First DRY CAMPING Trip in the 4x4 Class C RV (Arches National Park)

Today, we're heading to one of our favorite states in the entire country, Utah. And we just left one of our new favorite cities, Golden, Colorado. How was driving the 34 foot C downtown Golden, Colorado? It was very low stress. I wasn't at all anxious. I really enjoy how this takes turns, like handles a turn so much tighter than the fifth wheel would. So I'm less apprehensive of like really needing to set myself up for a super wide turn. So that's nice in little small cities because you never know how tight those roads are going to be. So we're just getting on to the famous Interstate 70, heading West, going kind of straight through a lot of the famous Colorado places. And we haven't been on this road for a couple years. You know, I've been joking a lot lately and saying as we age, we're just appreciating nature so much and Colorado is such a special state. I'm glad that we snuck in the visit. A lot of people ask us where our favorite spot is and we generally give a blanket answer stating Utah. So we're right around 6,000 feet elevation and heading from Indiana all the way to Colorado, we saw our miles per gallon kind of slowly decline from 14 miles per gallon at first down to around 12 as we did that steady continuous climb heading West. But now we're going to get into some more real climbs. So it'll be interesting to see how we do. So I was looking up the weather for Moab cause I had no idea what it would be like. And it's going to be 96 tomorrow, pretty warm. And it's going to be in the nineties all week. So we just pulled over to pee. We're already feeling a little bit more adventurous in the new rig. We're driving down the 70. We see a sign for Leadville and we go, oh, twin lakes. That's a fun spot. It's generally easy to get into and park for free. And it's beautiful. Like the views of the water and the mountains in the background are very picturesque. You're right next to Leadville, which is a cool little town. And right next to a big 14er, Mount Elbert. Mount Elbert. Erin and I are getting delusional. Chris just said she was the road runner. She's got like a snail's face. I literally think I'm going one mile an hour. We hit a flat surface and I feel like I'm just road running right now. We might want to switch and go to Leadville and get some elevation. Otherwise, you know, sitting in Moab, we know what it's like when it's 95 degrees. We've been there in the van. It's hot. It was, when we were there in the van, it actually, at that visit, drove us out because it was so hot. It was so unbearable. So those are the decisions we're contemplating, but I already like this vibe a little bit where we're not so regiment with, we have to drive to this spot. We have to bring the fifth wheel here because that's what we've planned out. You know, we can be a little bit more adventurous being 16 feet shorter, a foot shorter in height, and, you know, just a little bit easier to make these types of decisions. And for the sake of argument, you could do that in any rig. You could do that in any RV. It's just, what's your comfortability and what makes you more comfortable to make those last minute decisions? We were this close to going to Twin Lakes until Chris actually checked the real weather, but really it's in the thirties overnight there. And the highs are in like the fifties. And some chance of rain. Yeah. So we were like, oh man, two extremes. Do we want hot and sunny, unbearably hot, or do we want uncomfortably cold? Neither one is ideal. Weather really does dictate everything for where you want to go. This was a good little decision-making exercise for us. Yeah. We're going to stick on route and head to Moab. Well, we're about four minutes out. We decided to go to BLM 144. This spot is where we went in the van about five years ago. It's one of our earlier boondocking spots. It's about a half hour from Moab and the Arches National Park area. So it's a little farther away. That's why we liked to go to the closer BLM spots, but those are no longer there. So we're going to check out this BLM spot and hopefully we didn't make a mistake with the 90 degree weather. All right. We made it. We found a little spot. It's nice and dead out here, probably because it's 90 plus degrees and it's hot. It's sunny. So this is the spot right by the road. I really should have paid attention to the sun as well. It was kind of windy on our way up. So I didn't think we'd be able to put our awning out, but if you can put your awning to shade over the sun, that helps a ton. But our thought process with this site here was our views are on the driver's side. So we wanted our windows to face this way. We quite often park for the view and not necessarily