As full-time RVers, we often get asked, “What do you want to do while you’re here?” by friends and family. Because of our RV lifestyle, many think we’re always on vacation. As intriguing and attractive as that sounds, the reality is that I work full time. That means that, although Bob isn’t employed, work responsibilities have to come first.
Back in the day, when we owned sticks and bricks and a travel trailer, we made a point to get away every summer for a family vacation, often with our trailer in tow. We enjoyed cooking and eating meals outdoors, sitting around campfires, roasting marshmallows, playing games, and exploring nature. Since we sold our sticks and bricks and moved into our fifth wheel, vacation looks a bit different. We get away to somewhere new every week or two as part of everyday RV living. We sightsee and get out in nature regularly. No longer do we plan weeklong adventures in our rig. Every day is an adventure. I used to feel guilty for sitting in our rig watching TV while other campers gathered around fires to enjoy the great outdoors, but I’m over it. Our RV life may look the same on the surface as that of weekend warriors or RV vacationers, but it’s actually quite different. Clearing Up Vacation Misconceptions An RV vacation can be a wonderful experience: a nice camping setup, maybe with family or friends, outdoor activities, and plenty of recreation. It can include stories around the campfire every night, stargazing, and sleeping in. Because we live full time in our rig, we don’t often have campfires, just as most people in sticks and bricks don’t have campfires most nights. Visiting friends and family across the country may be part of vacation for many people, but for us, it’s typically not. Sleeping in is a weekend luxury not afforded on workdays during the week — at least not for me. Our daily RV life includes sightseeing and adventures to capture the essence of the area in which we find ourselves. We try to fit in as much as we can, but we have to do that strategically around my work schedule. What Vacation Looks Like for Full-Time RVers At this point, you may be wondering “What do full-time RVers do for vacation?” More often than not, vacation for us means escaping our rig and not sleeping in our own bed. It involves taking time off work for me but may include light volunteer work for Bob. It means more eating out and less cooking in, flying not driving, fewer responsibilities and more relaxation, and investing more time and money into sightseeing and adventures than we normally would. Although our vacations often leave Tagalong behind, they may include Gulliver, like on our anniversary trip to Mexico or our visit to the Arctic Ocean. Driving the Alaska Highway was a vacation for us in that I took time off work, but it included Tagalong and sleeping in our bed every night. Our favorite kind of vacation is cruising. It gets us completely away from our rig and out on the open seas to explore areas we can’t take our rig. I relish the disconnection from my normal busy life and appreciate home more when we return. Although as full-time RVers we don’t use our rig for vacations, we continue to enjoy our RV lifestyle and the many perks that come with it. You might also like Where We Park Our Rig for Flight/Cruise Travel.
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Despite the logistics involved in full-time RV living, the lifestyle offers numerous perks. We have the best of two worlds: months of living on the road and months in a single location. After four years of this lifestyle, we have a pretty good grasp of the perks of full-time RV living — at least for us. Others might disagree or see other things as perks, but here are our top four:
1. Freedom Because we sold our sticks-and-bricks home and live only in our 42-foot fifth wheel RV we named Tagalong, we have a lot of freedom. If we don't like our surroundings or views in one area, we can pack up and move to another without too much trouble. If we like where we find ourselves, as we did in Homer, Alaska, we can cancel our plans and choose to stay longer. The world is our oyster. 2. Seeing Family and Friends One of the greatest joys of our RV lifestyle is the ability to see family and friends across the country much more often than we'd see them otherwise. Because of our involvement with the Commemorative Air Force, our history with the Continental Singers and Orchestra, our cruise experiences, and our hailing from different geographic areas (Massachusetts for Bob and Arizona for me), we know people from the West Coast to the East Coast, and even into Canada. This can make for some great moochdocking opportunities for us, depending on our loved ones’ living situations. (Thank you, friends and family!) We truly value the times we get to spend with loved ones near and far and are thankful for the many opportunities our full-time RV lifestyle affords us to do so. 3. Amazing Scenery From magnificent rock formations to welcoming waters and everything in between, full-time RV living puts us up close and personal to beautiful scenery. For example, we camped on the top of a bluff in Wyoming, overlooking the town of Rock Springs below. We backed up our rig to Port Valdez, a fjord of Prince William Sound in Valdez, Alaska, parked with fantastic views of Lake Michigan in the Upper Peninsula of the state, camped amid red maple leaves in Idaho in the fall, stayed on spacious farms in Florida and Michigan, and saw the northern lights on our return trip from Alaska. We also glimpsed lots of beautiful sunrises and sunsets across the country. 4. Always a New Adventure And that brings us to our fourth perk of full-time RV living: It's never boring. There's always a new adventure awaiting, whether that entails investigative troubleshooting to find the cause of a leak or tracking dinosaurs in the desert of Moab, Utah. We have very few, if any, dull moments. Full-time RV living is not for everyone, but it is for us. We plan to keep enjoying it and all that it has to offer until we get sick of it or we’re physically unable to continue, whichever comes first. You might also like Is RV Life as Glamorous as It Looks? Some full-time RVers are drawn to the lifestyle by the freedom to fly by the seat of their pants, deciding when and where to move based on how they feel upon waking any morning. Others, like us, take a more disciplined approach. It’s more conducive to success with our 42-foot fifth wheel that stands 13 feet, 3 inches tall.
