Things That Go Bump in the Night is the penultimate line in a traditional Scottish poem: From ghoulies and ghosties / And long-leggedy beasties / And things that go bump in the night, / Good Lord, deliver us!

RV’s have a lot of components to keep track of. The information you know about cars and electronics is often very different and unintuitive.  Let me try to explain. 

Our first night in the RV we found ourselves at dusk looking for a good campground in the Catskills. The first one we chose had 12′ colored fountains and a huge 8′ plastic lamb’s head over the office entry.  The second one looked like Larry, Darrel, and Darrel’s place.  Not a place you’d like to stay.  The third one had no signs at all and Google Maps said to park on the side of the road.   No sign of a campground.  We finally found Beaver Del, a large grassy meadow next to the river. We decided to use battery power instead of plugging in since it was dark and late and we didn’t want to make a lot of extra noise.  We fell asleep to the lullaby of two hoot owls and the rushing river.   

In the middle of the night we were awakened by an annoying, insistent beep every 30 seconds.   Stumbling about the cabin I adroitly removed the carbon monoxide alarm yet the beep continued. I found a propane alert alarm under the kitchen counter along the floor.  We hadn’t even opened the propane up!  Lying stomach down on the cold hard floor, the directions were too small to read in the dark and the beep was unrelenting. I pressed the mute button with no success, found the 10 pound manual with no reference to this device, and finally resorted to covering it with a narrow little pillow interestingly left by the former owner. By muffling the beep I hoped we could sleep and miraculously wake up in the morning.

In the morning the car wouldn’t start.  The battery was dead.  We must have left something on.  We  asked the owner of the campgound, Elise, for a jump. No jumper cables in the RV. She knew someone down the road who had jumper cables. She retrieved them and brought them back to the RV.  

Looking under the hood of an RV is unlike  looking under the hood of a car.  The batteries are under the floor of the cab and there are no clear plugs visible to hook jumper cables to.  

Our camp neighbor saunters over. His name is Steve and is wearing a MOPAR service shirt.  He appears to have strong working man’s hands. Things are looking up. He finds the elusive positive plug and locates the even more elusive negative plug on the body of the hood! Voila! we have a connection Houston! Thank you Elise and Steve for helping us out. Muy amable (Spanish for you are so kind!)

Photo with Steve…he has been staying at Beaver Del for 3 months!  He sure helped us out. And this  is Elise.  Stay at Beaver Del when you are in the Catskills!  You won’t be disappointed!  Now onward to Allegany to see our dear friend Carmen for a few days!