All right.
Today is a big day, because today starts our 700 mile trip from Pocahontas State Park in
Virginia all the way up to Fryeburg, Maine.
700 miles, I think five states, three different campgrounds, and we're doing it with this
little dude in tow.
So it's sure to be an adventure.
Today.
We're headed to Lums Pond State Park in Delaware, and I'm particular about using RV Life, but
sometimes Google Maps gives you some better options.
When you are towing something that's big, it's very, very, very important to look at
your path before you embark in your journey there, because the last thing you want is
to be stuck around some tiny roundabout or some small back road.
So always do your planning in advance.
Look at your routes, choose appropriately.
Step one leaving Pocahontas State Campground is for us to dump our tanks.
The downside about only one dump station is that occasionally on days, especially on days
when everybody's leaving at the same time, you've got a little bit of a queue.
So how long this queue takes really depends on how quickly everyone dumps, because we've
all been there.
You have newer campers and you can be there for a while and it's just part of the journey.
So we're going to sit in a queue, we're eventually going to dump, and then we'll continue on
with our journey.
But that means that somebody has to sit still.
The first time you pull up to a dump station like this, and there's a queue, you're going
to feel the pressure, the same way you did when you backed up for the first time.
You feel like everybody's watching you.
I know this from personal experience because I felt that same pressure when I pulled up
to a dump station that had a queue like this.
But no matter what happens, take your time because while we have not made a mistake and
rushed things when we are trying to get through a dump station quickly.
We unfortunately have seen the situation where somebody did rush and sprayed stuff all over
themselves and their camper, not an ideal scenario.
So rule of thumb here is really just take your time.
Stay calm.
Don't worry about everybody else.
We've all been there before and do it the right way.
Patient's going into surgery.
One advantage of being organized is got everything in my bin here, and I'm good to go.
Release the Kraken!
99% of the time, you're only going to find one hose available.
And that is only for your black tank flush.
Don't, don't, don't use this for your fresh water tank.
Don't.
I've seen it done plenty of times.
Don't let that be you.
Occasionally in the rare occasion, there are two hoses.
One will be for the black tank and one will say for fresh water, but it will be appropriately
labeled.
And that is in the right instance that you actually do see two hoses, but for the most
part, you're going to see one hose just like this.
That is not for your fresh tank.
So for all you new campers out there, just keep in mind.
Flush only.
After all that planning, I missed one exit and it derailed everything.
Literally tacked on a solid 30 minutes to potentially even an hour.
I feel like I was driving straight through Manhattan.
Honestly.
There's so much traffic in DC.
Not ideal, narrow lanes, lots of people zigzagging, zero out of five flamingos for that drive.
I'd recommend not missing an exit.
And it's obviously really bumpy right now.
But somebody's a huge fan of that.
So we got off in Annapolis because, well, it was the first time since we've been kind
of out of a big city and it's been way over two hours, little man has cried himself to
the point where he's half asleep and now we've hit a U-turn.
Scratch that.
Not a U-turn, a roundabout, which is basically Daniel's nightmare.
Oh, my god.
I've got to ask this guy to take his lane.
This is not great.
Taking both lanes, tight roads.
I got [inaudible 00:05:40] in this lane.
Okay.
Literally taking both lanes.
There was somebody in there but they let me through.
Okay.
This is, oh, I missed that cone.
That's a win.
Now turn left.
Oh my goodness.
Oh God.
Oh, hate those.
No, hate those.
Well, no damage so far.
Well, we just decided to park in like five parallel parking spots somewhere in downtown
Annapolis, but the baby is fed.
So that's a win.
If we can get back to the interstate now with no more ado we'll only be two hours from home
for the night.
The really good news is we made it back to the highway unscathed.
Just an hour and 37 minutes until we get to our stop for the night.
And of course it looks like it's going to rain.
We're 28 minutes from our campground for this evening, and it has officially started raining
pretty hard.
And the lightning is crazy.
Anytime you see cars pulled off like that, or especially semi trucks, it's important
that you check the weather.
You want to make sure that there's not something that you don't know that they know.
Luckily it looks like we're just going through a severe weather storm.
There aren't any tornado or any kind of crazy weather warnings.
So we are now 24 minutes from home and driving slow.
But this day has been eventful.
We are really ready for it to be over.
I was kind of hoping it would be raining when we got to the campsite because setting up
camp in the rain?
Highly recommend it.
On a positive note, I figured out something genius.
I can remove the head of rest and no longer be staring at it.
It's taken me way too many miles to figure that out.
Look who woke up just in time for us to get to our campsite.
Hi baby Dash.
All right.
Okay.
So normally since we're just here for one night, you could care less if it was level
or not.
This one's off by three and a quarter inches and that's, three to three and a quarter.
By the way, Level Mate Pro, if you don't have it, get it.
But that's a little too much of a tilt for me.
So I'm going to take out my Anderson levelers and get this thing leveled.
Laura and I were just sitting in bed and we heard a huge crash on the roof and we looked
out the window and it looks like something hit our Airstream.
I'm hoping that there's no damage because, well, for lots of reasons, we all know why.
If I go out there and the Airstream is hugely damaged, I'm going to feel sick to my stomach.
So I'm hoping that is not the case because the aluminum shell on these is so much fragile.
And you can't get them fixed right now.
Can't get them fixed right now.
And that would derail our travels quite a bit.
So let's see what's going on.
See what's going on.
All right.
That's...
Don't step on that.
All right.
All right, yeah.
Less than I thought.
Yeah.
Set the door lock so I'm not going to get locked out because the baby's in there while
we figure this out.
Okay.
So that tree looks super healthy.
Usually that's a good sign.
How heavy?
Heavy enough to do some damage.
Initially it doesn't look like there's anything too crazy.
Looks like it definitely hit right there some.
Oh shit.
Definitely hit there, but doesn't look like it did any initial damage.
Rubs there, but washes off.
I mean, it sounded like it hit the top.
Probably just fell down the side.
Yeah.
So the next concern is, did it break anything up there?
Have you ever even gotten up on top of the Airstream before?
A few times, but not in a while.
You see some leaves up there.
I don't know if that's another branch, but...
So it must have hit near the rear.
I don't have the rear AC on right now even.
Maybe turn that on, check and make sure it's working.
That's a doozy.
Let's give you some perspective.
This is what hit us.
Emily scared the vajeezies out of us.
And we were actually on a work meeting and I think we've officially become their craziest
client, but let's do this ladder thing.
Just wrapping a towel around the step that could potentially make contact with the Airstream
just to protect it.
I don't see any damage.
Wondering where exactly it hit.
Nothing indicates the solar panels, but...
Checking the skylight, make sure it didn't crack anything.
Woo.
We might have gotten lucky here.
Well, don't get too excited yet.
We need to check the awning and the AC unit, for sure.
You can definitely tell that it hit that rear AC unit.
I don't necessarily know what part of that branch hit it.
Usually when you're parking your RV, you want to make sure that you're looking at trees
to see if they're dead, because that's when you usually expect to see things fall, but
these look super healthy.
So it's kind of bizarre that such a huge dead branch fell and hit the Airstream.
Because look at these.
They're beautiful and it's on a completely sunny day, which is again, not expectation,
but reality.
Luckily, it wasn't that tree.
That would've probably...
Killed us.
You know how much that must weigh?
Ooh.
We'll give the rear AC unit a test because it definitely hit it.
Maybe not as hard as initially thought.
There's mud, certain spots along the side.
So it clearly hit the side a little bit, but hit the step.
Not a big deal.
That was easy to kind of readjust.
Fingers crossed.
Super thankful the awning wasn't out because that would've no question absolutely destroyed
the awning.
Zero question in my mind, the thing is so heavy that it would've just crushed this thing.
It could be that a majority of it landed and hit the ground, impacted that first and then
fell towards the...
Actually we heard it hit, so that's not true.
Yeah.
It's a little damp, so...
Good to go.
And normally I would leave it out while I go test the AC unit, but knowing something
else could potentially fall, I'm going to put the awning back in.
Okay.
It wasn't running because the internal temperature has been spot on.
So I just dropped it to super cold so that it would kick on.
I just heard a kick on, I don't hear anything wrong.
It seems to be running normal.
No issues.
I'll go take a listen outside, and that should be, I mean, fingers crossed we should be good
to go.
What do you think, little man.
You going to give it the once over?
Does it look good to you?
Yeah.
Think we dodged a bullet?
There you have it, folks.
Did we dodge a bullet?
Yeah.
There you go.
So according to my quick inspection and Dash's approval, I think we're good to go.
I think we dodged a bullet or in this case, a tree trunk.
Oh, this is a dramatic start to day number two of our 700 mile travel day.
Want to find out about our next calamity on our trip to Maine?
Make sure you give this video a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel.
And of course don't forget to hit that bell.
That way, you'll be notified when our next video drops.
Between now and then, friend, make sure you wanderlocal this week.
As you know, it's good for the soul.