casita

ENP Summer Update 2023

Posted on by Stevo

The 2023 outreach programming season is in full swing! Since the beginning of the year, we have presented several wildlife, nature, energy, and EV programs all over WNC and worked on improving our classroom. Below are some highlights:

Tips: Increase magnification to 125- 150 for the best experience and click photos to expand.

Classroom Update

Jim built new shelves for the classroom’s storage room and we teamed up to install them with some help from Momentum staff.

We used Jim’s Tesla Model Y as a “truck” to tote the shelving components to the classroom.

Tesla cars are awesome – but ENP really needs a dedicated work truck/community outreach and service vehicle – more on this later in this update.

These new super strong shelves make our storage room far more organized and much safer for our students.

THANK YOU JIM HARDY for your expert assistance, ability, and guidance with this and all our projects – without you, we could not have made any of this happen.

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Classroom Solar Project Update

This spring we received a fantastic donation from Mike Dietham of SolFarm Solar Co in Asheville, NC

– a new home energy storage battery!!-

This valuable battery – when coupled with two more just like it – will allow us to capture much of the excess solar-generated electricity we produce from our classroom array, and store it for use at night, and during the frequent grid power outages we experience in our remote location.

THANK YOU MIKE

and

SOLFARM SOLAR

for this most generous donation!!

That’s Mike Dietham of SolFarm using his 100% electric forklift to load the battery module onto a trailer.

The trailer was attached to the “Mighty” Bolt – ENP’s outreach EV.

We feel it is so very appropriate that a home storage battery, donated by a locally-owned and operated solar installation company, is destined to be used to store excess solar-produced clean energy for an environmental education center powered by solar energy produced by the center’s own solar modules, and that strives to teach ways we can make better energy choices by using locally-produced and renewably-harvested, energy sources – such as the solar panels that power our classroom. Along with all that awesome, the Mighty Bolt outreach EV is charged (fueled) by some of that excess solar-produced electricity produced by the very same classroom solar array that this big battery will be coupled with. This will make our classroom 100% net zero, energy secure, and able to withstand any grid outages – and it may even allow us to go completely off-grid!

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention – the trailer is locally produced by Sylvan Sport – so cool!

Think globally, act locally.

Several students visiting our classroom on a field trip from Dr. Cabin’s class at Brevard College assisted me with the installation of this battery into its final location in our classroom/lab –

THANK YOU ALL!

However, this big storage battery system is not yet online and functioning. To make this system fully operational we need to secure the donation of two more LG RESU 16 Prime battery units and/or raise the funds needed to acquire them. If you are interested in assisting us in completing this third and final phase of this project, which my students, volunteers, and community supporters started over 6 years ago, please do contact us or visit our donation page.

All donations to our 501c3 are tax deductible.

–UPDATE–

We recently received an amazing grant that will allow us to purchase another LG RESU Prime 16 battery unit – we are now 2/3 of the way to our goal!! Thank you Lake Toxaway Charities for this wonderful and most generous support!!

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Outreach Programming Update

We have participated in several local renewable energy and Electric Vehicle (EV) community education programs and renewable energy education/demonstration events in our county of residence and in neighboring Henderson and Buncombe Counties with the Blue Ridge EV Club, Conserving Carolina, and the Transylvania Creation Care Fellowship. What follow are a few photos from the first half of the 2023 outreach programming season.

We started off the year in February with an EV program for Conserving Carolina.

All the participants were very interested and engaged in learning all about the joys and adaptations of driving electric.

The next photo is from a Solar Energy Fair organized by the Transylvania Creation Care Fellowship. In attendance were three local solar installation companies, several EV drivers, and Steve and the SS NaSA PoD from ENP. Our goal was to spread the word about solar and EV technologies available to individuals and businesses as a way to help everyone become better stewards of our shared environmental life support system – nature.

At the Drive Electric Earth Day event, over 70 EVs of various makes and models were in attendance. We had a steady flow of people interested in learning about driving electric and it was a grand success! Look in the center distance for The PoD – its micro-grid provided solar-sourced electricity to run the PA/sound system during the event and charge a participant’s EV – so cool!

At the Earth Day EV show in Hendersonville, NC, I watched as The Air Avenger and The Smog Queen “battled” for the health of our shared environment.

The Air Avenger won the duel – now the rest of us need to follow his lead and do what is right.

