A Dad, Two Kids and a Camper: How a Rivian R1T Handled 1,500 Miles Without a Single Unhitch

Nine nights, four campgrounds, a seven-week-old baby and a toddler who hadn’t turned three yet. That’s the short version of one Rivian owner’s 1,500-mile towing trip through California, and his takeaway was blunt: the charger never once made the family wait.

The owner, who goes by sizotty on Reddit, laid out the trip in a September 2024 post. The rig was a 2022 R1T Quad with the Large pack, hitched to a rented 23-foot camper — seven feet wide, and completely untested for energy consumption before the family pulled out of Perris. From there the route ran through Morro Bay, Lotus, South Lake Tahoe and Lone Pine before the trailer went back.

The Baby Set the Schedule

Anyone with small children knows the rhythm of a road trip changes entirely. Bottle feeds and diaper changes dictate where you stop and for how long, and this father built his charging plan around exactly that. Friends traveling alongside had a three-month-old and a dog, which added another layer of stops to juggle.

Heat reshuffled day one. A planned stop in Solvang got scrapped in favor of a Supercharger where the family could grab groceries, feed the baby and handle a change in one go. Later came a detour into Jackson, California — purely for a photo in the town that shares his son’s name — with ice cream at Mel’s Diner next to the chargers. The owner there told him the stop ran far longer than the truck actually needed.

Near Lee Vining, pizza came out while the R1T was plugged in. “Truck was more than finished before we were done eating,” he wrote.

At Kettleman City he figured six minutes would do it. Getting two kids out of car seats and back in again took considerably longer, so the battery ended up with more juice than planned — which quietly reshaped the charging stops that followed.

Staying Hitched, and the Luck That Helped

Never unhitching the trailer saved him from unhooking and re-hooking at every stop, freeing him to deal with the children instead. But it depended on finding room to maneuver, and sometimes on timing. At Jackson, the space he needed was blocked by a Model Y until its occupants wandered back roughly two minutes later. At another site his combination took up a second stall, though he was the only driver around.

He singled out one Rivian Adventure Network location for its two well-placed trailer stalls. An empty lot on an ordinary day offers flexibility a busy holiday weekend would strip away.

The final Supercharger stop needed a workaround too. The first charger misbehaved, he repositioned, and eventually started a session at a different bank. Even then, the truck was ready before the family came back with food.

The Campsite Did Half the Work

Charging didn’t end when driving did. Longer campground stays let the R1T recover energy, and in Lone Pine the truck topped up overnight after an evening spent exploring Alabama Hills at sunset and grabbing dinner.

Two lessons sit inside that detail. Confirm before booking that a campsite actually permits EV charging, and ask what electrical service the site offers — an RV hookup on the reservation page answers neither question on its own. And with an unfamiliar rental trailer, the first towing leg is the real test of your math. This owner planned conservatively, then beat his own estimates.

The trip is a useful counterweight to the usual complaints about towing with an electric truck. It helps that the stops were chosen around a baby’s feeding schedule rather than around the truck’s charging curve — the family had reasons to linger, and the truck simply used them well.