With the month of August now in motion, we were once again itching to do another trip out of town.
Our colder than normal summer still provided us with lots of local Fauna hanging out with us while we worked.
A Pokey Lil’ Fella 
Those Colt Cranes Are Just As Big As Their Parents!
We had received the call weeks earlier than expeted that the new (or should I say older) air filter had been pulled up at Knik Salvage. With how we had already scheduled our lives we had to wait until the first weekend of August to break loose though.
To break the trip up, we headed up to Soldotna for the first night. Laura found a small batch of artificial butterflies to decorate the Ohana, and we enjoyed an amazing breakfast (off of our diet) to start our trip.
Heading North the next day, we once again enjoyed the flare of pink against the blackened visage of the old fallen trees, left over from the Kenai Peninsula forest fire a few years before.
As much as we wanted to escape Alaska, it does have some pretty moments that we still do our best to appreciate.
That day we arrived at the Knik Salvage yard, and the nearly impossible to get in Alaska air filter sat before us. It was damaged on it’s removal, so they gave us a nice discount on the price and recommended the Q-Bond product below to seal up the cracks in the housing. And with that, we finally had the filter; It only took 2 trips to Wasilla, a ton of calls and research, and having to pay the price a new one should have costed. 😂 Gotta love trying to shop local up here…
Just gotta pay the “Paradise Tax” as my dad likes to call it… 🙄
Next we cruised through Wasilla towards Palmer to meet up with our new friend Ray Weber.
We met up with him at an awesome local game store, MJ Cards And Games, and he proceeded to teach us a game of Marvel United.
Afterwards his friend Andy had brought and taught us how how to play a game of Cthulu: Death May Die. It was pretty fun- both games were cooperative, so we were working together. Still though, we lost both games. 🤷 But at least we lost together! 😃
MARVEL UNITED 
CTHULU DEATH MAY DIE 
THE SHIPWRECK ARCANA
That night the Webers were kind enough to host us a spot and an electrical outlet ⚡, so we spent the evening really getting to meet them and playing a few games of The Shipwreck Arcana.
The next morning we were off to enjoy Palmer for the day. We wandered around downtown, scoring us a tasty Brunch as well as doing some out of town thrifting. It was a pleasant time!
We made a point on our travels to track down a new telescoping broom for The Ohana. It’s predecessor had decided to give up on it’s life that morning when we were cleaning the rig before take-off.
That evening we were headed back over to Wasilla to spend the night playing games with another friend; Josh Krull. When we had been cruising around Palmer, we also invested in an earth friendly shampoo and conditioner. At Josh’s we had our first traveling access to not only power ⚡, but water. 💧
So that evening before we settled in we hooked up both for the night. We were still in the middle of playing through a board game campaign of Firefly Adventures: Brigands & Browncoats, so we had Josh step in for a game that night. We had an awesome time!
FIREFLY ADVENTURES- Photo Taken By Josh
The next morning Laura got to take her first on the road endless shower in The Ohana!
Feeling clean, happy, and refreshed we headed inside to get super spoiled by Josh cooking us an amazing breakfast. We hung out with his family and his crazy 3 sphynx cats (and tabby).
As you can tell, we went from being apprehensive of the cats to loving on them quite a bit.
We had hoped to get to try out Josh’s newest game purchase that morning; Marvel Champions, but we didn’t end up getting to it. Josh let us borrow the game to learn and play. We made a plan to return in October during my birthday trip and teach him the game.
With an awesome trip under our belt we headed back Southbound the 6 hours to home. The newly wired electrical and solar system had performed perfectly. 😁
When we arrived home we were on to testing our next innovation; how to get endless shower water while we were on the road. I had researched 12 volt pump systems, and when faced with 2 models; one very expensive and one more affordable, we decided to test the cheaper one first. This one was an Amazon purchase made by a company called Camplux. The reviews were mostly good, with it being claimed by some reviewers that it more than did the job. We would see.
I ended up having to provide a hose, some fitting adaptors, and I custom built a secondary filter head out of a sprinkler hose head. We easily powered the unit of our LionEnergy Safari.
The goal was to be able to pull water from about 50 ft away from the vehicle with about 6 ft of elevation in the run of the hose. We tested the unit in multiple situations with multiple hoses, testing for overall water pressure consistency and the ability to keep our on-demand hot water activated.
Unfortunately the little pump could not keep up as advertised. 😔
But- nothing ventured, nothing gained! Not all of our experiments could be successful. Sometimes, regardless of how much research one does, you just have to be able to test the product to find out. If we wanted to obtain this dream for our big trip next year, we would just have to try out the more expensive model down the road….
Speaking of products you have to ultimately have on hand to test! We had finally invested in the awning room for our rig! With the height of our camper and wanting to be able to access the camper from in the awning room, there had been too many factors to guarantee a perfect fit for our situation. In fact, we almost knew this was going to take some custom modifying even before we saw it in action.
We hung the awning room using our 2 ninja stools as stilts, and they worked great! The rooms floor line stood up off of the ground, which for entry purposes we didn’t mind. The problem was that the floor concaved in towards the middle, which made a lot of the floor space unusable as it was floating up off of the ground.
We ultimately decided we would pursue having the floor extended and extra 2 – 3 feet through a custom sewing outlet. So for now, this project was on hold.
When we were having some tires changed on another rig, we ran across this project at the tire shop. Pretty cool! I had to take some pics to share with all of you. 😉
With our electrical and solar panels all being newly done, the next thing that been on our list was to optimize our solar charging unit.
I had researched and decided upon an MPPT charger that was supposed to increase our solar efficiency by about 30 percent! So during this time we had pulled the trigger ordered it, and now it had arrived.
Sadly the first step was to remove the PWM charge controller that had come with the new solar panels, and ironically I had installed just a few weeks before. 🙄
It Was Nice While It Lasted… 
Where The Controller Used To Be 
Removing The In-Line Power Switch And Moving It’s Location 
Putting In An In-Line Fuse Where The Switch Was 
The Solar Power Switch Will Now Be Installed Below The Closet Door
Once the wiring was in place, it was time to mount the Solar Controller itself! I had never been able to figure out why Tim (The Previous Owner) had these luggage clasps installed on the edge of the bench, but I figured it was a perfect place for the new controller.
Was she was all hooked up it was time to put the in-line fuse in and give it a test!
And everything was working great! Immediately we were pulling in more power than we had ever been before. This also gave us another point we could monitor our battery level from within the camper. 😁
Our camper electrical and solar setup was now complete, completing the overhauling of the electrical in the truck cab and dash we had done at the beginning of summer! It was pretty crazy, but through fixing all of the issues we had been shaking our fists at- we were gaining an in depth understanding of all of the facets of Our Ohana. What a cool way to be able to take care of something you love!
Geoff Murphy 10/18/2021