During normal working hours, you will find these two mild-mannered individuals working hard fighting for our shared environment at Land of the Sky Regional Council and the NC Department of Air Quality.

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We visited Oskar Blues Brewery which hosted our spring fundraiser for their “Making a Difference Monday” event series.

At our fundraiser, we joined forces with Adventure Grown Guides and several local EV drivers to share our knowledge and passion for our causes on this beautiful blustery 1st of May. The fundraiser was a success, getting us started on our way to raising the support needed to complete Phase Three of our ongoing classroom solar array project and our new outreach vehicle fundraiser project.

Wonderful long-time ENP volunteer extraordinaire Paulina sharing one of our friendly reptilian ambassadors – Elongated Muskadine – with a young friend.

The awesome crew from Adventure Grown Guides shared their guide service offerings with visitors.

Please contact them for all your adventuring needs when in WNC.

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In mid-May, we had a wonderful weekend outing sharing nature and science knowledge with hundreds of interested festival-goers at the wonderful

Lake Eden Arts Festival (LEAF)

High above our camp

We had a great location

So much fun!

Learning is fun!

Cade and Ashley

The PoD’s microscope station is a wonderful educational attraction!

Below are some beautiful diatoms some of our visitors found under our microscopes. They found them in lake water they collected from just 50 feet away in Lake Eden – so very cool!

The wonderful ENP volunteer crew and our LEAF camp.

We also presented an evening program for the wonderful folks of the Sherwood Forest Community in Cedar Mountain, NC at the Robin Hood Barn.

It was a wonderful event where Meredith, Jim, and I shared our passion for nature and wildlife conservation – especially for the more misunderstood creatures of the fields and forests such as snakes of all kinds and the ENP mascot – the Eastern box turtle.

Many heaps of gratitude to Billy and Gail, Meredith and Mary Beth, and all the wonderful residents of the Cedar Mountain and the Sherwood Forest communities who have been some of ENP’s most loyal project supporters since our inception over 15 years ago – you are all heroes!

PHOTOGRAPH BY TIM ROBISON

Learn more about the Eastern box turtle in this amazing article featuring ENP in a recent publication of

Our State magazine

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A new ambassador for his species

In early July we received a new juvenile Opossum joey. This young marsupial had been found by a friend in a forest after a stormy night. It was small, weak, and clearly needed some assistance if it was going to survive. My friend is also an animal advocate so he and his family took the little orphan into their home and took great care of him until he was ready to be released. His time with the family and their pets imprinted the little Opossum on the human way of life so he could no longer be released into “the wild.” This is why he is now living under our care at the ENP/Trails Science nature center. His name is Taylor Slow and he is so incredibly friendly and everyone who has met him loves him so much and gains a new appreciation and understanding of the most important role the Opossum plays in a healthy ecosystem.

Photo by Steve Atkins of Fox Cove Photography

Taylor now lives in the Possum Palace at our classroom teaching everyone he meets about the awesome ‘possum so please let us know if you would like to visit and we will be sure to arrange it 🙂

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SS NaSA PoD Update

This spring we installed a few new ENP-appropriate decals on the SS NaSA PoD – THANK YOU to our friends at Peppermint Narwhal for donating the wonderful artwork for The PoD’s decals allowing us to make all this awesome happen! Please visit Peppermint Narwhal and check out all the amazing things they have to offer!

We also met up with Asher and family, who are some of the SS NaSA PoD’s biggest supporters. During our time together Asher took the opportunity to sign The PoD’s hull.

It was so wonderful to see Asher and family again after all this time. We are so grateful for their contribution to this magical mobile classroom project – without them, none of this would have ever been possible! THANK YOU AGAIN, Asher and family – we at ENP are eternally grateful for your generous and most wonderful support!!!

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Speaking of The SS NaSA PoD, ENP also received a most generous donation of a special electronic component called an Autotransformer from Bob Harris of Black Bear Solar Institute.

I have installed this fascinating device which now allows the PoD’s storage batteries to be charged via “shore power” using almost any electric vehicle charger of the J-1772 variety. These charging units (AKA EVSE) are common in many parts of our service area, therefore, if the sun is not out and/or our battery bank is low we can simply pull into an EV charger, plug in, and fill up the PoD’s batteries on locally-sourced electrons – isn’t science, technology, and engineering amazing! (The PoD is also able to charge via the standard 30 and 50-amp campground connectors and 120VAC.)

