Our first full season is in the books

[mjammersc]

Well yesterday our first full year/season of our 2016 3160RL is officially in the books as we winterized it and put it in storage. It was a busy season and we definitely got our use out of it as we are still part of the working world.

Our season was from late March through the end of October, 7 months, and we were able to get out for 60 days of camping and over 6000 miles. This included lots of short 2-3 night weekends and the following longer trips:

- Lake Glendale/Garden of the Gods IL - included camping in snow and ~25 degree temps
- Hocking Hills State Park, OH
- Chain o Lakes State Park IN (with daily commutes to work)
- Week long loop of lower peninsula of MI touring lighthouses
- MOC National Rally at Goshen, IN
- Fort Pickens National Park (Pensacola Beach FL area) via Huntsville, AL and Nashville, TN

This year started with the install of our solar system and we were able to take advantage of it totally off grid ~6 nights and used it to run our fridge and also a crock pot while travelling. It has worked very well and was also useful on off-loading the electric when we were on 30A posts at a lot of parks.

The rig worked well overall. We had a couple of issues that we had to resolve/repair. One was a simple fix but a pain to diagnose - a outside fridge cooling fan connector that was disconnected but was buried in a wire bundle and the fridge had to be pulled out to reconnect it. We also had a black tank heating pad that was bad and was only found due to all the electrical monitoring gear we have related to our solar and EMS otherwise we'd think it was working fine. We also had a "drifting slide" issue pop up just before the rally and due to the Keystone tech visit and Lippert's support, it was resolved on the way home from the rally. We also ended the year upgrading to the MOR/Ryde IS and Disc Brakes before our Florida trip. The brakes are a noticeable improvement and overall the IS is better than the stock setup.

Now is time to catch up on all the home chores that have been neglected and start planning next years trips.