The most eventful part of this trip happened on the way to Choke Canyon. We didn’t have the most auspicious of starts. We hadn’t remembered to charge the Hare to full the night before, so we were charging during the day. Then Aneel had to run an errand right before we were set to leave. It was an odd start, we were running a little later than expected, and I was a bit frazzled.

This is why I was not particularly surprised when maybe 30 minutes away from San Antonio, our charging midway point, I asked Aneel “Did you pack the charging cable?” He wasn’t sure and I knew I hadn’t, but we were far enough away from home that we decided to check when we got to the chargers. Sure enough, no cable. It didn’t matter at the chargers, but we very much needed to charge at Choke Canyon to be able to leave and get to the closest set of chargers on our way home.

Aneel had the brilliant idea to buy one in San Antonio, if we could find one. So, as we were charging, we both started searching online. Home Depot? Lowes? AutoZone? After a decent amount of online hunting, we did find one in stock nearby at Best Buy. Instead of a silly mistake on our parts (readers: it was a silly mistake on our parts), we decided that this was just smart thinking. This means we can always have one cable at home and one in the Rivian. At all times. For emergencies.

Because we left late and had a charging adventure, we arrived at Choke Canyon later than expected and had to park after dark. Backing up the Hare and Tourtoise in the dark at a camp site that I’ve never been to? Not my favorite thing. But we managed. It was an easy parking arrangement anyway, I just literally couldn’t see where the dang spot was!

The park is a little rugged, quiet, and peaceful. The campsites are pretty big, but there isn’t a ton of tree coverage… so you can definitely see your neighbors. At one point, our camp site would have been lakeside, but that side of the lake has definitely dried up. We still had easy access to lake side, with a little outdoor alley right behind the camp loop. We had a nice hang lake side, bird watching and relaxing. And we did what little hiking there was. I will say… I wish there was more hiking.

They have a super cute, very small park store that sells live bait, camping must haves, and a small option of Choke Canyon State Park memorabilia. I had to pick up oil (because I forgot mine—oops). Apparently they do a weekend BBQ (not for me and my veghead ways), and they were just super nice.

Wildlife was abundant. Lakeside, we saw Northern Shovelers, Black-bellied Whistling Ducks, Canvasbacks (a first for me), Long-Billed Dowitcher, Common Gallinule, American Coots, Black-necked Stilts, White-faced Ibises, Roseate Spoonbills and more. Some of the more uncommon non-water/shore birds we saw included Curve-billed Thrasher, Bullock’s Oriole, Brown-crested Flycatcher, Ladder-backed Woodpecker, Golden-fronted Woodpecker, and Great Kiskadees.

But the best bird spotting for me was the Vermillion Flycatcher!!!! It’s been on my must-see list for a long time. I’m honestly surprised I haven’t seen one before now. It’s not common, but I’ve been to plenty of places where they live. At the park, we got a really good view of one hunting. They’re such pretty birds.

Probably the most amusing wildlife spotting was the javelina who just wandered through camp. It was after dinner, and we were just lounging… and here comes a javelina with no worries in the world just snorfling through. It came within just a few yards of us. We just stayed still and pretended to ignore it (while staring and taking pictures). It was clearly at home and just looking for any tasty plants and flowers nearby (or maybe potato chips and smores).

The wildlife and quiet at Choke Canyon was fabulous… but overall I’m not sure if I’d go out of my way to go back. Not enough hikes. But if we were nearby, it’d be a great stop over especially during another season (maybe autumn?) to see what wildlife was around then.

https://tourtoise.quest/2024/08/26/choke-canyon-state-park-review/

#Charging #TexasStatePark

Welcome back! In part one of this April 2024 series, I talked about the amazing superbloom that was happening throughout the park and showed the flowers, animals, and hikes that Aneel and I saw during our two weeks in Inks Lake. Now I’m back (better late than never) to talk about the total eclipse itself.

Aneel and I had been talking about and looking forward to this total eclipse so close to home for a few years. Although we’d already experienced one total eclipse before (August 2017 in St. Louis), we were very excited to be able to see another from our own back yard… back State Park? Then starting a couple of weeks before the eclipse, everyone started to get nervous. So many people had plans and had been looking forward to it, and literally… it was THE topic of conversation for at least a week because the weather looked like it was not going to cooperate at all. Not just cloudy weather was predicted, but rains and potential big storms. I wasn’t too nervous until just a couple of days beforehand because weather is too unpredictable to really forecast early, right?

