down.  See, one of the items we forgot last week was the 120 volt battery charger, which is now hard wired into the boat. So, even with an electrical outlet right there, our battery was not getting a charge from it, or the sun. We were relying on the engine to recharge the Lithium as we drove.

That Friday night we drove a few hours south on Highway 101. The drive would help break up a long day of driving on Saturday as well as charging up our house battery a bit… or so we thought. It was here that we found that the engine was only charging the battery at 1-2 amps, which would literally take eight straight days to do the job. We spent the night on the side of the road (regaining some van-mojo), in the wind and rain. Sure, the spot we chose had one of those signs with a red line through a tent, but Kerri justified it with a well known van-guy saying, “We aren’t camping. We are just overnight parking”. It can be used in reverse if the sign says no-overnight-parking too; “We aren’t overnight parking, we are camping”. It’s a genius get-out-of-jail-free card that the cops simple can not argue, so they left us alone that night. Saturday morning we woke with only 25% charge remaining on the battery – going below 20% is a bad thing.

By 10 AM we were arriving at the California border (nope, no fruit in this van), and the eighth wonder of the world; All Star Liquors. Kerri didn’t even wait for the van to come to a stop before jumping out the door. I figured I had a couple hours to kill so got to walking Moose around for a few minutes, then into trouble shooting our charging issues. I was hard at the job when the side door of the van jerked open. Kerri was already back, with a box of booze so large it came with it’s own full sized man to deliver it. “Just shove that in the back, I’m working on this” I said, hiding my surprise at how quickly she accomplished that whole thing. A few minutes later I found the problem – the wire was now frayed and grounding out – and put a band-aid on it for now. It’s the vanlife way. I will replace the entire wire in a few days when I have the time, and the wire. At least now we were getting some charge to the battery while driving, saving us from certain calamity. In my memory, as I write this, I’m pretty sure that Kerri cheered out loud and chanted my name in celebration for the fix… yea… I’m pretty sure.