Unplugged In Moab Ep 1: 100% Solar Electric RV Camping & Hiking to Natural Hot Springs!

Hey, kids. What time is it? Your time. That's right. Do you know where we're going? No. The valley of the Hot Springs. That's right. Part of the itinerary is those two places where we're going to Moab, primarily. So this is Eastern Utah. But first, we're going to be starting in closer by in Diamond Fork Road, which is close by Spanish Fork, Utah. And then we will continue on to Moab and we'll be doing lots of things in Canyonlands and Arches National Park. We are going to be driving for 57 minut

es more and we're going about 45 miles to get to our Diamond Fork Road camping destination. This trip took place in October and the fall colors were beautiful to varying degrees in various places throughout the trip. I'm in Fort Road, has some pretty narrow sections with lots of winding through the mountains, and it's a popular recreation area since it's near a large population center. We discovered while we were there that this weekend was especially crowded due to the fall colors and the fall

break for the schools in our area, including college students since the trailers. So why there is no shoulder on this road and I had to be extra careful driving up to our campsite, especially where there were lots of cars parked along the side of the road with people walking on the side of the road to get to their trailhead. Farther up the road is all of the dispersed camping, so there's no reservations and you have to just go with the luck of finding an available spot, as is how often Rocky wor

ks. As we drove, we passed many RVs or tents already occupying camping spots, but luckily we found one that was actually quite nice and we only had one far away neighbor. We had some friends join us and they were able to spread out in this camping area we found. So that was nice to have some extra room. As soon as we arrived, we got the trailer leveled off side to side, as we always do. Then we installed the extra trucks, which worked very well for holding the trailer nice and still. Then we got

everything else set up like the front and back, lovely stabilizers and finally the slide out. We're at 72% on the battery and right now it is 9:39 p.m. right now. Outside it is almost 69 degrees. That's in the house, in here at 69 degrees. And outside it's 40, almost 41 degrees. We'll be turning on the mini split at some point, I'm sure, to heat it up in the trailer. But for now, we're just going to let the trailer cool down naturally and then we'll turn on the mini split when we want to. And y

ou excited Sarah Clear. All right. We're going to have a fun hike tomorrow, Are you excited when you go to some hot springs? I'll put it on the screen here. The map to where we're going. So tonight was just hanging out, eating dinner, and then tomorrow we'll do the activity for this area. If you look closely at the top of the mountain peak in the center of this time lapse, you'll see cows moving around as they graze. As you can see, we got here just a little bit past the prime fall colors. So so

me of the trees are already bare. And the colors that were there were quite dark by now. The backdrop is still quite beautiful, though, and the colors of the sunset were still visible despite there being a mountain partially in the way as darkness descended, it got cold, so I turned on the mini split, which kept us warm all night. This is the Vectren monitoring portal that shows the trailer's electrical system for all of that first day. So at the beginning of that day, of course, we weren't on t

he trip yet and I was letting the batteries charge up, knowing we were going to go on this trip. And it looks like there's a little bit of power consumption here. I don't remember exactly what that was. It might have been. I turn on the water heater or something like that and then you can see the battery peaked at 95% and we got to our campsite that evening and then we started to cook dinner and we turned on the mini split. And that's what most of the standby or most of this energy going into th

e evening is the mini split consuming energy. It's generally pulling about, as you can see here, about 300 watts continuously as it was maintaining that 70 degree temperature. Down here. You can see the consumption for that day was 3.2 kilowatt hours and the solar production was 9.2 kilowatt hours. So that solar production is definitely all that it could have produced that day because the battery never filled up, although it got close at 95% of the consumption, though this is not indicative of a

normal camping day, clearly, because we didn't start camping until the evening and I showed these graphs just so that you have an idea of a little bit more of the nuance and details of what's going into the electrical system from the solar versus what we are consuming while we're living in the trailer. So you can see what it looks like when you have a fully electric trailer being powered by the sun and the dynamics of that. I will continue to show graphs like this every day of this trip as we p

roceed through the video series. Hey, let's see. How did you sleep last night? It's good. It seemed to help you sleep last night. Naturally. Hey, Lidia, how did you sleep last night together. I feel like that I was either one subtle. How did you sleep last night? And how did you sleep last night? Mediocre. Yeah. James was f little problematic. Right now it is 738 in the morning. Inside it is 72 degrees, and outside it is 27 degrees. And then looking over here at the trailer's battery system, ele

