We wrapped up our first year of retirement and 2018 with 6 months on the road with our trusty 3/4 ton diesel truck, Vigo and our 35′ 5th Wheel Trailer, Liv. We had another 1.5 months on the road without Liv staying with friends or hotels for a total of 7.5 months out and about. We learned a ton about the RV life and I thought I’d share some of the highlights in this rather lengthy blog post.

Feb – Jun 2018: Seeing the West with Vigo and Liv

Jan 2018: Driving trip with Vigo

Jul – Sep 2018: NW Montana, Alberta & BC Canada

Nov 2018: Rental Car Southern Florida

Oct 2018: SE Utah and NE Arizona

• Stats:
  • 20 National Parks and 18 National Monuments, Battlefields, Recreational Areas, etc.
  • 21 States
  • 2 Canadian Providences
  • 40 Campgrounds or RV Parks
  • 9000 miles with Liv and over 30,000 miles with Vigo
  • LOTS of family and friends who we hadn’t seen in years!!
• RVing Experiences with RV Parks and Campgrounds: As much as I’d like to say that we camped this year, we really glamped in the comfort of our full decked out rig, Liv. She is equipped with an RV king sized bed, a full shower, two TVs, an electric fireplace, furnace and air conditioner. We mostly stayed in RV parks with full hook ups, which is basically like having all the creature comforts of home! That being said…we did experience the following:
  • KOA Kampgrounds are our usual default campground and Good Sam Member Campgrounds are our next choice. Both of these types of campground/RV parks have certain standards for their ratings, which usually guarantees a certain level of service. We read through all the reviews from the various sources and weed out people just whining or true problems.
    • Interesting reviews included complaints about peacocks in the Santa Rosa KOA–I thought surely that isn’t really that big of a problem…oh yes it is! They had about 12 peacocks wandering the grounds screeching all day and night and then jumping up on your rig!
    • Another complaint was about the Seattle/Tacoma KOA being dated and tight. I couldn’t find any where else convenient to stay in that area, so we stayed and were wedged in between two other big rigs and actually ripped off part of our awning getting out since the slots weren’t really adequate for the bigger RVs.
    • On the flip side, complaints about how grumpy the folks who run the Crescent Beach RV Park right on the beach outside of Port Angeles, WA were made by people who weren’t staying in the campground–the beach in front of the campground is private and only open to folks staying in the campground…but their complaints made their rating much lower than it should have been.
  • We stayed in a few places where we boondocked or camped without hookups — no water, electric or sewage hookups.
    • We can pretty much last 4-5 days with the water we carry and with the current capacity of our holding tanks. We boondocked at the National Park campgrounds and they had showers, of which I took advantage. I am not sure how long we would last if I actually washed my hair in the RV!
    • Drying my hair is my biggest challenge as my hair dryer requires a 50 amp electrical source, which is NOT available when we aren’t plugged into electricity. The high wattage appliances are also a problem if you aren’t hooked up to electric, such as coffee pots and irons. I don’t use a coffee pot and I made sure any sewing project I was working on had all the ironing done before we were “off the grid”.
    • We have a small solar panel “suitcase” that provides 100 watts to top up our batteries, but we can supplement with a generator. We had a challenge with the solar panels in Jasper National Park due to the heavy smoke and then rain, then again on Vancouver Island with camping in such a thick grove of trees, very little light could penetrate the canopy. So a backup generator was great, but noisy and we were self conscious about being loud neighbors! We are considering roof top solar panels in the next year or two.
  • Walmart Parking Lot: Not sure if we will do this again, but I wanted it to be part of our experiences. My RVParky App tells us which Walmarts allow overnight stays and what the expectations are and where to park in their lot.
  • We reserved our RV Parks ahead of time everywhere we went in 2018. We were nervous about getting physically stuck somewhere or not having accommodations for a rig our size. A lot of the State and National Parks have First Come First Serve and we didn’t think we could handle the stress of driving around a campground trying to see if people were leaving and trying to grab their space. Also the State and National Park campgrounds fill up early and often don’t have room for the big rigs.