For our plan of attack, we rely on a number of phone apps to aid us in navigation and exploration. Apps for RVing abound, many of which we haven’t tried in our four years on the road. But a few have become standbys. Let’s take a look. 1. Campendium If we’re not moochdocking on the property of friends or family, Campendium tends to be our first app of choice for checking camping possibilities in a given area. For an annual fee, it shows us campgrounds, boondocking options, dump stations, overnight parking stops, and even Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land to help us make informed decisions. We’re able to search based on location, price, hookups, cell signal strength, amenities, and more. What we really like about this app is the reviews of people who’ve stayed at the places we’re considering. Freecampsites.net is another source we consult sometimes when researching places to stay. 2. Harvest Hosts If we don’t like what we find on Campendium for the area we plan to visit, we check our options on Harvest Hosts. We’re part of Boondockers Welcome, which was acquired by Harvest Hosts. The app incorporates both memberships. Harvest Hosts allows RVers to stay at museums, farms, wineries, breweries, and more for a single night. Boondockers Welcome lets guests stay on people’s personal property for up to five nights, depending on the host. Some hosts even offer electric, water, and/or sewer hookups for a small fee. Each host and experience is unique. We enjoy meeting our hosts, learning about their area, and spending time with them. 3. Open Roads As we travel the country, we make a lot of fuel stops — but fewer than we did before upgrading our fuel tank. Open Roads is our go-to app to save money at the pump. It allows us to get trucker discounts at Petro, TA, Love’s, and a few other truck stops across the country — and fill up at the diesel pumps the truckers use, which is super helpful since our rig is only 3 inches shorter in height than most semis. We’re also able to fill our diesel exhaust fluid (DEF) at the pump this way, instead of having to pour the smelly stuff into our truck’s DEF reservoir from a box. We use a handful of individual fuel station apps as needed in concert with Open Roads: TA, Love’s, Pilot, and Maverik. Although Open Roads tells us the prices for diesel fuel with our discount, it doesn’t tell us if a given stop has a dump station or other amenities we might be interested in, such as restaurants. The individual apps help with that. 4. CoPilot Because of the size of our rig, navigating can be challenging. We pay an annual fee for the CoPilot trucker app, which allows us to enter the dimensions of our rig and then routes us accordingly, steering us clear of low overpasses and bridges that can’t handle our weight. Other apps, such as Roadtrippers, allow RVers to enter their rig’s dimensions as well. We haven’t used those apps much as we’ve been very happy with CoPilot. However, after entering our height, length, and desired stops into Roadtrippers to plot a possible course for travel, I received a warning that certain legs of the journey wouldn’t work for us. But the app didn’t reroute us to routes that would. 5. Google Maps Although we trust CoPilot and its directions, we don’t solely rely on it for navigation. We also check Google Maps — especially satellite view — to ensure we can get into and out of fuel stops, parking lots, and potential camping spots. In addition, we take advantage of Google Earth and its distance-measuring feature to give us a realistic picture of what we might find at a given destination. 6. Ultimate RV Checklist To ensure we don’t forget any steps when packing up the trailer for travel and connecting it to and disconnecting it from the truck, we use a checklist app. We had used Tasks for a couple of years, but when it suddenly lost our checklists, we decided to trade it for an app with a backup option. Ultimate RV Checklist fit that bill. It comes with preloaded checklists you can use as is, or you can create your own to fit your needs. We did the latter. At one point, that app also stopped working. When that happened, we found that the backups couldn’t be easily reloaded into the app. So we moved them into Google Keep. I plan to put them back into a checklist app, where I can easily check them off and then uncheck them to reset the app for the next use. 7. OneControl Our Jayco Pinnacle came with OneControl by Lippert onboard, which we can use to turn lights on and off, open and close slideouts and awnings, and level the trailer. The control unit is right inside the trailer door. There’s also a OneControl phone app that offers the added convenience of being able to use it from outside the trailer. It comes in handy to assist with retracting the rear and mid stabilizers when we’re getting ready to connect the truck to the trailer, as well as opening and closing awnings while outside enjoying nice weather, and things like that. Other apps we use on occasion include CAT Scale and Allstays. You might also like 4 Reasons We Avoid RV Resorts. I gingerly stepped over boxes for the umpteenth time to turn on the lights adorning our little Christmas tree, the clutter starting to get to me.
