Our limited electric is causing a lot of problems

In our last blog post, we wrote about our challenges navigating around Baltimore without our dedicated RV GPS. You may have caught something unrelated to the topic of that blog post: our destination that day was a Harvest Host.

Harvest Hosts is a membership program that allows RVers to camp on business properties for the cost of patronage. Though some of the locations have hookups, most don't, as was the case at The Farmer's Market, our Harvest Host destination in NJ. So you're probably wondering, if we're traveling without the use of our inverter, why stay somewhere without electric hookups?

I did a lot of "trip planning gymnastics" during the couple of days after our blackout, trying to handle booking changes, re-routing, and new reservations while still trying to be present for our friend Roberto, whose wedding we were attending that weekend. With my limited time and energy, some things had to give. The Harvest Host was our first destination after our electric failure, and I didn't feel right about cancelling the reservation so soon beforehand. Harvest Hosts has a policy against cancelling a stay less than 24 hours ahead of time. Technically, I could have cancelled it the day before, allowing 2 days' notice, but I didn't. It was the day of the wedding, and I spent the little time I had making more important changes to our travel plans.

There was another reason, too. I had actually booked this same Harvest Host for late December 2024, aka our first stop after launching out for Season 4. They aren't open in the winter months but allow Harvest Host stays with their approval, if we agree to donate. Instead of staying at our usual first stops, the KOA in Clarksboro, NJ or Lums Pond State Park in DE, I thought this would be a quiet stop before moving onto the DC area for New Year's. Only, I ended up needing to cancel the stay. Our cat Lily passed away on December 10, after I had already made this reservation. We delayed our entire launch. I wrote the hosts and let them know we wouldn't be able to make it, as we had a "death in the family" (yes, pets count too!) and they wrote back and were so nice and understanding.

I don't know if they would have noticed that the same account cancelled twice, or if Harvest Hosts would comb our reservations and flag this location for us. So I kept it. We could deal with limited electric for one night. We used to do it before our solar installation! Plus this location allowed generators, so when we needed to cook or run our AC, we had that option.

The forecast was a little disconcerting. The town was about to be under an extreme heat watch, but it wasn't actually taking effect until after we'd be gone. Even still, temperatures reached the 90s that day and would still be 90°F at the time of our arrival. At least things would cool off a bit after sunset, dropping to the 70s, which is very comfortable for sleeping. Our plan was to run the generator right after arriving, so we could cool off the rig and make some food. Then we'd shut it off so I could have quiet during a meeting I had at 7pm. After that, hopefully we could get away with our Max Air fans and open windows.

We arrived at the exact same time as our only neighbs, who also chose to run their generator right away. That made us feel better. We hate drowning out people's quiet camping time with generator noise. Thankfully, ours is built into our trailer and is fairly quiet. We parked along the back fence, where we had awesome views of the field where the chickens roamed, along with the guard dogs, a couple horses, and a donkey. Across the field, behind another fence, were more chickens, a goat, a sheep, and some ducks.

We went inside the market and bought some groceries to hold us over until our bigger shopping trip in NH. The hosts have a lot of their own foods, including pasture-raised chicken. We hadn't had a lot of fresh produce since hitting the road, so we made sure to pick up some fruits and veggies, too.

We also bought some feed for the animals, but I needed to have dinner and jump on my meeting, so we planned to visit with the animals in the morning. So far so good with the cooling of the rig. Our AC units have always worked well, and since we have 2 for a 28ft trailer, they cool things off pretty efficiently. I was able to get through my meeting without sweating too much. There was a lot of cloud cover, which helped tremendously.

But soon we realized, the sun wasn't our biggest issue. As the temperatures fell, the humidity skyrocketed. The futurecast said humidity would reach above 80% in the middle of the night and stay there until sunrise.

Of course! The humidity! Did we forget everything from our Harvest Hosts/Boondockers Welcome Challenge, where we proclaimed humidity as the Least Valuable Player of the whole challenge?!

Things got sticky very quickly. The bedsheets felt damp. We continued sweating despite the cooler temperatures. We had to keep reminding ourselves that it wasn't dangerous. It was just uncomfortable. I put a cooling blanket in the freezer and offered it to Tanner, just in case. We also have USB-powered fans that supply a surprisingly strong breeze for their size.

I struggled to sleep that night. Not because of the discomfort. I went into sheer panic mode. Everything came rushing back: the feeling of being stuck in the RV, the ever-growing pile of problems, constant stress and anxiety. I woke Anthony up, bawling my eyes out and repeating "I just want to go home" over and over again. I felt like our new cottage was completely inaccessible, as were our home-bases in New England, neither of which we could stay at because of our limited electric.

I had a point. In Season 1, when we boondocked with limited electric, we were still in the throws of adventure, learning new things and feeling intrepid. This is completely different. We weren't on a grand adventure, basking in the novelty of our new lifestyle. We were using the RV for a new purpose: to travel between our home-bases and continue our transition out of full-timing. A muggy night wasn't new and exciting; it was miserable and all-too-familiar.

Around 1am, my whole system crashed. No amount of humidity could keep me from falling asleep. We hadn't made any decisions that night whether we would continue onward. No one should make big decisions like that until the emotions settle.

And they did. I woke up the next morning somehow feeling better. Maybe my mood really was tracking with the humidity, because that had gotten better, too. In fact, we had a nice breeze coming in through our windows, and we opened our front door to let more air in. I didn't want to make any final decisions until we fed the animals.

