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Three summers ago my dog and I drove to Alaska. I pulled an 18' Coyote Sport (also a KZ product) and did a fair amount of boondocking (or dry camping, no hookups).  Here are a few things that I remember: the battery will go dead pretty fast if you run the furnace. The fan seems to eat up the battery.  I cooked over a campfire when I could to save propane (also it was a lot of fun). I did some boondocking last summer in northern New Mexico and am going back in a couple of weeks. I took an alcohol stove with me and it came in handy a few times. I bought a "Thermojet Microlite." You can also find instructions online on how to make one of these type stoves out of a soda can. I recently purchased a solar panel battery charging kit (15 amp panel) and am curious to give this a try on the upcoming trip. On my last NM trip I found that my battery was pretty low by the third day even with being very careful about the lights and the furnace, so I hope this will extend the charge of the battery. By the third day I had to connect the trailer up to the running truck just so I could take a shower. The battery was too low to run the water pump very well. I used a couple of candle lanterns at night to light the trailer, again, to save the battery. This was on the NM trip. On the AK trip it didn't really get dark at "night." A few pics from these trips can be found at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hiramoto

BTW, after the Coyote I had a 25' TrailSport that was destroyed last winter in a freak Dallas snowstorm, but I'm pretty happy pulling my 14' Sportsmen.

The battery I had (have) is the ubiquitous Interstate battery that seems to come with every travel trailer (12v, group 24 I think).

With those two big solar panels, sounds like you'll be well set!  With that kind of set-up would you be able to use an inverter and run small appliances? With my 15 amp panel I'm just hoping to charge it enough during the day to keep the battery from going dead too fast. I'm taking a catalytic heater (propane) for a little extra heat if nec., but one should be careful with these things. Although it doesn't create carbon monoxide, it does eat oxygen and there are stories of people dying from oxygen depletion in small spaces.

I have thought about a Honda generator also. Would be great to be able to run the AC in case it got too hot, but like you said, it's a lot of money. On the other hand, if you're going to dry camp a lot it might really come in handy.

Post edited 5:03 pm – September 1, 2010 by dallas214

I just got back from a trip to New Mexico. I dry camped the whole time I was up there and am happy to report that my solar panel battery charging kit worked very well. My battery stayed charged the whole time, and one afternoon I even hooked up a 400 watt inverter and ran my oscillating fan all afternoon (it got hot one of the days I was camped on the rim of the Rio Grande Gorge — no shade). I imagined this would run the battery down really quick, but the fan ran fine and the battery was only a little discharged. Even so, the lights and water pump worked fine and I never ran out of juice.

Here is a link to a photo of my campsite at the Rio Grande Gorge. You can see my solar panel leaning against the trailer.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/h…..927960719/

There are some other camping pictures there as well.