Mathews Arm Campground Shenandoah NP
We are planning a trip to Mathews Arm campground in October but this will be our first time campings without water and electric hook ups. We will be arriving late Friday night and staying until Sunda...
Forum Discussion
We are nowhere near experts on the subject and have only drycamped a couple times. But, as a somewhat newbie, I can say, don't worry about it. However, here is what I would do.
- Fill up at home. The extra weight is null, unless you are overweight on your setup or too close for comfort. What happens if you get there and the water is out or is bad? Some places have stinky water. Also look at your tanks. What size are they? Our fresh is 40 gallons and our gray and black are about 30 gallons each. So we will need almost 60 gallons of fresh when we empty. We can either add some extra to the tanks (more than likely the black) before we leave or we can carry some extra water in containers, which is what we do. We have a couple of 6 gallon containers that we fill up at home and take with us. With what's in the tanks already, we are just under that 60 gallons for dumping purposes.
- Take the extra blankets and use those as much as you can. Get something like a Mr Heater Buddy protable heater. Run it right before bed to warm up the place and then again in the morning when you wake up.
- Be careful with your electric usage, especially with just one battery. Even though you have LED's, doesn't mean you should run your lights and other things alot. The fridge panel requires some DC as does your LP detector. Take a multimeter with you and keep an eye on the level of your batteries. Make sure you have one of those 12 volt charts and don't go under 50% (12.06 volts). We just dry camped this weekend and have 2 batteries. Both fully charged. Only some lights (LED), waterpump (no showers at the time), fantastic fan usage (light) fridge panel and LP detector, we were down to 60% overnight. We have the generator and ran it for an hour or so in the morning and charged the batteries back up. The next night, we only ran down to about 80% because we didn't run the fantastic fans. We have a 100 watt solar panel suticase and wish we had taken it with us. The weather was nice. Was supposed to rain, but never did. We also have solar lights that we use inside. They work great and do not drain the batteries in the MH.
- Fill up at home. The extra weight is null, unless you are overweight on your setup or too close for comfort. What happens if you get there and the water is out or is bad? Some places have stinky water. Also look at your tanks. What size are they? Our fresh is 40 gallons and our gray and black are about 30 gallons each. So we will need almost 60 gallons of fresh when we empty. We can either add some extra to the tanks (more than likely the black) before we leave or we can carry some extra water in containers, which is what we do. We have a couple of 6 gallon containers that we fill up at home and take with us. With what's in the tanks already, we are just under that 60 gallons for dumping purposes.
- Take the extra blankets and use those as much as you can. Get something like a Mr Heater Buddy protable heater. Run it right before bed to warm up the place and then again in the morning when you wake up.
- Be careful with your electric usage, especially with just one battery. Even though you have LED's, doesn't mean you should run your lights and other things alot. The fridge panel requires some DC as does your LP detector. Take a multimeter with you and keep an eye on the level of your batteries. Make sure you have one of those 12 volt charts and don't go under 50% (12.06 volts). We just dry camped this weekend and have 2 batteries. Both fully charged. Only some lights (LED), waterpump (no showers at the time), fantastic fan usage (light) fridge panel and LP detector, we were down to 60% overnight. We have the generator and ran it for an hour or so in the morning and charged the batteries back up. The next night, we only ran down to about 80% because we didn't run the fantastic fans. We have a 100 watt solar panel suticase and wish we had taken it with us. The weather was nice. Was supposed to rain, but never did. We also have solar lights that we use inside. They work great and do not drain the batteries in the MH.