This Harvest Host was a factor in our decision to keep heading north after the wedding. It was booked, we had cancelled once before, and we didn't want to cancel again. And our next destination? Another place we had booked once and cancelled. And we didn't want to cancel it again.

We weren't worried about any penalties, of course. We just really wanted to camp here! We had heard great things from several other RVers, and this might come as a surprise, but we had never stayed in our RV in Rhode Island! It's so close to our MA home-base that we've always skipped over it. Plus it's teeny tiny and really quick to drive through. When we do stay overnight nearby, we tend to choose places in CT instead.

Back in 2024, our stay was going to be purely for fun and a check mark. We'd get to enjoy the water, lighthouse, and nature. We could check off a state. But life took an unexpected turn that fall – a really good one. We set a date to close on our land in early November, and so we stayed in NH instead.

Besides wanting to finally camp at Fishermen's, we also thought that maybe getting back to New England would be a morale boost. We can't stay at our home-bases, but we'd be staying near them. We'd get to see friends and family. Plus we'd get to finally start tackling our to-do list that's been hanging over our heads since our launch:

1. Check on our land and put up new trail cameras (because our old ones stopped working, in case you're wondering why I haven't posted any wildlife sightings on our socials lately)
2. Finalize the purchase of the remaining acreage of land that we were offered last year
3. Clear out our NH storage unit – finally grab our camping gear that we left and get some stuff for the SC cottage (like Anthony's desk!)
4. Get more stuff for the cottage from my parents' house (like my desk!)
5. Replace our EZ Pass (which stopped working a few days after we launched, and travels have been extra annoying ever since)

And so, we marched on.

Dare I say, it was the smoothest drive we've ever had around NYC, despite not even having our Garmin GPS! We didn't hit much traffic, and we actually found parking at every pit stop. We got milkshakes from Shake Shack at our stop along the Garden State Parkway, and after the night I had, that milkshake was the cure.

We also tried really hard to take a "No inverter, no problem" approach.

But even the smoothest drives around NYC are still incredibly long. After over 7 hours of driving, we finally pulled into Fishermen's Memorial State Park. The woman working the gate told us to drive forward, park along the fence near the dump station, and go into the office to check in and secure our permits for our stay. Anthony headed in. A few minutes later, he came out empty-handed, but what wasn't empty was the expression on his face.

"Our section of campground isn't allowing the use of electric."

Excusez moi?

Anthony explained that there's a sign posted at the office desk, confirmed by the staff, that our section of campground "can't handle" the electric systems of newer rigs, and they're asking campers to use the pedestal to operate lights only. No big appliances, no electric water heaters, no air conditioners.

I followed Anthony back inside and approached the desk.

I must have stared at the workers blankly for 10 seconds before mustering the only word I was capable of: "WHAT?!"

It was clear that this issue was out of their hands. Also clear was that they couldn't care less about our plight. No other sites were available, and they had no authority to do anything except check us in if we still wanted to stay. That didn't stop us from making a ruckus about how there's NO ALERT on the website and we got NO EMAIL regarding this. And how we've been driving for almost 8 hours and have NO INVERTER so we NEED ELECTRIC HOOKUPS. We demanded a refund, to which they said we'd need to contact Reserve America for that.

There was no way I was spending another night without electric. We're sure some campers must just ignore the posting and run all their stuff anyway, but we couldn't risk another blackout if their grid became overrun. I went into RV Trip Wizard and found the nearest RV park. We needed to call them quickly because it was almost 6pm and lots of offices close then. Thankfully, someone picked up. Even better, they had availability for the 2 nights to take the place of Fishermen's, so we just drove 20 minutes up the road and stayed there instead. I snapped a photo on the way out. No water. No lighthouse. No nature. Just a dump station and a port-a-potty.

We moved up to Worden Pond Family Campground, rated a 7.5/10 on RV Life, which is slightly lower than our acceptable range, but we didn't care. They saved our butts, gave us 50amp electric, and our campsite was just fine. There are lots of seasonal campers that stay here, which is pretty typical of New England RV parks, and everyone we met was very nice. We can't review much more of this place since we only used it to hang our hats, but the staff were great, the amenities looked fine, and the campground was relatively clean, except for some trash in our site when we arrived. Obviously, they didn't know we were coming, so we don't know if they would have checked our site otherwise.

The 50amp electric was a huge win. At Fishermen's, if we had been able to use the pedestal, it would have only been 30amp. We were going to deal with it because that's how much we wanted to stay there.

We never figured out how recently the park decided to limit electric in those sites. Clearly, the infrastructure has been like that for a while, so why the posting now? And why not just cut power to that section and make it non-electric? Is it a money thing? Because even if we could have operated off our inverter, we certainly don't think it's fair to spend $45/night for that. The park has a lot of things they need to figure out, and until they do that, we won't be going.

And as for the refund, we called Reserve America's customer service line and explained the situation. They also couldn't do anything and gave us an email address of the RI Department of Environmental Management, because evidently that's how high up we needed to go to reach someone with authority. It worked. They emailed us back and said they granted our refund. We were relieved we didn't need to put up a fight.

When we decided to continue on our trip without our electric system, we knew we'd run into some problems. Discomfort at a Harvest Host? Absolutely. But this situation was so ridiculous, it was almost comical. We're happy for the blog content, but we were ready to get somewhere where we could just park without drama. We hoped that destination was coming soon.