Stats from Feb holiday

As promised, a little retrospective on the trip numbers for those who are interested (I guess if you weren't interested you wouldn't be reading this, right?)

Distance and Fuel
Of course, fuel is the biggie. Numbers aren't exact because both the Bounder and the Cavalier started and ended the trip with less than full tanks, but I think the quantities are large enough, at least in the case of the Bounder, that that doesn't make a lot of difference. On the Bounder numbers I extracted the estimated generator use at 2.25 litres per hour (generator manual gives the consumption at 1.75 - 2.8 litres per hour depending on load).

This is total fuel, including the amounts Don paid for (he was quite generous - thanks). So my actual out of pocket is somewhat less than this.

The distance is right off the vehicle odometers, which I've checked and are fairly accurate. The Cavalier odometer only accrues when the engine is on, so no towed distance is included. To make life easier I've converted all the distance to kilometers and the fuel to litres. The consumption rates are in miles per imperial gallon, though, because that's what makes the most sense to me. I didn't apply a conversion factor to the dollars - my bank statement shows a conversion of a couple percent either way at various points in the trip.

Unit	KM Travelled	Litres	MPG	Fuel Cost
Bounder	6,900	2,742	7.2	$2,230
Cavalier	2,864	245	33.2	$187
Combined	9,764	2,987	9.3	$2,417

Service and Repairs
Unfortunately the Cavalier fuel pump died outside of Phoenix, so that took a significant bite of the maintenance budget. But it is what it is: the fuel pump's not a factor of the trip and would likely have gone anyway even if the car stayed home. Other than the $$s it was not a significant inconvenience as it didn't leave us stranded anywhere or require a tow truck to get it to the dealer (we pulled it there with the Bounder). We were without it for about 2 days, and navigating Phoenix traffic in the motorhome made us really appreciate having it back.

I did some water line repairs on the Bounder and did an oil change/lube and a re-winterization on the way home - costs of all supplies are included. The Cavalier didn't require a service on the trip, but it did get a tune up and new plugs while it was getting its fuel pump replaced. I bought a small air compressor ($75) and a mini grease gun ($15) as permanent additions to the Bounder, but I didn't include these costs.

Unit	Service and Repair cost
Bounder	$ 75
Cavalier	$1,135
Total	$1,210

Camping
Here's a summary of the locations/costs. Costs look pretty good here, because we didn't pay for camping anywhere except Las Vegas. Helps to offset those fuel costs a bit.

Date	Location	# of nights	Cost
Jan 25	Rest area north of Great Falls	1	-
Jan 26	Wal*Mart Blackfoot ID	1	-
Jan 27	Virgin River Casino, Mesquite NV	1	-
Jan 28	Bally's Casino, Las Vegas NV	1	-
Jan 29	Riverside Casino Laughlin NV	1	-
Jan 30 - Feb 1	BLM Quartzsite AZ La Paz	3	-
Feb 2	Home Depot Casa Grande AZ	1	-
Feb 3 - 8	Desert Diamond Casino Tucson AZ	6	-
Feb 9 - 11	Harrah's Ak-Chee Casino Maricopa AZ	3	-
Feb 12 - 13	Wild Horse Pass Casino Phoenix AZ	2	-
Feb 14 - 16	BLM Quartzsite AZ La Paz	3	-
Feb 17	BLM Lake Havesu AZ	1	-
Feb 18	Riverside Casino Laughlin NV	1	-
Feb 19 - 25	Sam's Town Las Vegas NV	7	$194
Feb 26	Wal*Mart Cedar City UT	1	-
Feb 27	Wal*Mart Payson UT	1	-
Feb 28	Wal*Mart Helena MT	1	-
Total nights / average cost per night		35	$5.54

Water and dump stations
So you're thinking: OK, smartie pants, you did all this "free" camping so you must have gone for days on end without washing dishes or showering. I admit we didn't wash a lot of dishes since we were ALL in holiday mode, but no personal cleanliness suffered. The Bounder has a 62 imperial gallon fresh water tank and enough grey and black capacity to store the used water. Once I got the hang of RV showering (I didn't even bother trying when we had the trailer, as I couldn't fit in the shower anyway) I think showers used about 2 or 3 gallons at most.

The only time we had any concern at all in this area was at Phoenix waiting for Wendy's arrival, and this was my own fault. I hadn't bothered to dump when we left Tucson (although there was probably a dump station at Flying J where we filled the propane) on the rationale that we'd look for an RV park for Wendy's arrival. Losing the fuel pump in the Cavalier cut into our RV park search time, and we were still boondocking when Wendy arrived. Meantime we filled the grey tank (although we still had about 1/4 tank of fresh), so I moved about 5 gallons over to the black and we went on ration for a day or so. Lesson learned, for me: Don't ever bypass a chance to dump the waste tanks - you never know what will happen.