the optimal sun angle or solar output or anything like that. We really want our view of the windows to be the way that we park. So now our windows are on the opposite side of our previous rig. So a little bit different. Not a bad spot. There's a few people up in the beginning, maybe four or five RVs that we passed. And last time we parked the van, we were way out there in the middle of nowhere. But since we're leaving so early in the morning, there's no need to drive down the gravel road for 20 minutes. We talk about having a backup plan when you do BLM. And in this case, we didn't need a backup, which is great. We didn't even have to fully canvas the area, which is always nice. So when you can just pull in and you park it and you set up and you're level, that is a huge success. Yeah, so parking this thing is obviously easier than the fifth wheel, but because I was so used to the previous level system, now I feel like I'm kind of starting all over again, especially when it took us like 30 minutes to park at the last campground. Yeah. That was rough. Yeah, you did good today. We have a little problem. What? It's never good when you say that to me. It's not as bad as the wheel falling off. What is it? I can't find the propane hose for the grill. Uh-oh. Yeah, I mean, it's not the end of the world, but we can't grill. I thought you were gonna say that you couldn't find the hose for the generator or something generator related. Yeah. Is it getting warm in here? Look it, the dog's already getting warm. Yeah. They're hot. Okay, so power-wise out here, it feels a little weird. You know, we're used to a pretty extraordinary system that really just allowed you to run air conditioning from the sun and the batteries, you know, pretty much whenever we wanted to. So when we would pull up to a site like this at two, three o'clock in the afternoon, the batteries would be full. You'd be getting roughly, you know, 1500 plus watts of solar, which is enough to run one air conditioner and keep your batteries full. So we'd have one air conditioner running while the sun's out. And then, you know, usually when the sun goes down, you don't need as much air conditioning, but a big battery bank helps with that. So this system is actually pretty beefy from the factory, thousand watts of solar, 600 amp hours of lithium batteries, 3000 watt inverter, but we don't have the air conditioner wired to run off the inverter. So that's something we have to look into. But for now, the only way we can run the air conditioner, Chris is like, yeah, I get to the point. Get to the point, Aaron. How do we run the air conditioner? Is the generator. Which we've never, we've never had to do before. This is totally like out of our norm. We've had a generator a few times over the years, but we just, we really didn't use them. It was never our primary to run the AC. Yeah, so most motorhomes have generators, which is very normal to use. You know, you turn the generator on and then you can run your house. So this one has an 8K generator, pretty big. And I don't even know. I think we just hit the start button. I hear it doing something. Oh, woo. It's going. Chris is like, it's gonna die. Like I said, we haven't ran it, you know, it's, I'm sure we'll get into all the maintenance things with exercising your generator. We've had this RV for what, three, four weeks now? Yeah. And this is the first time we fired it up. So it's about time it was due and I'm excited to just get this place cooled down. It is hot in here. The dogs couldn't even walk outside. Junebug, she's so black with her dark fur. She just doesn't do well in this heat. So the dogs really need the AC. I think consumption wise, this generator is about 0.4 gallons per hour. So if you just round that up to half a gallon per hour and you ran it for 10 hours, that would be five gallons of fuel. So to run your AC for 10 hours in this 90 degree heat or tomorrow when it's 95, you know, that might cost you 20 bucks. So you might want to think about going to a cheap campground at that point. So when you turn that on, does everything get powered in here? Yeah, that's like a whole house generator. So that's like equivalent to plugging into Shoreline. To, yeah, to 50 amps roughly. I hear we have a really big generator. I hear it's a big one. We got an 8,000. I don't know what that means, but it's a big deal. It's more power than we would ever use. You can see it's 88 degrees in here. It's 93 outside. It's pretty toasty and RVs are always a little bit warmer. So we're going to try the front AC and see what happens. Okay, so I like that we're testing this out because we need to feel safe about leaving the dogs home alone. Is this the same mode you would do it if we were leaving where it fires up, it