Yosemite, battery, propane, heating, March
Hello everyone and thanks for your time and answers in advance. My wife, daughter and I have a five day trip scheduled to Yosemite the last week in March. We are new to RVing (long time tent cam...
Forum Discussion
CA Traveler wrote:
Congrats on asking! As a tent camper you know and stated the obvious - warmer clothing.
Furnaces take a lot of battery power and of course propane. Sure you can have more batteries and propane. Even drive to where you can run the gen but who wants to do that?
Learn about the limitations - for example fully recharging batteries (100% SOC) requires many many hours of driving/gen time. So you're resigned to a 50-80% SOC recharge. ie You start the night at up to 20% discharged.
Various heaters? Sure they work. But I have a personal adversion to running anything potentially deadly to me while I'm sleeping.
Some have used sleeping blankets but likely require more battery power than you have.
My advice: Take warm clothing, go and learn more about various options. It's been many years since we've been in Yosemite - I'm envious.
I agree with this. As a tent camper, you're used to doing simple things to stay comfortable. Don't lose sight of that simplicity now that you have an MC.
I camp in my C and have no generator, only 1 battery, and no hookups. I have not had to drive around or idle to recharge the 1 battery yet. It's not that difficult.
Yes, warmer clothes are number 1. Extra blankets on the bed. Rather than running my furnace, I picked up a Mr Heater Little Buddy. It runs on the 1lb propane bottles. In the evening before bed, I light it up for a couple hours to take the chill out of the air. In the morning, I light it up again to warm things up while I start moving around. I have curtains separating the cab from the house - this reduces any drafts. I lower the blinds at night - this helps block the cold from coming through the window. During the sunlight hours, I open the blinds and curtain so the sun can warm things up.
I find the above much easier to do than adding additional batteries, messing with a generator, finding ways to recharge batteries, etc., especially in traditional campgrounds that are popular with tent campers (who don't want to listen to a bunch of generators running every day of their trip).
