(There will be pictures for this soon.)

For our 3rd and final day at Finger Lakes campground, we took a side trip down south, to Rock Bridge Memorial State Park.  We hiked to the usual tourist sites of the natural stone bride and the so-called "Devil's Icebox", which is actually the beginning of an extensive cave system over a few miles, but most of it is under water.

After this, we were both very, very, tired!  Kelly had heard that the Hinkson Creek Trail, back up in Columbia, has had petrified wood sometimes, so we drove back north to Columbia to check that out.  I must say, Google maps wasn't much of a help here.  It marked the trail itself, but no trail head and we had a hard time finding a place to park!  Finally, we found a good parking place near Columbia's Stephen's Lake Park and then walked the trail over to Hinkson Creek.  Kelly spent a few happy hours rock hunting and we returned home around sunset.

When we got back to the campground, the trailer was quite a bit warmer than the outside air, which wasn't that cool itself!  (We knew the kitties were ok during the day, because we have a Raspberry Pi computer connected to a cellular modem, which uploads trailer temperature information to our computer at home, which can be monitored from anywhere with cellular access.)  Richard spent some time plugging up the generator so we could run the trailer's AC, but it kept turning off due to something in the trailer drawing too much power.  This hasn't been a problem since we bought and installed the "Slow Start" unit on the AC, so we were confused as to what could have changed.  Even though, we didn't expect it would make any difference at all, Richard turned the switch to disconnect the Lithium batteries, such that they wouldn't charge when the generator was running.  Amazingly, that did it!  So, we have learned that Lithium batteries draw a lot more current than regular lead acid batteries, when they're charging!  We can still run the AC on one Honda generator, but we can't charge the batteries at the same time!  Good to know.

Later in the evening, we heard the amazing sound of a whole lot of frogs at our site!  We spent some time driving to some of the lakes in the park to get a better recording, but when we returned back to our campsite, we actually were amazed to find that the loudest sound of the frogs was right where we were camped!

Having finally obtained a recording of the frogs (albeit with road and some airplane noises), we're finally getting into bed, in preparation for our "Moving Day" tomorrow.  Tomorrow, we go to St. Francois State Park

 

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Created by Richard Johnson on 2024/04/14 21:38
    

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