Saturday, March 30th The “Plan”
I’m going to Arkansas’ Ozark mountain just east of Bentonville (where the first Walmart started and it’s also known as a huge mt biking area). I’ll be camping in the total eclipse path on remote forest roads. I also plan on doing some bikepacking while I’m down there. I’ll just park the truck at a trailhead when I go do that.
Tomorrow/Easter Sunday, I’m heading out to my in-laws. They live about 15 minutes south of Albany NY. I’ll mooch some Easter dinner and stay overnight at their place Sunday. I’lll probably also see Kris and Glenn while I’m there (Jacqui’s sister and her husband). It'll be good to see everyone; unfortunately, I missed Chuck’s 80th birthday dinner party 2 weeks ago so I’ll get to wish him a belated birthday.
Monday morning, I’ll hit the road. My goal is to get to Bentonville Arkansas by Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, which means a couple of 10-11 hour driving days (assuming no major traffic jams). Instead of going via i-81 south, i-40 west, I’ll head i-90 west to Ohio, then 271 south, 71 south, i-70 West via Cincinnati and St Louis (bbq!!!). After some grocery shopping in Bentonville, I’ll head east a couple hours into the Ozark St Francis National Forest, which will be in the total eclipse path. After a couple weeks of goofing around, I’ll head home via i-40 east and i-81 north and see my friends Mark and Teresa in Maryland on the way back.
Not sure if Jeff will be joining me on this trip, but don’t worry I’ll have my Garmin Inreach Satellite messenger gadget. Anyway, Jeff’s more focused on the eclipse, so he’s going wherever he has the best chance of clear skies for his 50mm wide telescope/camera setup. He’s super into photographing astronomical stuff, and this eclipse will show the corona with the Moon being closer than last time. He’s figured out the software where you take hundreds of photos, overlay them, and let the software run a few hours to create a far more detailed, amazing image. Very cool stuff. The next eclipse is 20 years away and won’t be as cool as this one, so there’s added pressure for getting good photos. Per the weather forecast, it looks like the best place for clear skies to see the eclipse might actually be south of Buffalo in the southwestern corner of NY, assuming things don’t change. That’s super ironic if you ask me. Northern New York is not known for clear skies in April.
He’s also in the middle of having his campervan’s AGM batteries swapped out for LFP’s (lithium iron phosphate) by a nearby shop in Mass. There was a minor hiccup with the battery monitor cable being too short, so they’re waiting on a replacement to arrive. To make it all work, he also had to upgrade the van’s 2nd alternator, add a Wakespeed controller, and tie everything to a battery monitor to properly control the charging of the lithium batteries, but it’ll be worth the headache.
Previously, his campervan only had three 100 amp hour AGM batteries, but with AGM, you can only draw them down to 50% or you risk damaging them. On the other hand, his van has always had a 2nd alternator dedicated to charging the camper’s batteries, so he could recharge them relatively quickly by idling/driving the van for 30-45 minutes. After squeezing in 4 LFP batteries @ 120 amp hours each, he’ll go from only having 150 usable amp hours (1800 watt hours ) to 40 amp hours ( 5760 watt hours). A HUGE upgrade. That’s enough juice to run the camper’s roof mounted Air Conditioner for almost 6 hours, which will be nice when they’re overnighting at a Cracker Barrel or Walmart on a cross country drive.. Hopefully he can get his van back Monday morning, but after that he’ll need a a few hours to get it ready.
Myself, as far as the eclipse goes, I’ll just be happy to be somewhere that gets completely dark. It’ll probably be partly cloudy where I’m going,but I have a bad case of Spring Fever right now. I need to hit the road and go have some outdoor adventures where it’s not mud season. Vermont and the Adirondacks won’t dry out until mid May at the earliest, and with such a mild Winter, the bugs will be like a biblical plague until August most likely. It may not be fun to camp until the Summer gets hot and dry enough to kill off a lot of the bugs, and I don’t want to wait that long after such a meh Winter. Never thought I’d be complaining about not enough cold and snow.
Today, I got all the packing done. It all fits! I’m leaving the portable diesel heater home this time, but that means I have room to bring some campfire stuff. I’m not bringing the big Ranger solo stove which is 15” wide, and 12.5” high . I recently bought a much smaller 6” wide x 7” high $40 Chinese knock off table top version. https://a.co/d/fU64HIF I still have a 5 gallon bucket worth of wood pellets (which the little stove can burn), and I’ll have my milk crate filled with campfire related equipment. I’ll start with pellets and feed in twigs to entertain myself when sitting out at night. When out in the woods, I always turn in early (8-9p.m.) so it’ll just kill time for a couple hours during and after dinner. Smoke also helps keep bugs away.
Today I also did a last minute sewing project to make an insulated bag for the Peak Refuel dehydrated meals I got for bikepacking. You boil 1 cup of water, dump the boiling water into the dehydrated meal bag, give the contents a stir, re-seal it like a ziploc bag, and then wait 10-20 minutes. If you put the dehydrated meal bag into the insulated bag first, the extra heat rehydrates things faster and better. More likely to stay warm as you eat it too.
This is a taped version, I sewed mine.
The one I made below
