DRIVING the FLATTEST ROUTE DEMO! SOLAR vs GENERATOR and RV Newbies WHERE DO YOU START NEW Sunday..

Today we're going to revisit how to find the best route when you don't want to drive down sharp grades with a demonstration and a big shout out, if my big solar setup still works, if I need a generator, and if someone wanted to do this full-time RV thing, where do they even start? Happy Sunday, Birdwatchers! It's Robin with CreativityRV and this is an all-new Sunday Morning ViewQ where I answer all the best viewer questions about my full-time RV life. And we're going to get right into it today with a demonstration and a question about driving on steep grades. You might remember that I talked about this in my last video, because when you're pulling a lot of weight behind you, driving down some steep hills can be scary. It was for me when I first started, so I told you what I use, but I got another comment in the last ViewQ from Rocky5PR and I want to give this person a big shout out, because I checked out this website that he recommends and I am a huge Instant Fan. He said, was sort of surprised you didn't mention FlattestRoute.com. Rocky, I went and checked out this website and you are right. I was amazed at how much information this website gave me, so I'm going to hop over to my computer and I'm actually going to give you guys a demonstration on a route where this website showed me the best way to go, exactly what was coming up, how much time it was going to take me, and more. This is FlattestRoute.com. You can see here I put in a trip from Susanville, California to Klamath Falls, Oregon, and the route that came up was the same one that came up on Google Maps and in my car, but here's the difference. You can zoom in and you can see that the map is color coded. Green is easy, yellow is a little bit steeper of a grade, and you can go through the map and just put your mouse over these different areas and you can see exactly what you're getting into for a grade going up or down, and then this graph on the right shows you the big ups and downs and you can actually take your mouse along that area and it takes you along the map and shows you what that looks like and what area you're in. You can see that they give you a steepness score. The higher the score, the more you're looking at for your big ups and big downs, and you can see that, you know, blue and red and black are a little bit hairy. Now, what I really liked is that you just don't have to look at it yourself. They tell you that there might be a better route. In my case, it said through Bernie, California with a link, so I clicked that and went over to that map, which you can see here, same thing. You can go through it and go up and down and see where on the map you're going to be looking at the steepest grades. It also tells you how much longer it's going to take you, what the miles are going to be, and then they extrapolate the information between the two routes and they say, look, it looks like the second one is better and it has a better steepness score than the first one you looked at, so you don't need to compare routes anymore. On the left-hand side, there's also another graph that is very cool, so you go along and you see you go up a hill and down a hill, and in our route, we had one that was a little bit hairy. It was right here. You know, we went down this road and I said to Doug, it's not that bad, but this is one of those roads when you're carrying a lot of weight where you can really build up some steam and it wasn't marked great. There was a really quick hairpin turn and on our way back up that direction, we actually got behind an accident where a lady was coming down that hill too fast and four people were flighted out to different hospitals because she flipped the car several times. Hope everybody's okay. Now, I couldn't find that flattestroute.com has an app, but a workaround I have for that is I just pull the website up on my phone. I have an Android, so if you have an Apple, this might be a little bit different, and I go up to the right-hand corner, hit those three little dots, I say add to home screen, and then I pull that little icon that they give me into the same folder where I keep all of my other camping, weather, and routing apps, so it's right there. That takes me to the next question, which is on my solar setup and if I can get by without a generator. The first question comes from Granny Annie's Traveling Bucket List. Question, have you experienced a solar setup on your RV? If so, what did you use for a mainframe to attach the solar setup tilting arms and brackets to? And then Margo asked, I'm interested in how the solar system you put in is working. Are you still able to live without a generator? Okay, so yes, Granny, I have had solar installed. I've had it installed on all three of my rigs. On my first two, I couldn't fit a lot of panels up on the roof, so I had about two, three, four hundred watts between the two, and two regular six volt batteries. But on this rig, there was a big space for us to have a generator put in, but it did not come in the price of the rig, and it was almost as much as solar would be. So I decided to put that money into solar. I had 1280 watts put on the roof and six lithium batteries, which has been rad, because if you don't know the difference in the batteries, the little six volts, you cannot run down below 50 percent. It's very bad for them, but the lithium ones, you can, and they just hold more power and they're lighter. Now I thought putting that much solar on meant that we would never need to use a generator again. Mostly true, but not always. Here's what I found. That solar powers us up to a hundred percent on six lithium batteries when the sun is high, but in the winter the sun is too low, because I don't have a tilt system, which I'll talk about in a second. We weren't getting quite as much power, so we had to conserve, but luckily we have a Jackery, which is a little portable power station that we charge with 400 watt portable panels, which are tiltable, so we would just bring it in and that would run things like the air fryer, CPAP, TV, stuff like that. Now I asked for solar panels that tilt when I had my install from Northern Arizona Wind and Sun, and ultimately I did not have the tilt put on for three reasons. First of all, they wouldn't do it, because they didn't want the liability, and they told me some horror stories about panels and systems that flew off on the road. Second, when those panels are tilted on the roof, they're more likely to fly off in high wind, and I camp in some pretty high winds, and I didn't want to worry about that all the time. When you put them on a mounting bracket so that they can lift up on the roof, it can add four, six, eight inches, depending on your system. This rig is almost 14 feet tall. There are some bridges that I barely get under already, and honestly I just didn't want to worry about it. And like I said, we planned not to have a generator, but you might remember that I went back to Colorado in March, which is really snowy to moochduck on a friend's property, and the solar was not going to get it done, and I did not have a hook up there. So I went ahead and purchased a generator that sits outside my rig. It is not an onboard generator. Now we just keep that in the back of the pickup truck underneath a cover. I thought we really wouldn't use it that much, but when we got down to Arizona and California this last year, and we were staying in an LTVA, that low winter sun was not getting it done. We got there in October and it was blazing hot. It was in the 90s. Every couple days in the afternoon, we would run our air conditioner for an hour or two up in the bedroom and just chill out up there, which we couldn't have done without the generator. Near to the summer when the sun is high, it powers everything just fine. When I was in a B or a C, I had onboard generators, and even though I had about 400 watts of solar, I had to run my generator about an hour every single day, even though I was really careful about conserving my power. And here's one last minute question that we just added on from LK. She, he said, I have never had the desire to travel. I wondered if we start this full-time thing, where would we start? Well that's just a loaded question. Are you in an RV now and you just didn't want to travel in it? Or are you in a sticks and bricks? Are you solo? Are you in a couple? There's so much to go over. But I would say this, if you want to travel full time and you want to stay in RV parks, that is a real struggle right now. Know that you have to reserve things way in advance and then call to confirm. I'm going to tell you more about this soon. If you want to boondock though, like I do, on BLM land or national forest or at overnight spots like a harvest host, have an arsenal of camping options at the ready. You always want to have a plan A, B, maybe a C. Go back in my playlist and look for five camping options in five miles or never get stranded. There are resources that help you do all of this. Start out in an area that you know or you know where there are several camping spots. Get your feet under you. Get comfortable going down those roads and setting up camp, hooking and unhooking if that's the kind of rig that you have. Going and finding the water or the propane or the gas or the groceries and then maybe circle out from there. And spoiler alert, in about three weeks we have a new series coming out where we're actually going to show you how we do all of this while we go down the road. So look out for that. If you have a question for me that you'd like me to answer, put that in the happy and healthy. I'll see you next Sunday. Until then, everybody have happy travels and be free.