The forecast did look slightly better getting closer to the big day, but nearly full cloud coverage was still predicted. Aneel and I woke up that morning and talked about our options. Like the partial eclipse in 2023, should we drive to a close-ish location with less cloud coverage? No, we decided to hope for the best and comforted ourselves that if we missed it, we’d already had a great total eclipse experience in 2017.

That morning and afternoon—the park was very full. Everyone had their chairs pulled out, their glasses ready. I worked that morning, but we started our watch at noon.

The hour and change leading up to the eclipse is an interesting experience. I would look up with glasses on to see the sun fairly frequently but read and meander around quite a bit too. Apparently, I don’t have the attention span one needs to stare at the sun as the moon slowly, slowly creeps over the sun. Also, it’s a little more dramatic to take pauses and check back in and see how the moon coverage has significantly changed.

The weather leading up to the peak eclipse was PERFECT. As we’d experienced during the partial eclipse, cloud coverage moving through actually adds to the experience. You can take great pictures, and it makes the sun through the glasses look really beautiful.

It gets slowly darker, but ever so slowly… even when only a little sun is peeking through, it still seems like a typical overcast day. And then fairly suddenly, the moon covers the sun completely, you can look at the sun without your glasses, and everything seems almost like it’s night time. Not quite… maybe like the gloaming. It’s such a weird, magical feeling.

The park was a great place to be during the total eclipse. We were very, very lucky and had cloud clearance through much of the eclipse and during the total eclipse. Park visitors cheered and celebrated.

Then, after only four and a half, the sun starts appearing again. We watched as the moon coverage slowly moved away. To try to avoid traffic jams on the way home, we went on one more hike and had an early dinner. Traffic was still a little congested on the way home but not bad.

And we were very happy to see our cats upon arrival.

https://tourtoise.quest/2024/08/20/the-main-event-inks-lake-2024-total-eclipse-part-2/

#Eclipse #InksLake #TexasStatePark

Superbluem: Inks Lake 2024 Total Eclipse Part 1

As mentioned in my last post on our Thanksgiving trip, we had reservations at Inks Lake State Park for the April 2024 total eclipse.

Aneel worked VERY hard to get these reservations because Texas state parks have limited reservations, and they don’t do anything special/raise prices for big nature events like this. So he calculated EXACTLY when they would go on sale, decided we could make reservations for two weeks (so we could book a little earlier), and then was at his computer ready to purchase the second they were made available.

I felt very, very lucky that we ended up with such great reservations for the eclipse (and even more so felt that way after the eclipse: the reason why coming in part 2).

Superbloom

But the surprise was… it was also amazing because of the spectacular superbloom. The spring flowers were in bloom and just… freaking gorgeous.

My apologies for the semi-crappy pictures. Aneel has some on his actual camera that probably turned out way better. These are iPhone camera photos with Seek identification. Please let me know if I got any of the IDs wrong.

Superbluem

We jokingly started referring to this as the “superbluem” because of the spectacular showing of bluebonnets. I love bluebonnets… they’re so lovely, and it makes me feel close to Austin in positive ways (unsurprisingly, I have very complicated feelings about Austin and Texas in general). The bluebonnets were EVERYWHERE.

It was also super super fun to search for variants. The only ones we found were the white variants. Overall, I think we found maaaaaybe two dozen total of individual white variants. We searched high and low on every hike and walk for the pink and maroon variant but no go. I guess that means we have a goal for the future.

Activities

I’ve been fairly stressed because of work and the house renovation drama we’ve been dealing with… so getting out in nature and enjoying some wonderful hiking and relaxing was really good for my mental health.

We went on some truly lovely hikes, and got some really great birding in (including two new on my birding list) and a very good stop at the great bird blind at Inks Lake.

Animals

And the animal spotting was also on point. We saw some really great insects and arachnids.

Some great lizards.

