A Likely Place For Evacuations and Battery Issues

August 31- September 1

Skip this post if my rambling explanations aren’t your thing. 😉

THE BATTERY

In the last post I skipped over some of our trouble from the morning we woke up at Crater Lake National Park. We did not have hookups at this campground, so we were running off just our battery (a motorhome has two batteries, one is the chassis battery, that’s like you have in a car, the other is the house battery and it runs the lights, and other electrical stuff in the “house” part of the motorhome when it isn’t plugged into shore power). I’m talking about the house battery here. You may remember we replaced our house battery a while back earlier in our trip when we had issues and found out it was bad.

During the one night at Crater Lake we turned on a few lights for short periods, and put out the slide for our bed, but otherwise we don’t feel like we used much battery. When we got up in the morning, bright and early, and checked the battery level (we have a button to push to show approximately how much charge the house battery has, just by thirds, so not super exact)… it was on E. Ugh. Why would it be empty? It’s supposed to charge while we drive and we didn’t use much once we were parked.

We tried a light and it worked, so we knew it wasn’t completely empty… that gage only tells us to the closest third, so it must be closer to Empty than to 1/3 full (hence the E lighting up at this point), but not quite all the way empty. Our biggest immediate concern is getting our slide back in, because we cannot go anywhere with that out. So, we quickly prepare the bed and try to pull it in…

but there isn’t enough battery power. IT WILL NOT COME IN. UGH. Now what??

Well, you may remember from our last post that we were planning to go drive around Crater Lake and sight see without smoke (hopefully!), so we were up super early. This gives us hours until we have to check out. So, we decide to plug in our solar panel and see if it can charge the battery enough while we drive around the lake.

Have I mentioned the solar panel yet? We got it from Costco (a friend with a membership was kind enough to order it online and receive it for us) and have been planning to use it later in the trip when we are in more sunshine and want to “boondock” a bit. So, we haven’t even tried it yet. Well, here is our chance I guess.

So, Mike hooked up the solar panel to the battery and we placed it where there was the only sunshine we had coming through some trees… we’re in Oregon and, shockingly, sunshine isn’t always present and the campground had lots of tall trees also. We hoped for the best and went on our drive around Crater Lake.

We were gone just over two hours… came back… pushed the Slide Retract button.. and IT WORKED!! The battery still showed as on E, but there apparently was enough of a charge now to bring the slide in.

So, the panel didn’t work miracles with the only partly sunny place we were, but it worked enough that we could now be on our way.

PHEW. We’re not happy about the battery mystery (why was it almost empty??), but we’re happy we can at least drive still. Here are a couple pictures from the drive that day…

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We decided to hit the road and find somewhere along the way to get our battery checked. At this point the only thing we can think of is that the battery was switched into “store mode” (previously I talked about this, but basically we have a switch that’s too easy to push, that turns the battery off… it’s what you want to do when you store the RV so that the battery doesn’t drain).

We were thinking maybe it had been in store mode when we drove to Crater Lake and therefore didn’t charge on our way there like it would/should have (the house battery is supposed to charge while the motorhome is running). We still don’t know why it was all the way drained (what used all that battery power?!), but we do think maybe that’s why it was not charged after the drive. Who knows. And so we were hoping it was now charging as we drive since we’ve made sure it was not in store mode now.

So, we were driving towards Reno with no idea where we were going to stay that night (this was one of the few unplanned nights we had on the books), needing a place to stop and get the battery looked at. We ended up in Alturas, CA at a Napa Auto Parts.

Unfortunately, when we stopped and checked the battery level after driving quite a while, we discovered that the battery was still not charging while we drive… now we’re wondering if there is something wrong with the battery. UGH.

An employee at Napa tested our battery and of course found it to be almost empty, so they plugged it in for a free charge. They think the battery is fine, just dead. And they’re closing in less than an hour at this point and need to leave it plugged in overnight to charge… it’s a “deep cell” battery and they take a long time to charge… apparently. I guess now we know where we are staying tonight.

We found a somewhat nearby place with electric hookups. We HAVE to be able to plug in without a battery on board. We stayed at Likely Place Golf and RV Resort… on Likely Place, in Likely, CA.

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When we picked up our battery the next morning, it was all charged up and they said it was fine. Also, they did the battery check and charge for free.. thanks Napa!

We still didn’t know why it had drained, but went on with the trip. I guess we’ll just have to see if we have any more issues… And at some point we need to figure out why it’s not charging as we drive.

Next stop Reno/Sparks, NV!

WILDFIRE EVACUATIONS

The next day’s drive was a little more interesting than we’d like… We got the house battery put back in and hit the road.

We were headed to the Reno area this day, and wildfires were actively burning northwest and southwest of Reno. Here is a map showing the wildfire northwest of Reno. The blue dot is around where we started that day, and the green dot is where we were headed. The road from Susanville to Reno area was where we got closest to the fires, and an area we may not have been able to drive had we been running half an hour later.

It was a really smoky drive that day. We got an evacuation warning alert on our phone while eating breakfast in Susanville. It wasn’t for right where we were, so there were no immediate worries; also, it’s an evacuation warning, so not yet an actual evacuation. It was pretty crazy though, when everyone in the restaurant’s phones started making loud noises at the same time when the alert came through. I guess I’ve never been around a bunch of other phones when I’ve gotten alerts in the past.

On with our drive, it got smokier and smokier. Here was the view through Milford when we couldn’t see super far in front of us anymore… honestly, it was even worse than it looks here.

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About 30 minutes after I took those smoky pix in Milford area, we got another phone alert. This time it was for an immediate evacuation. Thankfully, we were past it and heading out of the area by the time it came.

The rest of the drive was about 65 miles and was uneventful, thankfully. Time to spend a few days in Nevada!

We’d like to acknowledge that any minor inconvenience or scare we got due to the fires is nothing compared to the experiences of folks who live in these areas. The west has been getting terrible fires year after year. Many have lost homes, some have lost loved ones, many have been evacuated and had to wonder about their homes for days with no news on whether it was standing, and many have been affected by terrible air quality in the area they live.

In the past three fire seasons, my parents and grandmother in Santa Rosa, CA have had to evacuate their homes multiple times. In 2020 the fire got so close to my dad and stepmom’s that a house just a couple blocks away was burned down. My parents in Lebanon, OR were on an evacuation warning and had unhealthy air quality for over a week that same year. We are not making light of any of that, by any means, just telling about our small experience of driving through Oregon, California, and Nevada during wildfire season.