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
You probably will not find anyone sitting on the side of the road offering to install tire chains for $50 - or anything more or less. It is just cold out there, and nobody is sitting around waiting to make a few bucks.
Put on the chains yourself, it will not take that long. And when I was there in February 1989 and light snow on the road. I did not need chains, and made it into the valley without a problem. Finding a campsite was another problem, the 'sites' where under 1/2" of snow, so you can not see the black paved sites, only white everywhere! I did figure out that the tall parts are paved, and pulled into a site, paid for it, and went to sleep.
I did not need to worry about battery power on that trip, as my camper did not have a furnace at that time. (I traded up to a Coachman camper a few months later. It had a furnace and refrigerator).
On another trip, I had a 300 watt solar system, and 4 golf cart batteries. I only had to worry about overfilling my grey water tank (42 gallons) and needing to drain it after a few days. A short trip to the dump station, and I Was able to recharge the batteries by running the main engine a bit, as well as empty the grey and black tank, then fill the fresh water. It took about 1 hour.
Your have an advantage. There is no "Run time limit" for your main engine, and it probably has a 100+ amp alternator. It is the generator that is limited to running between certain hours. I would run the generator for about 1 hour at the beginning of the generator run limit, and an hour before it ends. It is the first hour of running the generator that gives the most amp hours, then the batteries accept power at a much slower rate per hour later.
Good luck!
Fred.
Put on the chains yourself, it will not take that long. And when I was there in February 1989 and light snow on the road. I did not need chains, and made it into the valley without a problem. Finding a campsite was another problem, the 'sites' where under 1/2" of snow, so you can not see the black paved sites, only white everywhere! I did figure out that the tall parts are paved, and pulled into a site, paid for it, and went to sleep.
I did not need to worry about battery power on that trip, as my camper did not have a furnace at that time. (I traded up to a Coachman camper a few months later. It had a furnace and refrigerator).
On another trip, I had a 300 watt solar system, and 4 golf cart batteries. I only had to worry about overfilling my grey water tank (42 gallons) and needing to drain it after a few days. A short trip to the dump station, and I Was able to recharge the batteries by running the main engine a bit, as well as empty the grey and black tank, then fill the fresh water. It took about 1 hour.
Your have an advantage. There is no "Run time limit" for your main engine, and it probably has a 100+ amp alternator. It is the generator that is limited to running between certain hours. I would run the generator for about 1 hour at the beginning of the generator run limit, and an hour before it ends. It is the first hour of running the generator that gives the most amp hours, then the batteries accept power at a much slower rate per hour later.
Good luck!
Fred.
