Current (Sunday Oct 26) Endeavor docking location..........Tea, South Dakota (Red Barn RV park)

High Life......

Things just keep rolling. I might be getting my confidence back in this whole scheme of ours. Did our first night at a "Flying "J"" last night in Rapid City, South Dakota, this is important because if this plan is to be affordable meaning more long term than short, the free nights of sleep overs will be most important. Will not be able to afford every night costing $30 to $40. There will need to be some Walmart, Flying J or I understand Cracker Barrel allows over nighters in their parking lot. This be the course as we relocate adventures. Once we get located we will be surviving off the grid ("boon" or "dry" docking as it is referred to). Our chosen locations will be the various national/state parks or historical monuments. We have become email friends with a couple that are of similar age with the same type of setup (34 ft motorhome with tow). They have been touring the US for the past five years and only spend a few days a month in a paid RV park. Sherry maintains a log and it is kept with stories and pictures of their many adventures (hiking, biking and kayaking).
The important part of the Flying J stay was not that it was cost free, but we found that we could spend a night utilizing minimal battery power. The most important part of boondocking (in my opinion) is keeping the fridge going so that perishables can be kept with out continually buying expensive (and sometimes hard to get) ice. When we are not plugged into a paid power source that runs the fridge, it runs on propane but the electronics of the system obviously needs some voltage source. Either AC or DC (battery) when on the road (unplugged). If your battery power is depleted your fridge will shut down. What I am hoping to do is use minimal power at night and then rig up a solar panel that will recharge the system through the day. If that can become a reoccurring cycle we will have AC Independence, but most of all maintain our food source for minimal cost. The Endeavor has a huge 7500 watt generator built in and it works great but it is obnoxiously noisy and eats up 1 gal of diesel fuel every hour. Great if needed but would rather not.So the experiment last night has proven that we can get through an evening and wake up with 3/4 of power still in the batteries. Very nice.
But enough of that....as I noted in the early stages of this wind storm, we are located for tonight and all is going great. As noticed in the below pix, we are enjoying the farm setting this evening, but the leaves are mostly off the trees. 70's today and 40's tonight....but we need to get out of here. We have adjusted our course to a direct southern route....Texas here we come.

 

 

Road Rash.......

 

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