And, of course, some great birds. As mentioned, I added two new to my bird list, although I’m sure I’ve seen them before. They were the greater scaup (pretty sure greater not lesser) and also the gadwall. I didn’t get pictures – too far away (although again – Aneel probably has better pictures). The good pictures I do have are of the Canada Geese that we named because they walked through our campsite a lot-Humphrey and Lauren, so named because our cat Bogart meows/yells at us and sounds 100% like a goose. Hearing their geese noise made us think of him (i.e., Humphrey Bogart and his wife Lauren Bacall). We also saw little geeslings. And a truly whoa tufted common mallard.

Check Back in for Part 2

It was a spectacular trip already, and this doesn’t even touch on the total eclipse. Check back in next week for my recap on the eclipse. It was a tense week because it looked like weather and clouds might spoil everything!

#Eclipse #InksLake #TexasStatePark

For the first… 16 or so years of my life, I celebrated Thanksgiving with my immediate and extended family. It was always at either my grandparent’s house or my aunt and uncle’s house (maternal uncle – older brother of my mother). It was what I still consider the “typical” middle-class, waspy Thanksgiving day. The holiday revolved mostly around food… women in the kitchen with multiple hours worth of planning, prep, and cooking. Men mostly hanging out in the living room, watching sports and waiting for food. Couple dozen people ranging in ages from toddlers to great-grandparents.

My family always had the same food (which we then also had at Christmas): turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce, and more pies than people. I mean seriously… nobody agreed on the same “best pie,” so we all got our favorites and then some. Pecan, chocolate silk, apple, coconut cream, cherry, peach, banana cream, lemon, key lime… and always pumpkin. Nobody ever claimed pumpkin as their favorite pie, but it just wasn’t Thanksgiving without it. If you’re wondering, my favorite pie has pretty much always been apple. I like a good apple crumb (or french apple/dutch apple), but a straight-forward solid apple pie is A+ in my book.

And then, slowly, one by one, the cousins peeled off… celebrating with their new immediate family (getting married, having babies, celebrating with new in-laws, etc). And eventually, we all admitted defeat. No more big family Thanksgivings. My immediate family prioritized Christmas, and let Thanksgiving go.

By the time I was in my mid-to-late 20s, Thanksgiving meant Friendsgiving… potlucks with whoever was in town and blood-family free at that time of year. I still love a good Friendsgiving, but Aneel and I have a new tradition now. Starting a handful of years ago, we camp over Thanksgiving. I prep some food just for the two of us, and we head off towards quiet and have our own little family [non]-celebration.

2023 was no exception to this tradition. We lucked out on Inks Lake State Park reservations, and spent a a long weekend there from Wednesday, Nov 22nd to Saturday November 25th (spoiler: we actually had to the 26th, but we bailed early because of weather).

I prepped pumpkin risotto (recipe made veggie) and a fall salad for our Thanksgiving meal. And I picked up a smorgasbord of goodies from Sugar Mama‘s including little mini pumpkin pies (again.. not my favorite, but a Thanksgiving classic).

We had a fine time camping… good hikes, wildlife.

I attempted an apple cobbler over the campfire. It was tasty… but ugly (and a far cry from a cobbler). I didn’t take a picture of the final product – but it was a fun attempt nonetheless. We had more success with drinking mead (which we also shared with the local bumblers).

Our two biggest victories of the extended weekend were:

Sadly, the weather didn’t hold and right at the end of our hatchery visit, it started to rain. We headed back to our campground, but then after sitting inside our trailer for an hour, we realized it was going to rain for the rest of the day and we could hang out inside the trailer or pack it up and go home. We folded like cheap poker tables and packed up early. Heading home didn’t really feel like failure because of our sweet cats waiting for us and the cuddles we enjoyed.

https://tourtoise.quest/2024/04/13/thanksgiving-trip-2023/

#InksLake #TexasStatePark

Over the past year and a half, we’ve been exploring new state parks—trying to find fun places with nice camping and hikes within about 4 hours or so of home. We’ve been to quite a few, but to ease back into camping after a super hot summer, we opted to return to a couple of our favorites nearby. So in September, we spent a long weekend at Buescher State Park.

Buescher was actually the very first place we took Tourtoise when we got her, I believe, so that was a nice little commemoration. We really like this park because it’s pretty quiet with really woodsy camping spots. There aren’t many hikes within Buescher itself (although there are a couple of really great ones with beautiful overlooks!), but it’s adjacent to Bastrop State Park with a park road connecting the two. Bastrop has many more hikes, and we get access to both with an entrance to either.

