Greetings from Kettle Moraine State Forest

It’s been a good 2 weeks at Kettle Moraine State Forest in south central Wisconsin. There are 2 campgrounds here, Ottawa Lake and Pinewoods, and I choose Pinewoods for this trip because there are no electrical hook-ups and I wanted to see just how well my rooftop solar panels would support my power needs.

Without going into the technical details, I have to say I’m very pleased with the solar system while living “off the grid”. While I started out being very conservative with my electrical use, I gradually increased my consumption each day for 4-5 days until I was living as if I were “plugged in”. The 12 volt system on the camper won’t support the air conditioning or the use of the microwave, which require 120 volts. But I had pretty much unlimited use of everything else, including the hot water heater, refrigerator, stove, water pump (taking showers and washing dishes), ventilation fans, interior lights, TV, radio, DVD player, furnace and recharging the computer and cell phone as needed. I kept a log each day of my power usage and noted that the solar panels brought the batteries back to 100% capacity for 12 of my 14 days stay. On 2 days that were overcast with rain the batteries ended the daylight hours at 80% and 82% charged.

Speaking of computer and cell phone usage, the signal reception here is very poor. If it wasn’t for the cellular signal booster I installed while camping in Michigan in May I wouldn’t have been able to receive calls or call out, although text messages did come through without the use of the booster and TV reception was good as well.

While I was able to get onto the internet using my cell phone as a hotspot, uploading and downloading was so slow that it was just not feasible to use it. So on most days I took the short 3 mile drive to Genesee Depot WI where I could get a 4G signal and zip through my emails in a matter of minutes.

Pinewoods campground consists of 3 loops, one of which is a quite zone which is the one I chose. This means no outside music unless one wears earphones, no use of generators and no pets allowed; mostly tent campers here with a sprinkling of pop-up trailers. The campsites are quite deep and mostly level. Some, like mine are thickly wooded on 3 sides but some are more open and nicely shaded, set among tall White and Red pines with pine needle carpeted ground. These sites are very pretty but I needed open space overhead for sun exposure to the solar panels.

 Here at Kettle Moraine one can hike part of the Ice Age National Scenic Trail:

 http://www.nps.gov/iatr/index.htm

 

Ronna came to visit during my first few days and we visited Old World Wisconsin, a collection of ethnic farms from the late 1800’s that were dismantled from various locations throughout the state and relocated here. We had perfect weather and enjoyed a fine day. You can read more about Old World Wisconsin here:

 http://oldworldwisconsin.wisconsinhistory.org/

 

Bonnee, my friend from South Milwaukee also came to visit. We spent the day walking in the campgrounds, sitting under the rear awning and chatting and grilling pork chips for dinner.

We had been relaxing under the awning, talking and enjoying some juicy green grapes that she brought and decided to move to the picnic table to start the grill, forgetting to bring along a few grapes that were left on the small table behind the camper.  As we sat at the picnic table I noticed a small form moving through the underbrush toward the camper. Getting up to see what it was, we watched a fat raccoon get up on his hind legs, pull the plastic bag containing the few grapes to the ground and tear into it. We figured he wanted the grapes more than we did so we let him have his little feast and watched as he sauntered away toward the front of the truck. I have also seen many deer in the area along with many wild turkeys during my stay. Problem is I always see them when I’m driving the truck and never get any pictures.

I managed 2 trips to South Milwaukee. On the first, Bonnee and I went and saw the new Star Trek movie and on the second we took in a 2 hours sail on Lake Michigan at the Milwaukee Community Sailing Center where she is a member. Bonnee was confident enough in my sailing skills to let me cast off and dock the boat under sail (a 24 foot Ensign), something I have almost no experience in doing since my 30 foot sailboat had a small diesel engine for that purpose. But all went well and we had a very pleasant sail with light to moderate winds, sunshine and comfortable temps. I’m happy to report I haven’t gotten too rusty at the tiller.

My leg is at about 100% now and I have been walking about 2 miles most days without any ill effects. I’m looking forward to getting back on the hiking trials when I return to Shabbona State Park this Saturday.