Family Vacation Part 2
Part 2 of a 3 part series.
Yesterday I left off at the point where we had gotten to the camp site and gotten all of our things inside. While we were unpacking there was a loud BEEEEEP and then the electricity went off in the RV. HMMMM, my instincts told me this was not a natural occurance. 
I played with the lights but they didn't come back on. I turned on our lantern and about a minute later the lights came back on. I thought, "Well that was odd" and then left it at that. Then about 30 minutes later it happened again. This was gonna be a problem. Fortunately it was late and we were all ready to go to bed so we thought once we turned out the lights everything would be fine and we'd contact the park in the morning.
After we went to bed, we again heard the BEEEEEP, but it only lasted for a second or so and we had the lights out anyway so we figured no big deal. Then again 30 minutes later. And again 30 minutes later, but this time not just a BEEEEEP, but rather a sound similar to the smoke detector going off in the house, loud and continuous. This time we jumped up and stumbled into the kitchen as that seemed to be where the noise was coming from. By the way, it was now about 2:30am. Below the fridge was a propane gas detector and it seemed to be where the noise was coming from. But it wasn't the alarm, rather the "low power" indicator light was also on. It seems that something in the trailer was causing power issues and when the alarm wasn't getting enough juice it was screeching at us. Stacy looked at me wanting to know what we were going to do about this in the middle of the night. I scratched my head and got out my Gerber multitool, unscrewed the propane alarm, disconnected the wires and all was quiet. success!!! Well, it seemed that the power was only going out for about a minute at a time so the food in the fridge should be good and I wasn't overly concerned about the propane since we hadn't smelled any since we had been there so we called it a night and went back to sleep.
The next morning we went to the park office and paid for the rest of our nights there and told them about the beeping. They sent out Kenneth to take a look at it. Kenneth was a real nice guy and tried quite a few different things to resolve the problem. He replaced a breaker and for a long time that seemed like it solved the problem, but once the heater kicked on within a little bit, BEEEEEP and the power went off again. Kenneth ended up spending the entire day working in the trailer. We took advantage of the beautiful weather and walked to the play ground with Emily and played for about an hour. In the end it was determined that the power inverter was bad and had to be replaced. They had to go to a different town about 30 miles away to get the part. Kenneth did that, but wouldn't be back to install the inverter until the following morning. So again for that night we had the propane alarm disconnected.
The next morning we loaded into the truck and went to a bunch of old country stores. On our way out we stopped by the office to let them know that they could go into the trailer whenever they needed as we would be gone for the day. The stores were about what you expect with old country stores. There was a bar-b-que place that had good food and we ate there for lunch and then went back to the park. Kenneth had been and left and everything was fixed. YAY!!! For all of the trouble the park gave us one free night, so that was a nice little bonus.
Wednesday was a little rainy and dreary so we stayed inside. Stacy and Emily did lots of crafts, we played games and watched movies. So far the trip was going wonderfully. Our plan for Thursday was to take Emily on her first real hike. There were some trails and one specifically was only 2.5 miles so our plan was to take her on that one.
Next time, "Oh that is the new trail, it goes around the lake."