With our family gift exchange right around the corner, stacks of packages had made their way into our fifth wheel, taking up precious room in our 400 square feet of living area. Empty boxes the gifts had arrived in took up valuable floor and loft space while providing possible solutions to potential wrapping quandaries. The additional accumulation provided fewer options for normal everyday items such as mail, groceries we didn’t have time to put away, and wallets and phones to hang out. This only added to our cluttered situation and robbed my peace. Isn’t Christmas supposed to be a time of peace? And joy? Had I really let things steal my joy and the true meaning of Christmas? Surge Gives Way to Simplicity My thoughts wandered to the crowded city of Bethlehem in Judea. Our fifth wheel had filled with accumulated packages in anticipation of Christmas gift giving, much like the City of David had filled with people who needed to register for the census. That’s what compelled Mary and Joseph to travel 70 miles there from Galilee toward the end of her pregnancy. The hustle and bustle of that crowded city prevented the couple from finding a normal, hospitable place for her to give birth. No vacancy forced Mary and Joseph to seek shelter in a most unusual location: a dirty, smelly stable of live animals. Yet, those extraordinary circumstances led to the simple, humble birth of a king, who was wrapped in cloth and placed in a manger, or a feeding trough. God smiled down on his son in the form of a bright star that led shepherds to the stable to see this mysterious child, having been told about him by an angel. A Matter of Focus Back in the present with renewed joy, I made a point to focus on the true meaning of Christmas, despite the clutter in front of me. I knew that temporary state of chaos served a purpose to bring joy to others. It wasn’t meant to steal mine. Before I knew it, our living quarters would be back to our acceptable and preferred norm, with minimized distractions and greater simplicity, making it easier to focus on the things that truly matter. That’s what the stable birth provided for Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds. I’m grateful for this reminder about the importance of simplicity. I’m especially thankful for the humble, unceremonious birth we celebrate at Christmas time. Jesus came to Earth as a baby to make himself relatable to humankind. May this mystery cause you to reflect on your life as you come to grips with the simple message of Immanuel, God with us. You might also like Wrapped with a Bow. Living in an RV full time looks spectacular on YouTube, where RVers showcase magnificent travels, amazing destinations, and exciting adventures. But is RV life really all that glamorous? After four years on the road, we can tell you it definitely is not. Sure, parts of the lifestyle live up to that reputation, but many others leave much to be desired. Here are some of the negative aspects of full-time RV living: Travel-Day Squabbles Typically, we enjoy a week or two in a single location, exploring what the area has to offer and keeping busy while there. When we get into the truck on travel days, we have dedicated time with each other, interrupted only by fuel and rest stops or rare sightings along the way. It seems these occasions often become times to discuss issues between us, since neither of us can walk away. This can make for unpleasant travel that may carry into arriving and setting up at our destination. Sometimes, we forget we’re on the same team and in a partnership. That’s why you can find T-shirts and mugs that say, “I’m sorry for what I said while backing up the trailer.” Long Driving Days Reaching a destination by a certain date — for a wedding or a cruise, for example — may require multiple days of driving. This can be exhausting. One day, we drove 11 hours trying to get somewhere due to a family member’s medical emergency. Similarly, we spent eight days driving the Alaska Highway each way. Even though we traveled only three to four hours on most of those days, we kept all but our dining room slideout closed at any overnight stop. That kept us from taking up too much space at, say, a rest area while still allowing passage to our kitchen and refrigerator. Not being able to “be home” day after day wore on us. To help break up the trip, we spent two nights at the Liard River Hot Springs Campground in British Columbia both ways. This enabled us to open all four of our slideouts and truly feel at home. On the way back to the Lower 48, we also stopped at a museum in the Yukon to make the journey more enjoyable. Breakage Towing all of our belongings across the country equates to an earthquake in our “house” every time we relocate. Some roads are definitely better than others. The constant vibration can knock things loose. Big bumps or potholes can bounce hanging clothes off their closet rack. Pipes leak, sealants let go, and screws come loose. It seems that almost every time we move, we find something else that needs our attention. It may be a tire, a window, the truck bed cover, or any number of other things. That’s why we make a point to give the vehicle a thorough walkaround before travel and when we stop at a rest area or fuel station. We’ve learned to roll with the punches and take these issues in stride. They’re just part of RV life, but they’re not necessarily fun.
