Living the Dream II

(We've been without cell/data for over two weeks - this was written 5/19/18)

Perhaps a few details about living off the grid in a “no hook-up” situation would be of interest?  We arrived at Headquarters Campground in the Sequoia National Forest on 5/16/18 and we leave 5/23/18 – a full seven nights in the Kern River area about 5 miles North of the very cute town of Kernville, CA.

I celebrated my BD this week and we ate at a local café called Cheryl’s Diner – they had a great selection of pie and it was excellent!

This is a primitive campground, meaning there are vault toilets.  While there is access to water at the spicket it is cloudy and does not seem to be drinking water quality.  We filled our 60 gallon fresh water tank in the Hideout when we arrived and are using the water to wash dishes, shower, and use the bathroom late at night or early in the AM when a trip to the outhouse is too inconvenient.  We have tried very hard to limit the water that goes into our grey and black tanks.  We have been capturing the water from dishes and showers and dumping it in the firepit so we have less to haul out of here when we leave and we don’t want to have to dump prior to 5/23.  We are halfway through our stay and have used quite a bit less than half of the 60 gallons and have limited the water into the waste tanks sufficiently so I am confident we will be able to finish our stay without having to move the Hideout to fill or dump tanks.  I did locate the closest dump station in Kernville at a private campground – they charge $15 to use their facility to dump.  We will be stopping there before we head to our next campground.

Without being able to plug in to the “shore” we are running on our battery charged by the sun.  The weather has been perfect and our site is ideal for solar because the Hideout is not in the shade.  We have been sliding the panels on top of the roof as that seems the best placement of them while in this site.  We can monitor the output of the panels on the app on Husband’s phone which is Bluetooth connected to the charge controller in the underneath storage.  Here is what the Hideout looks like when the panels are connected.

You can see the wires hanging down the front of the trailer; the panels are sitting on top.  There are many systems in the Hideout that run on DC power – the water pump, the awning, the hitch motor, the blower for the furnace, exhaust fans and lights are the main things.  We also have a DC outlet and we have an inverter that can be used to charge devices such as our laptop batteries, cell phones, tablets… All of our battery powered items can be charged with full sun.  The only downside of this campground is the lack of cell service and data.  But today I went to town and did some laundry and was able to connect to the world for the time I was there. 

The Hideout also carries two 30 gallon propane tanks which provide all the gas we need for hot water, cooking, and the furnace (if needed).  The main use is for cooking – we have a three burner stove and small oven inside.  I also have a propane grill that I use outside with the small camping canisters of propane.  To be honest we haven’t turned on the hot water at all.  We all showered today after spending time in the river.  The water was cold, but not as cold as the river!  Cold showers=short showers and that is what we needed to do!

Overall this experience has been a good one and has taught us a lot about what we need versus what we want.  We are surrounded by tent campers and I am ever so thankful for my bed and for not having to pack my stuff each time we move!  We’ve done a fair amount of camping and living in the Hideout is infinitely better.  It is good that we can stay in unimproved campgrounds because it gives us more options when traveling.  We are also able to enjoy scenes like theses right outside our door because we do not need full hook-ups.