Archives for August 2016

Aug 31 2016

Where have all the megabytes gone?

Modern tech is great. Cellular networks and the Internet are like oxygen to us frequent travelers, especially people like me who work from the road. I couldn’t do what I do without those two technologies in my Airstream.

The really amazing part of this is how quickly the capabilities of mobile tech improve. In 2003 we had no mobile Internet at all. You had to find public wifi or haul a satellite dish around. In 2005 we got one of the first cellular Internet data boxes on the market, as a loaner for evaluation. It cost $3,000 and was the size of a dictionary. When I went to rallies everyone wanted to borrow the signal.

Just a decade later we have devices the size of a pack of gum that give us Internet at speeds literally thousands of times faster. We talk to our phones and think it’s no big deal that an artificial intelligence answers with a cogent response. And every serious Airstream traveler I meet has some form of this tech, so nobody thinks it’s worth borrowing anymore.

But there’s a big hairy downside to this, which is increased complexity. If you don’t understand the implications of the new tech as it arrives—and some technological update arrives almost every day—you’re going to eventually get caught at the losing end of something you never saw coming.

I’m pretty tech savvy and it still happens to me regularly. Apple, Microsoft, Verizon, and a million other players are constantly coming up with new stuff to make my life better, and most of the time it does, but at the same time it’s like someone changed the dance floor to an ice rink in mid-step.

Well, I can handle tech stuff, given some time. The human element is trickier. I’ll give you an example.

When we got on the road last May I noticed an amazing spike in the amount of data we were using. We have a Verizon Jetpack like many other people, and I had bumped up the data allowance to 24 gigabytes (gb) per month, which is a lot. The previous year we had gotten by on 6-8 gb per month, so I was feeling pretty smug about how we’d never have to worry about data usage again.

Strangely, before we even got to Alumapalooza in Ohio, half of our data allowance was gone. The rest disappeared by the end of the billing cycle. I queried my fellow travelers but they denied responsibility. I re-iterated the importance of not watching YouTube or other videos, and avoiding sites where video ads automatically load.

I pointed the finger particularly hard at Emma, since she’s a known bandwidth hog. Many teenagers these days use the Internet as a hangout, constantly interacting on social media, chat rooms, forums, even shared Google Docs—and Emma in particular is famous for having twenty to thirty tabs open simultaneously on her browser. Her defense has always been that she avoids videos and doesn’t leave web pages open that might automatically refresh themselves (or have ads that refresh).

So I dug into the tech problem. First, I made sure nobody else was using our wifi. I’ve used the name “Airstream Life” for the wifi ID for years and it was possible a few other people had devices that would log onto our wifi automatically when they were nearby.

I also looked at usage logs, changed the password, checked all the laptops for applications that would automatically update themselves, and turned off or limited cloud services that automatically sync data (like iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.)

What I found is a deck stacked against RVers who use cellular hotspots like Verizon Jetpack/Mifi devices. There are many ways your laptop can be using data when you don’t know about it. Some applications will automatically send data reports, synchronize files, or update themselves unless specifically told not to. The problem here is that you’ve got to find them all. There is no single setting that takes care of this, so the job requires a methodical approach, checking each application and service individually.

The other problem is that Apple has set up mobile operating system to update certain things when the phone or tablet is connected to wifi. This means when your iPhone or iPad is sharing your hotspot, they think they have unlimited data and they begin to use it as such. So it’s a good idea to tell your iDevices to “forget” your hotspot.

I did all that and it didn’t help.

Last Friday Verizon notified me that 18 gb of our data plan had been eaten up by the Mifi in just two weeks. At that rate I would run out of data in a week or so, and be unable to work, so this was serious. I started digging through the computers, iPad and iPhones again in a frantic search for a clue as to where the data was going.

On Monday, Verizon informed me that another 4 gb had disappeared over the weekend. I started physically turning off the Mifi whenever I wasn’t using it, but now the crisis I had feared was upon me. I spent most of Monday at Panera Bread, nursing a chai tea latte and using their free wifi.

Then I found a useful app which helped me identify the problem. It’s called Bandwidth+ and it’s free to Mac users on the App Store for free. I highly recommend it.

It just sits in the top toolbar and shows you how much data you’ve used since reset.