gets fired up, and then what happens? You walk away and it just, does it toggle on and off or does it stay on the whole time? Well, there I just turned it on, but there is an automatic generator, which is called the AGS. It's disabled right now. So that's something that we're going to set up. So that's what we use when we're leaving the dogs home. Yeah, and you can either set it up by time or voltage. Temperature? I don't know, or by load. By load, it means if you set the AC to a temperature and then it tries to turn on, it should trigger to turn on the generator to then hopefully turn on the air conditioner. Nice, I like that we're testing this in an extreme environment. It makes me feel like this is an official test. It's 90 degrees, let's see how we do tonight. And for those of you who are wondering, we did top off our diesel in anticipation of we might need to run our AC all night, right? So- It's really not that bad inside. The temperature? The noise. The noise, yeah. The temperature's bad. The temperature's bad, I was gonna say, are you nuts? Am I that weak? No, the noise isn't that bad, or the vibration. Yeah, I don't feel any vibration. I did feel the initial jolt of it kicking in since it probably just hasn't been started in a long time. But other than that, the noise, especially once the AC is on, you don't hear the generator because the AC kind of overpowers it, right? Yeah. So here's the generator noise at about 20 feet. Here's 100 feet. I can't hear it over the wind when the wind picks up, but I can hear it a little bit when it stops. So a couple hundred feet away, I can't hear it at all with the wind. And when it stops, you can hear it just a little bit. So definitely a different feeling with the generator, but it also feels really good to have, I don't know, power that you don't have to worry about running out necessarily. So with the batteries and the solar, you're always kind of like paying attention to that just to make sure that you don't run out of power. Now, on the flip side, you know, we obviously don't wanna run our generator all night, and that's where battery power is really nice with the solar because you can run that throughout the night and not worry about the generator kicking on and off. So that's obviously gonna wake you up as the generator starts on and off. All right, our plan tonight was to have this beautiful two pound bone-in ribeye on the grill with corn on the cob. And since we don't have our propane hose, we can't use the grill, we're going to improvise and we're gonna cook it inside on the skillet, which I've never done before. Aaron is the grill master. I don't cook steaks inside. I don't know how this is gonna turn out, but that's okay. After a long travel day, I'm sure something will taste delicious. Fingers crossed, it comes out somewhere in the medium rare range, give or take, and we'll be happy and we won't go to bed hungry. We're also gonna use the induction cooktop because we're combating 90 degrees. So it would just be silly to use propane. So we're gonna use the induction. I'm gonna keep it simple. And we're gonna go to bed early and try to beat this heat tonight. What's out there, ma'am? Look at that sunrise, beautiful. Pretty good night's sleep. I did wake up at 3.30. It got cold last night. I was really worried about the heat and it got cold. Looking at the hour by hour, it said it was still like 75 at eight or nine o'clock at night, which can be really warm. But luckily it kind of turned like that desert cool and not that humidity hot. Pretty out here. Stop. So Arches National Park is on the timed entry system, which is a big pain in the butt if you don't plan. And we usually plan things pretty last minute. So when I saw that you can enter the park before 7 a.m. or after 4 p.m. without that timed entry ticket, we knew that's what we wanted to do. So we got up early, well before seven o'clock, and we're gonna walk the dogs. So this is our first national park in the sea. And this is one of the reasons that we wanted to switch to a motorhome instead of the truck and trailer. And we're really gonna see what it's like. We're gonna go in. We already made coffee this morning, but we'll probably make a little bit more. But we're gonna get into Arches and really just kind of spend the day there. I do like having our home with us. Not that we ever worried about having our home dropped back out of space in BLM land, but there's just something comforting knowing we have everything with us. You don't have to pack bags. You can really get up and go and you have everything you need. Of course there's the downside where we don't have a site reserved back at the land. Like if we wanted to keep that spot for X number of days. But if we wanted to save