bosun Report post Posted August 27, 2017 My wife and I decided to boondock (or actually dry camp) at my uncle's place near Prosperity, SC in the path of eliplse totality. The eclipse was just as wonderful as widely reported, something we will never forget. This was our first real dry camping adventure for one night in our new MH. I was pleasantly surprised that my wife slept soundly at the noise of the generator located almost under our bed on our gas MH. We had to run the generator all day and night for A/C as the temperature was in the upper 90's. This is encouraging as we plan on more boondocking in the future. I'm looking forward to some more boondocking adventures in Oct as I attend some four wheel drive Jeep rides in the North Carolina mountains. I hope we only have to run the generator for battery recharging. Patrick Semper Paratus Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
tbutler Report post Posted August 27, 2017 Every adventure expands you travel possibilities. Glad you were successful with your eclipse expedition. We spent Saturday night before the eclipse on the Little America parking lot. Little America is a travel stop on I-80 in western Wyoming. Our evening was cool and we shut the generator down before going to bed. I was awoken in the morning by the generator autostart. Our residential refrigerator had drawn the batteries down to the point where they needed recharging. I checked the weather at a number of our possibilities on the line of totality. We decided to head north to Riverton, Wyoming. We left Little America about 9:00, filled up with diesel in Green River and then turned north. Louise called a campground in Riverton and we got a campsite with full hookups at 11:00 a.m. on Sunday morning. We were able to see the eclipse from that campground. Had we not gotten a campsite we'd have spent Sunday night on a parking lot or roadside somewhere and either viewed the eclipse from there or taken the toad to a spot where we could have seen the eclipse. Having the ability to live off the grid makes our coaches so much more useful. Friday we are leaving Fort Morgan Colorado on our way to Valley Springs, California. We will spend our nights on this trip at rest areas, Walmart parking lots and similar locations. Traveling this way allows us to make and break camp with little effort and little delay. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
desertdeals69 Report post Posted August 27, 2017 Tom, how many batteries do you have? I would think they would last more than overnight. Have you put a switch on the auto defrost wire? That is a dead short when on and some come on every 8 hours. You don't need to be defrosting while boon docking. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
tbutler Report post Posted August 28, 2017 We have the standard 4 x 6V battery set-up. They are AGM batteries and on their fourth summer. I'm suspecting they are nearing replacement. They used to run the furnace all night and the refrigerator as well without a problem so I'm seeing some reduced performance. I'll keep an eye on them. We don't do the off-the-grid thing that often so I don't worry about the defrost. In fact, I get a certain amount of pleasure not having to do the dig-into-the-ice thing like I used to do with the Nocold. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
manholt Report post Posted September 2, 2017 The next total eclipse is April 8, 2023. 100% will be over the Hill Country of Texas, in case you missed the last one! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