I put Bandwidth+ on all the laptops this morning, and checked a few hours later. In four hours … (wait a second. Let me put that into Daddy-speak) … in four hours of working my fingers to the bone trying to provide a living for my family and put food on the table and save for a college education for my beloved daughter, I used a grand total of 100 mb. That’s not a lot.

Emma woke up at the crack of 10:30 a.m., promptly got on her laptop to check in on her virtual world, and in one hour she used 145 mb. In other words, she was consuming data at a rate almost six times as fast as her under-appreciated, hard-working Dad.

I also looked through the data usage logs with Verizon tech support and together we found several evenings between 9 pm and midnight when our usage exceeded two gigabytes. (A gigabyte is 1,000 megabytes.) That’s like eating the entire buffet table at a Las Vegas casino. You could stream a feature-length movie with two gigabytes. Funny thing, though: those nights I wasn’t working late.

So the problem seems to be identified: TEENAGER.

At this point there was only way to deal with the problem. I bought another 6 gb from Verizon to get through the rest of the billing period and changed the wifi password. If you are parked to an Airstream on the west coast sometime this month and you see a wifi signal called “Sorry Emma”, well, you’ll know why.

Modern day problems. They’re different, but in the end, they’re the same.

Aug 25 2016

Chillin’ in Chelan

You know, America is a big country full of amazing things. Just when I think I’ve seen it all, we go around a corner and there’s something that adds a new dimension. This week it was North Cascades National Park in north-central Washington state.

While we were absorbing the sad fact that our Montana trip was going to be considerably abbreviated (mostly due to crowding around the Glacier area) I noticed North Cascades National Park in our road atlas. It’s not one of the “big name” western parks and I never hear anyone talk about it, so I assumed at first it was one of those obscure units of the National Park Service that’s comprised of a lot of forest and few visitor-friendly amenities.

But it was a “National Park”, meaning that it took an act of Congress to gain its status, and that is a rare thing indeed. Of over 400 units of the National Park Service, only 58 are designated “National Park”. The rest are National Monuments, Historical Sites, Lakeshores, Battlefields, Recreation Areas, etc. Even some western major sites like Devils Tower, Dinosaur, Organ Pipe Cactus, and Natural Bridges are designated National Monuments, not Parks. So there had to be something more there than I had suspected.

The atlas showed a long, narrow lake winding its way into North Cascades, called Lake Chelan (pronounced “shell-ANN”) and a ferry service the entire length called “Lady Of The Lake”. This ferry is one of three ways to reach the town of Stehekin (“stuh-HEE-kin”) at the extreme northern end of the lake. The other ways are on foot through the mountains, and seaplane. This seemed like something worth checking out, so we decided to cut down to I-90 in Montana and zip straight to Washington so we’d have a few days to spend up in the Cascades.

I should mention that the drive over was uneventful by my standards, but then I sometimes forget that I’m used to dealing with a lot of hairy situations while towing. If nothing blows up or fails spectacularly during a tow, I generally write it off as “uneventful.” But Eleanor does some of the driving now, and she caught what I call “a learning opportunity” in the last few miles of our trip.

We were navigating mostly by GPS during this leg and so didn’t notice that there was a 12% downgrade to Chelan Falls. This by itself would be intimidating enough for a towing-trainee but it was compounded by a strong wind and blowing dust. When Eleanor spotted this sign she knew she was in for some excitement.

Going down is always harder than going up, at least psychologically. The sensation of a trailer pushing causes many people to ride the brakes down the hill, which is of course a mistake because on a long grade you’ll have overheated brakes or perhaps no brakes at all.

So I took the opportunity to teach Eleanor the right way to get down a steep hill without melting the brake discs. She got a little sweaty but she managed and it was—I hope—a confidence-building experience.

In any case, a nice public park awaited us at the bottom of the hill, at Beebe Bridge Park, along a river. While setting up we found two empty metal cannabis tubes abandoned next to our site. Hadn’t seen that before. (It’s legal here.) I don’t care if people want to smoke the stuff, but sheesh, at least throw away your trash!

We set the Airstream up a few miles away from the ferry dock and caught the Lady Express at 8:30 am the next morning. The Lady Express is the “quick” boat, an all-aluminum ferry with twin turbodiesel engines and forty-inch propellers that push it up the lake at 24 MPH. It’s a fun ride on a sunny day.