Logistics Unless you have a small rig such as a camper van or a truck camper, logistics tend to be a big part of full-time RV living. We have to do a lot of research before venturing anywhere to make sure our big rig can fit. This can take a lot of time. Checking our desired destinations is more crucial in the East, where clearance can be more challenging, than it is in the West. We had absolutely no clearance issues in Alaska. There, 15 feet, 10 inches is considered low clearance, compared to anything below 13 feet, 6 inches in the rest of the country. Uncertainty Because we move so often, it’s hard to keep track of where we are and where we’ve been. We both experienced that same situation when we toured with the Continental Singers and Orchestra, which is how we met. For three months, we had a concert in a different city every night. Fast-forward 36 years, and we’re having deja vu moments. Many mornings, we wake up unsure of our location. What state are we in? Where were we yesterday? Where were we when that happened? Despite these challenges, we enjoy RV life and the freedom it gives us. We also relish visiting family and friends across the country much more often than we’d see them otherwise. Life is good. RV life is great. You might also like More Answers to Your RV Lifestyle Questions. Kapow. Kapow. The sound of gunshots jolted me from my work. With Bob still snoozing, I knew the TV wasn’t on. Darting from window to window, I peered out in search of the source of the noise but saw nothing conclusive. When you live in an RV and are parked in unfamiliar territory, gunfire can be quite sobering. We were camped completely on our own close to a lake about a third of a mile from the main highway near Tok, Alaska. Noise travels fast in the vastness of Alaska. Just because I had heard what sounded like nearby gunshots didn’t mean the shooter was close by. Research confirmed bull moose hunting season open in the Tok area. I hope the hunter got his or her moose. We didn’t hear any more gunshots after that. The incident was only one of many unusual happenings we encountered during our fourth year of RV travel. Here are some others: Wacky Waterfill Station We like to take advantage of boondocking and moochdocking opportunities whenever possible. Oftentimes, doing so means being strategic about filling our 75-gallon freshwater tank. We’re able to make the water last for a while, but there always comes a time when we need to refill our supply. Many dump stations offer potable water that can be used for this purpose. After leaving our campsite in Valdez, Alaska, we headed into town to empty our black and gray wastewater tanks. We opted not to get freshwater there because we had to climb through a mountain pass on our way back to the main highway and didn’t want to tow the extra weight. Beyond the pass en route to my cousin’s remote cabin and boondocking thereafter, we needed to fill our freshwater tank. We learned about a place near Glennallen where the locals got drinking water after a flood contaminated their regular source. It turned out to be quite an unusual fillup. The first “spigot” we came to was an open pipe with no hose fitting nor the capacity to attach a hose. Using that “faucet” required turning a wheel nine times to get the water to come out. Since we couldn’t figure out a way to connect a hose between that fixture and our trailer, we walked to the other side of the booth building to check for another option. Sure enough, we found a normal-size hose — but again with no capacity to attach another hose to it. Getting water into our rig requires a screw-tight connection. Bob remembered he had picked up a Water Bandit hose fitting (paid link) for just such an occasion. After locating it, he fitted the adapter to the hose. We deposited four quarters for 3 minutes of filling, and Bob moved the valve to make the water flow while attempting to hold the hoses together. Cold water spurted everywhere, dousing the bottom of my jeans. Good thing I was wearing boots. Bob backed off the water pressure, adjusted his grip, and succeeded at keeping the hoses connected. Three minutes of water filled our tank about 10%. We had started with about that much, so that brought us to 20%. We inserted another four quarters for 3 additional minutes with the same results. Clearly, we would need to do this about seven more times. The water running through the hoses left Bob’s hands frigid, to the point that he didn’t think he’d be able to endure the process for much longer. I grabbed a mechanic’s glove from our trailer basement and a leather work glove from the truck. (Neither had a match.) Donning those, Bob changed his position on the hoses to use different muscles. My job was to deposit quarters and keep mosquitos off of Bob. We continued the painstaking cycle until our tank was completely full — about 30 minutes and $10 later. By then, we had gained a greater appreciation for traditional water fills with a regular hose bibb, something we had previously taken for granted. Plentiful Pasta Making Not all unusual experiences are, or have to be, challenging. While visiting family in Oregon, we had a rare opportunity to make pasta from scratch, something we couldn’t pass up, as neither of us had ever done it before. With all five of our kids in town for a family reunion, we needed a lot of pasta, so Bob’s brother Rick put us to work. We felt like we were on a TV cooking channel, breaking eggs into a well of flour on a countertop and mixing it with a fork. After getting the dough to the desired consistency, we shifted to putting it through a pasta maker to press it thin enough to cut into spaghetti noodles. This involved many rounds of feeding the dough through the machine and adding flour in between, a backbreaking process. We made more than enough spaghetti for everyone to eat their fill and combined it with marinara sauce Bob had made earlier following Alton Brown’s recipe. Since then, we picked up an all-in-one pasta maker that mixes ingredients into dough and pushes out pasta as spaghetti or penne noodles. Making pasta is no longer novel, or backbreaking.
