Saturday November 3rd 2018

It rained hard overnight. There were big leaf covered puddles all around this morning. During breakfast the rain came to an end. The remainder of the morning was dry and calm. Around noon the sun came out and the forecast strong wind arrived. The wind howled and the leaves blew all around for the remainder of the daylight hours. This evening there is only a light wind blowing.

The view across the campground was pretty, but a clear harbinger of the winter to come.

The first thing on today’s agenda was to fix the problems I had yesterday with towing the car. I didn’t have lights on the towed car or a functional supplemental brake on the drive yesterday. The problem with the lights turned out to be dirt in one of the sockets that the power cable plugs into. Once I cleaned that out the plug made a good connection and the towed vehicle brake, directional and tail lights worked again.

Fixing the supplemental brake was a little more complicated. Working on the assumption that it wasn’t getting power, I opened the brake box and went to work with my multimeter. The twelve volt cable from the car’s power socket was not the problem. Digging deeper into the power connections to the circuit board, I found the switch to be the culprit. Either the connections to the switch or the switch itself are bad. I’ve popped the switch out of the case and can short the connectors to get the supplemental brake to work. The long term solution will be to replace the switch unless I decided to replace the entire brake unit. This unit is seven years old. There are better alternatives available today, but it is a significant expense that requires some research. A replacement system will cost more than one thousand dollars.

My third accomplishment of the day was making reservations for the remainder of the month. I now have seven different reservations to get me through the rest of November. The first four are for one or two nights to get to warmer weather. In southern Georgia I slow down staying from at least five nights at each of the remaining stops. With the reservations I already have in December, January and March, I only have to lock down the first eighteen days of February. A weekday phone call with help turn plans into reservations and close the gap.