working hard, or hardly working, with me it's hard to tell.

A red Rose.

It was a beautiful day today, high 70s, light breeze, and no rain in the forecast, so running out of excuses I had to put the solar panels on top of the pop-up camper.

It was an easy job but just like I mentioned previously I got Dicor all over everything before I was done. Dicor self-leveling caulk has got to be the stickiest most tenacious substance known to man, and I guess that's why it works so well. As long as you put it where it's supposed to go it's the best stuff there is, but when you get it on your hands and then transfer it to everything you touch the stuff is a nightmare.

I had to order a couple of MC4 solar wire connectors from Amazon because I mounted the solar panels so far apart that two of the wires were going to be a little short to be hooked up in parallel.

I put them far apart for a reason. I wanted to balance out the load on the roof so it wouldn't cause any problems with the roof raising mechanism. But most of all I wanted to put them in a place where I could reach them and do everything I needed to do to screw them down and hook them up without having to walk on the roof. Fact is I'm afraid I would fall through the roof if I put my entire 200 pounds in one area.

Now you might say that sounds like an awfully weak camper if you're afraid to walk on the roof, and I would say, you're darn right. As I said before the Palomino brand of pop-up slide in truck campers are not noted for their strength or longevity. They're mostly noted for being about the lowest-priced pop-up on the market.

Now some people may ask, but boondork how do you justify buying a camper like that? And I would say, most folks buy things for three reasons.

Reason one is you want to impress your friends and neighbors and make them jealous of all of your cool stuff, and that of course is the reason I buy most things.

The second reason is you buy something because it will perform a specific job better than anything else, and in this particular case that's why I bought the little Bronco.

Reason number three is your addicted to Amazon you can't stop buying things you don't need or want. I'm currently in a seven step program to help me with this.

I determined a while back that I wouldn't compare the little Bronco to really nice, well-built, expensive campers. I would simply compare it to the way I was taking my mini-vacations last summer and determine if it was better than sleeping in a tent, and I can say without hesitation that it is. So if it's got some problems, so be it, I'll deal. If it doesn't last long I don't care, neither will I. If it looks shabby and seems to be falling apart, well so am I.

So despite its shortcomings it's going to be way better taking mini-vacations in it and sleeping in comfort rather than sleeping in a tent, or on the passenger side of my truck.

                        theboondork

My two 100 watt solar panels securely [ I hope ] mounted to the roof. By putting them both on the edge of the roof I did the whole job without having to get on the roof myself. I've been playing with the wires and the cardboard keeps the panels from producing any unwanted electricity.