In addition to those incidents, we had plenty of other unusual encounters in our fourth year on the road, including getting snowed on, visiting an ice house, seeing the midnight sun, dealing with rodents, camping in fall foliage, and tracking dinosaurs. They’re all part of our amazing, adventurous RV life. You might also like Our Most Unusual Experiences in Year 3 on the Road. * As Amazon Associates, we earn from qualifying purchases. From the vantage point of a couch in front of a TV, full-time RV living can look pretty alluring: driving open roads, camping next to rivers and lakes, going where you want when you want, living a life of luxury. Much goes on behind the scenes to make all that happen, though. Because we relocate our fifth wheel every week or two, we always have plans in motion and on our minds. We don’t like to book RV stops far in advance so that we have freedom to change our route or destination on a whim. But we do like to have an idea of the direction we’re heading. For that reason, we’re continually working on future stays — not an easy feat for two middle children who aren’t great at making decisions. This involves a number of factors. Researching Destination Areas Adequate preparation requires a lot of research. We use our Campendium app to find big-rig-friendly boondocking options, campgrounds, and fees. If we don’t find something we like in a certain location, we increase the search radius to an hour or so outside of that destination area. We also check our Harvest Hosts app to identify if any big-rig-friendly hosts are in that vicinity. We pay an annual fee to be part of Boondockers Welcome, which was acquired by Harvest Hosts. This offers us free stays of up to five nights, depending on the host’s preference. Some hosts offer electric hookups, for a fee. This can come in handy when the weather’s warm and we want to run our air conditioners. Additionally, we use Google Maps to look at the satellite view of any place we’re considering for a better picture of the feasibility of getting our rig into and out of it. And Google Earth allows us to measure distance to determine if our rig will truly fit. Planning Routes Once we’ve identified a place we’d like to stay, we have to figure out the best way to get there. Google Maps may seem like the natural go-to, but it doesn’t take into account the height or length of our rig. Although the app’s suggested routes tend to be OK for us in the West, we can’t rely on them in the East, where low clearance and weight restrictions can be issues. We use our CoPilot navigation app to steer us in the right direction. Originally a trucker app, CoPilot allows us to enter the dimensions of our rig and then navigates us accordingly, avoiding U-turns and roads with weight and height restrictions. Identifying Fuel Stops Finding our weekly destinations and routes is only part of the necessary research of RV life. We also have to locate places along the way where we can get fuel. Since upgrading the capacity of our fuel tank, we can go farther before needing to stop, which gives us more options to find the best diesel price using our Open Roads app. Open Roads is a fleet fuel program that gets us discounts at TA, Petro, and Love’s truck stops across the country. After checking Gulliver’s fuel level to determine how far we can go before we need more diesel, we look at Google Maps to identify cities with truck stops. Equipped with that information, we go back to our Open Roads app and enter the city name to populate fuel stations there, along with their prices. The app shows us the cost of fuel with our discount applied, not the publicly displayed price. Finding Dump Stations If we’re doing any sort of boondocking or moochdocking, we also need to identify RV dump stations nearby where we can empty our waste water tanks. Campendium can help with that, as can a website called rvdumpsites.net. Finding dump stations is only half the battle. More importantly, we have to determine if our rig can get into and out of the facility. We’ve encountered plenty that weren’t compatible with the size of our 42-foot-long rig — even in established campgrounds.
