Camp etiquette

Not wanting to sound like the "camping police" here but if you are going to go to a campground and run your generator 24 hrs a day, then camp in a dispersed area so others don't have to listen to it. If you can afford a $20,000 side by side UTV then you can afford a battery bank and solar because even your quieter Honda generator makes a annoying drone late at night even from 200' away,  I know because they were in site 3 and we were in site 6 and I could still hear it inside our trailer even as deaf as I am.

My next and last gripe, don't be a camp site hog take one site don't park your camper in site 4 and then park your extra vehicle and the trailer for your off road rig in site 5. If there is a extra vehicle parking area like at this campground park your extra stuff there don't take up a extra camp site. It takes effort to hook up to your camp trailer and drive out of town and then 5 miles up a bumpy dirt road only to find no sites left because people are hogging the spots. Please show a little compassion for your fellow campers you probably wouldn't want to hear noise all night or have to drive home because you couldn't get a spot.

Solar power

We are still getting parts together for our solar set up but in the mean time we used a single 100 watt Renogy solar panel on our last two trips, I hooked it to a cheapo Harbor Freight solar charger that I had from a project for our popup camper and I used automotive wiring connectors to attach the Harbor Freight wiring to the Renogy panel.

At best this setup with it's light wiring and cheapo controller put out 3.6 amp from a 5.29 amp panel.
We laid the panel flat on our flatbed trailer early in the am on the first trip and then tied it to the gate in the afternoon.

On the second trip we left it flat on the trailer only tilting it with blocks toward the sun afew times during the day. On this trip I put it out on our third day in camp we woke up to 83% battery power which is in the range we normally fire up the generator to recharge the batteries. At 83% we have used about 90 amps out of the batteries so I hooked up the solar panel in the am and by dark we were back up to 95% battery
power so we were only about 23 amps from a full charge which kept us from running the generator even once during the five nights we stayed there so for me it was a success so I will look to replace this portable set up with heavier wiring about 8 gauge and some Renogy panel connectors, a better charge controller and two of these 5.29 amp 100 watt panels with a piano hinge to connect them together and maybe some legs so they could be stood up. This setup I used this trip cost us about $110-120 so not bad.

Six more days of fun at Cottonwood Creek Campground in WY

We just got back from six days/five nights at Cottonwood Creek Campground in WY. We did some rockhounding, gold prospecting metal detector style, 4 wheeling and took a day trip to the Bighorn Mtns.
We showed up at camp late Tuesday afternoon and had the place to ourselves till Thursday and the campground overflowed by Friday.

Weather was typical for our camping trips in other words it rained.

                                                       Which makes for nice sunsets

                                          Sunrise at 6:30 am, sun doesn't hit camp till after 7am

Trailer blocking.

For the most part we use 6x8" or 8x8" blocks under the landing gear and 2x6 or 4x4 under the stabilizers. We use 2x6" under the tires on the low side but some times you only need a inch not two so we cut up a horse stall mat that is a inch thick that we could add in stripes or blocks.

Camping project

While camping this last trip we removed the valances and added curtains, we still have 4 windows to go.

First camping trip for 2020 is done.

We went to Cottonwood Creek BLM campground outside of Lovell WY for 5 nights was in the 80's mostly and as usual when it did storm the wind came a howling and got the camper rocking.