Originally Posted by
Jon Wehrenberg
AJ,
First about "cheaters". Unless the electric box in the campground is ancient it likely has a GFCI 20 amp and a 30 amp RV receptacle. If you use a 20/30 cheater the GFCI will trip. It is not worth the effort to go find a cheater plug. At one time that may have worked, but codes today require the GFCI. (That's the kind of recepticle with the two buttons, and it will trip if there is a ground fault, not to be confused with an overload which will trip the circuit breaker)
If you are in transit and just using the campground for overnight 30 amps will be more than adequate. Unless temperatures are too hot or too cold and you have to run an AC or have a heavy electric draw to run heaters you should be fine. Limit your current draw to about 24 amps and there will be no problem.
If your batteries do run down a little overnight because you would rather have heat or AC rather than charging the batteries, they will get recharged as soon as you start the engine and start driving.
We often dry camp overnight only running the generator for a few hours while we use the ACs and the batteries are still good enough to watch some TV or make coffee.