The Lady of the Lake is on the left in the photo above. It is larger and slower (about 14 MPH), taking 4 hours to travel the length of Lake Chelan. The Lady Express is at right. Because of the way the schedules work, the ideal play for daytrippers (in the summer) is to take the Lady Express north in the morning to arrive at Stehekin by 11:00, then pick up the Lady Of The Lake at 2:00 for the return trip. That gives you the maximum time in Stehekin.

The ferry attracts jetskiiers along the southern portion of the lake, where the vacationer are clustered. This part of the lake relatively calm (especially compared to the “narrows” section further north) so sometimes the only waves the jetskiiers can find to play on are those created by the ferry boats. It’s a lot like watching dolphins bow-riding waves in front of ships.

The area around Chelan reminded us of Lake Como in Italy, a little. Add in a few old stone estates, olive trees, and walking trails up into the hills and it would be a lot closer.

Of course, in Italy you probably wouldn’t find an Airstream parked on the hillside …

Stehekin is an unusual outpost. One person described arriving as being “like summer camp.” The moment you land there are people waiting to greet you, direct you to the Rainbow Falls tour or the NPS Visitor Center or the Lodge, and dusty red buses to haul you around. There are only a few things to do there, and since the local economy is entirely built on tourism, they want to make sure you have a chance to enjoy everything.

It’s a bit funny when you see all the cars parked in Stehekin and reconcile that with the facts: there are only 80 year-round residents, there is only one road, and it’s just 13 miles long. Of course, the population is quite a bit bigger in summer with tourists in town, including dozens of hikers.

Three hours in a tiny village might seem like a long time but it flew by for us. We checked out Rainbow Falls, ate lunch at the famous local bakery, walked two miles back to town, and then hit the Visitor Center. There’s so much to see, photograph, taste … and no distractions. Zero cell service, a feature I’m coming to appreciate because it is so rare. Most of the time I need to be connected, but when I am taking a day off it’s nice to see the phone enforce it with a “No Service” indicator.

There are other ways to get here. Next time I want to hike in, taking a couple of days to explore some of the Cascades trails. You can use the Lady Of The Lake to help with that, either getting dropped off or picked up at a few “flag stops” along the lakeshore. In places where there is no dock the steel-hulled boat just runs aground lightly, then extends a gangplank to pick up hikers.

We picked up a hiker at one such flag stop on the way back. He confessed to having missed the boat the night before (thinking it was a smaller boat and not the ferry), so he had to tent-camp an additional night. That sounded a lot like a fortuitous moment to me. It was a beautiful place to spend a night all alone. Lucky bastard.

Seven hours of cruising on the lake and three hours roaming Stehekin was just about the best use of a sunny day in the summer I could think of. I highly recommend the trip.

Our next stop was further north in the Cascades, but I’ll talk about that in a future post.

Aug 22 2016

Wandering in Montana

After a few days of boondocking it’s nice to hit a full hookup campground for a night just to get everything back in ship-shape. The Airstream is inevitably full of dirt and gravel tracked in from the campsite, we are perhaps a bit less fresh than we’d like to be (due to careful conservation of water), all the little electronic devices we carry need charging up, the laundry basket is full, it’s time to get some groceries, and maybe dump the tanks if there wasn’t a place to do it before.

The definition of many Airstreamers is “someone who spends $75,000 on a trailer and then looks for free campsites,” and there’s a bit of truth in that. But there’s a good reason. I personally hate paying the rates commercial campgrounds charge when what we get in return is a lengthy set of rules, a tedious check-in process, an un-level campsite with dodgy electric, street noise, and neighbors so close we can hear them chewing. We look for the state park and federal sites not because they’re cheaper (or free) but because they are so much less annoying.

But sometimes you need the full hookups. In this part of eastern Montana there aren’t a lot of choices in campgrounds. A few nice-sounding Federal and State campgrounds didn’t have the services we needed and were too far off in the boonies for our needs, so we just grabbed the first commercial campground we could along Route 2, “the Hi-Line” road—and resolved to accept whatever fate handed us.