Below is a photo of The PoD charging up via a J1772 EV connector.

The PoD is now functionally complete and fully operational. THANK YOU to everyone who made this amazing mobile environmental outreach classroom possible – you are all heroes of the highest order!

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We are now working very hard to raise the funds needed to acquire an all-electric pickup to act as a tow vehicle for the PoD, and serve as a service vehicle for our future ENP community assistance program. Below are a few renderings of what this could look like once we raise the support needed to make it happen.

(not to scale)

The PoD and a Tesla Cybertruck (Steve’s favorite)

The PoD and a Rivian R1T EV pickup

The PoD and a Ford F-150 Lightning EV pickup

As of 8/2/23, we have raised close to $4000, but we still have a VERY long way to go. If you are interested in supporting our wonderful volunteer-operated 501c3 organization with this, or any of our other projects, please consider helping us reach our goals with a donation of any size, form, or function. Read all the details of this campaign on the New Outreach Vehicle Fundraiser page on our website, visit our GoFundMe campaign, or the donate page on our website. Or if you prefer to send a check via “snail” mail, just contact us and we will be glad to give you our mailing address.

Please consider sharing this information with others – THANK YOU.

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We are now well into our very busy summer camp programming season of presentations at camps, events, Trails, and private homes all over the WNC area.

Below is a slideshow following the first half of 2023.

  • Asher investigates some pond water under the microscope
  • We love The PoD!
  • Microscope fun at UFBRF!
  • Paulina sharing Slip the Rat snake with visitors at the Upper French Broad River Festival (UFBRF)
  • Rudy sharing solar and EV knowledge and personal experience with a visitor at the UFBRF
  • At the UFBRF
  • The bio-artifact table
  • More artifacts and a live Copperhead – the snake was released into the wild later in the day
  • At the UFBRF – we shared nature knowledge and teamed up with the Blue Ridge EV Club to share renewable energy and EV knowledge with festival attendees. NOTE: The Tesla is charging via The PoD’s solar array and, like The PoD, the golf cart is a solar powered mobile microgrid!
  • Afternoon program at Camp Merrie Woode – can you find The PoD?
  • At Merrie Woode
  • Meeting Charlie at Merrie Woode
  • Paulina sharing nature knowledge at Bound for Glory Camp
  • Steve and Slip, Rylee and Paisley at Camp Illahee
  • Nature class @ Camp Illahee
  • Rex the Redfoot tortoise sporting his new Tile tracker at Camp Illahee
  • Steve and Taylor
  • High over the forest – can you find The PoD and our classroom*? *Look for the corner of the solar array.
  • At the Lake Toxaway Nature Park in July
    At the Lake Toxaway Nature Park in July
  • Our display at the Lake Toxaway Nature Park
  • High above the The PoD at the Lake Toxaway Nature Park
  • Looking over Lake Toxaway
  • Rylee and Taylor Slow the Opossum at Camp Carolina
  • Opening day program at Camp Carolina
  • High over Camp Merri Woode
  • Steve and Taylor

That is all for now, look for our end-of-year report in December.

If you are interested in having us visit your camp, school, home, office, or event in the WNC, Upstate SC, or East Tennessee areas – please contact us and we will work to make it happen.

THANK YOU ALL for working with us to make Earthshine Nature Programs possible!

Note: Any/all advertisements found within this post are not endorsed by ENP.

SS NaSA PoD Update #13

Posted on by Stevo

Since our last update, we have completed* the SS NaSA PoD and presented many wonderful outreach programs in Transylvania County and beyond. What follows is a recap of the events since our last update.

In August the PoD became a solar centerpiece in the PoD’s first solar/renewable energy/Electric Vehicle program while Jim and I shared our knowledge and practical experience using these technologies with a gathering of interested local individuals.

Below are a few photos of this wonderful event.

Thank you Saunders for these great photos of the event!

While Jim and I were presenting the program I arranged with Marian to drive up in the “Mighty” Bolt EV, park adjacent to the PoD in full view of the audience, then nonchalantly plug the EV into the PoD to charge its batteries on solar-generated electricity, and then take a seat in the audience. It was a really neat demonstration of renewable energy and EVs in action.

