Dealing With the Electric Plug-ins

We had a very quiet day today. I did laundry and Forry took care of some outside chores like adding water to the batteries.

We had waited up last night for the neighbor in back of us to return home, but finally gave up and went to bed. Their electric was plugged into the 50 amp plug for our site when we arrived yesterday. The folks in the office had called them on their cell phone and told them they needed to remove it (as they hadn't paid for 50 amp...) and plug into the 30 amp pedestal. We told the office folks that we would just plug into the 30 amp until they returned, but evidently it was quite late before they got back.

This morning just as I had finished breakfast, there was a knock at the door and our neighbor was there to exchange plug-in spots. It sounds like there has been some confusion about this electric pedestal since they arrived. The actual pedestal for their site is not active (he said he was told that the park was saving a $20 per month activation charge by only activating every other pedestal). So instead of having your choice of 30 or 50 amp at the pedestal at your site, they are parking people who pay for 50 amp in partnership on the same pedestal with the people who pay for 30 amp... Quite confusing!

So anyhow, I went out with him and we traded spots and had a great conversation in the process. He said the man who was in our spot before us was insistent that sharing a pedestal would never work and got so mad at the maintenance guy who told him to share that he pulled out and left! He was just sure that having another coach plugged into "his" pedestal would "steal" all of his electricity! (Now I know why the office staff was so nice and kept saying "thank you!" when we said it was no big deal, we'd just use the 30 amp until the folks got back.) We haven't been at too many parks who are set up this way, but there have been a few and it seems to work just fine.

So why didn't I just exchange the plugs in the first place? Because you need a "pigtail" to take the 50 amp line from your coach down to 30 amp (the plugs have a different arrangement of prongs and are not inter-changeable). And it would have been rather rude to unplug the other people's coach!

We went for another bike ride this afternoon, this time riding up and down ALL of the streets in the park. It is a BIG park!