Hi Friends.
Hope everyone had a great start to the new year and have been enjoying the holidays. Travis and I have been down in South Carolina for a majority of the last few months, having fun and catching up with my parents and older brother. While we have been in Bluffton for most of the time, we have also done day trips to Tybee Island, Savannah, and Charleston. It’s been great and the weather down here in the winter months is immaculate. Though I do miss the snow a bit, as I love how each season feels and looks different. In the van, it’s simply not doable for us to be in temperatures that cold.
We are hoping to hit the road by the end of the week and start making our way through to Florida. Our timeline for getting back on the road has been a little bit delayed. We decided it’s time to update our batteries before we go on the road again. We had lead acid batteries that the previous van owners had used, which have been a little clunky and we think at the end of their life for a while. They haven’t been able to hold a charge as well as they were towards the beginning of the trip, plus with the shorter days, it’s been difficult to get them charged enough to keep our fridge running overnight. We have been unplugging the fridge at night and replugging it in the morning. Sometimes we use ice to help keep things cold, other times we take our chances with food spoiling. It’s been frustrating to us nonetheless that we have to keep doing that. If we don’t unplug the fridge and it simply drains the battery – it not only does harm to the lead acid batteries, but an alarm goes off. When the alarm wakes you up in the middle of the night and the only way to turn it off is to get out of bed, open the back of the van and push a button, it’s get old really fast. It’s not horrifically loud, but definitely annoying.
Needless to say, it was time. Travis and I both have been doing research and found some nice lithium ion batteries that should do the trick. It’s definitely an expensive upgrade, but we know it will be worth it in the long run. Now we are simply waiting for them to come in and we have to install them before hitting the road again. Hopefully that will be sometime this week.
Thanks for reading,
Leece.
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