The next step in working toward completion of the PoD was to install the trim piece around the new air conditioner – it had to be custom-crafted to fit the space and it looks great – thanks, Jim!

Then the time came to have the damaged area on the “driver’s” side of the PoD repaired in preparation for the custom new ENP graphics/art. The scratch went deep into the fiberglass body of the PoD – but luckily, not all the way through. The damage was causing the gelcoat to flake off, so clearly the damage needed to be repaired before we could apply the custom graphics to the body of the RV.

This is the damaged area before repairs began.

This is how it appeared during the repair…

And now, the finished product…it is a huge improvement.

I would like to offer up a huge THANK YOU to the wonderful crew at Camping World of Asheville for doing such a great job and for giving us a wonderful 501c3/mobile education discount!

An interesting point of interest: the PoD was on-site at Camping World for several days while it was undergoing repairs. During this time the PoD was off-grid and running entirely on solar power so I decided to use this as an opportunity to test the PoD’s solar/battery power system, the new air conditioner, and its remote monitoring security system.

This is a reference photo of the PoD when I dropped it off at Camping World for repairs.

As a system test, I left the air conditioner thermostat set at 70F for the duration (but I could adjust the temperature as needed via the AC unit’s wifi connection).

To verify all systems were functioning nominally, I was able to check in with the PoD via its cellular-connected security system and Victron Energy systems portal at any time.

Next are a few photos I captured while the PoD was at Camping World for almost a week.

On the first night, I noticed a spider spinning a web from the edge of the solar array…I wonder what his story is?

The next day the PoD was moved to a distant parking area where it sat for a couple of days before its turn came for repairs.

Then the PoD was moved into the shop…

Where it met some other RVs in various states of repair. This custom RV belongs to Crossroads – a local mobile veterinary clinic – what a great idea that we can totally relate to – just so cool!!

While in the shop the PoD had its hub bearings serviced and body work started…

…it was moved outside during the bodywork to allow it to cure (and charge) in the sun.

This photo shows how small the PoD is when compared to its larger cousins.

The next photos are a few screen captures showing the Victron solar/battery system’s status from during its stay at Camping World.

The leftmost capture shows the solar (yellow) and battery use (blue) over 5 days of the PoD’s stay at CW.

The center capture shows the day the PoD was taken into the shop. We can clearly see this happened between 1 and 3 pm as evidenced by the drop to zero output from the solar array while it was inside. However, even without solar input during this time, the batteries kept the AC online and operational without any issues.

The rightmost capture shows a time when the AC was on and drawing 635 watts and the solar array was charging the batteries and powering the AC at almost twice that at 1200 watts – amazing!

Sunset between the RV’s

The PoD’s time at Camping World was time well spent as it gave us a great field test of its energy production/distribution, and life support systems as well as its remote monitoring/security system – and some much-needed repairs.

The PoD’s then came home and Marian stitched together its new curtains…

Arent they perfectly appropriate 🙂

I then decided to install a single, fold-down cot above the dinette area. I chose to do this in an attempt to make staying in the PoD more comfortable for us during multi-day festivals. The PoD’s double bed (above) is more like a wide single so it is a bit of a stretch for two 50-something humans to sleep on comfortably.

It was given to me by a friend and in its previous life had been as a very slightly used camp cot…

…I modified it by removing its legs and attaching it to the wall of the PoD. In this photo, you can see the new cot in its down position. Note the center support is made from a wooden dowel, a PVC plumbing fitting, and a chair skid.

The next photo shows how the cot appears in its stowed position.

Below the cot is the GoSun Chillest 12-volt refrigerator/freezer/dinette table.

Note: the wooden support leg is easily removable and stows behind the cooler when the cot is strapped in the stowed position using two corner velcro straps.

With the addition of a thick foam camping pad, the new cot is quite comfortable – but the couple of nights I spent sleeping on it to test it out makes sleeping in the PoD feel somewhat like a submarine.

We then completed the installation of the PoD’s microscope station and debuted it at the DuPont Forest Festival.

Take a look at a few images from this wonderful event.

This was our first event using the PoD’s Overland Vehicle Systems awning sidewalls and they worked perfectly to keep the bright sun off the microscope station and provide some nice shade/shelter when needed.

Between events, the time came to remove the old Casita decals and clean the PoD as well as possible before applying the custom new ENP decals. This is how the PoD looked before decal removal and cleaning.

