We plan around an extended three day weekend, i.e. take Friday off with a 3 day weekend. With a half day of driving on each end, that's 72 hours of camping, and 3 nights of use.
Assuming you can't pump all the water out of the 50 gallon tank, that gives you 16 gallons per day of water over 3 days, or 12 gallons per day over 4 days.
A pound of propane has 21,560 btus, so two 30 lb bottles would give over 323,400 btus/day over 4 days (propane on during driving but the tow vehicle alternator powering the gas solenoids).
I haven't measured it yet, but the refrigerator circuit board, and the LP detector, probably take 250mA each or about 12AH/day.
The refrigerator's gas solenoid should draw about 1A when the flame is on, so if that's 60% of the time, that's another 16AH/day.
Make sure you turn off the
12V door frame heater that keeps condensation down during high humidity conditions. See the frig owners manual for that.
The hot water heater's gas solenoid should also draw about 1A when the flame is on, so running it 2 hours/day that's about 2AH/day.
The water pump draws 6A, so 16 gallons at 1.6 gallons/minute is 10 minutes of pump time, or 1/6th of an hour for 1AH/day.
So you're up to 31AH/day before lights, etc.
Add one 2.3A double-tube flourescent light for 4 hours and you're up to 41AH/day.
Run the 2.1A double-tube flourescent light in the bathroom, the 1.5A shower light, and the 2A bath vent fan for a bit over 1/2 hour and you add another 3AH for 44AH/day.
Run the 1.5A stove vent hood light and its 2A fan for a half hour during cooking, and you're just over 45AH day... with no radio, TV or other "luxuries."
If you put a pair of 225AH T-105s in one of those Blue Sea battery boxes on the tongue, and start with 100% battery charge, you could get 3 days camping at 45AH/day, taking the batteries down to 40% charge, or 4 days camping taking them down to 20% charge. This is in mild weather.
But what if it's warm out and you run the Fantastic Vent on medium (2.1A) for 12 hours (25AH) and low (1.8A) for 12 hours (22AH), you've doubled your daily usage.
And the same with cool weather. That 7.5A (25k btu) furnace running an average 1/3 duty cycle over 18 hours (45AH) also doubles your daily usage, not to mention uses 7 lbs of LP per day on top of the frig and hot water heater usage.
Under these conditions, or if you want more than 45AH/day, you're into charging. Don't plan on getting charge level any higher than 90% with several hours/day of generator, solar, or tow vehicle alternator. And the rule of thumb is that you need 10% more charge than dischage, so you'd have to put in 50AH to replace 45AH and 100AH to replace 90AH.
It isn't the Honda generator that's charging your batteries. It's the converter. If it's only 13.8V constant, it's going to require the generator running longer than if it were a 3 stage with 14.5V bulk charging. If the converter could put out 20A charge, it would take 2.5 hours to do 50AH. But if the converter only puts out 10A, it would take 5 hours. The Inteli-Power or TruCharge converters can give you this higher voltage. And the deeper the discharge, the faster the initial bulk charge.
Keep in mind that the generator running from say 6PM to 10PM is supplying the lights, vent fans, water pump, and several hours of Fantastic Vent or furnace use WHILE it's charging the batteries. Since this doesn't come out of the batteries, charging time is less. And there's plenty of current for "luxuries" like TV, DVD, not to mention charging notebook computer batteries, and even AC-powered ones like microwave oven and using the vacuum cleaner.
IMHO portable panels would be a pain. While tilting them to the appropriate angle for the latitude would let you use a little smaller ones than what you'd have to roof mount flat, especially considering you're up north, you'd really have to secure them well or their tilt could generate a lot of lift in higher winds... not to mention their theft vulnerability.
If you're going to try to get by with one battery, the generator run daily during heavy usage time is the no-brainer answer. If you want to go longer than 3-4 days, you have to address the water and propane issues.
I'd personally opt for the generator, but frankly I would get a two battery setup. I'd also get a Link 10 battery monitor. AFAIK, it's the ONLY one that lets you program in the Peukert effect for discharge.