it, we could always throw a rug down or a grill or some chairs. Like you can still do that. But I like having our stuff with us. It makes me feel good. It's late May here in Moab. So we're still kind of on the early side. It's not that busy. Plus this weekend is like reaching almost a hundred degrees. So I think it's kind of on the slow side. So we're not really too worried about having spaces. And there's a chance that we might check out Utah Raptor State Park as we haven't seen it for a couple of years and now they have electricity and I think they have a dump station. I'm not sure. But they also have a $50 a night surcharge. Woo wee! Steep. That is state park prices, huh? Wow. But you know, every time we went there in the past, we always were blown away at how beautiful it was. And as sad as it is to see that no longer be free and to slowly transition over the years, it is such a great piece of land. And you know, I'm proud of Utah for being able to capture it. Hopefully they can preserve it in the process and think of the positives from it. We got a little noise from that air conditioner up there. It sounds like a leaf is stuck in the fan vents or something. It's been bugging me for about 600 miles. We did it. You gotta love it when a plan comes together. Even one that you don't plan on. A non-planned one. Yeah. I just don't like timed entry. I can't plan that far ahead. It's a little stressful. So the reason that we're here on this particular road instead of one of the popular arch pull-outs or any of the hiking spots is because there's two roads within the park that are very dog friendly. And this is one of them? Yes. So it's kind of interesting. You can obviously bring your dog in the parking lots and at the campgrounds, but they can't go anywhere on the trails. Like the overlooks? Yeah, they can go on the paved roads, but that's just not really safe. Yeah. So this particular BLM road, I think it's called Willow Springs. Uh-huh, it is. Yeah, we can just walk the dogs for a couple miles. Got this cool little pull-out. We'll maybe come back and make breakfast or something. Yeah. And just hang out. I mean, this is why we're here with our home is so that we don't have to rush and we get to just kind of relax and have the day be as it is. Yeah, it's kind of perfect for us because we like to cook in our RV. We like to enjoy the area that we are. It worked well to get our butts up, get out here. We can do our big normal morning dog walk here in the park. How special is that? And then yeah, breakfast time. And after that, we're gonna be fighting the heat today. It is so hot today. So we originally wanted to do the big, what is it? Devil's- Garden. Devil's garden hike. We still might. We might. We're gonna see what time the dog walk and the breakfast ends. We wanna keep this fun, keep it leisurely. So we'll see how the temperature is at that point and then decide from there. Here you go, my love. Enjoy your morning work time in the national park. Yes, I have to catch up. We left in such a hurry this morning. I had a couple of things untidied that I need to tidy. Look at that view, noise. You can see what a difference having the screens down makes. So normally when these are up, it's like crystal clear. Yeah. It's really, I have, right now, this is the best seat in the house because I have windows all around me. So we're at 90% of battery since last night, which is kind of typical. We use around 10% overnight. And solar wise, we're only getting 300 watts of solar in right now. So that's not a ton. And that's the reason that we're not really charging very much. And we didn't have a very big drive this morning. That's true, we did not. So you're not gonna charge up very much. 27 minutes. Yeah, that's literally not much for charging. Yeah. So that's why I always think, put as much solar as you can fit on your roof and that you can afford and that makes sense for your lifestyle. Obviously you don't put on two, 3,000 watts of solar if you don't use it. If you're always in a park. Yeah, but the way we sit a lot, a lot of solar makes a lot of sense for us. So, so far, I mean, I like having the big inverter off this. We're always plugged in. We can use the air fryer. But the propane's gonna heat us up a little bit. Might have to, I don't know, kick on the Jenny and run the AC. Well, this fan is working great. Yeah, it is. With the windows open, it's super comfortable in here. And just because we're being shaded by the sun, like you don't have that high sun heating us up. So it's really comfortable right now. This is my favorite type of fan. It's the Max Air Deluxe with a built-in rain vent. You don't have to buy any extra things for it. It's temperature controlled. We used it last night. Set it down to