During decal removal…

In this short video, Paulina shows how we removed the decals.

After the decals were removed and while we were waiting for the new ones to be printed, I installed a permanently-mounted weatherproof, Bluetooth-connected, sound system for use with general class programming and/or to provide background music.

This is the control unit mounted on the outside of the PoD.

This is one of the two coaxial waterproof speaker pods.

Then, we presented several more programs – one was at the Blue Ridge Electric Vehicle Club’s semi-annual National Drive Electric Week electric vehicle car show where the PoD and Mighty Bolt EV took center stage. The club used the PoD’s PA system to emcee the event. This is what our display looked like before the event opened to the public – the Mighty Bolt EV is plugged in and changing from the PoD’s 1,780-watt rooftop solar array – so cool!

What an outstanding teaching tool we have created – together!

Then, the next step was to have the PoD professionally detailed in order to get the ~25 years of grime off of its surfaces before we applied the permanent decals (note again the wonderful new curtains).

My crew and I then applied the decals

The PoD’s custom Hellbender artwork was donated by Peppermint Narwhal – please visit them today at:

www.peppermintnarwhal.com

Your support of Peppermint Narwhal helps wildlife species in need.

Wildlife awareness tangent: learn more about the misunderstood Hellbender by watching this beautiful short film by Freshwaters Illustrated – you will be very glad you did.

Oh, and the next time you are in Washington, DC please stop in at Hellbender Brewing Co. and have a Hellbender Ale.

Finally, we present to you the completed*

SS NaSA PoD

as it appears today.

THANK YOU Asher and family!

The next set of photos is from the multi-day

Lake Eden Arts Festival (LEAF) in October where we were able to give the SS NaSA PoD a real-world test of its abilities.

We are super happy to report that the PoD performed admirably well at the LEAF festival. It gave us a wonderful base of operations to bring wildlife and environmental conservation, nature, and science programming to thousands of festival-goers and it provided a warm, safe, and supportive environment for our education animals and ENP chief naturalist Steve when they slept in the PoD over the three nights of the festival. Even though nighttime temperatures dropped into the mid 20’s the PoD’s micro-scale heating system (a small, ceramic element, forced-air heater) kept the pod and its inhabitants at temperatures in the mid-’60s.

During the day the PoD’s solar array was able to effortlessly keep the state of charge of the batteries up to system-supportive levels that kept all systems online and functioning for the entire festival.

We made many new and visited with several old friends 🙂

The microscope station works perfectly and is a huge hit!

Rachel loves Ashley the Boa constrictor 🙂

Below are three images of how the PoD appears in its fully deployed “Festival Mode” situation.

We also demonstrated solar cooking by cooking up some of Marian’s wonderful vegan meatloaf and later cinnamon buns for all our volunteer staff using our GoSun Fusion solar stove and solar table.

Our touch table full of bio-artefacts

It is a huge draw for all the curious young naturalists, outdoors persons, and future scientists.

Cade teaching the next generation all about snakes 🙂

Charlie the Red-footed tortoise absolutely loves strawberries

From high above our corner of the wonderful LEAF festival.

It was a grand learning experience for everyone.

THANK YOU ALL

Thank you to everyone who has supported us and those that are continuing to support us in the creation of this most unique environmental outreach education project – we are eternally grateful for your most generous support. You are all the greatest of heroes and your support is truly making an amazing difference!!!

This outreach education project will continue to inspire and educate all the curiosity seekers who discover it. But to do this right – we still need your support. The final steps in working toward the completion of the PoD are outlined below and will most likely occur in the following order:

-Installing the telescope – yes, I said telescope. The PoD will have a telescope available for special “sky party” night programs!! This telescope will use a special camera* to connect to the PoD’s flatscreen monitor to allow large groups of people to view all the awesome from the cosmos that surrounds our pale blue dot of a planet.

-Continued stocking of our field guide library.*

-Installing the composting toilet.*

-Installing the 120/240 Volt “shore power”/EVSE service. This is mostly complete but due to supply chain issues we are still waiting on previously-ordered parts to arrive that will make this happen.