To figure out if we’ll be able to get Tagalong in and out of a dump station, we once again consult the Google Maps satellite view and street view, if available, for accessibility and clearance issues. Checking the Weather Another big part of RV logistics is keeping tabs on the weather, as we don’t like to drive in rain or other inclement conditions. Working our way north for our Alaska adventure, for example, we had to wait for the weather to warm up before we could move on. This left us in the desert outside of Las Vegas for two weeks, and we still got snowed on in Twin Falls, Idaho. As you can imagine, all of this research takes considerable time. It’s a not-so-pleasant aspect of full-time RV living, which is not for the faint of heart. Yet, it’s a necessary part. Thankfully, Bob is an excellent researcher and does most of this planning for us. You might also like Confessions of a Full-Time RVer. Whether you live full time in an RV or in sticks and bricks, issues have a way of popping up when you least expect them. We’ve certainly had our share in both circumstances. Things have gone incredibly wrong for some RVers, forcing them to hang up their travel hats and settle down. We’ve been very fortunate in our RV life. Although we’ve had plenty of challenges, we haven’t encountered anything we couldn’t get through — even though some things took many months to resolve. Some of the simpler incidents in our fourth year of RV living included separating trailer skirting and losing a hubcap off the truck. An Amazon order remedied the hubcap issue, and some screws and bolts fixed the skirting problem. We also had a loose window in the trailer that would occasionally open on its own as a result of travel over bumpy roads. Closing it required powering open the dining room slideout part way. The last time that happened, while driving through Canada, I went to close the window and discovered a loose screw in the control mechanism. Since tightening the screw, we haven’t had any issues with the window. Who knew it was such a simple fix all these years! Here are some more significant excerpts of things gone wrong in RV life from the past year: Mysterious Drip Right before setting out on the Alaska Highway, we noticed a puddle under our kitchen slideout — the last thing we wanted to see before hitting a notoriously rough road, especially after all the water problems we had already dealt with. Upon examination, Bob quickly found the culprit: a plastic, instead of brass, tee joint connecting the pipe to our ice maker. Yes, you read that right. Our rig came equipped with an ice maker. We used it early on but quickly realized its ineffectiveness for boondocking, with no water connections. So, we stopped using it and resorted to a couple of silicone ice trays, which also save precious freezer space. Bob bandaged the pipes and made a point to keep an eye on them until he could replace the tee with something more effective, which he did when we were in North Pole, Alaska. Crunched Levelers For our first overnight stop on the Alaska Highway, we pulled into a downward-sloped rest area. We had learned from other leveling challenges that for best operation, our refrigerator couldn’t be at a pitch more than 3 degrees. Knowing that and not wanting to sleep so that we rolled off the bed, we attempted to raise the rear of the truck to make the front of Tagalong more level. This involved driving up on some stacked plastic leveling blocks, which we use for the trailer all the time. With the dually wheels on each side of the truck and the weight of the trailer on top of them, the plastic crunched and broke into pieces as soon as Bob drove onto it. So much for that idea. We ended up disconnecting the trailer from the truck for that stop so that we could get the trailer even from front to back and enjoy our evening there. Trailer Lockout Upon arrival at an overnight stop, I attempted to go inside the trailer to open the dining room slideout. But I couldn’t get in. Although the main door opened, the screen door attached to it wouldn’t budge. That meant we couldn’t lower our stairs, which fold up inside the door, to get into the rig. Bob grabbed his cordless drill and removed hinges from the screen door to allow us in. That worked temporarily but didn’t correct the underlying issue. After much scrutiny, we realized that one of the brackets on the stairs was bent, catching on the screen. Bob successfully straightened out the bracket and filed it down, fixing the problem. Missing Smoke Detector After arriving at a location and setting up camp for the week, I looked up and noticed two screws hanging from the ceiling above our kitchen island. As I stared at them, I racked my brain trying to identify what used to cover the screws. Then it dawned on me. I asked Bob if he had moved the smoke detector. He said no. A search high and low for the device didn't uncover it. I suddenly remembered I had been having difficulty opening the dining room slideout. I pulled it in a few inches and, sure enough, the smoke detector sat atop it. Bumpy road conditions must have rattled it loose from its ceiling perch. No Hot Water Our rig has two ways to heat water: with propane and with electricity. Upon arrival at Fool Hollow Lake Campground in Show Low, Arizona, Bob noticed the lack of hot water coming out of the tap, despite the electric water heater being on. He tried to heat the water with propane, but that didn’t work. We had encountered a similar issue another time, so after some troubleshooting, he pinpointed the problem: a faulty thermal cutoff. It’s a safety device that prevents melting if the water gets too hot. He happened to have a spare, and replacing it produced warm water out of our