Happy New Year! We spent our weekend at the same site in Huckleberry Campground we had before (lucky!). This is a really beautiful campground. And site 63 is nicely set apart from others, making for a serene and peaceful outing. Well, to us anyway. We ran our brand new generator this weekend to try it out, but kept very much on top of the time so we wouldn’t exceed approved hours of operation (10-8). We knew there would be no solar in these woods and it was cold enough that we wanted to run things for sure.
While we ran the generator to recharge the battery in the evening, we got to play with our other new toy: the movie projector!! This is super fun. Besides the annoying crease lines in the shower curtain, the picture was pretty good. We watched “The Force Awakens” the first night and that is really the optimal way to view any “Star Wars” movie: in a tiny camper with curtains closed, sitting under the covers, while running the heater with wild abandon. We watched some episodes of “Red Dwarf” and “Westworld” the following nights and the supreme joy level remained the same.
Richard got to go out on a bike ride one of the days before succumbing to the virus that has been going around, and that claimed me a couple of weeks back. Sunday we ventured a little hike along an interpretive nature trail, but we kept it pretty low key. Monday was New Year’s and Richard was full blown sick at that point. Hopefully this will not be an indication of how the year will go.
Dinners this trip included one grilled, one Blue Apron, and one experimental Omnia no boil lasagna. That worked better than expected! It is probably very important to let it sit 30 min after assembly before cooking and we did that. Cook time was 3 min just base on high, 1 min with oven on base on high, 40 min on the lower side of Medium, rest 10.
The redwoods are very damp and cold (for us!) at this time of year and we had a lot of condensation this trip. I discovered that using a squeegee works pretty well on the windows and I’m assuming the water going into the frame is coming out at the outside corners because I did see drip lines in places outside that made logical sense to me. Beyond that, we needed to run the fan a lot and left her in the driveway for a while to air out before putting her in the garage.
We are overall very pleased with the generator, in a “why didn’t we do this before??” kind of way. It is not that huge or heavy, and can fit behind the passenger seat on the floor of the car. It’s audible for sure, but not terrible. Like, I walked from our site to the bathroom and couldn’t hear it (I might not be the best judge though). From inside Dory, we can hear it, but not when a movie is playing. It charged the battery quite quickly, bumping it from around 75% to almost full capacity in under three hours. This, while we were recharging other things at the same time, and running the projector for part of the time. Richard is working on a battery based system for the projector, but it sure was fun to play with, and since we were using the generator anyway…. 
Normally, we wouldn’t be able to use it without electric hookups. The generator almost works the same, except we wouldn’t be able to run heavy duty items like the air conditioner, for example. But we have some battery based options we can look at for weekend movie viewing that would be quieter. The best part of this is that we can look at long weekends in places that don’t have great solar and we won’t need to rough it. …. What?? Listen, we never claimed to be doing anything more than “camping” in the first place. We wake up to lattes in the woods and ice cubes for my protein shake. Now it turns out we need big screen entertainment.
Life is short. Happy New Year. 🙂
*Note to Future Self: Ok, I get it. There are TWO ways to take Highway 17 to 9 to 236 to get to Big Basin. Take the one that brings you to the Northern junction, but then continue, until you get to the Southern junction. Hopefully that will make sense to me in the future. Whatever you do, Future Self, don’t keep taking Bear Creek Road. It won’t get any easier the more times you try it. However, so many pieces of it seem to have fallen off, it may not even be an option much of the time.
Total miles: 88.4, 15.7 mpg, 2 hours 38 min. Site 63 Huckleberry. Very nice and private with space between sites. No cell service until about 3 miles out of the park. There is CA Parks Wifi at the Visitor Center and store. Nice bathrooms, water spigots a plenty, and a dump in the Huckleberry campground.
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