Hey Jasper...solar requires sunshine!!

Okay, first of all, Jasper is awesome! I had never been, but knew I would love it. My first bear sighting was just inside the park. You always know there is a wildife sighting by the number of cars pulled over, and crazy enough, people outside their vehicles trying to get a "better shot". People, you should be smarter than that!!!

We checked into Whispers Campground on May 25. Barry had stayed here before and told me about how beautiful the sites were, surrounded by trees. Unfortunately due to beetles, a lot of the trees were killed off and therefore had to be removed. It's still a very beautiful campground with all new facilities and Parks folks constantly driving around monitoring the wildlife to ensure campers' safety.

Bernie has 1170 amps of solar on the roof, so we can be completely self sufficient for an extended period of time; however, we require some amount of sun! Funny enough, I think we got one of the few sites left that is still surrounded by trees. Although beautiful, we had no direct sun and our solar was struggling. So we switched sites. The next site was so unlevel that we maxed out our front leveling jacks. So we moved again! The 3rd site was more level and less trees, but our solar was still struggling. After a couple of sleepless nights for Barry with days filled with obsessively checking the amount of charge in the batteries while willing the sun to shine, and throwing rocks at the clouds trying to get them to move out of the way, it turns out that during our move from Crimson Lake, which was in heavy rain so very rushed, the breaker switch must have gotten bumped and therefore disconnected the solar system!! We didn't notice in St. Albert when we were visiting Jenn because we had full hookups at the Kinsmen RV Park.

We're good now!

Having said all that, the weather has not been great so far, not much sun at all....morning temps anywhere from -1 to 5 C warming up to around 10-15 throughout the day. Thank God for my pendleton blanket! I miss my electric fireplace on cold mornings!!