Al F

A good idea. Maybe just picking up 4 or 5 containers of table salt and pouring it into the tank would help. Or picking up some water softener salt and pouring it into the tank would work.

First real winter we have had in San Antonio since 2018. It is 11am here and still 29*, about what it was at 6am. Supposed to be 10* or colder Tuesday morning.

Yeah, I get the same feeling when I look at my outside temp in San Antonio, Texas (or in the Portland, OR area, or in the high desert country of Central Oregon) and see 98-102 temps.

What is the reason you are wanting to check your batteries? Are you having a problem and are trying to find out if your batteries are good, or do you just want to check to see if the batteries are charged? Are you planning on doing some dry camping or boondocking and want to know if your batteries are in good enough shape to dry camp with? Any other reason? The hydrometer is the best tool to check the state of charge (SOC). Be sure to compensate for the temperature. Details should have come with the hydrometer. However if you want to know the SOC of your batteries while dry camping you really need a battery monitor like a Trimetric or Victron 712.

One year, about 10 years or so ago, there were several places in Big Bend NP where you could walk across the Rio Grande and not get your feet wet. No flowing water in those spots. There was a very significant drought in the area at the time.

It is good to note that there is that the water flow in the Rio Grande stops at El Paso, TX. All the water has been used for irrigation or drinking. All water below there comes from recycled water out of El Paso or from tributaries feeding the river below El Paso. The major source of water flowing through Big Bend NP comes from the Concho river in Mexico.

No reason to apologize. Being as the place is on private property it is reasonable to expect that there would be a fee for dry camping. The place is interesting, being as you could park right on the river and it is not a far drive to what should be a pretty quiet beach, unlike South Padre Island which is quite crowded much of the time. It is interesting to note that a few years ago, during a dry spell, the mighty Rio Grande wasn't flowing out into the Gulf of Mexico. You could drive a 4x4 from the north side of the mouth of the Rio Grande, across the sand bar, into Mexico. Back in the 1860's during the Civil War they used to sail ships up the river for maybe 50-100 miles to pick up cotton for shipment to Europe.

I would consider paying $10/night to park along the river there. After all the owner has to pay taxes and upkeep for the property, so I wouldn't expect free. But as others wrote there are free boondock places in the area.

OUCH! $10,900 (including the BMS) for 600AH. That comes out to about $1800 for each 100AH of power.

Their website seems to state that it is $35 for dry camping, a bit expensive. Might be worth it to view the Space X rocket launches though.

Those newspaper and flyers are delivered by private companies and have nothing to do with the post office. You could talk to your local city officials and get them to ban private companies from delivering unsolicited mail.

Three 100AH deep cycle batteries is far to little battery power to connect to a 3000 or greater watt inverter. Four deep cycle batteries are usually used to connect to a 2000 watt inverter. Three batteries and a 1000 watt inverter will power a TV, cell phones and computers. Also the 400 watts should do fine keeping those 3 batteries charged. What are you planning on powering with the 3000-5000 watt inverter?

I bet the Credit Card companies have a kickback deal with the local postmaster to hold the credit card payments until they are past due. 🙁

I sure saw a lot of media coverage about the deferred maintenance bill. Most interesting is that 102 Republican Congressmen voted against the bill and only 81 voted for it, while only 2 of the Democrats voted against it.

First we always travel with full or almost full fresh water tank. Next we stay at city park, state parks, National Forest campground and fill up before we leave. Websites like Campendium NP, NF, RV Parks, Free Campsites. Net and others sometimes list dumps and places to fill your water tank. Also as Linda wrote above a number of gas stations have dump stations and water fills. The Escapees RV club, the owner of this forum has a website which lists thousands of free or low cost places to park your RV at and also has many listings of places to dump and fill your water tank. You have to be an Escapees member to access and download the list. https://daysenddirectory.com/

Excellent video from PBS TV News Hour.

Liquid container waste: In a RV park, dump it down a toilet in the bath house. Dry camping with vault toilets or pit toilets, dump it in the toilet. Boondocking, take it 50-100 yards from where people camp and scratch out a hole about 6" deep (cat hole), dump it in there and then cover it up. About the same if you were tent camping. Solid waste. You only need to dispose of it every few weeks and you just bag it up and dispose of it like any other trash. I believe the video I posted in the reply just before this one discusses the disposal issue.

I found this video to be very informative about composting toilets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM71d8wMuUU They had been using the composting toilet for about 1 year before making the video.

Do you dry camp/boondock with it? How well does it work with very intermittent water flow Such as running the water for 2-4 seconds then off for 10-15 seconds then on for 2-4 seconds and repeat. We do this when washing hands, or washing dishes. When dry camping/boondocking you very severely limit the amount of time you let the water run. The one we had, (not the one you have) the heater would start during the 2-4 seconds run time, turn off and run the 20-30 second cool down cycle, but not heating water. When we turned the water back on the heater was still in the cool down cycle so it wouldn't re-light for a while.

You are absolutely correct. That becomes evident as soon as you start into the "Find Missing Mail" online process.

To report missing mail, go to USPS.com and hover your mouse pointer over the "Help" tab and click on "Finding Missing Mail". From there just follow the instructions.

Another success story with opening an online incident for a missing package with USPS. Package arrived in the Dallas area from shipper in 2-3 days on 12/8, then sat at the Coppell distribution center until 12/12. Then it was flagged as in transit to next destination. On 12/17 at 11:30am I opened the USPS incident, then 38 minutes later at 12:08pm it was scanned in at the local post office. Coincident or did they just "happen" to scan it in as it came off the truck????? Anyways the package arrived today. Edit: I called it an incident report, but actually it is "Finding Missing Mail" drop downn in the "Help" tab on the USPS.com home page.

Thanks for the info and clarification. My confusion stems from terminology. That is the terms "supplement" versus "advantage". That was the source of my question. I think that your former employer had (has) a sort of customized plan, similar to an advantage plan, with Medicare instead of a "supplement". Medicare supplements (also called "Medigap" on Medicare's website) are well defined plans with letters such as F, G, N that pays what regular Medicare doesn't cover. Not to say that your former employer didn't use the word "supplement" in describing the insurance, just that it wasn't the "Medicare Supplement" plan offered to Medicare eligible people. For 3 or 4 years after I turned 65, my former employer had a plan similar to what you describe, that also included prescriptions. They stopped that plan and set up a type of Health Savings Plan, (maybe it is called FSA for Federal Savings Plan?) that the company funds up to X number of dollars each year for us to select the Medicare plan that suites us. We decide if we want a Medicare Advantage plan from whatever insurance company or a Medicare Supplement. We also need to select Medicare prescription Plan D if we want it.

Thanks for the info. We probably would have paid $200-$300 for the special lenses. We felt the cost we were quoted for the new lenses was like most of what we have seen in the medical charges the last 20+ years. The retail cost is exorbitant, but they are willing to take from 10 cents to 30 cents on the dollar from the insurance companies/Medicare. After all Medicare was paying for the surgery, all the extra charge would have been for the different lenses.

Which Medicare supplement did you have? Also curious as to what UHC under paid. We have Plan F though USAA. It primarily pays 20% copay that we would usually need to pay. Seems pretty cut and dried as to what to pay, seeming to me to be hard to under pay.