So we've got a night in the RV under our belt now. We wanted to get in a local campground visit prior to any major journey so that if there were issues, they would be short term because we would be headed home soon enough and/or we would be close enough to home that we could bail if necessary. On May 21, our plan was to depart after soccer and swimming lessons and lunch - around 1pm - and travel the hour or so to the campground to arrive around the 2pm check-in time.
I have done quite a bit of research now on how to equip and pack an RV. Maybe at some point I will add a post about the process and what we ended up packing, but let me start by saying that I had a few priorities in the process:
1. Be minimalist. (I would rather have not enough and need to add then too much and have to figure out what to get rid of.)
2. Try to pack so that things aren't going to shift around during the drive. (This involved a small fortune of shelf liner.)
3. Make sure that there are things for the kids to do.
Here are a few lessons that we learned on our maiden voyage:
Lesson 1: Don't be in a hurry. Our plan was to leave at 1pm. We were all loaded up and buckled in at 1:30 - not too far off of schedule. Then the RV wouldn't start. Not good. Being that we were all in the RV already, I told the kids we were just going to pretend we are camping - it was pouring anyway, and we were doing exactly what we would be doing at the campground. So, John worked on figuring out what was going on and getting the battery charged (with me helping the little that I could) and the kids played. (Item #1 added to the packing list for the future - a battery charger.) Two hours later, we pulled out.
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| My view on our way |
Lesson 2: Minimalist works, but not everything is unnecessary. Like a battery charger (see lesson 1). And leveling blocks. Leveling blocks are definitely necessary. In our first spot, we were tilted front to back and side to side. Everly unbuckled and took her first step after we parked and promptly fell into the table. Later, we moved to a spot we thought was more level, but was still tilted side to side. Fortunately, the tilt was such that we rolled into walls instead of out of bed while sleeping. Unfortunately, the tilt was away from the shower drain, which meant I had to try to kick the water into the drain the entire time that I was showering.
Lesson 3: Be willing to play in the rain. And cook in the rain. We spent some time in the RV building puzzles, coloring and playing games, but we did need to get out and we realized that if we didn't go out in the rain, we wouldn't be going out at all. We also realized that our rain/mud boots were one of our most valued items. We played in puddles. We took walks. We came back and built a fire (bringing dry fire wood and dryer lint to start the fire was key) and cooked mountain pies for dinner in the rain. We ate under the awning and then made s'mores.
Lesson 4: Have a positive attitude. The attitude we took for this trip was that it was all experimental. We needed to get everything figured out and we knew that we didn't know everything yet and that things were bound
to go wrong need improved upon. Things did go wrong. Like the battery dying and the sink leaking and the shower water being sub-zero temps 38 seconds into the first shower. But, we laughed and took care of it and got things figured out. It rained the entire time (have I mentioned that?) but we had fun despite the rain. We got the RV to make some memories. Nothing is perfect, but when we look back on it, the memories can be...problems and all.