As it turned out we got pretty lucky and found a residential park that had a few transient spaces available, for $25 a night. The site was a lumpy bit of dirt but it was quiet, the utilities worked and the friendly manager even tipped Eleanor off to the best washing machine in the laundry room. The town was too small to have a decent grocery store but we’d find groceries further west in Havre later.

Last spring when I was planning this trip I wanted to travel the Hi-Line across Montana to see what the small towns and native reservations looked like, and because it was an appealing alternative to I-94. There really isn’t much to grab the tourist’s attention along this route except for a dinosaur museum in Malta, the Fort Peck area around the reservoir, and a few other small curiosities such as a buffalo jump and some roadside art. The road is reputed to be the most dangerous in Montana, due to a 70 MPH speed limit and few passing lanes. Still, I’m glad we took this path at least once.

At Havre we faced a decision: continue along Rt 2 to the Glacier area, or dive south through Great Falls and back to the Interstate at Missoula? Bert Gildart told us the crowds around Glacier and the Flathead Lake area were unbearable (by Montana standards) and a look at ReserveAmerica confirmed it: all Glacier-area campgrounds booked solid. No, thanks. We’ll come back another time when it’s not peak season and the NPS isn’t driving attendance up with their centennial celebration.

So we are going to press on westward, heading for the northwest corner of Washington around the North Cascades National Park, where hopefully things will be quieter. This means a lot of driving over the weekend, but that’s fine if it yields a few days of really nice country at the end, and this way we’ll arrive in the park when a lot of working folk are heading back to home. Besides, we need to get to Seattle in less than a week, so we’ve dawdled as much as we can.

Two related observations:

When I tell non-Airstreamers that we are taking “only” a month to cross the country, they always give me a peculiar look. They’re used to the idea that you can only take off a little vacation time and so such a trip must be a rush-rush thing. So I explain to them that having the Airstream means I can work as I travel—relatively little of my time is spent “vacationing”— and slow down to enjoy things more. Usually this gets me a blanker stare.
This trip has been a relatively quick one. We will have traveled well over 3,000 miles from Vermont to Washington in 25 days, which is an average of 120 miles per day. There have been so many times we wished we could detour further, stay longer, relax more on this itinerary. I think the ideal amount of time to cross the USA is about two to three months. Maybe when we’re closer to retirement we can slow down and travel like we did in the 2005-2008 full-timing days.
When thinking about North Cascades National Park, I realized that we have been to 38 of the 58 designated National Parks in the NPS system so far. We’ll bag two more—Mt Rainier and North Cascades—before this trip is over. We may never see some of the National Parks (like American Samoa and Virgin Islands) but I do think we’ll continue visiting the 400+ units of the National Park Service for the rest of our lives. They are an amazing treasure and the best value for an Airstream owner anywhere.

Aug 20 2016

A sunshine lesson in TRNP

The north unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park (TRNP) is disconnected from the south, separated by 70 miles of rolling terrain near the edges of North Dakota’s current oil boom. There’s a strange confluence occurring in the area between the yellow hayfields and the gray derricks, trucks, and tanks that represent the rush to plunder the oil reserves below.

The north unit of the park is of course protected from all that, and I am glad to say that it is beautiful and worth the trip. Still, not many people go there. I suppose this is because there’s less “stuff” to see and do compared to the south unit, and it lacks the convenience of a nearby tourist town (the south unit has the town of Medora). There’s also no cell phone service in the campground, and no hookups or services, so you have to be self-sustaining and OK with being disconnected for a while. I didn’t mind.

The weather finally turned on us, soaring up to 95 degrees during our one-night stay in the north unit. Without air conditioning we had to revive some hot-weather countermeasures we haven’t dug out in years. Mostly the trick is to limit activity, have cold drinks, deploy all the awnings, run fans, and take cold showers. We lazed around in the trailer for a while reading books, but eventually fled the Airstream to drive the scenic road through the park and soak up some chilled air in the car.

In the photo you can see Eleanor walking toward a CCC-constructed shelter on a bluff overlooking the Little Missouri River.

Emma picked up another Junior Ranger badge in the morning, and then we moved on to Fort Union National Historic Site, about an hour away on the North Dakota/Montana border.

We parked the Airstream in the Montana parking lot, had lunch, and then walked to the North Dakota side to tour this interesting reconstructed fort and trading post. In the photo above, note the unplanned comparison between the work truck of the 19th century and the work truck of the 21st century.

