More Autumn colours, battery problems.

We travelled today from Asahikawa towards Saporro. Beie is known for its flowers and although they are past their peak they still were remarkable. 

We continued on towards Saporro. The trip was uneventful except for the autumn colours which adorn all of the places where it was green in the past. The hillsides, river vallies, cliffs. The best way to describe it is to show you photos. 

We camped on an abandoned bridge. There are so many abandoned roads, bridges, hotels, car parks, that finding a camp site is usually not difficult. And often we find spots with great views. 

 42.77121N,   141.764S this area has closed roads and bridges because of a new dam being built. So these are expected to be inundated. 

We are having battery problems at present. The house batteries experienced a severe over- charging episode (or perhaps multiple such episodes before the problem was discovered) very early on after we took delivery of the vehicle. The factory settings for the regulator were wrong. With instructions from Mark at Earthcruiser Joe managed to reset it correctly. Joe thought at the time that this would severely effect the life of the batteries, and we were reassured by Mark that should they fail he will replace them. 

So it seems that they have failed now. It is not because of anything that happened while we're away. The car was parked in the sun, with nothing running, and the batteries were fully charged when we returned. But now the house batteries will not hold enough power to start the stove or the heater in the evenings. Joe runs the vehicle engine while I start the stove or the heater. The heater will not run all night. It starts flashing a code which means "inadequate power". We now realise that this may explain why we had difficulty starting the stove in the last fortnight before we left last time. We thought it was air in the fuel line. 

Yesterday in Saporro we had the start batteries tested and the result was "unstable batteries". However the young man doing the testing didn't seem to understand what he was doing so we don't have a lot of confidence in the result. He couldn't test the house batteries either because they are AGM (absorbed gel matt) and his testing device couldn't test them. He said they do not exist in Japan! That could make things difficult for us! We'll try to get a better answer elsewhere. Maybe marine shops have AGM batteries. 

Typhoon Vongfong is heading up this way but is not predicted to effect most of Hokkaido. We are in the south west and hoping to avoid it. However it raining today, only lightly, probably not related to the storm. We do have to do a ferry crossing to HONSHU in the next few days, so we are hoping that the 9m waves experienced further south are not also seen here! So wish us luck!