“Falling” into Old Age and Backpacking

Backpacking

This month I’ll turn 68. Is that old? Are these sayings true?

“Age is just a number.”

“You’re as young [or old] as you feel.”

“Mind of matter.”

To me, these make for good “motivational” or “inspirational” posters — those posters often seen in offices to supposedly get under-achieving people become super stars — I’ve never seen them work however.

I prefer posters like this one but have never seen on in an office 🙂

The past couple of years I’ve fallen several times while backpacking and perhaps this is due to getting older; so the question might be asked,

“Should I do something differently or is it time to consider giving up backpacking, especially since I usually hike alone.” Continue reading “Falling” into Old Age and Backpacking →

Honda Generator Maintenance and Storage

Camper Upgrades, General Talk,

As we near the end of October, many campers are “winterizing” their campers and putting them into storage. Given our location and easy access to year round camping we “winterize” differently. 

This summer we bought a pair of Honda generators as I shared a while back. These were purchased only for use in summer when temperatures are in triple digits (meaning we won’t have any camping neighbors). They also can be used for backup electricity in case of a power outage. We won’t need them for at least 6 months, so it was time to winterize them – meaning to do any required maintenance and prep them for storage. Just in case you have Honda EU 2000 series generators and haven’t read the manual, other than the Quick Reference Guide, here is the maintenance schedule.

Continue reading Honda Generator Maintenance and Storage →

Battery Water Filler

Camper Upgrades

Adding water to flooded RV batteries can be somewhat difficult as the above picture shows on our 2014 Milan 26RLS. The battery bank is behind the propane tanks and the front of the trailer slopes forward over the batteries. This isn’t a problem if you have sealed batteries that do not require topping of the water. I prefer flooded batteries that can be tested with a battery hydrometer as I shared in this post with instructions on using a battery hydrometer. The downside of these flooded batteries is they periodically need to be topped of with distilled water. As with most things in life, there is a proper tool to add distilled water to a flooded battery — the battery water filler. Continue reading Battery Water Filler →