66 degrees and humid this evening. The rain has stopped but showers are heading our way later.  Tommorow starts July with even more showers and thunderstorms but that’s the last expected through the holiday weekend.

Tomorrow evening I will pack for Moose River Plains but not leave until early Thursday morning. I have the day off, so I rather drive up there in daylight and stop up in Queensbury or Glens Falls and pick up some fireworks there. I also need to buy some food but I will likely just get that tomorrow evening at Shoprite. My goal is to be to Moose River Plains no later than noontime, so I can get a good campsite and have time to go fishing or for a short hike.

I ordered a second Bluetooth speaker to use with my phone for playing music at camp from Walmart and despite promises that you can pair the speakers together for stereo and louder sounds, it didn’t work, so I ended up returning the extra pair. I was super bummed out but I guess the two models were slightly different models, despite ordering the same model online. The return process wasn’t too bad but it still kind of sucked. Might look if I could hand pick out matching ones, even if it means I won’t get the $13 online discount.

Really trying to get away from using truck radio at camp to minimize use of the starting battery ever since I I had that situation on Memorial Day Weekend when my starting battery went dead without warning when I left the truck radio on (which runs on the starting battery). Normally the radio shuts off automatically and it warns you to start the truck but not this time. First time ever this has happened to me in the woods with Big Red Red over the past 3 1/2 years.

Fortunately, Red and the Boonville Boys gave me a jump but there is no guarantee that there is someone around to help…. And some campsites lack easy access for a second car to jump start.

I made some changes the last time I camped. I installed new, always on, easy to read voltage meters on the starting and accessory batteries. I previously did not even have a volt meter on the starting battery as I foolishly relied entirely on the truck’s built-in in low battery alarm which never failed until it did. Another issue I fixed was the alternator under charging both batteries in hot weather as the ground on the accessory battery was not connected to the starting battery and the hall effect sensor. That’s been fixed. Under charging plus not driving anywhere at North Lake Reservoir plus not running the engine much slowly killed the starting battery without dropping the voltage low enough to let cause the low battery alarm to kick in. But now I know better and have a guage to carefully monitor the starting battery charge at all times to be safe.