live. work. dream.

I’ve been mulling over a draft for a post about our custom RV solar power system for months, ever since we left the prime solar energy country of the southwest. It has just been working so well for us that we haven’t really had to think about it much. Then our batteries crapped out on us.

For the past few months, we have spending about half of our nights in state and national park campgrounds, without hookups. And we have easily been able to go eight hours or more without using our Honda 2000i generator to charge the batteries. Or longer if we had good exposure to the sun.

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When we picked out our Dodge Ram 2500 pickup truck, one of our requirements was that it had to have a diesel engine, so that we could run biodiesel or straight veggie oil (SVO) in it. We wanted to offset our footprint by buying such a large vehicle. So we took a class on Making Your Own Biodiesel, learned the ins and outs of producing and buying it, and set off on this trip with the hope that we would find it in lots of places. Eventually, we’ll make our own, but for now, we have to rely on Biodiesel.org to tell us who’s selling it and where.

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As a child, I was terribly frightened by the movie the Wizard of Oz. It wasn’t the witch, the trees, or even the monkeys. The idea of a tornado coming and tearing up my house and carrying me away from the comforts of my home and family was really quite traumatizing.

With age and a little therapy, I’ve been mostly able to overcome this fear. But the other night I couldn’t help but remember how my siblings and friends would taunt me about our neighbor’s car – an Oldsmobile Toronado. As I tried to drift off to sleep, the unmistakable sound of a distant tornado warning siren kept me wide awake. Hey, I saw Twister. (more…)

Here’s another quick tip for RVers with dual LP tanks for their rig. This was another little chore from my RV maintenance day back in Duluth. I wrote the word “use” on a small piece of magnetic sheeting to help us remember which tank we’ve been running off of since we like to use one tank up completely and keep the other one full as a reserve. When we switch tanks, we’ll just move the magnet from one to the other. This also serves as a simple gauge so we know at a glance if we’re running low on propane.

By drawing an “approx. level” line on the magnet we can also easily tell about how much gas is left in the tank we’re using. You don’t need any spendy inline gauge or one of those strips you have to pour boiling water on. Just wait until you have the stove or any LP appliance on and run your hand down the side of the active tank. You will feel the side of the tank get cooler at the approximate level of gas left. We’ll just do this periodically and move the magnet as necessary. Muchas Gracias to El Jefe for showing me that trick!

Our first day boondocking at Seedhouse Campground in the Routt National Forest, we had excellent connectivity with Satellite 91 West using our DataStorm F2 dish. The next few days however, we spent too much time trying to troubleshoot connectivity issues. In a previous life, this would have been frustrating. But it’s hard to get upset when your home office is deep in the woods with so much to do…

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We’ve been giving the fridge a serious workout the past few weeks as we have traveled through some record-breaking heat in Arizona and Utah. I’ve been meaning to post about how the fridge issues that began at Lake Francis RV Resort seem to be resolved. Then I noticed the ignition fault error this morning after our first night in the Rockies outside Steamboat Springs, CO.
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Here’s another reason to get a fifth wheel instead of a bumper-mounted travel trailer. The last few legs of our roadtrip have confirmed that we made the right choice…

When we researched purchasing a travel trailer or a fifth wheel, we discovered that fifth wheels are much less likely to sway in high winds as the weight is centered over the axle instead of hanging off the bumper.

Over the past few days we have experienced some pretty high winds. Traveling south on CA highway 395 and then up out of Death Valley, we experienced strong winds from all directions. Not once did I feel instability in the trailer. I never noticed the fifth wheel sway or fishtail from side to side. It felt steady even in the strongest winds and was always rock steady in the rear view mirror.

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For the past couple nights we’ve been staying hitched to our fifth wheel trailer when spending just one night in RV resorts. We’ve researched this online and only found this one forum discussion about staying hitched that addressed the issue specifically. It confirmed my assumption that it will do no harm to the truck.

I do, however, raise the trailer a bit more than the RV.net Open Roads Forum member who mentioned he only extends his trailer legs an inch or so after hitting the ground. Personally, I recommend lifting the trailer until I notice the truck bed actually lift. Then I retract the trailer legs until it appears there is no weight on truck bed. All it takes is a couple small adjustments up and down to relieve all weight from the truck’s shock absorbers.

Please note that we do not have air shocks on our Dodge Ram 2500. I do not know how staying hitched will affect air suspension bags. All comments are welcome.

As far as king pin tripods go, we looked into that too after noticing many fifth wheel rigs with them in RV resorts. We’ve read online that larger 5ers benefit more from using tripods – but the smaller 5er the less rocking. We’ve determined using a fifth wheel kingpin tripod is not necessary for our 24′ Arctic Fox. Just something else to carry… I would only consider it if I ever take up permanent residence like I’ve seen in some of the parks where we’ve stayed. But then we would need to go back to Humboldt County and get a carved redwood bear holding a welcome sign.

From our direction we’re traveling in, there’s only one road in, and one road out, to the hottest, most inhabitable place in North America, Death Valley. The music of Pink Floyd is the ultra mellow soundtrack for our crossing at 5:30 am today.

Way back in 1996, the first time we crossed this inferno, the only soundtrack was the wind screaming in my ears as we rode across on bikes getting baked in our leathers. Back then, we gave no thought to what time we crossed. I think we did it at noon. Today, drive across in comfort at dawn in our big ass truck, yet, I’m still terrified. Couldn’t sleep all night thinking about this epic drive. I mean what kind of morons do this in summertime? Us, that’s who. We’re always good for this sort of misadventure.

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Gave the ol’ Dodge Ram 2500 a real workout this weekend haulin’ the rig over Carson Pass (8,650) and Monitor Pass (8,314 ft) from Silver Lake near Kit Carson, CA to Twin Lakes near Bridgeport, CA. Check out our new LiveWorkDream Roadtrip Maps page to see some of the crazy hairpin turns and to follow the progress of our route.

The truck had no problem accelerating up the mountains, though it sure would be nice to figure out the right combination of using the Tow Haul switch, Overdrive Off option and the lower gears. While the truck seems to handle our load just fine in drive, using the Tow Haul switch comes in handy on steep steady grades. A few times, though it seemed to abruptly drop down a gear and nearly red-line for a moment. Any tips are greatly appreciated.

The weight of the trailer didn’t seem to be an issue at all. Either the hitch is getting broken in, or I’m getting much better at handling the vehicle as we didn’t experience any of the bouncing around we had the first few days out.

Of course, we were certain to drain our freshwater tank before we broke camp so we weren’t carrying that extra weight. And we had very little waste water in the holding tanks since we are good at conserving and primarily used the campground toilets. After all, we’re used to back country camping where we did all the dishes with a pint of water.