M&T travel tales, Camper updates and more!

Can’t describe what happen last year when we arrived in Freeport.  If it was because we got busy or got distracted or we needed a break from blogging, we don’t know, but we’re hoping to make a comeback, starting now!

Our apologies for leaving our faithful followers guessing and we hope you’ll continue to enjoy our adventures.

This year’s winter trip includes more time “off grid” to and from Florida.  We will travel two overnights on our way to N.C. to visit Denise & Dennis for 5 days, then a two-day trek to Lakeland, FL for a two month stay at Sanlan RV & Golf Resort.  Late January, we will traverse Florida westward to Freeport and spend two months at Live Oak Landing.  On the second day of spring 2026, we will begin heading north, reversing our route, planning on arriving home the last day of March.

WHATS NEW AND WHAT DID YOU MISS?

We had started a blog post but left it unfinished.  A couple of items of note from that lost post that you may find interesting:

Sharing & Caring

Last year while in Freeport, Mag found a place named Caring and Sharing in Santa Rosa Beach (about 10 miles southwest) that we thought we’d check out and possibly volunteer.  I think the best way to describe it would be to think of a Salvation Army location with a Food Pantry attached.  Mag corresponded with them and we stopped by to meet with Lynne.  Lynne gave us a tour and explained what they do.  Folks register who are in need and are allowed to pick up groceries twice a month.  They have a good system for getting bags loaded up with non-perishables, so they are ready for pickup on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays between 11:30AM and 2:00PM; we signed up to work the food distribution line on Fridays.  We had no clue exactly what our duties would be, but we meet Keith, Beth, Tonya and they quickly got us up to speed.  They have a section of the parking lot cordoned off for clients to drive through.  Typically, Keith works the morning shift and sets up an assembly line.  Preloaded grocery bags filled with dry goods, frozen meat and/or fish, sometimes bags of fruit, sometimes bags of produce, sometimes milk, bread & pastries, little bags for kids containing snacks’n’stuff, depending on what has been donated.  Keith and I fill the vehicles with Mag, Beth, and or Tonya checking in each family with tablets holding the customer info.  The person checking them in calls out how many bags for each family, how many kids bags, and also makes inquiries about any toiletries needed.  We don’t get much protection from the sun, and it can get quite busy.  The assembly line needs resupplying at times which means Keith and I have to take a cart to make a run to any of the five sheds behind their building holding the preloaded grocery bags, frozen meats, produce, etc.  We’ve enjoyed our time there and may volunteer again next year.

Springs in FL

We did a bit of hiking at a number last year of parks not too far away.  We made it up to Morrison Springs.  It’s not a huge place but it was neat to see.  The water temperature ranges from 66-77 degrees year-round and, although there were some folks splashing around or kayaking, we did not partake.  I did a little research and discovered there our over 1000 springs in Florida; I had no idea: they’re all over the place.  I’m thinking they could be a fun place to snorkel, maybe next time we come down, we’ll pack our snorkeling equipment.  Morrison Springs produces about 50 million gallons/day which runs into the Choctawhatchee River.  Some springs are a little warmer, like 85 degrees, but not hot springs where temps run 100+.  I’m still researching springs in Florida, so stay tuned!

This past summer we took on a project to replace the battery bank in the trailer that will allow us to spend more time dry camping (camping without any connections).  It was a considerable learning experience, but Phase One was completed.  The existing system included (2) lead acid batteries like ones in your automobile.  They were limited in a number of ways which only allowed us hours of unconnected service.  In order for us to get through at least one night without a power connection, we decided to transition to Lithium batteries, specifically LifePO (lithium iron phosphate).

Without getting too technical, a key metric to measuring the power available to us is Amp Hours (Ah).  The old system had roughly 130Ah of capacity.  There are several shortcomings to Lead-Acid (LA) batteries but one that had the most impact for us was, you can only discharge the batteries to roughly 50% of its total capacity before you have to recharge it, otherwise you may damage the battery permanently.  This means of the 130Ah capacity, we really only had 65Ah.  On the other hand, LifePO batteries can be discharged to nearly 0% capacity (not recommended) before you need to recharge them.  Both types have their advantages and disadvantages, but this was the factor that drove our decision to go with LifePO.     

The question now became, how much capacity would we need to dry camp for a day or two.  The calculation can be a bit of guess work, but you need to look at devices you use and calculate how much energy you would use/day.  Our refrigerator is residential unit, just like at home, and requires 5amps of power to run.  It doesn’t run 24 hour/day but maybe half that, so 5 amps X 12 hours = 60 Ah/day.  We also have a Keurig coffee maker, an air fryer, blender, microwave, outlets for charging laptops, phones, TV etc.  These are all 120-volt items.  There is a host of devices that run on 12 volts that need to be added to the calculation: i.e. lighting, water pump, water heater, furnace, hydraulic system for the leveling system and electric motors to move the slides in and out.  It’s hard to calculate the exact amount we would use in a given day, so it was a bit of a crap shoot.

We settled on (3) LifePO batteries each with a capacity of 230Ah, giving us a total capacity of 690Ah.  We’re not sure what the exact results will be, but we did camp out one Friday night to give it a test.  After 14 hours, from 7:00 p.m. Friday to 11:00 a.m. Saturday, we used about a third of the total capacity.  I think we could safely say we’ll get a full day out of the battery system, probably more, so we’ll see.

Some additional info on our new battery system.  We can charge the batteries a number of ways using the onboard generator, or when driving (the truck will charge the batteries), or plug the trailer into an AC outlet.  In case you were wondering, Phase Two will include solar panels mounted on the roof to charge the batteries.  Below are some pictures of the newly installed system showing the: (3) LifePO batteries, (1) Shunt to monitor the capacity, (1) 3000-Watt Inverter to convert 12 volts from the battery bank to 120 volts so we can operate the 120-volt devices, a 30 Amp AC Outlet and a couple of Circuit Breakers.  To run on battery, we will plug the RV’s AC power cord, that normally plugs into an AC outlet, to 30 Amp AC Outlet we installed that is connected to the inverter & batteries.  The other option was to run new cabling to the main service panel but when we saw the mess of wires, we thought, “we’re not doing that!”

Shunt-Inverter-Remote-Displays

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