The best laid plans. No matter how much you research, how good you plan, or how well you execute your ideas, things need to change. I’ll admit I didn’t finish all the things on my list before we left. It got busy with final packing and an excitement to leave. We wanted to meet friends in the U.P. for the holiday weekend so, whatever… I have projects do on the road. What else am I going to do?
Our first issue was the lack of properly secured cargo in the trailer. After two-tracking the rig to the Two Hearted campground on Lake Superior, we opened the trailer and to our horror, we found on the hood of the TJ…. a sleeping bag. Everything else stayed put. Since then, I’ve added eye hooks and bungee cords to a few other items that tended to end up on the floor that were wedged on top of the cabinets.
I installed a two-pin ISO port on the camper to use with our newly acquired 80W Zamp solar charger. I tested it at home and it worked great. I was excited that the ISO connection was the same as my battery charger and I could plug it in for charging from the generator/shore power too. But I didn’t test it all and as it turns out, the solar panel is wired backwards from the battery charger. Do I re-wire the solar controller? Seems sketchy. I opted to run alligator clamps with the same ISO connector to the battery for generator/shore power charging days with the battery charger. Not how I planned but it works. There is a battery in the trailer to run the water pump and some USB ports. I have that wired with the same ISO connector so charging it with the generator or shore power is simple as well.
We decided after shower number one that we didn’t like the shower drain. It was meant to drain through a hose, out the side door, and into a five-gallon bucket on the ground. Simple idea, right? Except not all campsites are private enough to feel comfortable showering with the door open. So I did what I didn’t want to do and drilled a hole in the floor of the trailer in the front of the vee nose and ran the hose there to a three-gallon bucket that fits under the trailer. Problem solved. Now, since I drilled the first hole, I have no problem drilling a second hole for a power cord that feeds a power strip mounted to the cabinet so when we have shore power or the generator running, we have AC power in the trailer too.
The composting toilet is working as designed. This is making boondocking a lot easier. We are finding out-of-the-way places to camp for free and prefer this over established campgrounds. We only go to campgrounds when we need to be in town and want shore power for a couple of days and internet access in camp.
The hot water heater works excellent. We have all the hot water we need, anytime we want it. I planned on using the shower wand when we needed water at the sink. I stupidly took the faucet off (it felt chinsey), and left it at home. I ended up teeing off the line from the pump and using a garden hose shut-off valve as a makeshift faucet. It works easier than the shower head.
In the camper, I had modified a free dog crate (thanks Mike!) to fit the space on the floor at the front of the camper and Gus sleeps in that. It worked just fine but he really didn’t care for it, having never been a crate dog, so we took in out and now he just sleeps on a dog bed on the floor. On a couple of cold nights that we needed to run the heater, we moved him up on the fold-out couch to get him off the cold floor. He seems to like this better but we still have a child gate that we put up to keep him from wandering from his sleeping area. We don’t think he would pee in the camper but we aren’t testing that theory.
I haven’t changed much else, really. I fixed a leaking fitting on the splitter from the 100 Lb. propane tank. It feeds the on-demand hot water heater, the wall mounted space heater, and a line that I hook up to the camp stove for cooking. Once in while a wall board will pop off. There’s a lot of rocking and rolling going on with the trailer on some of these roads. We’ve done a lot of re-arranging of stuff to better optimize space as we used supplies up and this is lightening the load. One of the cabinets has been removed. It was solid overhead cabinet for an office cubical and was seriously heavy. We really didn’t need the storage space any more so it got dumpstered to save weight.
So at this point I think we are happy with the way things are now. We are almost 2 months into this journey and finally getting into a nice routine.