The Announcer's Jinx

Sorry it's been a while between posts.  I've been making real progress in reducing the amount of possessions I have.  You know when you are watching a televised basketball game and there's a foul called and a player is at the free throw line getting ready to shoot a free throw and the television announcer says something like "This player has made the last 34 free throws he's shot in a row."  When announcers do that it's almost a lock that the player will throw up a brick that clanks off the front of the rim.  When that happens it's called "The Announcer's Jinx" and I've been hesitant to convey news on how things have been progressing on selling my house for fear of "The Jinx".

So I won't risk saying anything that might jinx things.  I'll let you know when things finalize.

Thanks for reading!

Campground Review: Texana Park & Campground

We had the opportunity to visit Texana Park last weekend so I thought a review might be a change of pace vs. the camper/house sale updates.

 

Located near Edna, TX about 2 hrs SW of Houston

Texana Park gets it's name from Lake Texana, on whose shores the park is situated.  Lake Texana was created by damming the Navidad River.  The park used to be a Texas state park but is now owned and operated by the Lavaca-Navidad River Authority.  Cost is $23.00 per night for a campsite with hookups.  There are 139 campsites so its a fairly good sized campground.  There is also a day use area with picnic tables, a boat ramp and a pier to fish off.  

There are 5 restroom/showers spaced among the campsites.

Over near the day use area is a small Nature Center that exhibits both live and mounted examples of the local animal population which includes a couple different types of venomous snakes, alligators, white tail deer, dozens of different bird species and even bobcats.

Free Admission!

We lucked out on the actual campsite we obtained.  It was a large waterfront site that had thick bushes and trees on both sides of it that made it completely secluded from the sites to each side.  This campsite was the largest we've encountered in our Texas camping and had a great view of the water.

View from the water's edge.

 

View from the camp chair

With all the water around we assumed there would be canoe or kayak rentals but when the two nice ladies at the park office were queried they said that there are plans to have rentals NEXT year....somebody is missing a business opportunity!  If you want to canoe or kayak this year on Lake Texana you'll need to bring your own.

We didn't see any alligators but there are warning signs posted that educate you on what to do if you do:

 "Yield right of way to alligators."  No problem!

We had wonderful partly sunny low-80's weather but that changed big-time after midnight Saturday night when a powerful thunderstorm camped over us for about 6 hours with winds in the 30 to 40 mph range.  Then Sunday morning the weather completely cleared and it was a cloudless mid-70's day....perfect!

Texana park has about 10 miles of hiking/biking trails to explore and abundant wildlife can be observed along the trail.  We had two whitetail deer walk through our campsite to get their morning drink from the lake Sunday.

Conclusion:  We really enjoyed our weekend at Texana Park.  We thought we got the very best campsite out of the 139 but there are probably a lot of other really nice ones too.  We gave the park a 4 out of 5, deducting a  half point for no watercraft rental and a half point for being about $5 to $7 more than most Texas State parks. 

 If you go request campsite 88, you won't be disappointed!

Thanks for reading!

More Power!

The second 100 watt solar panel came in along with the mounting hardware and wire so I decided to take advantage of the beautiful spring weather here  in Texas and install it.  After attaching the "Z" mounting legs on the ground I lugged the panel up the ladder and maneuvered it into place on the left of the vent as discussed in a previous post.

                            The other wire is a Sirius XM radio antenna....wish I had one!

After screwing the legs into the plywood roof  through the 3M mounting tape that I had put on the bottom of each Z leg I coated each leg with a big helping of Dicor Sealant to insure no water penetrates into the wood of the roof when it rains.  I highly recommend Dicor, after you apply it it "self levels" and makes a very nice seal.  I want to connect the two panels in parallel so that  the voltage of the system remains the same (18 volts) but doubling the current flowing to the battery (about 5 amps with one panel, hopefully 10 with two).  To do this I have to splice the new panel's positive and negative wires with the positive and negative wires of the installed panel.  This splice would be exposed to the elements if not protected so I have it all taking place in this junction box that is attached to the roof behind the refrigerator vent.

                                       Positive to positive - negative to negative

After checking that the power controller by the battery was indeed getting power from both panels I sealed up the junction box and squeezed Dicor around the wires where they enter the box to seal it to the environment.  In it's location the box is shielded from airflow while driving and also doesn't create any additional "drag" (as if this rig needs any more!).

                                                  Have gun, will travel!

So I took my multimeter tool to the solar controller and connected it to the positive wire coming from the now parallel solar panels and switched the multimeter to measure DC amps going into the controller.  Surprisingly, even though it's a cloudless day here the display jumped around quite a bit from 6 amps all the way to 9.8 (which was the high reading).  I guess if I would have taken this measurement when just the one panel was connected it would have showed 3 amps all the way up to 4.9 so I'm grateful for the doubling in current even though it's not the predicted 11 amps if 100% efficiency could be obtained.  Oh well, I guess More Power! is better than whatever you used to have!

                  Wish I had a buck for every time I climbed up and down the ladder today!

Thanks for reading!