Walt's Corner

Our first real camping trip in Rio Grande was at Guadalupe Mountains National Park: Dog Canyon Campground. Over the long Labor Day weekend.

No hookups. Generator hours from 8AM-8PM. A prime place to attempt boondocking for the first time where we aren’t too far away from home – just in case some things didn’t work out.

My main concerns transitioning from the our Lance to the Airstream were the tanks, solar, and battery.

Tanks
Lance had 45-gallon tanks for all three – fresh, gray and black. Airstream has 28, 19, 12, respectively. Initial edge to the Lance. Real world practice tells a different story. In all our 3-4 day camping trips, which are the majority of our trips, I never filled our fresh water tank with more than 25 gallons and I still emptied some when we were done. 28 gallons will be sufficient for most of our adventures. Black and gray tanks should never be more than your freshwater capacity anyways. When hitting multiple sites, there is always a place to dump and refill water if necessary.

The one trip a year where that might suffer will be our annual Big Bend Ranch State Park trip. Years ago we would spend 10 days in that park without needing to hook up and drive to dump/refill. We haven’t spent that many days out there for the last 4 years. We’ll manage.

Solar
Lance has 400 watts of solar while Airstream has 200 watts. Edge to the Lance. This will have to be increased. 200 watts on the Lance was sufficient when the fridge, furnace and hot water tanks used propane. 200 watts of solar was enough to charge our battery back up to 100% by the new day’s end.

The Airstream uses no propane. The fridge is a 12-volt compressor which draws 3-8 amp hours depending on how hard the compressor is running any given moment. Propane fridges barely uses .5-1.5 amp hours depending on whether it is actively burning propane for the absorption. The Airstream’s furnace and water heater is a single Timberline 2.0 hydronic unit that heats up a glycol which then transfers the heat to your water for instant-on hot water or runs the glycol through a radiator with fans for your furnace.

While the hydronic heating system uses no propane, it does use gasoline from the Airstream’s gas tank at a rate of about .18 gallons per hour when run on high. So maybe 2 gallons consumed overnight max. And from the battery, about 5 amps per hour on average. I expect to lose 40 amps hours overnight from the battery.

I will be looking into seeing how to get an additional 200 watts of solar on the roof. I know the controller can handle it.

Battery
Lance has a 200ah lithium. Airstream has a 270ah lithium. Airstream is the clear winner here in specs, but is necessary considering the draw from the battery will be considerably more than what we are accustomed to.

Summary
Even though the solar isn’t enough to charge the battery during the day, it does manage to keep the battery loss to a minimum of 5-6% loss throughout the day as it keeps the fridge and exhaust fan running.

What makes up for this is the included Onan generator. We kept some interior lights on during the evening hours. Fan on medium-high all night with the windows open. Fridge running. Fired up the Timberline briefly for some hot water. When we woke up the next morning we turned on the 3000 watt inverter to power up the Keurig coffee brewer 3 times. All this brought the battery level down to 61%, or 164 amp hours. After running the generator for about an hour, the battery was back up to 100%. That was super-impressive to me.

Next post – will be about the camping/hiking part of this weekend.

With Airstream, one can officially name their RV and have an aluminum medallion engraved with that registered name. Ours has been named Rio Grande. Fitting for our area where the Rio Grande runs through our beautiful city of El Paso, TX.

But primarily, I named it after the small shuttlecraft called a runabout from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Deep Space Nine’s first runabout was called Rio Grande. Named in honor of Gene Roddenberry who was from El Paso. This Airstream reminds of a small shuttlecraft so it only seems fitting.

On our first real camping trip in this new RV we attached the name plate. I love the reflection of the Guadalupe Mountains in our back window of this photo. More on that trip to follow in the next couple of days. Stay tuned!

Saturday was the big day! Picked up our new Airstream Rangeline. Airstream likes to put you up in a nearby RV park for your first night. How else are you going to get a proper shakedown? We did that with our Lance, but we forked over that money. AND I didn’t have the dealer at my beck and call that first night either.

With Airstream, it is truly a first-class experience from the time you step foot in their dealership until, well, seems to be an open-ended ticket for now. Andrew, the President of Airstream of El Paso, has made sure we understand that the experience does not end at the transfer of ownership. Shout-out to Andrew and John for all the assistance and answering questions. It was quite the learning experience and we are grateful for their knowledge and courtesy. Oh, and the two pups that come to greet you when you enter! Most adorable.

I am not one to camp out in an RV park for fun. Because, well, it just ain’t fun for me. I want a cool-weather camping experience, preferably next to a trail of some sort. But for this shakedown we had to compromise and set up camp in a city RV Park. In 105 degree temperatures.

With the El Paso sun beating down on your Airstream, that little 13,500 BTU AC just doesn’t cut it, especially when you have to open that sliding door up, essentially letting out all the cool air you’ve saved up inside. Turning on the coach and running that AC alongside cools it right back down pretty quick, though.

The capable (270AH) lithium battery it comes with can be monitored via the Victron app and its smartshunt. The only gripe I have is that the solar controller is not anywhere near accessible. It’s placed inside the cabinetry where you have other remove screws to take off an access panel in order to get a view of it. Makes me wonder how easy it would be to relocate it. If that’s my only gripe, I’m doing pretty good.

