This was our first major trip with the Casita. We had originally scheduled this trip for summer of 2020 (prior to purchasing the Casita), but had to cancel due to COVID. We could have visited Grand Teton which had just reopened for day trips, but our Yellowstone lodging within the national park was still closed, and so the trip wasn't feasible, even if we had been comfortable with traveling that summer. On the original trip, we would have done a mix of hotels, cabins and tent camping. For 2022, we restructured the trip so we stayed in the Casita every night of the trip.
On the drive west (to Grand Teton) and back east (toward home) we always traveled during the day and stayed a single night at each location — often not even unhitching the trailer. However, we gave ourselves lots of time in the national parks, and stayed 4 nights in Grand Teton and 6 nights in Yellowstone. This allowed us to do a lot of exploring and also a lot of hiking, without feeling rushed.
In scheduling this trip for mid-May, we knew we were risking bad weather, but we took that chance in exchange for minimizing crowds. (The last few years, Yellowstone has been very crowded in the summer.) This plan was basically successful. Neither park was empty, but we didn't run into any real crowded situations — such as lines waiting to park at roadside pull-offs — until the last day we were in Yellowstone.
However, the weather was a wild card. We experienced about a 55-degree temperature swing while in Grand Teton and Yellowstone. For about half of our time there, we had lows in the mid-20s and highs only around 50 degrees, with rain or snow at least once a day. Later in the trip, it did get warmer, with lows in the 30s and highs up near 70. The low temperatures at night made things challenging with the Casita, since we were hovering right on the edge of what was safe for the water and waste systems. On the plus side, we had reasonably nice spring weather at least half of every day, so the main impact was that we had to do a lot of contingency planning to be ready for whatever got thrown at us.
The truck and trailer both performed well. We put 3511 total miles on the truck, 2673 of those with the trailer attached. This means that drove around 850 miles while the trailer was parked in Grand Teton or Yellowstone. That gives you a sense for how big these places are. Even in strong crosswinds, the trailer tows very easily.
Mileage ranged from 11.7 MPG in South Dakota (uphill all day and into a headwind) to 15.5 MPG for part of the drive back in Montana, with 12-13 MPG being more typical. The truck got an amazing 24-25 MPG while in Yellowstone, probably due to the slow speeds — 45 MPH max in the park. The only time fuel economy was a problem was in South Dakota, where we could get barely 200 miles on a tank, and gas stations were sometimes 40 miles apart. Gas prices ranged from $3.50/gallon when we left Minnesota (which felt high at the time) to around $4.00/gallon in South Dakota, to over $5.00/gallon in the parks.
We had full hookups (electric, water, and sewer) for all nights traveling west and east, electric at Gros Ventre in Grand Teton, and no hookups at Madison Campground in Yellowstone. At Gros Ventre we were able to use the electric heat bar on the rooftop air conditioner during the evening. Overnight, we relied on the propane furnace, since it has a thermostat and hence runs less often and is quieter. At Madison Campground, we were on battery power, so only the propane furnace was available. Because the furnace blower sucks a lot of battery power, we kept the overnight temperature quite low (45-50 degrees) and were generally comfortable except when we got up to use the bathroom.
We ran our Champion 2 kW inverter generator on two evenings at Madison Campground, for a total of around 3 hours. We used propane from the port-side tank for fuel. This was the most awkward part of the trip, because we did not have a good grasp on how much power we were using or how long we would need to run the generator to replenish that power. We probably should have run it either more often or slightly longer, because we were very near 50% battery capacity (the limit to avoid damaging the battery) by the time we left Madison. We also learned that the generator does not have the power (at altitude, anyway) to run the electric hot water heater. It will run the microwave without any problems, though.
Between the fridge, furnace, the generator, and cooking, we used about 13.5 lb of propane, less than half of what we carried.