We picked one of our favorite spots from last time: it is at one end of the curve that backs up to the lake. You have to walk a little way not on a trail, but it’s worth it to sit and enjoy the view and the birds.

While on this trip we tried out a few things worth mentioning.

1. The built-in tire pump on the Hare!

It was still quite hot (hitting over 100 each day), but our tire pressure warning went off as we set off to drive to the trailhead of a hike one day. It was a little surprising because usually that happens when it cools down for the season. But it was super easy to take care of because of this awesome Rivian feature.

The great news is… this is just SO EASY. Hook up the cord, set the pressure goal, and pump. We weren’t particularly low on any tire and the whole process took maybe 5-10 minutes total? We had a guy stop to chat about Rivians while we were airing up. I’m really still not used to being so popular for our vehicle. I’ve driven boring cars for so many years. It’s amusing-especially because I’m still not really a car person but it is a very cool car.

The only slight—very very slight complaint—is that the air compressor control doesn’t seem to work great. Sometimes it would stop before we got near the goal pressure. One time it went well over the goal, so we had to let air out. I ended up just stopping to check it occasionally on the screen instead of letting it run automatically. Even with that little hiccup, it’s still such a great feature and easy to use.

2. Our shower tent!!

 After one of our 2022 trips, we realized outdoor showering could be handy—if really dirty from a hike and don’t want to track it inside or after swimming or just because we want to spray down really quick because it’s hot. The Tourtoise does have an external hose, so we bought a shower tent a number months ago and just hadn’t used it yet. This time we intentionally set it up and used it. And it’s so pleasant.

Like I mentioned earlier, it was still very hot on this trip. We would get up early-ish, to get a hike in before it hit the peak heat. But even then, it was in the mid to high 90s and sunny while we hiked. We kept the hikes short (around 45 minutes to an hour), but still were soaked in sweat by the end. At our campsite, we had lunch, then hung out outside in some kind of shade, bird-watching and reading.

Then when it got close to cooling down, we took a shower outside, washing away all that sweat and heat. It’s just a nice camping experience. Watching birds and looking at trees while taking a shower.

I felt a little bad because we didn’t use a gray water bin (although we did specifically use an appropriate outdoor camping-approved shower wash). So as soon as we got home and knew we would be using this again, we bought a foldable gray catch. It fits perfectly, is a few inches high on the edges, lets us catch the water, and is easy to transport.

Great animal watching

We had some really great animal and bird watching on this trip too. We got great views (and sounds) of Pileated Woodpeckers, Blue-Gray Gnatcatchers, Green Heron, and the more common species. No cuckoo this time though.

In addition, we saw several species of lizards and this velvet ant (maybe the Klug?) that apparently has a wildly painful sting!

Overall, an excellent trip with a few new test successes.

https://tourtoise.quest/2023/11/05/new-adventures-in-buescher-state-park/

#Buescher #TexasStatePark

The other big spring weekend trip that we took in Tourtoise was to Lost Maples State Natural Area. Yeah, yeah, it’s not specifically a state park, but close enough. And holy moly wow… this place is fabulous and worth talking about. This place is GORGEOUS.

The weekend started off with a fabulous drive through Fredericksburg, Kerrville, and Hunt, Texas. They really play up the hunt part, which I’m not huge on, but still… it is just breathtakingly beautiful to drive through there.

We stopped in Kerrville for a charge, and had an easy charge at the Kerrville visitor’s bureau. Walked to Lowe’s for something, wandered over to Sonic because why not, before heading back to the charging center.

We got to Lost Maples and almost immediately realized we wouldn’t have cell service and internet for the trip. That was a bit of a bummer because we’d hoped to test out some new equipment… but it makes sense for the landscape, which is essentially a canyon in between hills. The area is famous for the Uvalde bigtooth maples but has good birds, lotsa armadillos, the endangered golden-cheeked warbler and black-capped vireos (both endemic to the park), and also the super pretty Texas madrone tree.

The campground is so-so. It’s right at the front just after the entrance, and the sites are right next to each other, without much privacy from each other. But, it’s small and you have a great view of the hills on both sides. It’s worth it to stay in this spectacular area.