-While the PoD is mostly complete and working exactly as we engineered it to do, and doing it very well – the one big issue we are having is with its tow vehicle, a 2013 Honda Pilot with high miles that struggles to pull the PoD up hills – and in our area, we are known for the hills that we call mountains. Needless to say, we are concerned about the remaining lifespan of the Honda and truly do hope it makes it a bit longer until the day we are somehow able to source an all-electric truck/SUV to be used as the PoD’s tow vehicle as well as the third (and last) outreach/utility vehicle for ENP. Please do contact us if you would like to assist us with the acquisition of a dedicated all-electric utility vehicle*.

*These are our remaining needs to fully complete the SS NaSA PoD project. If you are interested in assisting us with a donation of or toward these final items and/or the support needed for us to be able to complete this project – please do contact us or feel free to donate via the link below.  

Please consider supporting this project via the donate link on our website. 

This unique mobile outreach classroom will greatly benefit the nature, environmental, and wildlife conservation education, evidence-supported science, reality, common sense, and renewable energy awareness education for all our outreach program participants in the WNC region, as well as our wonderful students at Trails Carolina and Trails Momentum who will also benefit from the unique wonders it contains. 

As always we will be sure to share any and all updates in posts on this blog, in our end-of-year newsletter, and on our YouTube channel – so please consider subscribing to stay up to date on this wonderful project.

The SS NaSA PoD and the Mighty Bolt EV (our primary outreach vehicle) are owned by ENP (501c3) and used as the ENP company outreach vehicle and mobile outreach classroom for ENP and our education partners Trails Carolina and Trails Momentum.  They are fueled primarily with cleanly-generated electricity provided by the ENP/Trails student-built classroom solar array and the SS NaSA PoD’s rooftop solar array. They both serve as outstanding teaching tools for our Trails students and ENP outreach program participants.

Please subscribe to this newsletter and our YouTube channel to receive future updates on our projects and programs.

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Please note: any/all ads that appear within or below this post are not provided, supported, or endorsed by ENP nor are we supported in any way by these ads –

NaSA PoD Update #8

Posted on by Stevo

Since our last update, we worked very hard to have the PoD ready for our Earth Day reveal – but unfortunately, that did not happen. The conversion time is taking longer than we anticipated so we are now simply working to complete the PoD – with no set due date. This removed the notion of a deadline from the project and at the same time relieved some of the stress I felt because of that deadline. Now, with the anxiety of the deadline removed I feel far more at ease with things and much progress is happening at the pace at which it needs to happen.

That all being said – we are getting very close to completion.

We have completed over 90% of the PoD’s new educational/electrical/plumbing systems and all that remains includes the following:

Solar-electrical – over 95% complete: Most of the solar electronic components are now installed and all that remains is configuring the inverter, and some wire management issues.

Plumbing: 95% complete and working! All that remains is the installation of the composting toilet – this item is not time-sensitive and/or imperative to the initial operation of the PoD and will happen at some point over the next few months.

Exterior: 80% complete. All that remains is the installation of the microscope table*, flatscreen monitor mounting structure*, and painting of the PoD – these items are not imperative to the initial operation of the PoD and will happen over the next few weeks.

Interior: 99% complete! All that remains is the re-installation of the removed “furniture” from the interior of the RV as well as some finishing touches Marian will be making such as appropriately themed curtains.

Below is some of the work we have completed over the last few weeks.

We installed the Solar Inverter Battery Support Structure (SIBaSS – pronounced “Sea Bass”) into its final location in the solar-electronics gear cabinet.

We then installed the inverter, Battery Management System (BMS)/Lynx Distributor assembly, Charge controllers, and the two lower batteries.

We installed most of the heavy gauge wiring between the charge controllers and inverter to the distributor as well as the massive cables from the distributor to the batteries.

Wire management is most important. The next photo shows wires that are not yet managed.

We had to “MacGyver” a way to insulate the huge battery cables where they pass over and through the support structure. The black insulator is made from a thick, rubber, radiator hose from a large truck.

The “brains” of the system. This Cerbo GX device will allow me to monitor the real-time data from the solar-electronics system such as DC solar input, battery SOC, charging status, inverter status, AC/DC input, and output, as well as control the individual components of the system and share all of that information with my students and program participants via a Bluetooth connection to the presentation monitor on the outside of the PoD.

The AC/DC fuse/load panels are in place.

