We got home with our new Oliver on the 9th then spent the next several days airing out that new fiberglass smell. Using multiple fans, opening all the cabinets & vents we spent 3 days airing it out before loading it up for our shake out trip to Zilpo Campground. Our goal was to test out a bunch of different features on this trip prior to our longer trip up North in mid-August.
Since Zilpo is about a 30-40 minute drive to a major grocery we wanted to bring everything we needed to eat for 7 days. I spent the day prior to leaving food prepping. I baked a batch of Mokonut cookies, made a batch of hummus & pesto, chopped a bunch of veggies, drained & rinsed some black beans and made three different salad dressings. The morning we were leaving, we made a Trader Joes run for last minute perishables. I even bought some bagged lettuces, explosive diarrhea be damned!
We were fully loaded for a week at the lake and on the road by 11AM on Wednesday. Steve had a couple stops along the way. The first one was the UK parking lot to calibrate the truck & the trailer followed by a stop at the CAT scales to weigh both the truck & the trailer.
We have been testing out the Garmin RV GPS. This was only the 2nd time using it when towing a camper. You set up the Garmin profile for the camper specs (weight, height, width) & theoretically, it is supposed to navigate you on RV safe roads for your rig. We gave a verbal command to navigate us to Zilpo campground. The route had us get off at exit 121 off of I-64 East instead of the usual exit 123. After a bit of a discussion we decided to trust it & get off exit 121.This was a test trip after all. We knew what exit 123 had in store for us since we have taken multiple campers this way to Zilpo over the last 20 plus years. Exit 121 was a bad idea, as it tried to route us on a no RV road at one point. Fortunately, there were signs before we fully committed to the turn so we didn’t have to do any sketchy backing up. This route was also much curvier than getting off at exit 123. We were still able to get to Zilpo from this direction but it was curvier & a bit slower. Not sure what to make of this to be honest.
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| Zilpo Gate House |
Once we can pulled into the site, we ate a quick lunch then finished setup by about 3PM. It was crazy hot. We had Sammie & Belle with us & I was a bit concerned with keeping Sammie comfortable since she is an older pup with issues. We kept them either in the air conditioned camper or in their dog pen with fans blowing on them. Belle seemed to tolerate it better although Sammie did OK as well.
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| Zilpo - Site H18 |
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| Belle keeping watch while Sammie snoozes |
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| Sammie snoozing |
We could monitor the state of the batteries via an app to monitor how much charge was left & estimated time remaining. The time remaining was a bit misleading depending on when you looked at it & how much current was being drawn. If the AC was running the time remaining would be 5 hours but when just the fans were running then time remaining would be 10-12 hours. It was unclear to us what percentage of time the AC was running vs the fans only.
We wanted to start the night with full batteries so Steve connected the truck & put it in generator mode to top off the batteries before bed. The truck can charge the batteries when the AC is on but the charge controller had to limit the current it was drawing otherwise the truck generator would reset due to overcurrent when the AC kicked on. In the future we will investigate a soft start for the AC. He found that 10 Amps was the sweet spot that didn’t reset the trucks generator. It would have been nice if we had the knowledge & foresight to get the larger 7200 Watt generator for the truck when we bought it. Ah well. The nice thing about the truck generator is that it is super quiet. When the onboard battery needs to be charged the truck’s gas engine will kick on for about 5-10 minutes then it turns off when the battery is charged. Much quieter than the typical generators you hear in campgrounds.
At 9PM we unplugged the truck & set the AC to 75F on low fan speed. We both slept good until about 2AM. When the AC is not on, the fan is pulling air from outside & since it was so humid out the camper also felt very humid which made it feel warm. I was also concerned about Sammie but she ended up doing fine the first night in the camper. Steve woke up to check on the battery life remaining & was pleasantly surprised to see we still had 60% capacity at 2AM. I had a hard time falling back to sleep but of course as soon as I did, both dogs were up at 5AM having to go potty. I took them out then went back to bed. Steve checked the batteries again & we still had ~45% capacity left at 5AM. We made 2 pots of coffee before plugging the truck in at 8:15AM. The lowest capacity we got to was ~29%. That means if we have fully charged batteries before bed, we can easily run the AC all night. Yay!
It took the truck 2 hours & 15 minutes to fully recharge the batteries. During the recharging process we did not have the air on. Only a few lights, fan & dehumidifier. Another good test. So basically we can fully charge in the morning & again in the evening & run the AC all day & night on the hottest of days.
Since we were in a very shady site we couldn’t test how fast the solar panels recharged the batteries. We will have to do that somewhere we have good sun. In North & South Dakota the sites we have booked are full sun so we will be able to charge the batteries on sunny days with the solar which will reduce the generator recharging time. Based on these tests we don’t expect to have any issues with leaving the dogs in the camper while we are out exploring. Just in case, we did invest in a Necto that keeps track of the temperature, humidity & power loss. If a preset threshold is exceeded it will send us both a text.
Test summary:
- Can we run the AC on batteries all night?
- Yep!
- How long does battery power last?