After all four nights of boondocking I was worried about getting back online to do some work, and getting the batteries re-charged. We had drained the trailer battery below a certain point and I wanted to get it back up to 100%. (The following discussion gets technical but those of you who are interested in solar stuff might want to consider this.)

Practically speaking, we can collect a maximum of about 55 amp-hours in a single sunny summer day with our two 115-watt fixed-angle rooftop solar panels. In theory such a pair of panels could collect 150+ amp-hours in eight hours of full sun, but in the real world it doesn’t happen for various reasons: clouds/haze, sun angle in the morning and afternoon, time of year, wiring losses, efficiency losses in the charge controller, battery resistance, dust on the panels, etc.

We also have a pair of 120-watt GoPower portable solar panels, which I use when we need extra charging capacity or when the Airstream’s rooftop panels are shaded by trees—as they were at TRNP. They can add another 30-35 amp-hours in real world use. (They are more efficient than the rooftop panels because they can be angled to capture morning and afternoon sun).

It’s not the goal to recharge to 100% every day. If the batteries manage to make it to 100% that’s nice but it indicates either we didn’t need much recharge or the panels are oversized relative to the batteries (or the solar charge meter is inaccurate, which is virtually guaranteed for voltage-based meters).

Since the last 10% of charge takes a disproportionate amount of time, our goal is to get the battery to 85-90% each day, and draw it down it to no lower than half its capacity overnight. Our battery is rated at 255 amp-hours with a rated duty cycle of 50%, which gives us a usable capacity of 127.5 amp-hours. (We can discharge it lower but if we do we’ll be buying a new battery much sooner.)

On this trip the Tri-Metric amp-hour meter was telling me that we were using a lot of power (due to heavy use of 3 vent fans and watching a movie each night using the inverter), so we had a net loss each day. By the first morning we had used 74 amp-hours (Ah) and regained 51 Ah during the following day, netting out at -23 Ah from full.

The second night we were more cautious with our power use, but still by morning the meter showed that we were down to -93 Ah and we recharged to only -64 Ah. The third morning it was down to -104.5 Ah and we recharged to -64 Ah again.

This was an unsustainable trend. At this point the battery was well below our theoretical maximum daily charge of 55 Ah and it would take two days of full sun to get back to 100%.

I was disappointed because we have been deploying the portable solar panels in addition to the rooftop panels, to capture morning and afternoon sun. My calculations suggested we should have gained much more power than the Tri-Metric was telling me. But I had a theory about why, and it was confirmed the next day when we plugged into city power at a campground in Culbertson MT: the batteries took almost no charge, despite the Tri-Metric showing that they were still at -104 Ah.

The problem stems from the fact that I’ve got two solar charge controllers in the Airstream and they’re fighting each other. There’s a built-in BlueSky MPPT controller that takes the power from the two roof panels and puts it into the battery, and the portable GoPower panels have their own controller that does the same thing. Each controller “sees” the other one, by detecting the voltage at the battery. The GoPower controller gets confused and backs off on charging (thinking the battery is already fully charged) which results in it putting less power into the battery than it should.

Worse, the Tri-Metric gets baffled in this situation. It uses a calibrated shunt at the battery to measure the current going in and out. For some reason, when I plug in the portable panels it only measures some of the electrical current, resulting in an inaccurate reading. Thus, each day I was getting an inaccurate state-of-charge report, and I thought we were low on power even when we weren’t. In actuality we were recharging to nearly full each day!

Fortunately the Tri-Metric is smart enough to know when it is wrong. It uses an algorithm to sense when the battery is fully charged, and resets to 100% under those specific circumstances, thus compensating for any long-term inaccuracies. It was interesting to see it “realize” that our battery was not at 50% but rather 100%, and after just a few minutes of being plugged in the Tri-Metric conceded and ‘fessed up.

I’ve got a fix planned for this. I’m going to install a plug for the portable panels that ties into the existing wiring for the rooftop panels. This plug will go in the refrigerator compartment. I’m also going to disconnect the solar charge controller on the portable panels. By tying the portables into the existing wiring (rather than having them directly connected to the battery as they are now) all of their energy will go through the Tri-Metric shunt correctly and through the BlueSky charge controller.

