Rain and Then More Rain

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Smokemont Campground, Smoky Mountains National Park, North Carolina

When I read that the park receives almost as much rain as the Pacific Northwest, I kind of wondered how that could be. And while I still don't understand what the weather patterns are that produce that much moisture, especially on this side of the park, I don't question that it is true any longer.

Rain started in the wee hours of yesterday morning and it just dumped out of the sky. Although we enjoy the cooler temps at night by leaving all the windows open, we had to shut down the vents to keep dry. And then it poured some more - it rained all night with no let-up that I was aware of. When we woke up it was raining. The campgrounds were all flooded with an inch or more of water and still it kept coming.

We ate a lazy breakfast and hoped that it would ease up, because we had to move the trailer. We had a terrific camp site right on the river, but we were scheduled to leave for home yesterday. Since we lost a day with the trailer brake problem, and because we were enjoying the park so much, we decided to add two days to our stay. They had open sites, but not the one we were in - that was booked up for someone else. So we had to pick a different site for our last two days. And that meant moving the trailer.

We managed to make that work although we looked pretty funny out there in the rain with our bright yellow rain ponchos. Taking advantage of the mobile trailer, I went over to the dump station and relieved it of four days worth and also drove it around a bit to charge-up the batteries (more on that later). Finally, we backed into our new site and set up camp again, all in the pounding rain. We fixed lunch and settled in to a nap.

At this point, the rain had been dropping for well over 12 hours and everything was saturated. The river, not exactly quiet the day before, was now surging with muddy water and was up in its banks at least a foot, maybe two. I now understand how much water there can be in this park and these mountains.

We awoke from our nap around 4:00 to a sunny afternoon. The rainstorm had broken and the sun was out now filtering through the canopy. We dashed down to Cherokee for a shower and some groceries, Joan made a great spaghetti meal (with Adams Family Italian Sausage that was so good!).

And what about the batteries! I just purchased these batteries about a week ago in Raleigh. My old ones died in Hatteras the result of neglect over the winter months. Unhappily, I replaced them with deep-discharge flooded batteries because they didn't have AGMs in stock and I couldn't wait for them to arrive.

But batteries discharge over time and with use and need to be kept charged up. Normally driving the trailer, hitched to the car, will provide enough charge, through the car's alternator, to keep us dry-camping for 3-4 days, depending on how conservative we are. The reason we put a solar panel on the trailer was to boost that capacity from sitting in the sun all day.

But the funny thing about solar panels is that they don't do a whole lot without the 'solar' part. And, in order to keep the dogs comfortable when we don't have power to run the A/C, we picked a campsite under the trees and next to the river. The panel isn't collecting much sun energy when shaded by the trees. Nor does it get any sun when the cloud cover is high, like it is much of the time up here. In short, the solar panel isn't helping us at all on this stop. We are having to plug the trailer into the car and idle the engine just to get some minimal charge on my new batteries. Even so, they are getting low enough that I'm worried about losing them - after just a week, no less. Joan says I like to buy batteries as much as some women like to buy shoes!

Lots of RV travelers solve this problem by purchasing a portable generator. And she is urging me to consider that option. The problem is they are expensive, heavy, and take up storage room (which we don't have). I guess, though, if we are going to spend time dry-camping in forests, we better have some additional options for power!

Oh, the pleasures of travel!(17.1.75)

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Comments

[mickey]

back to charleston
Because of your blog, Michael, we ate at Fleet's Landing yesterday. I had the she-crab soup with more sherry than everyone else who has ever had she-crab soup. I also had the salad with shrimp, grapes, spiced almonds, etc. Nice! Thanks for the tip. We also enjoyed the horse-drawn carriage tour. We returned to Augusta where Evelyn's daughter lives. Tomorrow off to Alpharetta for the wedding of E's granddaughter. We take the flight home on Monday. --Mickey