South Branch

South Branch was the first campsite I set up at without Michelle. I pulled in behind Ed and got busy with the picket line and water buckets. Ed got on the bus to return to his horse at the River Road campsite. I hooked up the generator, opened the awning, and set up the table and chairs.

I was pleased to see tall trees with space between for an antenna. A tall Tamarack stood right next to me! I shot a line over it to hoist the center support. I used my wrist-rocket with attached spinning reel and a 9/16” hex nut for a projectile. I then attached 200 lb. Dacron to the monofilament and pulled that back into and over the tree. A wild cherry tree and a poplar supported the ends. I was very pleased with the antenna and looked forward to hours of special event operation.

But things went bad. First, the refrigerator stopped working and then the battery went dead. Even with the generator attached to the trailer and running, the water pump and lights wouldn’t work. In spite of the coincidental timing, it turns out that these problems were unrelated.

I was able to get the propane powered fridge to work just by pushing its thermocouple farther in over the pilot flame. (This never works, but it did this time!) The problem with the batteries was the result of a malfunctioning electrical converter. Michelle had just bought this horse trailer, used, and we were just now figuring things out. There is a spot for two deep cycle batteries but only one came with the trailer. It was now dead. We unhooked and drove to nearby Hale, MI, for a new battery. Then, to keep them both charged, I wired the generator’s 12V supply directly to the batteries. This worked, but consumed all my free time and cut into our ‘Happy hour’! To make things worse, the noise from our generator disturbed the veteran campers.

https://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/hmnf/recarea/?recid=18750