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! 

The maiden voyage.

Our plan was to try out our new Earthcruiser (EC28 - the 28th Earthcruiser made) with visitors, and in the cold. Both extra numbers and cold weather was likely to stress the systems and that is what we wanted.

So we headed off towards Canberra. Our first impressions of the vehicle were the size -much bigger than anything we have driven before, except for the motor homes in NZ. The EC is more compact - especially in width, with the camper only as wide as the vehicle, and in height -with the height easily seen from the cab. This makes estimating clearance from overhead obstacles much easier than in the motor homes. 

The next thing we noticed was all of the attention our vehicle created. We constantly saw people staring and turning to watch us. Drivers strained to see the name of the vehicle. Pedestrians stopped to ask questions. At first this was all very gratifying, but over the next couple of weeks the novelty soon wore off. Every time we returned to the vehicle there would be people standing around it and wanting to know about it! 

Our first night camping was a pleasure as we tried out the equipment and worked out how to camp with our setup. Notice how clean the vehicle looks! 

The young adult members of our family arrived in Canberra the next day, swelling our numbers to 5 adults. Two were to sleep in the roof top tent and one on the folded down back seats, on an inflatable mattress. 

And it was off to the snow! Unfortunately this was a very poor snow season in eastern Australia. Our first night in the alpine area we camped at 3 mile lake west, not far from the Selwyn snow fields. There was no snow but there was a severe frost. Some of us braved the cold and sat around a camp fire, but the others stayed inside with the heater.

The next 10 days were very enjoyable as we settled in to the vehicle and some routines. The boys skied at Perisher in man made snow, and we didn't see snow fall until our last day in the alpine national park. 

However we did enjoy the alpine national park - with it's waterfalls, tree ferns, and majestic s gums. 

The family left us in Melbourne after we all caught up with friends, and after a great holiday. 

Beryl