Solar Trailer

Our first longer stay at a campground was in Padre Island, where we had no electric (or any other) hookup. No problem, we've got solar panels. Know what solar panels require? Good sunlight. Know what Padre Island was missing whilst we were there? Good sunlight. We took our battery down LOW. And we were struggling to use anything at night. Even one light seemed to suck us dry. So we used our Luci lights (I LOVE those). By the time we left Padre Island, our battery was down to about 30%, and you're really not supposed to take it below 50%. Hmmm....

Since Padre Island, we've really avoided staying places without electrical hookups. Which is a shame, a lot of places are pretty expensive for the full hookup experience. It also keeps us out of a lot of national parks, especially ones with older campgrounds or that are somewhat isolated. We stayed at Guadalupe Mountains National Park in TX, but that was really only for three nights. Pretty sweet, price-wise ($8), but no hookups. We were pretty low battery-wise by the end of those three nights.

We've been sitting pretty at Hickiwan Trails for a couple weeks, so Bill decided it was time to test all our stuff and see what is really sucking our energy. Holy cow. Each lightbulb we had (incandescent) used 1.5 amps or so. Each bulb! Aside from our heater and our refrigerator's climate control, that's our biggest suck. I had ordered LEDs off Amazon, but I had sent them to my parents and we willpick them up in a few weeks when we're there for the annual ski trip. Except that from here, we want to go to Joshua Tree and Death Valley, both no hookups. Our campground managers had mentioned that you can get packages shipped here, so Bill talked to them to see what delivery times are like. We are now the proud owners and users of LEDs. Each of those bulbs uses .11 amps. That's right, we are now only using less than 10% of what we were using before. What a relief. We can now use four lights (or more) while cooking and eating, making sure we feel comfy and such, while still using less than we were struggling with before.

We've been running an experiment while we still have the hookup (and the ability to rescue ourselves), to go alone on solar. We've not been fully recharging during the days, but we went three nights and only got down to 50% on the battery. Yeah! Next step, more solar. We only have 100 watts or so of solar. I think we're going to double that before we leave my parents' house after the ski trip.