Camping Tip: The best areas are right at the end of the curve: # 15, 16, 17, 18. They offer more privacy and back up the best wooded area.

We had ravens every day in our campground, and great birding just from our campground (painted buntings, blue grosbeaks, chipping sparrows, summer tanagers, Inca doves, ash-throated flycatchers, eastern phoebes, and literally dozens of black-chinned hummingbirds thanks to some campground hummingbird feeders.

The park has about 12 miles of hiking, and two of the hikes are decently long and challenging—about 5 miles and some steeper areas. It was a great amount of hiking for a three-day weekend. And honestly, those hikes were so beautiful, I could have done them a couple of times each. We did have a few really great sightings of the golden-cheeked warblers, but sadly never saw the black-capped vireos. We did catch a few red-eyed vireos, woodhouse’s scrub jay, tropical parula, yellow-throated warbler, yellow-breasted chat, black-throated green warbler, ladder-backed woodpecker and a louisiana waterthrush. Ugh – so many great birds.

We did get caught in fairly constant rain in one of our hikes… and it turns out that after 3+ hours of constant light rain… it gets very uncomfortable. I was soaked from head to toe (waterproof rainboots aren’t very helpful if the rain just runs down your legs INTO your boots). We got so wet, our electronics actually still are showing some damage. That’ll teach us to be a little more attentive when it’s raining.

Running low on beer, we did take a quick trip right outside of the park to the Lost Maples general store. It was about 4 miles away and pretty limited in supplies, but good enough for us!

Camping Test: The other big note of the trip is that we spent one night sleeping in the Hare to test how that went. Unfortunately, I had a sore muscle from a few days before and it just got worse every day of the trip.. so that was a big bummer. But other than that, it was easy sleeping in the Rivian. We pulled the mattress cushions from the Tourtoise and they fit pretty well into the back of the Hare (with the two back rows of seats lowered). We technically set it to camping power on, but I had to turn the AC on a couple of times because it wasn’t staying on and Aneel’s phone didn’t charge. So something kinda went wrong there. But the TL/DR was it’s super easy and roomy enough to sleep in the Hare.

We will DEFINITELY be going back to Lost Maples, and hopefully multiple times. That place is just… a highlight of Texas landscape.

#lost-maples #texas-state-park

https://tourtoise.quest/2023/06/11/spring-state-park-reviews-part-2-lost-maples-state-natural-area/

Aneel and I are trying to do one weekend trip per month on average. Sometimes that means non-Tourtoise trips, but they do make up the bulk of our weekend getaways (which is great). We’re always looking to explore new places, but are also trying to keep a list of the best places to return to. Two of our favorites areas have historically been Inks Lake State Park and Buescher State Park—we actually have reservations to go back to both in the fall. In April and May, we added two more areas to our “have traveled to” list.

Park Selection Criteria

Honestly, my criteria this time around for picking areas to visit were 1) what has availability that matches our availability and 2) what is within three(ish) hours, so it still makes for a pleasant three-day weekend. Generally, I do also try to look at reviews and descriptions because we’re looking for hiking trails, great nature, and lean away from busy, group activity-oriented areas, and areas that seem more specifically designed for boating or water sports. I like being on a boat, but that’s not really what these trips are for.

While trying to pick some areas for Spring, I got to reservations a little late, and bluntly… was just looking for places period. One ended up okay, the other ended up spectacular, and I’m glad we went to both for very different reasons.

April trip: Mother Neff State Park

Neither Aneel nor I realized it until our drive to the park, but Mother Neff State Park was the very first Texas state park. I’m guessing timing or paperwork or something makes that claim not 100% defensible because most sources always use the wording “one of the first parks in the Texas’ state park system,” but truly… it’s THE park that starting the whole ball rolling.

Part of what is now Mother Neff State Park belonged to a woman named Isabella Neff from the mid 19th century all the way through her death in 1921. She was a big player in her community (gaining the nickname “Mother Neff”) and had a huge soft spot for community activities and outdoor leisure. So, when she died, she donated six acres of her favorite land to the state for a park. She also, apparently, instilled in her son a love for parks and outdoor leisure because her son, Pat M. Neff, worked hard during his time as a Texas governor to start the Texas State Parks Board and start a government run state park system in Texas.

