A park circuit is not limited by how far you can drive. It is limited by how far you can go between the towns that sell you water, fuel and food.

Story two was about camping on the public land next door to the parks — free, unreserved, and with no services whatsoever. This one is about the other half of that sentence. No services means the trip runs on what you carry, and what you carry runs out in a town.

Plan the towns, then the parks

Most people plan a loop the other way round. They pick the parks, string them together, and discover the logistics somewhere around day four in a gas station parking lot.

Flip it. On any circuit — Utah's Mighty 5, the Sierra circuit up the eastern escarpment, the Arizona-Utah canyon loop — mark the gateway towns first. Springdale, Torrey, Moab, Blanding. Lone Pine, Bishop, Lee Vining. Page, Kanab, Escalante. Those are your supply points, and the distance between them is the actual shape of your trip.

Then ask one question: what is the longest gap on this loop, and can I clear it comfortably? Not barely. Comfortably, with the margin to sit still for three days in the middle of it because the light is good.

Water is the constraint. It is always water.

People plan around fuel because fuel has a gauge and a price on a sign. In practice, water runs out first and is much harder to find.

Where it actually comes from on a circuit:

  • RV dump stations. Nearly all of them have a separate potable fill. Many are free, some charge a few dollars, and a lot of them sit right in the gateway towns you are passing through anyway.
  • Park campgrounds. Even when the campground is full, the spigot near the dump station is usually accessible.
  • Municipal parks and visitor centers. Small-town parks very often have a potable tap. Ranger stations sometimes will.
  • Commercial fills. Some gateway-town campgrounds sell a fill to non-guests, which is worth the money on a long loop.

The rule that matters: fill on the way in, not on the way out. Top up in the last town before a long empty stretch even when the tank is three-quarters full, because a three-quarter tank in Escalante is worth more than a full one back in Torrey.

Run the numbers rather than guessing at them. Two people living carefully use about five gallons a day, everything included. On a 91-gallon tank that is roughly nine days with a reserve intact — long enough that the water stops deciding the itinerary. Our planning tools will do the arithmetic against your own tank, and there is a tow calculator there worth running before you plan any of it.

Fuel math with a trailer behind you

Towing costs 30 to 40 percent of your range. More into a headwind, more at altitude, more on washboard, and every one of those is normal on this kind of loop.

So do not plan against your solo range. Plan fuel stops at about 60 percent of it, and treat what is past that as reserve rather than distance you get to spend. Gateway-town fuel is also frequently the most expensive on the route and occasionally closed on a Sunday evening, which is exactly when you will arrive.

If your rig runs a diesel heater, its tank is a separate line item and an easy one to forget. It draws little, but running out at 9,000 feet in October is a memorable way to learn the lesson.

The ice run is the hidden schedule

Here is the thing that quietly shortens more trips than fuel ever has: a cooler needs ice every second or third day. That is not a supply run, it is a leash. It pulls you back to a store on a schedule that has nothing to do with where you wanted to be.

A DC compressor fridge ends it. Not because it keeps food colder, but because it removes an entire category of errand from the trip. Combined with a battery bank large enough to carry it — 400Ah of lithium, fed by roof solar — food stops being a countdown and becomes something you simply have on board.

Which leaves provisioning as the easy part. Buy the perishables in the biggest town on the loop, where the selection is better and the prices are not gateway-town prices, and treat the small stores near the park entrances as top-ups rather than as your grocery plan.

The pattern

Every story in this series lands in the same place. Distance from a services pad is capability. In story one it bought backcountry campsites, in story two it bought the boundary, and here it buys the length of the circuit itself.

The rigs we build carry 91 gallons of water and 400Ah of lithium for exactly this reason. Not as specifications to win an argument on a forum — as the difference between resupplying on your schedule and resupplying on the campground's.

Next in the Parks Edition: rules past the pavement — what is actually allowed where, and how to read a land manager's map before you are standing on it.