Anyway, finding places to dump & fill wasn't that difficult overall as I had printed some pages from the internet (Google RV dumpstations). If you travel and intend to dry camp a lot, I'd suggest you do the same.

While the Bounder was winterized (Jan 25-27 and Feb 27-29), a 5-gallon water cooler bottle with a hand pump provided lots of water for basic needs. Disposable dishes and cutlery and heat-and-serve meals (like yummy Swanson TV dinners) made this part of the trip a lot simpler, too. On the way south we put the waste water into the tanks and used the facilities with no concern since we were headed to warmer climes, but on the way back I tried to minimize the amount of liquid going into the tanks and dumped in lots of RV antifreeze to try to make sure the tank plumbing didn't freeze. We'll find out how well that worked in the spring.

Here's where we filled/dumped:

Date	Location	Comments
Jan 27	TA Travel Centre Cedar City UT	Free dump and water
Feb 2	Gila River AZ Shell Station	Free dump, water, and WiFi
Feb 14	Flying J Phoenix AZ	Free dump and water
Feb 19 - 26	Sam's Town (Full hookup)
Feb 27	Flying J Nephi UT	Free dump (didn't take on water)

Internet
If you followed the blog you noticed that updates were hit and miss. Both Don and I simply had laptops with built in WiFi - no external antennas or anything. We found spots with great reception, some with so-so, and some with none. Some businesses (like the Shell in Gila Bend, the Desert Diamond in Tucson, and Staples in Phoenix) knowingly provided a free signal for their customers. Sometimes we piggybacked on the signals of other RVers, with their specific permission or on an unsecured network. We made use of unsecured signals from unknown sources - probably businesses or homes - as well. Whenever we used any unsecured signal we of course assumed that the owner had set it up that way intentionally, thereby granting permission for anyone to use.

We paid for internet at Sam's Town - $19.99 for the week. At that point we'd been a few days without, so it was a worthwhile expense.

Internet access was probably the biggest area of annoyance, and when I do this trip again I hope to have a more reliable method. Aircard (cell phone)? WiFi range extender? Satellite uplink? (Yeah, right).

Other stuff
We put a total of 26 hours on the generator, which is a lot less than I thought we would. At an estimated consumption of 2.25 litres per hour and an average fuel cost of about $.81 per litre, that's about $1.82 per hour and $47 altogether. But for the convenience, it was well worth it. The generator ran mainly in the mornings and evenings in the locations where we were stopped for several days, to recharge the batteries from overnight and top them up again, and whenever we wanted to make coffee or use the microwave. Although we didn't watch TV much, when we did it ran mainly from the inverter, with the generator fired up on occasion to recharge. On travel days we didn't run the generator to recharge the batteries as much as they were kept up from the alternator.

The inverter (1500W) was very convenient - we used it to run the TV (see above) and we used it extensively to recharge laptops and cell phones. When the batteries were fully charged we also made coffee off the inverter, but we avoided doing that if the batteries were down much (eg if the furnace had cycled much overnight) as it drew the levels down quite a bit.

The solar panel unfortunately couldn't keep up with keeping the house batteries charged - being only a 100 watt panel and being flat mounted with no way to tilt towards the sun. It should be fine in the summer when the sun is higher in the sky, and I'll look at changing the mounts so that it's tiltable. I'm not sure if adding more panels is a good investment at this point as we'll probably have fairly mobile holidays and the batteries will charge from the alternator. We'll see.

We filled just once with propane: 13.1 gallons for $43.10. We started on pretty much a full tank and currently have about two thirds, so I would put the total consumption at about 16 gallons (US) and cost at about $53. Since we were sans hookups except for Sam's Town, the fridge ran mostly on propane (and worked great), plus we had consumption for cooking and heating. Except for a few nights at Tucson, nights were down near or below freezing so the furnace was turned on overnight (although I did have the thermostat set down to 55). Even on nights where the furnace kicked on several times the batteries were at 65-75% the next morning, so they held in there fairly well. The furnace did a great job of keeping the Bounder warm - although I brought along a catalytic heater to supplement if necessary we didn't use it at all.

I can't think of anything else that's of interest. If I've missed anything that you're curious about, let me know. I'll be here, quietly plotting the next escape (winter of 2009-10?).