I got up before J and started to work on a blog entry without turning on our inverter. After J got up, we turned on the generator around 6:50 because the house batteries were showing 11.9 VDC (extremely low) with only about 85Ah of our theoretical 400Ah capacity used — not good. I processed four images for the blog. We turned off the generator around 8:35 after getting the batteries back up to about 69Ah used and we were getting 7.6A of solar-electric power. I cleaned up the RV then read an article in a 2008 edition of National Geographic on space flight. J and I talked about our battery problem, then ...

I called Lifeline Batteries around 10:00 to see about getting replacement batteries under warranty. The guy asked me questions about why we thought we needed them replaced, then he said we had to do the following before they would consider replacing them. First, plug in and charge the batteries for at least 12 hours. Then disconnect the batteries from everything and let them rest for four (4) hours. Then measure the voltage on the batteries. He thinks we have a sulfation problem which is cause by repeated insufficient charging which causes the batteries to lose capacity. If that's the case, then we can try a conditioning/equalization charge by putting 15.5 VDC into the batteries for eight (8) hours. We might have a problem doing the conditioning/equalization because our Inteli-Power PD9160A power converter (converts 110 VAC to 12 VDC) can only put out about 14.5 VDC. The guy suggested that we can probably adjust our HeliotropeHPV-30DR solar charge controller to output 15.5 VDC.

I processed some images for a stock submission and we were getting plenty of solar-electric power now.

I had lunch around 12:10 and finished the blog entry. Some nice clouds were moving in from the southeast. We left around 1:00 and ...

Walked up and down the road to get some exercise. J headed back before me.

I returned to the RV around 1:40 and the clouds had become almost solid overhead and we were no longer getting much solar-electric power. We turned on the generator so J could vacuum the floors. After she finished, I vacuumed all the other surfaces then processed more images for a stock submission. We finally turned off the generator around 5:50, and the batteries were showing +16.5Ah of capacity — we were able to put more juice into the batteries than our baseline when we left Auto Zone on October 9, 2010. I reset the Link 10 battery monitor to have the new baseline.

We had dinner around 5:45 of Bertolli Shrimp Scampi & Linguini.

We left around 6:25 in the Jeep.

Instead of going straight to photograph the wonderful clouds, we explored a dirt road we hadn't taken, and it took us down into a nice valley with some orange aspens. The trees were in the shade of the mountain to the west and not so interesting photographically.

We headed back to the scenic over look near the summit on UT-31 and the sunset color had mostly passed. We drove further west and stopped to photograph the clouds to the east (left). The image was created from one capture that was processed twice to bring out detail in the relatively bright sky and the relatively dark foreground and then combined by hand in Photoshop.
We returned to the RV around 7:25. I downloaded the images I took then started to make a batch of coffee concentrate in the Toddy Cold Brew System. We turned on the generator around 7:45 because the Capresso Infinity Conical Burr Grinder took a fair amount of electricity to run and took quite a long time to grind a pound (0.45kg) of LavAzza Gran Filtro Dark Roast whole-bean coffee. We turned the generator off when I was done around 8:10. Then I had the last of the Blueberry Bars with some vanilla ice cream before downselecting the images from tonight.