ctrical system, we're down to 30% on the battery and we're just barely starting to get a little bit of solar right now. The mini split is warming up a little bit, 6.600 watts. We had it set to 70 degrees pretty much all night, starting at around 9:30 p.m.. The sun has come up over the ridge and we are now getting direct sunlight onto the panels. And now the panels are getting 700 watts and the battery is charging at 300 watts right now and it got down to 20%. And right now it's 9:20 a.m.. Everyo

ne is outside playing and looking at the temperatures. We're 78 inside and 52 outside. I just turned off the mini split so that is no longer pulling anything. And now our battery is at 25%, charging at 822 watts and the solar is now producing 1100 watts and electrical on board of things. Charging and running off the AC is 162 watts at the moment and it is 1019. And after the girls had the morning to explore our campsite, we changed into swimsuits and packed up our hiking backpacks with water and

snacks. We left the trailer there and drove the truck back down the road to the fifth water Hot Springs trailhead. This is a 4.6 mile hike roundtrip to some natural hot spring pools in the mountains. This is a popular hike and we perhaps should have left the trailer earlier in the morning to get a better parking spot because I ended up dropping off Jessica and the kids at the trailhead, and the closest spot I could find to park the truck was half a mile down the road, so that ended up making th

e hike 5.6 miles round trip. For me, this is where I ended up having to park, and I'm quite a ways away from the trailhead, so I got to get to where I dropped off Jessica and the kids. This is the parking lot. It's kind of hard to see from here, but it is completely full and there's a ton of people parking illegally up the driveway this way. Look at this beautiful trail with overarching trees. Has gorgeous. What do you think, girls? I like it. Yeah. Sarah, what do you think of the hike? Yeah. Ja

mes, what do you think of the hike? Probably a lot. Yes. We are now hiking down the trail to go to the fifth Water Hot Springs, also known as the Spanish Fork. Hot Springs. Since we're here in mid-October, the fall colors are just spectacular. And for that reason, it's really crowded. The parking lot is completely full and people are parked down the road for car anyways. So yeah, I guess that's the price you pay when you come at a popular time of year when it's beautiful fall colors and the weat

her not crazy hot, these are all ready, willing time. This is about 2.3 mile hike. One way to get to the hot springs. Are you ready, Lucy? Yeah, that's all right. I'm holding. Are you ready, Lydia? Yeah. Are you nervous? Lydia No. Okay. Here is still a little grip, like 12. I see. Okay. Yeah, It's beautiful. No, no, Look at these. Pretty tapered walking into Lucy. You should call this part the fire force. I'm proud of my girls for doing a great job hiking these 2.3 miles and never asking to be c

arried. I have certainly carried all of them before, just like James is here. But we've hiked enough through the years and built up their hiking expectations to be able to handle a couple mile hike like this with minimal complaining much of the time. Upon arriving at the heated pools, I was surprised at how different the layout is now compared to when I was here last, which was likely around 210 years ago. There is clearly a lot of human intervention here where people have stacked rocks and even

used cement to create a cascading water effect through multiple pools with varying degrees of hot water as I knew it would be due to the parking situation. It was quite crowded, but we managed to find a little space eventually. So what do you think is a Wonderful Life? Yeah, the United States has always been if you get into to Hong Kong, you have fun. This is James's first time in a hot spring. Cool to see how warm is the water feeling? Really warm. How about you, Lydia? Do you think it's reall

y warm? Yeah. Hot or even hot. How about you, Claire? Yeah, Yeah, it's a little bit windy. The air is a little bit cooler. Take a picture. Was it worth the hike? Good. Was it a fun hike, Lydia Or was it a little too hot? yeah, it was beautiful. I mean, look at these colors. We then began the 2.8 mile trek back to the truck. One in Lydia. What was your favorite part about the hot springs? Snacks. The snacks? We can eat snacks anywhere. What was your favorite part about the hot springs? She said,

All right, let's see. What was your favorite part about the hot springs? The hot springs? Which pool? They really struck me. yeah. There are a lot of these falling. The hot springs are so cool and very hot. What was your favorite part about the hot springs? Being hot. Being hot. All right. I was hungry. She was so glad that she made it to the hot springs and that she didn't stop on the hike when her legs are tired. Yes, I am glad. I'm glad she made it. It was the most fun. Yeah. And look at thes

e fall colors was so beautiful. I think everyone had lots of fun at the hot springs we were there for. I don't really know. I wasn't keeping track. About an hour. Really. I thought we were there for longer and we all had a lot of fun and the hot springs are really cool and their variance of pools and waterfalls and the temperature of the water and various pools is different. And the hike here is just gorgeous. We're now hiking back to the track and then we'll obviously continue on our way back t

