On Mon, 13 Jun 2011 19:43:05 -0400, BAR wrote:

Don't make the mistake of buying the smallest generator you can find.
Pretty soon you will find out that you want to run a couple of things on
the generator and you can't.

That's good advice but too large is a bad idea also. Ideally for the
type of light usage you describe, you'd like to be able to lift it in
and out of the back of a truck by yourself.

And then there's the inverter alternative that Tim mentioned, powered
by your car/truck battery for relatively short periods of time. The
price of inverters has come way down in the last year or two. I'd
vote for a sine wave model with lots of reserve capacity. Your tools
will be much happier on sine wave power and if you get one big enough,
your wife will be able to run her hair drier from it. Hint. :-)