WE HAVE A LOSER

Tuesday, June 16.   Ladies and gentlemen, we have a loser.  Hopefully we have now stayed in the worst park that our RV travels will take us to.  Pedernales Falls State Park, step up and take a pratfall.  There is nothing to recommend this place – neither scenery nor the physical plant.  This was the most attractive thing we saw: I thought it was dead, in keeping with the ambiance of the flora around us, but when Loni nudged it with her toe it took off like a shot and ran up a tree.  That was it for our nature walks. 

Ugly is bad enough, but there’s no excuse for the lousy physical plant.  The ranger station is about a mile and a half from the actual campground.  You can’t just pay your money and pick a site.  You have to pay, then drive down, drive around, find a site, drive back to the station (no phone service) to tell her what you’ve selected, then return to set up.  Did all that.  Got out our Progressive Industries power monitor and plugged it in.  YIKES.  Our first time with a bad power setup.  The monitor showed reverse polarity.  Why is that a big deal?  Well, beats me, but a quick google and this seems to be the answer:

Reversed polarity puts all the AC breakers on the rig in the neutral side of the circuit. An overload might still trip the breaker, but since the breaker is in the neutral side, the circuit is unprotected from a short. Current will continue to flow until the circuit burns open. A fire aboard is a possible consequence. Reversed polarity also presents a serious shock risk. Turning off a breaker appears to remove power from the circuit because it turns off all appliances connected to that circuit. But with reversed polarity you have disconnected the appliance from ground, not from power. The circuit is still live!  Unfortunately, the circuit boards in the rig could melt, causing mucho buckos of damage. 

So, thank you Progressive!  I walked around to a few other sites and thought the monitor read ok on them.  It’s a little hard to read in direct sunlight.  Drive back up to the ranger, report the polarity problem, tell her the new site, drive back down, back in, level, go to hook up the monitor and . . . augh!  An open ground fault (the grounding wire not connected somewhere) thus a potential shock hazard.  Wander around again and test another site.  Another open ground.  Trudge again. Finally, a good one.  Drive back up to the ranger, report the additional two faulty posts (she has no clue what I’m talking about, but at least writes down the info), get assigned to the new spot, drive back down, set up, get the air on, and flop.  Did I mention it’s 98 degrees out?  This is not a happy camper.

We did drive the rig over to the “falls” the next morning, but found the water level so low there was barely anything trickling over the rocks, which form more of a slide rather than a falls.   To be fair, this part of Texas is experiencing a drought, and I’m sure it’s more attractive in wetter times.  We won’t wait around.