We’ve always kept a clock in the kids bedroom. When Rachel was little, we bought a digital clock and covered the minutes with a piece of black construction paper and some tape. We taught her what a ‘7’ looked like on the clock, and it became a rule that she couldn’t get out of bed till 7. We have maintained this rule, and we love it.

Moving into the Airstream presented a little bit of a challenge. We bought a similar small alarm clock, but it was AC powered. When we spent time boondocking, we rarely have the generator running, as nearly everything in the Airstream runs directly off DC power. For the first 8 months of travel, the kids had no clock, and everybody missed it.

I’m happy to declare that we found the PERFECT clock. It is battery powered and backlit, and always works, no matter where we are. The clock has a low-power backlight and uses sensors to turn off the backlight during the day. We don’t know exactly how long the batteries (2 AA) will last, but it has been a few weeks already with no trouble. We carry plenty of rechargeable batteries and a charger, so swapping the batteries is easy.

The kids no longer wander in at early hours to bug us. They usually just find a book and read till we all get up. Everybody is happy again!