faucet. Forgotten Purse It’s not uncommon to accidentally leave possessions at places and have to return to fetch them. When that act of fetching involves driving a tall, heavy fifth wheel through traffic in Portland, Oregon, it’s downright nerve-racking. That’s where we found ourselves after I realized I had left my purse at McDonald’s north of Portland, about a half hour away. With white knuckles, Bob graciously drove back through the city — and then through it a third time after retrieving the purse to get to our destination. I try to double-check that I have my purse with me now before we hit the road from anywhere. You might also like: Ah, boondocking — wide-open spaces, beautiful views, quiet serenity, and economical cost. Since our rig is prepped with solar panels, generators, and large freshwater and wastewater tanks, we like to take advantage of dry camping when we can. An ultimate destination of Alaska in 2023 kept us in the West, providing abundant off-grid camping opportunities. Because of that, we did a lot more boondocking in our fourth year of RV travel than we did in the first three years combined. As a result, we feel much more experienced at it than we did when we got busted for camping where it wasn’t allowed. We’ve learned a lot since then about the importance of conserving all the water and electricity we can. That means reheating coffee and leftovers on the stove rather than in the microwave, among other things. Here are our favorite boondocking hacks that make living off the grid easy and enjoyable: 1. Plastic Grocery Bags One of the best practices of our boondocking success is using plastic grocery bags instead of tall kitchen trash bags to collect our waste. We learned this trick early on from full-time RVers Tom and Molly and continue to use it to this day. Because we don’t have a grocery-bag-size trash bin in our kitchen, we still line our normal-size waste can with a tall kitchen trash bag and hang the smaller grocery bag inside the larger bag, attaching it to two corners. This prevents messes from contents that don’t quite make it into the smaller bag. Plus, we can store about three full grocery bags in the tall kitchen bag. Then when we make a trip into town, we take the bags with us and deposit them in multiple bins for easy disposal. 2. Fat Trapper Another thing that helps with our trash situation is a gadget called the Fat Trapper (paid link). It’s a sealable plastic container that comes with heavy-duty bags for collecting grease and fat from cooking. We don’t want to put used oil and grease down our pipes because of odors and possible clogging — not to mention the water that would be required to wash it down. Nor do we want to put that in our trash bag as it could make a mess and sit there for a while, reeking, until we venture into town. 3. French-Press Coffee To avoid having to run our generators to make coffee every morning, we invested in a 50-ounce stainless steel French press (paid link). French presses work better with coarse-ground coffee than they do with what you can typically buy already bagged. For that reason, we purchased coffee beans and a manual coffee grinder (paid link) when we first moved into our fifth wheel. After a week or so, we traded elbow grease for a power drill to grind the coffee. That worked great. But then we got even smarter. We decided to buy whole beans and use an in-store grinder at the supermarket, allowing us to select the coarseness of the grind. Finding grocery stores that offered that feature during the pandemic became quite challenging, so we learned to stock up on bags of self-ground coffee before hitting the road for our annual trek. 4. Once-a-Day Dishwashing Because our freshwater supply and gray water tank capacity are limited when living off the grid, we let our dishes pile up in the sink and wash them only once a day. On rare occasions, we use paper dishes and plasticware, but those create more trash that we have to store until making a trip into town. If we’re camped at a place where campfires are allowed and firewood is abundant, we can burn our paper dishes. In reality, however, we don’t have campfires all that often. Another thing that can help with dishes is spraying dirty ones with a water/vinegar mixture from a spray bottle before leaving them in the sink. This can make the eventual cleaning process easier. Along those same lines, we often wipe food remnants from our plates and bowls using a napkin or paper towel before leaving them in the sink. 5. Prewashed and Sliced Produce In addition to washing dishes only once a day to cut down on water use, we try to buy pre-washed and pre-sliced produce when stocking up for a boondocking adventure. This can save quite a bit of water that we would have used to wash mushrooms, for example. That may not sound like a big savings, but cleaning produce uses more water than you might think. Tasks we took for granted in our sticks-and-bricks home aren’t always optional when boondocking. 6. Cast-Iron Skillet One of our best buys that we use on a daily basis is a 10-inch cast-iron skillet (paid link). After seasoning it well, it cooks great food evenly, helps us maintain healthy iron levels, and is easy to clean — saving water. Most uses require only wiping the pan with a paper towel and adding a little more oil to it. 7. Window Shades for Temp Control Our RV came equipped with two shades on each window: a privacy screen and a black-out shade. The latter came in quite handy in Alaska’s land of the midnight sun. We use both shades to keep the interior of our rig temperate. Closing the screens on cold nights helps prevent warmth from escaping. And closing them on warm days helps keep the inside temperature tolerable.
