Here's a fact that still makes us laugh: our first-ever camping trip in the Brinkley Model Z 3515 was fifteen straight days of boondocking. No hookups, no shore power, no practice run. Just us, a brand-new solar and battery system, and a campground in Central Florida with exactly zero amenities. This episode is day one of that challenge, and it did not go the way we pictured.
Watch the full video on YouTube to see day one from pickup to campfire.
Picking up a very different RV
The trip started at Mobile Solar Consulting, where our rig had spent the past while getting its solar and battery install. Walking through the finished system for the first time was a little like getting the keys to a new RV: panels on the roof, a serious battery bank, an inverter that can run the whole rig, and a monitoring screen we'd spend the next two weeks staring at. The whole point of this build is running everything on sunshine, air conditioning included, and this challenge was the shakedown.
The drive to Dupuis
From pickup we headed for Dupuis Campground in the Dupuis Management Area, a wide-open natural area in Central Florida where sites are primitive and neighbors are far away. The tow went smoothly, which we no longer take for granted after our first travel day. We double-checked the safety chains before rolling out, one of those small habits we adopted after learning things the hard way early on.
Setup is a different sport off-grid
At a normal campground, arrival means backing in, plugging in, and connecting a hose. Boondocking arrival is a longer checklist and every item matters more. Where does the sun cross the sky, and will the panels see it? Are we level enough for the fridge? How much water did we actually arrive with? Our first setup took much longer than we planned, included a water run we hadn't budgeted time for, and taught us that "parking and relaxing" is not how day one of off-grid camping works.
Day two: level problems and a solar report card
The next morning we discovered the rig wasn't as level as we thought, which the fridge and our sleep both noticed, so we re-did part of the setup. Then came the first real solar check-in, and honestly, the system delivered. The batteries had carried us through the night, the panels went right back to charging at sunrise, and everything in the rig ran like we were plugged into a pedestal. Watching the battery percentage climb from sunlight alone never stopped feeling like a magic trick all trip.
Cooking with emotion
Fabiola christened the off-grid kitchen with a proper meal in the Instant Pot, which turns out to be a great boondocking tool: one pot, efficient power draw, no propane needed when the sun is doing the work. We ended the day on a Florida trail, sweaty and a little stunned that this is our actual life now. Fourteen more days off-grid to go, and after day one we were equal parts confident in the rig and humbled by how much we still had to learn.
The meal was a beef stew, browned onions and all, and the whole cook is written up with her seasoning base and timings as Fabiola's Instant Pot beef stew. The solar numbers during the cook are in there too.
Watch the pickup, the setup stumbles, and the first solar report on YouTube. We also send a short weekly newsletter about where we are and what broke this week. The signup form is on our newsletter page.