We moved the spare wheel and tire assembly from the back of the PoD to the tongue. Since we have done away with the gas bottles taking up space on the tongue, we have ample space to mount the spare. We also used the original clamp from the gas bottles as a hold-down for the wheel and tire assembly.

Moving the wheel/tire assembly freed up the space on the back of the PoD where we have installed a new access hatch that allows external access to the storage space under the bed. This will allow easy access to programming materials during classes 🙂

Lastly, we topped off the state of charge (SOC) in all four of the batteries in preparation for connecting them to the system this week!! We are about to bring the PoD to life!

In other news – Lucky the Eastern box turtle came out of hibernation this past week 🙂

If you live in an area with box turtles please keep watch for them crossing roads – especially during and after warm weather rain showers when they are most active. When you see them crossing the road please help them across to the side they are heading toward because they are on “important turtle business” and need our help crossing roads.

However, please do not take them home as “pets” or release them in areas that you believe are somehow better for them – they are protected by law in most places, and moving them far from their home range is stressful and detrimental to their health and the health of wildlife due to the potential vectoring of novel diseases and parasites and wildlife populations.

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Stay tuned for all the awesome that is on the way – and a new video will be ready soon!

This amazing project will serve to inspire and educate all the curiosity seekers who encounter it. But to do this right – we need your support. If you choose to assist us in making this project a reality, this unique mobile classroom will greatly benefit the nature and wildlife conservation, science, reality, common sense, and renewable energy awareness education for all our outreach program participants in the WNC region as well as our wonderful students at Trails Carolina and Trails Momentum who will all greatly benefit from the wonders it will contain while they are in class and in the field on expedition. 

 Please consider supporting this project via the donate link on our website or our GoFundMe page:   www.gofundme.com/lets-build-a-mobile-outreach-classroom

The construction and use of this unique mobile classroom will be documented on this blog, in our end-of-year newsletter, and on our YouTube channel.  

The ENP NaSA PoD and the Mighty Bolt EV (our primary outreach vehicle) are owned by ENP and used primarily as the ENP company outreach vehicle and mobile outreach classroom.  They will be powered and fueled primarily with cleanly-generated electricity provided by the ENP/Trails student-built classroom solar array and NaSA PoD’s rooftop solar array. They will both serve as outstanding teaching tools for our Trails students, ENP outreach program participants, and everyone we meet via our outreach programs.

THANK YOU to everyone who has supported and is continuing to support this most unique project – you are all the greatest of heroes!!!

Please note: any/all ads that appear within or below this post are not provided or endorsed by ENP nor are we supported in any way by these ads – they are an automated feature of WordPress.com.

NaSA PoD Update #7

Posted on by Stevo

Over the last two weeks, much has happened with the development of the

SS NaSA PoD.

We have made so much progress I have decided to make this update as a video. It is a bit longer than the 30-second click-bait style video clips most people are used to today. Its length is due to its real content – but if you want real content you must be patient and focused, and open to learning.

Now, sit back and enjoy a detailed overview of our progress.

Stay tuned for all the awesome that is on the way.

We hope to have the ENP NaSA PoD in service on or before Earth Day 2022!

This amazing project will serve to inspire and educate all the curiosity seekers who encounter it. But to do this right – we do still need your support. If you choose to assist us in making this project a reality, this unique mobile classroom will greatly benefit the nature and wildlife conservation, science, reality, common sense, and renewable energy awareness education for all our outreach program participants in the WNC region as well as our wonderful students at Trails Carolina and Trails Momentum who will all greatly benefit from the wonders it will contain while they are in class and in the field on expedition. 

 Please consider supporting this project via the donate link on our website or our GoFundMe page:   www.gofundme.com/lets-build-a-mobile-outreach-classroom

The construction and use of this unique mobile classroom will be documented on this blog, in our end-of-year newsletter, and on our YouTube channel.  

The ENP NaSA PoD and the Mighty Bolt EV (our primary outreach vehicle) are owned by ENP and used primarily as the ENP company outreach vehicle and mobile outreach classroom.  They will be charged and fueled primarily with cleanly generated electricity provided by the ENP/Trails student-built classroom solar array and NaSA PoD’s rooftop solar array. They will both serve as outstanding teaching tools for our Trails students, ENP outreach program participants, and everyone we meet via our outreach programs.

THANK YOU to everyone who has supported and is continuing to support this most unique project – you are all the greatest of heroes!!!

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