Thursday, December 7, 2006

Organ pipe

There used to be a 35 foot length limit at Organ Pipe. They finally raised the limit to 40 feet last year, so we’re staying right in the National Monument, at the same campground we stayed at all those years ago. It’s a little tight, but we’re in.

Dry camping (no hookups). We did it a lot when we were driving the VW bus; all the time in fact. As we moved to bigger motorhomes we still dry camped, but a little less with each larger version. We’ve been in this motorhome over a year, and this is the first time we’ve dry camped in it. It is so electronic, turn off the lights at night and there is a forest of glowing lights all through the rig. Turn off everything you can and there is still a steady draw of about 20 amps. I know this because, finally, we have a motorhome that will give us some clues about battery condition and amp usage. It also give us a breaker panel with a main switch to turn off everything that runs through the inverter to make 120 volt power. Flip that switch and we’re totally on 12 volt, and with everything turned off, we draw zero amps. We have a solar panel on the roof that will charge us back up at the rate of 4 or 5 amps all day long. We can dry camp in this thing.