We just arrived home from our annual Grass cart racing camping trip in Wamic Oregon and let me tell you we had FUN…. There were 12 of us and we for the first time hooked up the new camper. Let me say out loud that we know nothing about a RV, I watched Youtube, yep and you can learn alot from other people so use your resources but there are things they don’t tell you and I am going to let you all know.
Our RV is a 2017 with a power slide and awning, this includes legs (stabilizer bars and a tongue jack also electric) this is fantastic as you are not manually cranking to get your RV setup at the site but that frickin hitch and hooking up to the truck is a pain in my ass. Hooking up is the easy part, there is this little latch on the hitch that is up when not connected and down when fully engaged with the hitch. It sucks bad, you have to be at exactly the right frickin angle for it to click and release and most camp sights are not level so it is the MOST frustrating part of the entire process. We hooked up in 2.5 seconds but getting that hitch to release when you park is dumb.. you have to figure out if you are uneven (which you will be if you are in a forest camp site) how many plastic blocks you need under the wheels to get level. We needed 3 and my husband deserves Kudo’s as he had to miss a big ass tree and get on top of the blocks without running me over. Maybe that was his plan ha as I have great life insurance…. obviously I survived
So here is what I learned this week:
1. get some walkie talkies- they allow you to talk to the driver (husband) outside the vehicle, they were great. We bought ours at Bimart for $30 bucks
2. make sure you have some leveling blocks- we bought the 10 pack Campco but I will be investigating other options on Amazon, mostly because those little yellow blocks move when you back up.
3. A 2000 watt inverter compressor is not big enough power to operate your trailer. The microwave absolutely needs 4000 watts and if you do not have enough external power your breaker will pop and NO outlets will work. This cannot be reset until you get to a place where you can plug in to a 30 amp outlet to correct.
4. Grey and black water tanks- grey is shower and dish water, empty it as often as you like (anywhere). The black tank my husband the germaphobe is not going near. We do not poop in our camper, (unless we were in the middle of frickin nowhere why put yourself thru the trauma) but regardless we need to empty and there is a special hose for this task. I have no issue doing this, put on your rubber gloves and hook up a rinse hose. I put a cup of fabric softener in the black tank before we leave camping and some easy chemicals like borac acid laundry soap and baking soda, easy, cheap and works fantastic.
5. Snoring in the wood cannot be controlled so don’t try.
Happy camping more to follow
SsGreenBean 