Here is the toughest thing we deal with, trying to stay connected, this is tough in all campgrounds, but even more difficult when on the road traveling. Our Verizon hot spot has been good for us but it expired a couple of days ago and here at the Beckley rest stop we have little to no cell service so we are unconnected.

Being Canadian full timers and spending so much time in the USA everything is very complicated. The cellular provider we use in Canada is Rogers, actually terrible service but for southern Ontario they are probably the best, we have two phones, Laurie’s I-pad, and a Rogers Rocket Hub hot spot. When we started our travels in the States our provider then had a program called “Roam like Home” cost was $5 per day per phone for a total of 10 days for each phone, for a total of $100 extra per month an ok deal to get all the features we had at home including 20 gig of data, now the cost is $7 per day, per phone, for 15 days for a total of $210 extra per month NOT a good deal so we changed our process. We used Roam cellular for our America provider this year, two American phone numbers, unlimited calling and text in US/Canada and 6 gigs of data per phone per month. Six months cost me $550 for both phones, a much better deal! Coverage has been responsible on the east coast, we will so out west next winter.

I know enough ranting for a Saturday morning, had an uneventful night, other than the regular truck noise, if we got rain it was light as it didn’t wake me. On the solar production, better than I expected 103 amp/hrs. We had originally thought we would stay here a second night but because of the poor cellular service we will push further up the road and try to find us a Walmart off of I-79 and spend the night.

It’s Saturday afternoon and we are settled into a Walmart parking lot just off of I-79 in Whitehall West Virginia, and I have a satellite signal for round three of the Masters. Only 144 miles today nice bright day, some high cloud but should be a pretty good solar day, we fueled this morning $140 to fill we are coming down from the mountains so elevation is around 1200 feet. We will get through the Pittsburg area tomorrow which will avoid the weekday traffic.

Well happy Friday everyone, yesterday was a great solar day, 137 amp/hrs produced this morning batteries at 87%, had a great day in Gatlinburg and still got back for me to watch three hours of the Masters coverage.

Still hot here in Tennessee was mid 80’s yesterday and only dropped to high sixties overnight, weather is looking a little suspect for the next few days so we have to make a decision as to how far we push today. We are going to head for West Virginia and north through Pittsburg and up I-79 so how far we cover today. Beckley West Virginia is 234 miles, up through Rocky Gap or hunt for a overnight near Wytheville Virginia which is 161 miles.

Well it is 1 o’clock and we are parked in the Beckley rest area for the evening, so a four hour drive to day through the mountains, highest elevation today was 3250 feet and we are at about 2350 here now. Just put the dish up to watch round two of The Masters.

It has been an overcast day so good for driving, no good for solar so we will see quite a difference in the morning readings, this is where the lithium battery bank come in to its own with more usable power, that extra 30% of battery is huge to carry us through a couple of cloudy days. The rain looks like it is coming this afternoon and overnight so another day I didn’t have to drive in the rain although a number of insects did commit suicide on the windshield today.

So a quick check tells me we are less than 500 miles (800 kilometres) to our next park in Stoney Creek Ontario. So it appears we may cross the boarder a day or two earlier that we had anticipated, and that’s ok there are a number of places we can boon-dock for a night or two and it would give us a couple extra days to visit and tie up some loose ends.