about 73 degrees and it shut off in the middle of the night. I love it. You don't have to worry about rain or buying an extra hood vent or anything. So that's one of my favorites. And there's two of them. I wanna show you something super cool. Okay. If you come stand where I am and you look out that window from right here, you can see Balance Rock. I was super distracted when you were talking to me. It is perfectly sitting outside that window, isn't it? Yeah. And the cameras never do justice for what it looks like in real life. So I'm still trying to get used to everything on this new RV. The fridge is the biggest draw, which is gonna use roughly somewhere between 100, 150 watts when it's running. And that runs 24 seven. So that's really where you need your solar to keep that running off the batteries good. You're getting all gourmet here with leftovers. Yep. As usual, you and I are eating different things. You get your turkey bacon scramble and I'm doing... These are some lentils that I had pre-cooked in the freezer and some pre-cooked chicken and some asparagus. So I'm having chicken, lentils and asparagus for breakfast. And I think I'm gonna put some of this pico de gallo on it. The pico de gallo is one of the best packs that you can just go get something already made in the grocery store that's fresh, good ingredients, low calorie, full of flavor. You're putting a lot of trust into that container. Am I? Yeah. Well, it's never been opened yet. Still a lot of trust in that container. I was like, ah! Aaron likes his bacon super crispy. So I'm burning it on purpose, people. But yeah, I just have these lentils and they're like a little snack size bag. I like to put things in a individual serving portion. So like on days like today where I do want carbs with my breakfast, I just pull it out and they don't go bad in the fridge. If I just put everything straight in the fridge and I don't go through it, then it wastes. So I'll put that in the freezer and then it's more of an on-demand. With my breakfast, sometimes I have carbs with it and sometimes I don't. Depends on the day and everything that's going on. And today I'm feeling like some lentils. And we're enjoying the wider floor space with the slides in. It's not feeling too crowded. It's nice to be able to do it. So we just drove to the end of the park, which is Devil's Garden. And that's the longest hike of the park. Arguably the best hike of the park. We did a dedicated video on just that hike and we really enjoyed it. We were planning on doing that hike again, but with the heat and both Chris and I have been a little under the weather for the past couple days, and it really kind of hits us harder as the day goes on. What is it, 85 degrees out already? Yeah. It's 11 o'clock in the morning. So we're gonna maybe pick out a shorter one, but that Devil's Garden hike is really beautiful and it's long, which is nice. It's eight miles round trip. So if you want a nice long hike in a park, that's the one to do. It's also entertaining because there's like eight to 10 or something like that different points of interest along the hike that you can have on a list and look for them and you identify them and you take your photo at each one and all the different arches with the fun names, that's what makes it fun too is you have that list of things. It's almost like a little scavenger hunt that you gotta see each point on. Yeah, that's a good one. Arches is really not that big of a park. It's really not. I think maybe this paved road is somewhere around 10 to 15 miles, roughly. And so it's a nice driving park, especially when the weather's really hot. There's lots of stuff, places to pull over and go on short hikes too. It is a good drivable. It's nice and short for sure. And every spot along the way is very beautiful and panoramic, lots of different viewpoints to stop at. So not exactly how we wanted our Arches National Park visit to go, but it seems like every time we come here, it's a pretty short visit. It's usually like we're in for a single hike or just a stroll through the park just because we like to come to Moab, once every other year and check it out. It's such a cool area. I had a great time and it feels like we were here short, but we've been here for over five hours today. Yeah, it's pretty easy to spend a lot of time in the National Park, especially when you have your home with you. I just like being here low key, relaxed, like no stress, no pressure, just being immersed in the beauty and just you feel it in your soul and your breathing and you're taking it all in. You don't have to do anything extravagant to enjoy where you're at. Ever wonder where the name Irene Iron Travels comes from? 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