o our trailer. This is about a two and a half mile hike, so it might be a little bit long for some small kids that don't have much hiking experience, but we were able to do it just fine. You know, it took about an hour and a half for us to come up, and I think it'll probably take us about an hour to get down here at this rate that we're going, which is all downhill, which is nice. Hey, James, did you have fun today? Yeah, he had tons of fun based on his facial expressions. yeah. yeah. That's so

beautiful. Yeah, I'm so cool. All right, we are back to the trailer, And as you can see, we are still getting sun here, but not for long. Coming into the trailer, we wanted to cook dinner while we were away. So we have the crock pot going here on stove while we were away and it was on low. You can see the batter here. Got to 79% so far. And we're getting 367 watts currently. So we're not going to be getting the charge and the battery up probably much more than this. I also had the water heater o

n the whole time we were away because we're going to shower now, so we're not going to get the battery full tonight. But it's okay. You know what? Funny for tomorrow, we're probably not going to turn the mains, but very much tonight. and right now it is 5:07 p.m.. So we were gone for about 5 hours. It's just a little while later now at 5:12 p.m. and you can see the solar has already dropped to 116 because of you just fell into the shade from the side of the mountain is now 9:00 at night and you

can see the battery is at 64% and I'm going to leave off the mini split as long as I can. It is 70 degrees inside and 42 degrees outside. This is the Victorian monitoring portal for the trailer's electrical system for that day. We begin the day here at 60% and then the battery declined throughout the night as the mini split was pulling energy heating the trailer. And then here it bottomed out at 20%. And that's around when solar started to ramp up as well. And so that's where this blue line star

ts going back up, which is the state of charge of the battery. And you can see some spikes in energy consumption here in the morning when we were there in the trailer doing things and the hot water heater tends to take the most energy. And that's this spike right here as well. When we got back to the trailer after the hot springs, you can see the battery was at 79% and then the hot water heater was being used a lot as we were taking showers after the hot springs this afternoon along here, the cr

ockpot was running and that's it. So that's this 0.2, 7.25 kilowatt hours being pulled per hours, just the crockpot running. And then we go into the evening here in just a little bit of electricity being consumed from random electronics probably. But I don't think I had the mini split on any time during this period here. And we ended the day at 58% on the battery. So our consumption for the whole day ended up being 8.3 kilowatt hours and the solar production was 10.4 kilowatt hours now in the mo

rning and it's 73 degrees inside and 30 almost 39 degrees outside looking at the electrical system, we're down to 40% on the battery. It was about, I think, 49% in the middle of the night and the inside temperature had gone to 61. So I turned on the mini split. And so it has been cycling on and off, maintaining the temperature. And right now is 8:05 a.m. because of the canyon that we're in. It's going to be a little while before the sun gets down to us. This right here is facing north, and that

is the first mountain peak that is getting some sun exposure. This view is looking east. So this will be where the sun comes from when it does, but it's going to be a while. Lydia, how did you sleep? It did great. It is now 912 in the morning and the battery is down to 37% and it's just barely discharging. Still, our soldiers jumped up to 600 watts. And looking outside, you can see that we are now getting direct sun and looking here at the ground. You can see it just barely has gotten to our tra

iler. So we are now getting as much power as we can get from the sun at this angle. But we're actually going to be leaving real soon and getting on the road to head to our next camping destination. The mini solar heater is still on and this is how quiet it is. This camping spot has been really nice. It's it's a pretty large open area. And you can see the StarLink dishes right there on the side of the trailer. And it works great, even though it's that close because it's between north and this are

a is just really beautiful with the fall colors right now especially and the road here is asphalt. It's paved. It used to be gravel. And so that makes it extra nice getting here. And there's another rig right over there. And then last night, another car, passenger car arrived and they are over in that spot off to the side. And this could actually fit many more rigs, but potentially they would be, you know, in each other's business too much. And people like to spread out when they're not camping,

especially. So we quite like this place. We'll be back again, I'm sure in the next episode of our trip, we pack up our trailer and drive 256 miles south through Moab, Utah, and continue south to our next Boondock campsite on Lockhart Road, near the Needle's entrance on the southern end of Canyonlands National Park, which is one of my all time favorite campsites. This drive takes us about 5 hours and we stop twice along the way to dump the trailer tanks and acquire new fresh water as well as gas

up the track. Make sure to subscribe and change the notification bell to all, to make sure that you're notified when that next video publishes. Thanks for watching and we'll see you in the next video.