Well, we had a good sleep last night, but we found out that if you leave the furnace running on the lowest setting for the whole night, the battery doesn't last as long as the night does! So around 3am I got up and turned the furnace fan off so it didn't
completely drain the battery. These motorhome furnaces have a lot of safety switches and things built in...one is that if the fan speed runs too low because the battery is getting low, the burner just won't light. But there is nothing to stop the fan from running and further draining the battery. No problem...what we'll have to do next time is leave the furnace off when we go to bed...but turn it on when one of us gets up during the night. We are still learning the best ways to do these things. It went to about -5 outside last night, so it was our coldest night yet, but we slept fine. Makes me wonder why people keep their houses so warm overnight.
Drove south from Maple Creek to Cypress Hills Park today. It's a beautiful park, with lots of rolling hills and the first real forested areas we've seen since we left Ontario. Stopped at the visitors centre to get some trail maps and took off on our first hike that was about 3.3 kms long. Saw a little squirrel that posed for a picture, a few deer that jumped across our path....and a MOOSE! It's the closest we've ever been to a live moose out in the wild. We're walking along the trail, and I stopped to let Ruth walk in front...she thought I was stopping to point something out to her so she starts looking around and sees the moose, sort of sitting down about 10 metres away. Just staring at us. We put Whiskey on her leash (there was absolutely nobody else around the park) and took a few pictures while continuing on the trail, which happened to go half way in a circular path around where this moose was sitting. As we walked out of her view, she stood up so she could continue watching us. It was the neatest thing!
Loch Lomond at Cypress Hills Park
Squirrel posing
Deer
A moose
Went for another hike afterwards that was about 1.5 km's around a beaver pond...Whiskey was a tired puppy after that.
Thought we'd backtrack to the main highway past Maple Creek and on to the town of Walsh just past the Alberta border. We've found that it's easier to find good overnight spots in the smaller towns. But when we got to Walsh, we found there wasn't much of a town. It did have another "campground" but they wanted $15 or something and it was one of those ones we wouldn't have stayed at for free! So we drove on to Medicine Hat. Stopped at the tourist office here and found a baseball diamond parking lot close by that we've set up in for the night.
Tomorrow we'll do a grocery shop and some laundry while we're here...they have a "Great Canadian Superstore" here, and we've found they tend to have the best prices. Speaking of prices, gas had been around $1.02 all through Saskatchewan, but as soon as we crossed the border we saw it at 96.5 and now we've seen it at 95.5 here in town.
Total Nights Sleeping in the RV... 18...
October Fuel $ 984.45
October Grocery $ 211.85
October Overnight Costs $ 0
If you have the typical "Suburban" brand furnace, the gas valve seems to be sensitive to low battery voltage. Keeping the house battery terminals clean and shiny is a must.
ReplyDeleteThe house batteries were good and clean plus it's not a "Suburban" furnace but we do know now what we did that caused this problem so now we just have to remember to turn off the furnace first and then the generator.
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