You might also like 12 Best RV-Related Purchases. * As Amazon Associates, we earn from qualifying purchases. Each year of full-time RV living leaves us feeling more comfortable and experienced in our lifestyle. Despite that, we continue to encounter challenges and even scares along the way. Our fourth year of RV travel was no different. Here’s a countdown of our scariest experiences in our fourth year on the road: 6. Police Visit While camped in the parking lot of the Museum of Mountain Flying in Missoula, Montana, with permission, a loud rap at our door made us stand at attention. Glancing out the window, we saw a white truck marked POLICE and an armed, uniformed officer standing at the base of our stairs. Bob went out to greet the man. They chatted for a bit as Bob explained our connection to the museum, which we had visited a couple of years earlier while on tour with the Commemorative Air Force. Satisfied with the discussion, the officer wished us well, climbed into his truck, and drove away. 5. Honked at While Camping We had just gotten set up at a beautiful dispersed campground in McCammon, Idaho, with a panoramic view of red maple leaves. We saw no other soul at our three-site campground, 50 feet or so from the main camping area. Before long, a vehicle came to a stop next to our rig and emitted the annoying beep of a horn. I looked out the window and saw a car with a driver accompanied by a dog in the passenger seat. We had no clue who the person was and no inclination to exit our trailer to find out. We figured if they really wanted to talk to us, they could knock on our door. Meanwhile, Bob looked up info about the campground and learned it had 10 RV sites and five tent sites. Were we in a tent site? The car had no signs of being an official vehicle and eventually moved on. A short time later, a truck marked RANGER drove through and didn’t bother stopping, leaving us relieved. We later discovered after a walk through the campground that we were definitely in one of the RV sites, as we found the five clearly identifiable tent sites. Maybe the driver thought we were someone else. 4. Parking Lot Knock On our way to Dawson Creek, British Columbia, to reach the start of the Alaska Highway, we overnighted in a Calgary, Alberta, mall. We had found the option online. Staying at the mall only required signing in at guest services inside the complex, where we received a dated paper to put on our truck dash. After a delicious meal at one of the mall’s many restaurants, we returned to our trailer and settled in for the night. At about 9:30 p.m., we heard three pounds of a fist on the side of our trailer. I thought someone had knocked on our front door, but that was not the case. Some kids walking by decided to try to scare us. It worked on me. 3. 4 a.m. Truck Alarm On our return trip to the Lower 48 after a wonderful summer in Alaska, we stopped at a rest area in the middle of nowhere about an hour north of Watson Lake, Yukon, in Canada. We had stayed at the same place on the way to Alaska and liked it there. After an unsuccessful attempt to spot the northern lights for the second time, we dozed off to sleep. At 4 a.m., the beeping of a car alarm woke us from our slumber. It turned out to be Gulliver’s alarm, something that had never happened before. We quieted the disturbing noise and went outside to investigate, finding no signs of foul play or anyone around, for that matter. The next morning, when we got into Gulliver for the next leg of our journey, the culprit became evident: The monitor for our rear trailer camera had fallen from the windshield in the cold of the night. 2. Tsunami Warning We arrived in Homer, Alaska, on a foggy, rainy afternoon. When I looked at my phone to check the weather, I saw a tsunami warning. Talk about a wake-up call. I quickly took a screenshot. But later when I looked, the warning had disappeared. We had been through four tornado warnings since becoming full-time RVers, so we knew to take these things seriously. No longer finding the tsunami warning readily available, I did some quick research and discovered it had been issued after a 7.2-magnitude earthquake off the Alaska peninsula. The tsunami warning had been canceled five minutes after issuance, so we were in no danger. 1. Stuck in Museum Parking Lot Our scariest encounter in our fourth year of RV travel happened the day after the Calgary mall incident. We had made arrangements to park overnight at the Alberta Aviation Museum in Edmonton, Alberta, which houses a B-25 WWII bomber similar to the one we work on with the Commemorative Air Force. We pulled down the road leading to the museum, finding it lined with cars on both sides. The museum lot offered nowhere to park our big rig, so I pulled into the fire lane, facing a fence, while Bob went inside to talk to the staff. As it turned out, an organization had leased part of the building to host a reptile show that weekend, drawing quite a crowd. The museum supervisor came out to assess the situation and, finding illegally parked cars, essentially told us there was no safe way for us to work our way out of the parking lot. Yet, the executive director, who had approved our stay, wanted us to leave and come back later.
I suggested maybe Bob could back into a parking lane so that we could pull forward to get out, despite people moving about in every direction. A friendly gentleman helped direct foot and vehicle traffic while Bob’s years of trailer-backing experience led to a masterful job of getting us out of a sticky situation. People inconvenienced by the maneuver proved understanding and supportive, which we appreciated. We returned later to a virtually empty parking lot and spent an uneventful night there. You might also like Scariest RV Moments of 2021. |
AuthorThis is the travel blog of full-time RVers Bob and Lana Gates and our truck, Gulliver, and fifth wheel, Tagalong. Categories
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