Zion Panorama

Comfort Castle Location: Rockport, Texas
Adventure Location: Rockport, Texas

Luck beats skill frequently and today it won again. Last week a carpet runner was tried in the kitchen and dining room area. It worked out so well the first night that an additional one was purchased. That means that there can be washable carpet from the couch all the way into the bath room. This is the finished runner picture.

The two runners totaled a few inches too much in length for the area. My luck with cutting those types of rugs has been that they came unraveled in a very short time. While Andy Baird’s site, http://andybaird.com/travels/, he mentions sealing the cut edge with a lighter flame. The AH HA moment slapped me upside the head with vigor. One of the runners was marked and cut with one of my sharp knives. Then the edge was melted with a lighter to prevent unraveling. Now the runners fit the area perfectly.
My good fortune is that the piece cut off is a perfect fit for an arm pad for using the computer. The edge was sealed on the new arm pad and now my elbows are much happier while my fingers are hitting incorrect keys typing this blog.
For a neat panorama view of the entrance to Zion Canyon NP go on over to http://www.lightcurve.com/?p=2292 and go down to his insert and click on it. My one time there was over ten years ago and it is a lot nicer than my memory of it. Enjoy.

The batts and solar are still holding their own even in this continuous cloudy weather. My batt low last night was 12.38 volts. So there is a slow decline without any full sun to help. Maybe another hundred watts of solar panel would help. However AM Solar that the current panels came from no longer markets these higher voltage panels. They now market a panel that is slightly over two volts output less and claim it works with the old panels like I have. The problem is that none of the engineering types or web sites on electrical things agrees with AM Solar. So it is my opinion that a person should only use the standard 17 volt panels that the rest of the world uses. That way they can replace or upgrade at will without fear in the future. This set up will likely be plenty for most of the year especially if the panels are tilted in the winter.

The bitter cold in the high thirties kept me inside either the Truck or the Castle all day. On a trip to, where else, Wal-Mart a couple of pictures of murals located at the harbor were taken. They are getting a bit faded from the hot bright Texas sun.


Tonight is another thirties night then after that it should be onward and upward for temperatures until late next November. Tee shirt and shorts weather is very conducive to trying to have tooooo much fun. TheOFM.