We were able to thoroughly put it to the test. On shore power. Off shore power. The 12 volt fridge is amazing and quite spacious for its size. City water and fresh water tank draws. Carol even tested the shower. By accident. She thought she was turning not the faucet over the fold-out bathroom sink but instead turned on the shower. I am impressed with the Timberline 2.0 Hydronic furnace used to heat up the coach and provide the instant-on hot water. Curious to see how much power that pulls at Big Bend Ranch State Park this New Years.

We are looking forward to fully testing it out over the Labor Day weekend. Until then, it rests, snuggled comfortably with a covered (5 sided) parking spot.

We’ve had some pretty harsh rains here lately, so when I saw a puddle on my front porch I thought nothing of it.

Even the next day. I came home and noticed the porch was still a bit damp with a small puddle. OK. No worries. It must have rained a little during the day.

Day three. There’s that pesky puddle. Pretty sure there was no rain. That shit should have dried by now. Closer inspection showed that it was coming from the seam of the garage on the sidewalk.

My first thought was THE ROOF! The roof is on fire! No. Wait. That’s something else. The roof might be leaking and the water is making its way down the inside of the wall separating the garage from front porch. Some bad news, indeed. The wall felt… normal. Wasn’t gushy or damp. I went inside the garage to have a look. That’s when I noticed the drip. Coming from one of the connections at the water shutoff inside the garage.

That’s some pretty good news! I don’t have to work on my roof! Simple pex and shark bite connectors. Say… I wonder if I wiggle the pex tube a little if it would settle into place and stop dripping? BAD IDEA! BAD IDEA! Now the water is spraying out. I’ve made a huge mistake. Note to self: never wiggle a dripping water line.

I run out to the water box at the edge of the driveway, pull the top off, reach in with a pair of pliers and turn the water off to the house. The spraying stops. A quick check of the time – 9:04PM – tells me that Lowes is closed. Fuck. Guess this is going to have to wait until tomorrow.

For fear of loosening up the other connectors tied to the same area as a result of me yanking the old connector off, I figured I’d replace the entire set up in that box.

Problem solved. But not before going a night and morning without running water. I can’t tell you how many times I reached for the faucet to rinse something out. Carol went to the store that night to get 6 gallons of water to hold us over. It was almost like camping. Well, tent camping. Not like our RV camping. Where we have actual running water.

Putting the exciting news up front (I do hate clickbait), we accidentally bought our Retirement RV a little sooner than expected. An Airstream Rangeline! Which also means we’ll be selling the Lance (sad face).

Picking out our Lance was about a year-long process. Innumerable visits to many RV dealerships. Walking around them. Walking in them. Picturing us camping in them. Getting kicked out by security because “you can’t sleep here overnight.” Bitch, please. I lie down on that bed before I buy it!

Taking our time to pick that Lance out was almost as fun as buying it. What we (I) really wanted was an Airstream but back then there was no way we were going to afford that. We could barely afford the Lance, but at least it was the next best thing in my opinion. So the Airstream dream slipped into the back recesses of my mind and sprouted roots that dug deep and held.

The retirement RV was going to be all metal construction. No more applying sealant to the seams as a cyclic maintenance routine. No more wondering if this would be the time the slide decides to not work. Is it going to start leaking around the slide? How long is this frame and plywood sheet house going to last?

It was a major compromise from the both of us. Carol wanted a motor coach. Something she could comfortably drive. I wanted an Airstream – the classic bullet shaped aluminum riveted trailers. The Rangeline is our compromise. All steel construction. No slides.

We initially went to the Airstream dealer to just have a look at the touring coaches. See what they looked like inside. Would we think we’d be able to downsize that much? Dude made us an offer we couldn’t refuse and we bought it on the spot.

This will certainly be a huge learning curve as we transition from camping in what essentially was a mobile home (trailer) with walk-around queen size bed, full kitchen with oven, stove, full-size fridge and freezer, table that seats six, walk in bathroom with shower and full vanity over the sink to store all my assorted sundries, separate closets and wardrobes, and food pantry.

Transitioning to what’s basically a cargo van. But Airstream does find a way to maximize what little space it does have. Definitely a 2-person only RV with a full-size bed that folds up and out of the way for maximizing cargo space when traveling. Could have opted for a pop-up top. Nope! Just another place to worry about leaking later.

Due to its much smaller footprint, we will be able to fit into a ton of more spaces than what we have been accustomed to. It is hard to explain the anxiety one gets when rolling into a camping area, knowing that out of the 30 different spots available, your rig will only fit into 5 of them, and let’s hope there is at least one of those 5 available. This van will fit just about anywhere.

All of the usual places we repeat camp? I can think of all the spots that are available to us now. City of Rocks. Aguirre Springs. Oliver Lee Memorial. Bryce Canyon. Zion. Joshua Tree. Fort Davis.

Sad to see the Lance go, but we will be selling it. The Airstream dealer graciously offered to sell it on consignment, with no fees.

This is going to be a wonderful next chapter in our lives!