This should give us an accurate reading and no more trouble with two solar controllers fighting to charge the battery. I plan to make this mod when we get to Seattle and settle in for a week or two.

Aug 15 2016

Theodore Roosevelt National Park, ND

We’d spent most of a week in Wisconsin, culminating in a few nice days on the shore of Lake Superior in the city of Ashland and near the Apostle Islands in the town of Bayfield, and it finally was time to go. North Dakota was calling us–the last of the lower 48 states to receive our Airstream.

Yes, with this one we’ve finally hit all 48. (I doubt our Airstream will ever visit Hawaii, and Alaska is somewhere in the distant future.) North Dakota had eluded us all this time because, well, it’s not on the way to anywhere and (sorry) there just wasn’t much to draw us into the state.

Except for T.R.’s legacy: Theodore Roosevelt National Park to be precise, a fine place by reputation that just happens to be located in the western end of a state that is otherwise not known for tourism. Year after year I’ve considered making North Dakota a stop and each year it just hasn’t worked out. But this year we devised a route specifically with the intent of finally giving N.D. some Airstream love.

I can see why Teddy liked the place. It’s wild, open, beautiful, and saturated with adventure. There are wild horses and bison, prairie dog towns, caves and coal veins, badlands and rivers, and all the fresh air you can inhale. We’re finally back in the west, Teddy. Thanks for saving this place for us.

As you can see, the wildlife is pretty easy to spot. There’s a nice 34 mile loop drive in the park with many short walking trails that can easily consume your entire day and give you incredible vistas with little effort. For us, the horses and bison were particularly accommodating and twice blocked the road with a parade.

[I feel obliged to point out that approaching bison is a particularly stupid thing to do. They’ll gore you and toss you fifty feet before you can even start to run away. My photos were taken with a long lens. We stayed in the car and slowly drove away when it looked like they were roaming too close.]

On the other hand, you don’t have to fear the prairie dogs, even fierce-looking fellows like this one. They look a little smug sometimes, probably because they know they are protected creatures living in a national park, and if tourists bug them they might get a ticket from a park ranger. This particular beast was part of a large lawn-mowing crew that was spanning a couple of acres.

The campground here is exactly what we expect from a good national park. Very few amenities, a nice quiet site in the trees, ranger talks in the evening, and a natural setting that is untrammeled by hordes. A few dried bison chips scattered in the campsite are a bonus.

No 30 amp power, no dump, and sulfury-tasting water help limit participation by the tenderfeet (or at least, those tenderfeet who don’t have a nice travel trailer to camp in!) I’ve been mixing the water with powdered drink mix to disguise the flavor, because it has been fairly hot and I’m gulping down about 2 liters a day.

We’re living on solar power here. I’ve been wondering how we got along before we started carrying a portable solar panel, because lately it seems like we keep hitting campgrounds where trees shade the roof-mounted panels. Except for a few hours in the morning, the only direct sun we can capture is far away from the Airstream. I’ve been using every inch of the 45-foot cable to get the panels in a spot where the sun hits them in the early morning and late afternoon.

Even with that we aren’t getting a full recharge each day, so we have gone to our best boondocking practices. One of my latest tricks for saving electricity is to use the iPad for 95% of my Internet needs. It uses a fraction of the power of my laptop and recharges off a USB outlet, which means I can skip the inverter. Plus, I can recharge in the car while we’re driving around.

Since it has been hot, we’re hanging around in the trailer during the morning while it’s cool, and then heading out for the day until sometime past 5 pm. This cuts down the length of time we need the vent fans, which is also a big power saver. Each vent fan consumes about 2 DC amps, which means all three of them running for six hours = 36 amp-hours. That’s a lot of juice, which is put to better use after 7 pm when the temperatures start to drop quickly (thanks to dry western air).

We’ve got another day planned here, and then we’ll relocate to the lesser-visited North Unit of the park, which is about 70 miles away. I’m told there’s no cellular service up there, so we’ll just do one night and then start heading to Montana.

Our stops from here to Seattle are completely uncharted. We have no real plan at all. Weather, campground availability, and our whims will reveal a route at some point, but it’s much like traveling by Ouija board—anything might be spelled out in the next 12 days or so…