Working on solar panels, or hiking the Appalachian Trail, just depends which Beaver you are...

So two weekends ago is definitely the most unfair division of labor so far. Mike took the van up to State College to put on the solar panels and do electrical work, whereas I hiked the Appalachian Trail for ten days from Black Horse Gap all the way up through the end of the Shenandoah National Park. Now there is something that all of our readers need to be aware of. Mike has the absolute worst weather luck of anyone I've ever met. I think that in some previous life he angered the weather gods so badly that they're still taking it out on him now. So when I go hiking on the Appalachian Trail in springtime in the mountains, I get 9 drops of rain in 10 days. When he takes the van to State College to work on it, he gets two major storms. I bring this up because I'm sure it's going to cause some irritation along the way when we get rained on for days.

Here is a shot of the solar panels right after they came out of the box. Luckily the company is amazing and sends all of the stuff that you would need to put it up. We just decided that we didn't want to screw into the top of the van so we got epoxy tape to hold it up. Here's a photo of what everything looked like.

Here you can see that the solar panels are in! And Beaver One's amazing family helped him to get it done. They did all of the wiring through openings that were already on the roof of the van. We got really lucky and three panels are going to fit so we're actually going to order one more. Here is Joe putting up some solar panels.

I have to say that they were really easy to install. Even putting in all the wiring and hooking it up to the batteries happened in one long weekend. The downside is that we realize that we have an inverter/converter issue. The only time the microwave, outlets, heater/AC work is when we hook into shore power. Obviously this largely defeats the purpose of having four batteries and a set of solar panels. It's something that we're going to have to look into and work out, but right now we're just so excited to have solar panels that we're going to enjoy this victory and research the other issue. Mike also spent 24 hours working out and fixing wiring in the back of the van. It really was a bit of a rats' nest when we started, with no color dedication to the wiring at all. This meant that working out where it all went was so time-consuming.

Mike's dad also worked really hard to make the interior of the van look better. For some reason the person that we bought it from thought that cheap sticky tile should be stuck on everything! We've spent ages peeling it off and using Goo Gone to remove the sticky residue. Here are pictures of the tables returned to their slightly old fashioned green color. The good thing is no more sticky tile and it at least matches the interior of the van.

One of the other issues related to the van interior that we're still working out is what to do with the walls. A lot of the wallpaper is down but I don't want to put wallpaper back up! Not entirely sure what to do...

Also before I left we put in the speakers in the back of the van. This has made working on the van a lot better because now we can actually listen to music in the back with some quality. Also while working on it Mike met one of his more colorful neighbors. He was fascinated by the van and talked Mike's ear off about his travels. He also asked Mike to sell the van to him. Quite flattering since the van still has so much work to do.

Mike wanted me to post information about my hike... so if you are interested in my latest 200 + mile walk in the woods on the Appalachian Trail you can find it here: