Hey again! It's Glamping with ChickFix!
She's baaaaaaack!
Previously on ChickFix
I have learned a lot about the different types of campers,
and the benefits and drawbacks of each, and I'm going to share that with you today.
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Travel Trailer
5th Wheels
Motorhomes
Just because your minivan has a hitch on it
doesn't mean you can tow anything you want.
Don't want to sleep on the ground anymore.
There's still a lot more to consider when you're purchasing an RV...
I'm here on the Gulf Coast of Florida
THIS is the most beautiful beach in the world. Just sayin'
Today we're going to talk about all those little nitpicky things that you need to think about.
A couple more just assorted random tips for you
This is all just based on my personal experience, and it comes from a place of love!
Our first RV was a 30-foot travel trailer, and it only had one air conditioner.
And we do a lot of camping in the summer in the deep south,
Where it can be a hundred degrees everyday for a long period of time.
If you've only ever tent camped, then having air conditioning AT ALL sounds wonderful.
But to try to keep something of that size air conditioned with one little air conditioner
was really difficult.
And in hindsight we really wished we had
had a second air conditioning system installed like our
neighbors did at our recent beach trip.
This bad boy here has three air conditioners,
and we are cool all the time.
On the opposite end of the spectrum,
if you're gonna be camping somewhere where you're in sub-freezing
temperatures frequently, you're gonna need to think about heat but also
keeping your pipes protected so that they don't burst on you.
Condensation on your windows can also be a factor there.
Even if you intend on only camping places that have power hookups,
you really need to consider having a backup power system.
We've had situations where the power went out
at the campground we were at, and if we didn't have a
generator or solar-powered batteries, we would have no air conditioning, no power, nothing.
So if your RV doesn't come with a generator or with solar panels you
definitely want to look into getting something you can use in case shore power is not available.
If you're thinking about a travel trailer or a fifth wheel, I cannot
emphasize enough the importance of towing capacity and torque when it comes
to the vehicle that you're going to tow it with.
Cars, in general, are not designed to tow that much weight.
If you don't already have a vehicle that's capable of towing
the weight that you want to tow, you're gonna have to buy one.
Sorry!
Also, no matter what you get, make sure you take it to say an empty parking lot
somewhere, or somewhere where you can practice.
Practice taking tight turns, practice backing up into small spaces.
You are gonna feel a lot more comfortable
if you have some practice when you do finally get out on the road.
All right, I thought of one more: slides.
Something to think about.
Slides seem wonderful, because they slide out and they give you
lots of extra space inside your camper which is fantastic!
A couple of drawbacks though:
With a slide, the more slides you have...
The more slides you have, that's more motors and more things that could potentially go wrong.
My husband is over there acting out me
whacking my head on these things, which I do constantly, because our bays are
underneath the slide. So when I want to get to something underneath there,
you have to kinda climb in underneath there
(you know, the older you get, the harder that becomes)
and I am constantly whacking my head on these slides!
So, something else to keep in mind.
There's a lot of discussion out there about whether diesel or gas-powered
vehicle is better based on either a Motorhome or a towing vehicle for a
travel trailer or a fifth wheel.
But something to consider is that a rig like
the one that just went past me is extremely difficult to get into a regular gas station.
Whereas with a diesel-powered vehicle, you can pull through the truck stops
where the semis pull through, that are designed for bigger vehicles.
So that's just another factor that we didn't really consider
when we bought our first travel trailer, but now that we've got this big motorhome,
really makes a huge difference to us.
One thing I've learned through these travels
is that the bathrooms in truck stops are typically a lot cleaner
and nicer than the ones in regular gas stations and they do actually sell
regular gas as well as diesel.
So...PRO-TIP!
All right, I thought of one more. It's early morning I'm out here cooking
breakfast by myself, and I can't get our awning to come out.
There's something to be said for leaving things a little bit more manual.
It's very easy to get seduced by "you just press a button, and it happens!"
But often times, you don't have a good manual option. In order to figure out what's wrong with this thing
and why it's not opening, we're gonna have to actually get up on the roof.
And if we want to manually unroll it, it's gonna be a huge issue.
So always make sure that you've got some sort of an easy manual option.
No joke, I'm seriously terrified every time we have to put that slide out or pull it back in again.
That it's either gonna get stuck or it's just gonna fall off completely.
There's not an RV repair shop on every corner, and a lot of the ones that are out there...
kind of suck.
Not all of them, but a lot of them.
And honestly, when you think about it in terms of marrying a house with a car,
There's just so many things that can go wrong
that it's hard to find one shop that can actually repair it all.
Sometimes you can find mobile RV repair people that will come
out to your campsite if you're in a more touristy or populated area.
But part of camping is getting away from it all, and a lot of these campgrounds
are nowhere near anything like that.
You'll save yourself a lot of time and money and heartache
if you can fix things yourself. And if you're not handy,
or you're not willing to TRY to be handy, then RV life might not be for you.
If you're already an RV camper and you've got something to add that I didn't mention here,
please comment it below! And make sure you watch out for part three.
Well technically I guess that was six. THREE!
It's raining on my right now. I don't know if you can tell, but it's actually raining.
I don't know how it's raining, but it is. It feels amazing.
Hi again!
Nobody waves! Why do they not wave?