{"id":162,"date":"2006-03-14T20:51:19","date_gmt":"2006-03-15T00:51:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/?p=162"},"modified":"2006-03-14T20:51:19","modified_gmt":"2006-03-15T00:51:19","slug":"being-cheap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/?p=162","title":{"rendered":"Being Cheap?"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’ve arrived at Mystic Springs Airstream park, about 30 miles north of Pensacola FL. Finally! The long driving spree is over for a while. We’ll hang here amongst the moss-draped pine trees through Sunday or so. We need the break.<\/p>\n

\"Mystic<\/p>\n

Our camping budget has been greatly helped by all the courtesy parking we’ve been doing lately. Our stay at NTAC was free (because we were the guest of one of the lot owners), as were our four nights in Weathersford. Then we hit Wal-Marts along the way up to Indiana, spent a few days at Airstream of Indiana, and stopped at a Cracker Barrel on the way down to Florida.<\/p>\n

The upshot is that in the past 15 nights we have only had to pay for parking twice (at Kickapoo State Park in IL and Mammoth Cave NP). So for two weeks our total camping expenditure has been $32. <\/p>\n

Now it’s sort of a quest: how long can we go without paying? Eleanor says I’ve gotten cheap, but I prefer to consider it Yankee frugality, or perhaps just an expansion of the way we travel. Anyway, we just put hundreds of dollars into batteries so we can get along longer without power connections — let’s make use of them! Didn’t we buy an Airstream for “real travel independence” as they say in the brochures? But she still says I’m cheap.<\/p>\n

We need to make a few more tweaks to be comfortable living “off the grid”. I’d like to be able to power our laptops and cell phones off the trailer’s 12v system without using an inverter, so I am considering a IGo everywhere universal power adapter<\/a>. This thing has little power tips to fit all sorts of equipment, so one IGo will power both the laptops and the phones (assuming I buy the right tips to go with it). <\/p>\n

On Saturday night I went out to Radio Shack and bought their universal 12v adapter for $5.99. This allows us to run the factory-installed Sharp flat panel TV on the 12v system, bypassing the inverter that came with it. (Formerly it went from 12v to 110v AC power, then plugged into the wall.) So that’s one less appliance that needs AC power. Now we can watch DVD movies even while boondocking.<\/p>\n

Once we have the 12v adapter for the laptops and phones, everything in the trailer except the laser printer and vacuum cleaner will run off the house batteries. I can recharge the cordless drill, camera batteries, and other misc battery-powered devices using a basic Radio Shack cigarette-lighter inverter, if I really need to.<\/p>\n

So, I’ve dumped the Honda eu1000 generator that we were hauling around. With an SUV, toting a generator means gas fumes in the car, less storage space, and more weight. We’re going to see how it goes with just batteries and — eventually — a pair of solar panels. <\/p>\n

Mystic Springs is a nice spot, but it’s in the boonies. Sprint doesn’t cover the area, and there’s no Internet access to be had anywhere nearby, so I have to drive 30 miles into Pensacola to snarf wifi from Panera Bread or one of the hotels. I already got booted from the Luxury Suites motel by a grumpy matron earlier this evening, so I think from now I’ll stick with Panera. At least there you can get a nice cuppa and muffin while you work. While I’m doing that, Eleanor and Emma are going to run errands and find something fun to barbecue — the park is planning a barbecue night on Thursday. I’m voting for salmon… would a cheapskate do that?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’ve arrived at Mystic Springs Airstream park, about 30 miles north of Pensacola FL. Finally! The long driving spree is over for a while. We’ll hang here amongst the moss-draped pine trees through Sunday or so. We need the break. Our camping budget has been greatly helped by all the courtesy parking we’ve been doing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}