Our First Boondocking Experience!

Sunday, December 15, 2019 -- We already had the equipment for getting fresh water, and dumping waste water. So the electrical situation was the only one left we needed to master!

When you are considering boondocking, its very important to get some kind of understanding about what things in your RV run off of regular 110 AC electric, what runs off of 12V DC electric, and what runs on propane. We paid alot of attention to that over the previous 9 months, so had a good understanding. When electric is not available, the refrigerator, stove, water heater and furnace all run off of propane. Although the refrigerator and furnace both use some 12V electric as well. 12V DC electric from your RVs battery will run what the refrigerator and furnace need, in additional to all the overhead lights, outside lights, built in radio, smoke, carbon monoxide and propane detectors, lights on the service panel, slides and the awning. The microwave and anything else that generally plugs into a standard outlet all run off of 110 AC electric, which is non-existent when boondocking. But when the generator was running, and the trailer was plugged into the generator, everything worked, just like we were plugged in at an RV park.

We have a Champion Dual Fuel Generator, and up to this point, besides running the break-in period, it had never been used. When we set up in Quartzsite, we started running the generator moderately, for about 2 hours each evening. The first 2 nights, with low temperatures in the lower 40s, we got thru the nights just fine. On day 3, we decided that we probably should get our battery monitor hooked up, so that we could have a better idea of where we stood.

But the 3rd night, with low temps in the upper 30s, didn't go so well. We ran out of electric around 3AM and had to turn the generator on to charge our battery and keep the furnace running so that we wouldn't freeze! Thank our Lord for the BattleBorn battery we bought. If we had anything but a Lithium battery, we wouldn't have been able to get back up and running quite as easily!

Even having the numbers in front of us from the battery monitor, we were still learning about how much wattage we were using and how much battery power we needed in reserve to make it thru the night. And at 5AM the next night, we ran out of power again, and had to start up the generator to charge the battery and keep our furnace running!

It took some time, but we soon realized that we needed to charge the battery up to about 13.2V in order to get thru the night without problems. So, in addition to running the generator for about 2 hours in the morning, we also ran it for about 3 hours in the evening to charge our battery up to the proper level. And we also lowered the thermostat for the furnace down to 71 degrees, so that it wouldn't come on as frequently. Needless to say, this costed us about $5 per day in propane to run the generator, which was way over our budget. So we started to look for solutions.

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GentleSeas Photography by Ed
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Tuesday, December 17, 2019 -- Our electronics had previously been sitting on the floor under the dining table. But Ed built this shelf so we could move them up out of the dust! And he tied them all down, so they wouldn't move around on travel days!

Thursday, December 19, 2019 -- It's a little chilly today, so General is curled up on the couch with his blanket.

I went to the Post Office right at noon, because I had heard about the waiting time to get General Delivery packages. But there was no one there, so I got right in and right out!

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Roadrunner Market is the main grocery store in Quartzsite, with Coyote Fresh Foods coming in a close second. Roadrunner is bigger and has more selection, and their prices are just slightly cheaper than Coyote. We can also get groceries at Dollar General and Family Dollar, which we did quite frequently during our stay.

Quiet Times was recommended to us as a place to receive packages from Amazon. They claim to have never lost a package, which the Post Office does from time to time. And they only charge $2 per package for this service. It seemed worth it to us.

You can buy pretty much anything at the Tyson Wells Marketplace. Natural Remedies, anyone?

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Over the Hills 2019 T-Shirts by Ed
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Here's another view of the Tyson Wells shopping area.

We got some Cholla Cactus skeletons to use in our Christmas decorations!

Quartzsite has these really awesome signs at each of the main road entries!

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