Saturday, January 24, 2025 Cape Disappointment and Long Beach

Saturday, January 24, 2025 Cape Disappointment and Long Beach

It got cold last night. Ben was concerned our batteries were at below 50% when we got back to the RV late last night.  Our solar panels don’t seem to be charging the batteries adequately, either because of shade or because of a problem with the solar panels.  At any rate, the furnace quit working sometime in the early am hours.  Ben had to make a late night run to the bathroom at 3am because of a touch of GI trouble and saw that the electrical panel was de-energized and the Lithium Batteries were not reporting their status.  This would most likely be caused by them draining below about 10.8V, at which point the battery management systems built in the batteries would shut them down to protect against over discharge that might be damaging.  

We threw on extra blankets and managed to sleep in until 9am.  The outside temperatures were below freezing. At that time, Ben started up the RV motor and used the RV’s cabin heater to warm up the RV while he got out the tools to troubleshoot the system. In the past, he was able to simply use a portable jump starter to start the generator, but the generator control panel was completely dead.  It wasn’t until he physically disconnected the batteries from the coach and then applied the jump starter to the batteries that the batteries came back online, reporting a voltage of 11.5V.  Once we were able to get that reading of 11.5V on the batteries, Ben was able to reconnect the coach, and this lit up the generator control panel. This then allowed us to start up the generator using the jump starter on the house battery banks.

  
We were then able to shut down the RV coach motor and let the RV furnace heat up the RV to shirt sleeves temperature.  Ben also noticed that the inside rear dual tire was reading a bit low, and while the RV motor was running, the TPMS sounded an alert to that effect.  The one tire was reading 54psi while the others were reading 60psi.  They should be at 61psi.  Fortunately, Ben has a heavy duty compressor for airing the Bronco tires up and down, and he was able to use that to bring all the RV tires up to 61psi.

  
We ran the generator for an hour, which brought the batteries up to 50%.  By then, the sun was rising, and the solar controller was showing 0.4A charging current, which isn’t much, but it was positive.  We shut down the generator and started off to explore the Cape Disappointment and Long Beach areas.

  
We drove across the park and saw the boat launch facility, which was quite nice.

There was parking for 10 trucks with trailers plus 2 designated handicap spaces. There was a gravel overflow area a few hundred feet away.  There are two nice floats and launching lanes on either side of each float.  There is also a fish cleaning table and a nice bathroom serving the parking area.

At one corner of the overflow gravel parking area is the trailhead for a 1.5 mile forest loop trail.  This highlighted some huge sitka spruce trees over 12’ in diameter.  These trees were present when Lewis and Clark explored the area originally.  There was a bit of elevation (~100ft) in the loop trail, so we got a decent work out.

From there, we drove to the Cape Disappointment light house trail, where we hiked up a pretty steep pathway to the coast guard light house (194’ elevation).  Ben took a side spur to check out Dead Man’s Cove, which was a very scenic little beach area tucked between two adjacent headlands.  Then we took the trail to the Lewis and Clark Interpretative Center, which puzzling enough had a separate $10 admission fee, but the upstairs of the building had a free gift shop, bathrooms and Fort Canby exhibits.  The weather was beautify and sunny, although it was only in the 30’s temperature wise.

We drove into Long Beach to have lunch at a place called the Corral Drive In.  It was well past the main tourist center of Long Beach, so we got to see all that.  The Corral did not have any inside dining, and although the sun was shining, it was too cold outside to eat, so we got our food (two orders of “Hot Mess”- pulled pork sandwiches on brioche buns with jalapeños and BBQ sauce, fries and a drink), and drove back into Central Long Beach. 

We found the main beach access and the “World’s Longest Beach” arch, where Ben’s family had taken a photo back in 1970.

  

We drove onto the sand and ate our lunches.  Ben took a quick stroll down to check for clam shows, but saw none.  The tide was heading out, so we made a beeline back our campsite so we could do reconnaissance of the beach for clams.  

The RV was back in the shade and the solar panels weren’t charging any more than 0.2A, and the batteries were still just about 50%, so we started up the generator again and hoped to get them up to at least 75% before shutting the generator down for the night so we can count on the furnace all night and not have to jump start things again in the morning.

We changed our shoes and headed onto the beach.  We did find some clam shows and were surprised they were about 150’ up the beach from where the surf was wetting the sand.  We walked toward the North Lighthouse, and found a patch of beach with quite a few nice clam shows, so we know were to head for tomorrow with our clam guns.

Classic clam show

We made dinner (Mac and Cheese with meatballs, toasted artisan bread) while the generator was running, using the induction cooktop, microwave and toaster, in sequence.  This would preserve propane for the generator and furnace.  
We’ll keep our fingers crossed that we make it through to the morning without the batteries cutting out and have heat all night.  Tomorrow we plan on checking out trails at the North Head Lighthouse in the morning, and clamming in the late afternoon.