- ~11 hours running AC (75F), 2 pots of coffee (without AC running), lights, DC fridge & still had ~29% capacity left
- 9PM = 100%
- 2AM = 60%
- 5AM = 45%
- 8:15AM = 29%
- How well does the solar recharge the batteries?
- Unknown. Site was too shady to properly test solar
- How long does it take the F150 Powerboost to recharge the battery?
- From 29%, it took 2 hours & 15 minutes with charge controller set to 10 Amps
- How long does 32 gallons of fresh water last?
- We started with a full tank. Below is what the panel said at the end of each day.
- End of Day 1: 94% left
- End of Day 2: 94% left
- End of Day 3: 88% left
- End of Day 4: 75% left
- End of Day 5: 63% left
- End of Day 6: 44% left
- End of Day 7: 44% left
- We had access to campground bathroom & shower house.
- We also have a composting toilet that does not use any water. I think this is a huge water saver.
- Only used fresh water for brushing teeth, washing hands & dishes
- Overall great news. Even if we did need to take a Navy shower, the water should last at least 3 days.
- How much food did we need? In typical fashion, I brought way more than we could eat.
- We left with a full fridge & still had about half the food left. Never made the pesto pasta, never opened the smoked salmon, shredded chicken or Steve's hotdogs.
- This is actually really good to know so I can pack less food in the fridge for our upcoming trip & rely on strategic grocery stock ups.
- What did we eat?
- Wednesday
- Lunch: Hummus, feta & lettuce lavash wraps
- Dinner: Southwestern salads
- Thursday
- Breakfast: Yogurt, strawberries & granola
- Lunch: Hummus, feta & lettuce lavash wraps, side salads
- Dinner: Southwestern salads
- Friday
- Breakfast: Yogurt, strawberries & granola
- Lunch: Hummus, feta & lettuce lavash wraps, side salads
- Dinner: Turkey & bacon burgers
- Saturday
- Breakfast: Eggs, bacon & toast
- Lunch: Almond butter & jelly sandwiches
- Dinner: Large salad
- Sunday
- Breakfast: Pancakes
- Lunch: Large salad
- Dinner: Turkey & bacon burgers
- Monday
- Breakfast: Eggs, bacon & pancakes
- Lunch: Large salad
- Dinner: Asian slaw salad
- Tuesday
- Breakfast: Breakfast bars on the road
- Snacks
- Mokonut Cookies, Peanut Butter Pretzel Nuggets, Larabars, Apples, Chips, mini pies, strawberry donut holes
With the crazy high heat indexes we did explore if we could move to an electric site. They had one site left that we were able to move into for the remainder of our stay. We moved to site G1 on our second day. Kind of a pain but it was worth it. This gave us confidence in being able to run the AC full blast for the pups while we were able to explore. Also, we didn't have to worry about plugging in the truck for 4 hours everyday.
So what else did we do this week? We got the paddle boards out several times. Mostly to get in the water & cool off but we did a few miles of paddling over the week. We took the dogs for several walks, Sammie was mostly pushed in the stroller. One day we biked the campground & took photos of campsites for future stays. We snacked a lot, I read and finished The Long Walk, the usual camping routine. We did spend one afternoon in the camper due to storms. It was nice to have the extra room but also sucked because our site got wet which was a bummer since it was so humid out. It took all of the next day to fully dry out.
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| Belle always on watch |
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| Sammie's sleeping cubby |
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| Best part of the week - paddle boarding everyday |
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| Site H26 has a path to the lake with a private beach spot. Totally getting this site next time! |
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| I finished A Walk in the Park - A really good book |
The campground was really empty for a mid summer week. It was hot & there were storms around a couple of the days but I’m still surprised at how few people were at the campground. We have been coming to Zilpo for almost 20 years. When I first started coming to Zilpo the entire campground would be full on the weekends. This time 4 of the loops (A, B, C & E) were closed & the loops that are open weren’t full. The sites are wonderful. Most are fully shaded, lots of space between sites, bathrooms & shower houses in every loop. There are not a lot of electric sites & maybe that is the issue with so many people getting into RV life. The campground really doesn’t have anything else going on either other than the lake. Twin Knobs on the other side of the lake has several all electric loops, a playground, amphitheater, pickle ball court plus a few other amenities. It’s also easier to get to Twin Knobs as it’s closer to the interstate. If you like a low key, quiet campground with lake access, Zilpo may be a perfect choice.
We decided to leave Tuesday morning, a day early, since they were forecasting some serious storms for central Kentucky. After our afternoon paddle, we packed up most of the campsite. Good thing too, since around 5PM there was an unexpected brief but heavy rain that soaked everything. Afterwards the humidity was so high that there was no way what was left out was going to dry before we left.
Tuesday morning, after a pot of coffee, we finished packing everything up, hooking up & we were on the road by 7:45AM & home by 9:20AM. Steve got the camper backed in reasonably easy. We spent the rest of the day unloading the camper, laundry & cleaning it. The storms finally showed up around 4PM but weren't bad at our house although there were some tornados around. We were happy to come home a day early to beat the storms.