Camping on The Cape Part 1

Trip:47
Nights: 156-166

We left on Friday, Aug 30, and drove about halfway to Tobyhanna State Park in PA to spend the night. The trip was uneventful, if slower than hoped due to holiday traffic. The trip the next day, from PA to the Cape, was also slower than hoped.

We made it to North of Highland Camping area around 5 PM and discovered that the RV battery was completely dead. It was 100% when I left that morning. The car was charging the RV battery while it was running, so I don’t think the fridge should have drained the battery. It never has in the past, although maybe I never drove all day on DC mode before? So we were at a dry campground with no battery, with the next day expected to be a rain out. I managed to get the battery back to 10% by letting the car idle for a couple of hours, and that plus pretending we were tent camping got us through the night.

The next morning it was very cloudy, so the solar panels were barely functional. However, we were on vacation, so I left the panels plugged in and hoped for the best as we headed to the beach. We got about 45 minutes of beach time in and then the rain started, so we went with plan b and headed into Provincetown.

Provincetown is wild. Imagine Bourbon Street on a holiday weekend, but 80% of the crowd is gay. It was fabulous. We wandered the streets for a couple of hours, checking out the local shops before our walking history tour started. The tour guide was in drag, playing the part of Anne Hutchinson, who got herself banned from the colony for speaking out against the governing council. The tour guide is a stand-up comic who was quite funny and quite uninhibited. They check IDs to join the tour. The history content was fairly light and mostly used to set up the jokes. We did learn a bit about the origins of Ptown. After the tour, we took a break to get off our feet for a bit at Provincetown Brewing before heading to Mac's Fish House for a fabulous dinner. We ended the evening as we usually do when camping, playing gin rummy. I did manage to get enough juice back into the battery to allow us to use the lights that night.

I was expecting sunshine and blue skies on Monday. I did not get it. It was very overcast, and I needed to charge the battery. So we rearranged plans and decided to spend the day on Mid-Cape, where I dropped the battery at the Yarmouth Advance Auto. We hit the Wydah Museum. The Wydah was a real pirate ship that sank off the coast of Cape Cod in 1717. The wreckage was found about 20 years ago. The museum is full of artifacts from the wreck. It's the only documented pirate treasure in the world. It is a very cool museum and a must-visit if you are on the Cape. Unfortunately, they don't allow photos, so I got nothing to show you from inside the museum. After the museum we explored the towns of Dennis and Chatham, had fabulous ice cream at the Cape Cod Creamery, visited the Salt Pond part of Cape Cod National Seashore, and had a really great dinner at Chatham Squire, a local pub. After dinner, we picked up the battery and headed back to the campground.

Tuesday was a perfect blue sky, 70F New England day. We started the day birding in the National Park, then went out exploring Cape Cod lighthouses, lucking into one that was open for tours, so we got to climb to the top of it. After dinner at the camper, we went back out to Herring Cove Beach, which faces west, for a fabulous sunset.

On Wednesday, the battery was discharged again. We had been dry camping the entire time on the Cape, not using the fridge, and there is no way we were using more than about 15AH a day, yet the battery was down 70AH. (Or so I thought). I decided the battery was defective, as it's only 6 months old. Our big events for the day were birding at the Wellfleet Audubon Sanctuary, and a whale watching tour. After a little birding, we drove back to the Mid-Cape area to NAPA to buy a $140 lead acid deep cycle battery to get us through the week. When we left for whale watching, the battery was reading 100%. The whale watching trip was 3 hours and it was amazing. On the way out we got a very interesting lecture from the naturalist about the whales we'd likely see, their habits, history of almost being hunted to extinction, etc. Whale watching is hit or miss, as the whales aren't in on the deal. We saw 13 humpback whales that they could ID by the patterns on the underside of the tail, and one they did not recognize. Those patterns are like fingerprints, unique for each whale. We also saw 4 white sided dolphins and one gray seal. After the tour we went back to Mac's for dinner again, as it was so good the first time, we both wanted to try something else from the menu. We were not disappointed. When we got back to the camper, the new battery was down to 40%.

We had planned to spend at 7 nights at that campground, but the power issues plus an uneasiness about the campground led me to write off the next three night we had paid for and book a W/E site at a campground back in the Mid-Cape area, in Brewster. The campground, on the surface, was great. Bathrooms were spotless and the water pressure in the shower would blast a hole in your chest. A conversation Michelle had with someone in the women’s room explains it best.

“My husband is concerned we’ve accidentally joined something by staying here.”

I actually got a write-up (like I’m back in the college dorm or something) because the $10 LED twinkle lights I strung around the camper awning were “causing a disturbance.” Apparently, no external lights are allowed at campsites. Also, no showers were allowed before 8 AM, and if you arrived after 1030 PM (quiet hours) you were expected to sleep in your car. Look, I’ve been annoyed as the next person by the occasional loud, late arriving camper. However, it’s just part of camping. Shit happens, traffic, work, kids, whatever, and you arrive late sometimes. The idea that you can legislate that out of the camping experience is silly. The campground was covered in very aggressive signs threatening immediate expulsion from the grounds for any minor rule violation, and there were a lot of rules. The vibe of the place was just off. Lots of families have camped there every year for decades. But as a first timer, I felt out of place.

On the power issues, I’ve narrowed the issue down to two causes, I think.

Something in the camper was causing an unusual power draw. The fridge was off, so it was not that. A friend I called for help suggested the breakaway brake as a possible source, so I reset it, in case it had been bumped just enough to engage the battery, without actually triggering the brake. I don’t even know if that is possible. The only other thing that could draw enough power to matter is the furnace fan and pump. Both were safely off.

The other option - Advance Auto screwed up, the battery was not charged all that much. They commented as they handed it to me that it was fully charged, reading 12.9V. It went over my head at the time, but 12.9V on a LifePo4 battery is 30%. Also, I learned too late that the solar controller inside the camper requires me to pull the fuse for the solar panel before changing any settings. I did not do that, so the reading I was getting from the Lead Acid battery is possibly suspect. Maybe that 40% reading was bad because I didn’t do a proper reset? I really don’t know. It seemed to charge back up just fine when we were on shore power later in the week. I’m conducting tests at home to figure it out.

Part 2 coming soon.

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