Running your fridge on a battery is risky

This is my final post on the trip to and from Salt Lake City. The trip home took several days with great scenery. Vast vistas are impressive but more difficult to capture with a camera than Mountains.

These images were taken from the Dignity of Earth and Sky plaza near Chamberlin, South Dakota.

We were having difficulty reserving a camping spot so we decided to stay in a motel in Sioux Falls, SD. Setting up and taking down the camper is not a huge problem but after dark and after a long day of driving is not fun and sometimes you just give in. The problems started the next morning when I tried to start the car. The engine would not turn over and all kinds of strange things began to happen with the electronics. The screen displays changed rapidly and the audio made all kinds of strange noises rotating through the different speakers in the audio systems. I could not turn the system off so the weird things just kept happening. We suspected the battery because I had not disconnected the car from the camper and we guessed the fridge in the camper had drained the battery in the camper and the car. Always a dilemma - you can't turn off the fridge over night without doing something with the food.

We called for a jump (perhaps a mistake because someone also sitting in the parking lot later offered a jump). It took an hour and a half for a guy from a gas station to show up in his car with a portable battery pack. Hint - do not call a roadside assistance service. If you are in a city, just call a nearby garage. The 5 seconds to jump and $150 we had already paid solved the problem. We pulled out and I reached the interstate and found that the car would not go faster than 20 mph. I could not rev the engine and I was afraid to turn off the engine because I was not certain that the battery had time to recharge. The garage guy had left a number and we called. He said we should try turning off the car, waiting 30 seconds, and then try starting it again. If the car would not start he would find us and jump the car again without a charge. Great guy. I did as I was told and everything was fine. I guess the lesson is that new cars are just a computer with wheels. Just like your home computer, if you are having trouble try restarting and many problems go away. Your home computer is a little different because it plugs into the wall, but the rest of the process works the same. There were a few other residual issues. That check engine light indicated there was still a problem, but we read that unless the light was blinking the signal only means that a code has been stored and the light would be turned off when a dealer hooked up his machine to check the stored code. It turned out the next time we stopped and then restarted the car, the error light also disappeared. Evidently, sometimes you must restart your computer several times to get everything fixed.