There is a whole lot more to the whole State Park history in Texas, but the focus for this blog is that Mother Neff State Park is an important part of Texas State Park history, and it was nice to visit for that reason.

The park itself is pretty small—bigger than the original donated 6 acres—at 330 acres. I got curious writing the blog, and apparently the smallest state park in Texas is only 16 acres and the biggest state park in Texas is Big Bend Ranch State Park, which is 311,000 acres. So yeah, definitely on the small side of things. It only has about 4 miles of hiking, so definitely not enough hiking for us during a three-day trip. We pretty much did all the hiking in one day.

It is a pretty area though. The RV camping loop has some good shady areas and tree sections. We were on the inner side, which isn’t our favorite because I want a camp site that backs up just to nature. But we did have okay privacy and some nice trees around. Also, it was pretty much the perfect time of year in Texas to camp and the butterfly, bird, and wildflower life was spectacular.

The hiking didn’t really feel like hiking… it was more short strolls through the area. Some of them are labeled moderate, and that might be fair because they could be a little rocky, but… it was not at all a challenge and they are all very, very, very short.

The birds were abundant—we saw so many painted buntings, and also frequently spotted black-chinned hummingbirds, chickadees, Franklin’s gulls, Bewick’s wrens, Mississippi kites, and had one hilarious turkey encounter that nearly gave me a heart attack. The only bird that wasn’t a decently common enough spotting for me was the dickcissel. We did hear a chuck will’s widow at night… every night… but couldn’t ever find it.

The other big positive is that there are plenty of areas nearby to hike when you’ve exhausted the 4 miles at Mother Neff. We ended up going to Miller Springs Nature Center, which was about 20 miles away, and I had a FABULOUS time hiking there. There isn’t a ton, ton of hiking there, but plenty and it all crisscrosses and is super wild and just very pretty.

The big bonus of Mother Neff is that it’s a recently built campsite, so it’s full hookups and a 30 AND 50 amp plug at every site (Aneel already posted about that), so super easy to camp there. Don’t have to worry at all about having to hook up and dump tanks.

Camping Tip: Best Camp Sites: 5, 7, 8. 6… more privacy, good space, backs up against wild area. We took note just in case we end up coming back. I kinda doubt we will, it’s just not necessarily big enough. But it’d be a perfectly good place to stay if there was something else in the area we really wanted to do.

To Be Continued…

I thought I would post about Lost Maples State Natural Area in this post too, but this post is too long already. Stay tuned for part 2, and I’ll highlight all of the awesome that is Lost Maples.

#mother-neff #texas-state-park

https://tourtoise.quest/2023/06/04/spring-state-park-reviews-part-1-mother-neff-sp/

We just did a trip to Mother Neff State Park, which we discovered on the way there is the oldest State Park in Texas. Did you know that Texas State Parks were originally envisioned as glorified rest areas for car tourists? That the first Texas State Park was made from land donated by the Governor’s Mom? Ah, Texas, where public spaces have never been a priority…

There’s been a lot of flood damage to the park in recent years, which has caused them to close the old camping loop and build a brand new one with electric sites with both 50 Amp and 30 Amp connections. After our charging adventure at Purtis Creek State Park, we thought it would be a good idea to test out some in-park charging.

NEMA Simplified! By Orion Lawlor – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

The Rivian’s mobile charge cable comes with two plug ends, a NEMA 5-15 (standard household 3-prong) and a NEMA 14-50 (the usual plug for large RVs). Our Tab 400’s cable is a TT-30 (the usual plug for small RVs—the TT is for Travel Trailer). As we discovered at Purtis Creek, RV adapters for TT-30 to 14-50 aren’t wired the way EVs expect. So how do we power both?

The Best Option: 14-50 AND TT-30

Happily, Mother Neff park had both 14-50 and TT-30 outlets (and a couple of 5-15s) on separate breakers! This makes things simple: plug Hare into the 14-50, plug Tourtoise into the TT-30 (there’s a surge protector shown here). In practice, we got about 30 Amp charging, which at 240 Volts meant 7-8 kW, which is roughly 15 miles of charge per hour using Rivian’s estimates. That would fill the battery from 0% in under 20 hours, or from 30% full in 14 hours. Pretty good for an overnight stop.