• Tricks of the Trade:
  • Our fear of getting stuck with a 35′ trailer in a spot we can’t get out of has been our biggest worry.  I bring up my cell phone GPS up in satellite mode so that we can “see” the parking lots, the campgrounds and any other potentially tight spot we are driving. It’s a lot easier to see entrances and exits to parking lots, how big the space is you are attempting to maneuver and gives you  much more spacial awareness. Though we still had a close call with almost driving out on the beach at Moro Bay, CA with the rig!
  • We use walkie talkies when Tom is backing in the rig so that we aren’t yelling at each other trying to communicate to move back 2 inches or over 3 inches. I am usually standing at the back of the rig, so am close to 50 feet away from Tom in the truck. I think we are pretty classy with our walkie talkies!
  • We make sure we are parked such that all of our slides can come out and we are close enough to our hooks ups to actually hook up before we unhook the truck from the rig. One time we had to accept the fact our water hose wasn’t long enough to hook up no matter how we parked and had to buy another hose.
  • We use 2 GPSs for a travels–it’s a lot easier to scroll out for the big picture on my cell phone than it is on Tom’s truck GPS. That being said, we end up in disagreements on which GPS to listen to on a number of occasions since they use different algorithms. One time both GPSs were convinced we could make it over a short cut pass from northern Idaho to NW Montana. We’d taken the short cut before, but my GPS got us on the wrong road (the ONLY time listening to MY GPS was the wrong answer – LOL). Thankfully, after 12 miles on a growing dubious road we asked a lady if we could get through to MT on the road. She took a long look at the RV and said, “Not in that monster!” Thankfully we had room to turn around. Our lesson from that experience is to look at the overall trip on the computer screen BEFORE we take off to make sure we know where our GPSs are taking us. Another time we had both GPSs agreeing to take a road that I had seen odd squiggles on the  map on my computer screen. I told Tom to take the road, but go slow so that we could catch any warning signs on traveling with larger rigs. Sure enough, we managed to NOT drive the Moki Dugway with the rig.
• Crossing the Canadian Border:
  • We read the official border crossing website many times, listened and watched You Tube videos on crossing the border with a rig and still almost paid $200 for a rogue lime hiding in our fridge! Check your fridge and take out your garbage before you cross to avoid unexpected findings!
  • The rules crossing the border are different whether you are crossing into Canada or crossing into the US.
  • The food items change from year to year as to what you can and cannot bring across–so READ the border crossing website!
  • Canada is metric! Thankfully our truck had a button we could push that totally converted speed to km/hr, fuel usage to liters, the GPS to km and temp to Celsius. That helped with all the mental conversions that we were originally trying.
• APPS that we regularly use:
  • GasBuddy: tells you the prices of gas and diesel in your current location or where you indicate. We find that the price of diesel varies significantly between gas stations and can often save $.30 a gallon by watching prices in GasBuddy.
  • RVParky: Provides much of the roadside info that RVers need, like
    • Low clearance bridges
    • Campgrounds
    • Good Sam Campgrounds
    • KOA Campgrounds
    • Specialized truck stops that have diesel and dumping stations
    • Cracker Barrels–apparently they let you stay in their parking lot overnight!
    • Cabelas
    • Walmart
  • AllStays: We don’t have AllStays since the app is only for iPhones and Apple products, but I would get it if we could as it is the highest rated RV App. Can’t believe they don’t have it for droid!
  • Harvest Host: This is only available if you have a membership with them, but we do and plan to use this app to check out all the wineries, breweries, farms and other semi-rural areas that will let RVs stay for FREE!
  • I have tried out a few of the National Park apps, but haven’t been too excited about them. I usually do my research on the computer when we are camped and use the National Parks websites since I need the screen real estate to view their maps and read through their suggestions. The apps have a hard time putting up all that info on a cell screen.

We have our routine down and Tom has become quite adept at parking Liv in the tightest of spots. We are ready to dust off the rig and our check list and head out for 2019 in a few weeks!