Early Season Trip Gives a Chance to Try a Few New Upgrades & See Big Bend, Guadalupe Mountains, Carlsbad Caverns & White Sands National Parks
It takes a long time for Minnesota to thaw out even when temperatures get into the 70s. We’ll be heading south and as long as no government shutdown interferes we’ll be visiting four national parks in the next couple of weeks. Since it’s the first trip of the year it’ll give us a chance to try out a couple of upgrades we made over the winter including a new tabletop, better storage for our glassware, a new portable solar panel and a pair of additional lithium batteries.
New Maple Folding Tabletop
The old tabletop was a couple of inches wider than we would’ve liked, so over the winter I built a new maple one. It’s 22 inches wide when folded out and 11 when folded. The old one was 27 inches wide. Should be a bit easier to get in and out of the chairs.
Foam Glass Storage
We’ve been trying to find a good method to keep our glassware from moving around when we travel and I think we may have come upon a winner, a custom made block of 2″ foam.with holes just smaller than the glass diameters. Seems to hold the glasses nicely. We’ll see after we drive a few hundred miles.
Extra Batteries for Longer Stays
We got a deal on 50 amp hour LiFePO4 batteries so we added a pair to expand our capacity to 300 amp hours.
Portable Solar Panel
Lastly, we got a portable folding solar panel to supplement the three rooftop panels. We should be able to get a little more efficient because the portable panel can be positioned at the optimal angle and we can move the panel to the sunniest spot on campsites.
That’s all of the upgrades for this winter season. Stay tuned for how well they worked.
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