Second Best: 14-50 Y-adapter

What if we only had a 14-50? Well, we brought a Y-adapter that lets us plug in the Rivian charger to one side of the Y, and use a 14-50P to TT-30R adapter (P is for Plug, R is for Receptacle) to power the trailer. The Power Watchdog Surge Protector lets us monitor how much the trailer is drawing (which is not much, even with the water heater for the shower), so we could set the Rivian’s charge rate accordingly. To keep things safe, we aimed for only using 80% of the rated 50 A for the circuit. Because this is still a 240 V setup, the charge rate is still good: 6-7 kW.

Third Try: TT-30 Y-adapter

Okay, what if we only had a TT-30, like at Purtis Creek. We brought a TT-30 Y-adapter for that. In this case, it’s the Rivian that needs the plug adapter: TT-30P to 14-50R, wired for an EV not an RV. Again, we’ll want to make sure the Rivian doesn’t draw too much power. At 120 V we were getting about 3 kW, or around 6 miles of charge per hour. Getting from 30% to full would take around 32 hours. Definitely doable on a multi-day stop.

TT-30 Y-adapterUh-oh: 5-15

If the campsite had only had 5-15 outlets, we could have plugged the Rivian into one of them and gotten enough power to limp to a charger… maybe. We didn’t try that in Mother Neff, but at Purtis Creek, that tripped the breaker, no matter how low we set the charging rate on the Rivian.

Luckily (well, by design), we arrived at the park with enough charge to get Hare (not towing Tourtoise) back to the L3 charger in Waco, if we’d needed to. Making sure we arrive with enough charge to make it out is definitely a priority now that we’ve almost gotten stuck.

Bonus: Home charging

At home, I have a 240 V circuit for my welder. It has a 6-50 receptacle, but the circuit is actually only 30A, so we plug in a 6-50P to 14-50R adapter and make sure the Rivian charges slowly enough to not trip the breaker. Pro tip: to make the Rivian always charge at a lower amperage at home, set up a schedule that covers all 24 hours with the desired rate.

6-50 to 14-50 adapter. Blue to match the welder

#charging #mother-neff #texas-state-park

https://tourtoise.quest/2023/05/08/wired/

I’ve always liked roaming around. I’ve criss–crossed the United States (and a bit of Mexico and Canada) on a motorcycle, camping along the way. I’ve driven from London to Ulaan Baatar. I’ve driven a caravan through the Outback on a trip to Australia.

When I moved to Austin, the two of us drove the contents of my storage unit across the country in a box truck, stopping to camp along the way. Together, we’ve done car camping road trips, hitting a half dozen national and state parks over a few weeks. And we rented a camper van in Iceland to see the sights of the ring road.

When Covid hit, we realized that RVing was a good way to get out into the world without spending lots of time on planes. For our first few trips, we tried various motorhomes, but quickly came to the conclusion that we didn’t like bringing our whole RV with us when we drove to trailheads. That led us to towable campers, where we could drop off the house part of it and just take the car part with us on outings. We rented a Scamp to visit North Cascades and Olympic National Parks, and visited the Casita factory only to discover that they had an 18 month wait . After doing some more research, and a test trip in a camper we found on Outdoorsy, we decided that the travel trailer that we liked the best was the nuCamp Tab 400.

Now the next question: what do we tow this thing with? We’d rented pickups for our early towing adventures. They were a mixed bag. We found that rental companies would only let you tow with a 3/4 ton pickup or larger, which meant that they were all enormous. Many of them smelled terrible (because they were diesel or because rental work trucks don’t get treated nicely). The Tab is fairly light, but not light enough to tow with a passenger car or a crossover. I toyed with the idea of buying a Tacoma (which I regret not doing, because I could have sold it for more than I’d paid for it and avoided some rentals).

Ideally, we’d use an electric vehicle. When we towed with pickups we got startlingly bad gas mileage. With renewable electricity forming a larger and larger share of the electric grid, EVs are becoming more environmentally friendly, so we really wanted something electric.

In 2020, I put down a deposit on a Rivian R1S. I’d honestly despaired of it being delivered after they pushed the estimated delivery date back and back again. But finally it’s here! It has power to spare for towing, and so far its range has only fallen by about half while pulling Tourtoise.

#campervan #caravan #history #mobile-home #national-park #texas-state-park #truck

https://tourtoise.quest/2023/03/26/ev-tv/