Tuolumne Meadows Vacation
Day 8
Goin' to Mammoth
The day after the backpack, we decided to go into town. Because we
had left a light on in the RV from Friday to Saturday night, the RV battery
was completely dead, so to take a shower or read at night, I had to use
jumper cables to hook our truck's battery to the RV electrical system.
A fellow staying next to us told us about getting a soild state isolator,
and how this might solve our problem. So, we decided to go to the
town of Mammoth to see if someone could install such a device in our truck.
With Trish and I in the truck and my parents in their Toyota, we headed
east out of Tuolumne. After about 30 minutes, we had crossed Tioga
pass and headed down into the town of Lee Vining. Since the town
was too small to have anyone who could install the isolator, we headed
South another 30 minutes or so to the town of Mammoth.
While Trish and my parents did laundy at the laundromat, I headed to the
pay phone. Unfortunately, I was not able to find anyone in town who
knew what an isolator was, much less how to install one.
After the laundry was done, Trish and I spent quite a bit of time at the
visitor center in Mammoth, watching the Belding Ground Squirrels, and playing
with the huge Ponderosa Pine cones. Eventually, we got back in the
truck and headed back to Tuolumne.
After a couple weeks of playing with the battery after we got home, I determined
that there was something very wrong with that particular battery - I couldn't
get it to hold more than about a 20% charge, and the battery would boil
over when I tried to charge it, since it could never get up the voltage
that the charger considers "full".
Anyway, that's how the day went. You win some, you lose some, I guess.