Today we're gonna take you through a moving day for our full-time RVing family.
We'll show you packing up, hitching up, drive day, and arrival. Let's go.
Pack up for us typically starts the day before we actually leave.
Normally in the evening after the kids go to bed we'll put some stuff away,
but in this case the weather says it's supposed to rain this afternoon
so I'm gonna get all of our outdoor stuff put away this morning before the weather gets nasty.
It's a good thing Kevin packed things up outside earlier today because now it is
raining. It is also evening and there are a few more things that we like to take care of
in here before moving day. Let's show you.
I roll up the rug. The leaf in the middle of our table here has to be put away,
and don't forget to latch it. We put these plastic tubs down in the middle of the floor
here so we can fill them with all of the items on our countertops for safe keeping while we travel
down the road. We can lay the rug next to it, and there's still enough space because these slides
just come in to either side of the island here. If there's anything that we need for the morning, we
will leave that out and take care of it tomorrow as we are packing up. The night before we also
like to prep our lunch and our snacks. Basically, I grab whatever is in the fridge: fruit, veggies,
sandwiches, or wraps. Peanut butter and jelly is a great go-to. I get it all ready, put it back
in the fridge, so I can just grab it for our cold bag in the morning. That's what I'm gonna do now,
and then we're gonna go to bed and we'll see you in the morning. Good morning. Now that it's
morning time, we pack up as we go along. First place to tackle is the master bedroom. We throw
anything that could get in the way of the slide coming in on the bed, close up, one room down.
As we continue to get ready, we latch up the sliding door to the shower. Since this is glass,
if that were loose, bad things could happen. Anything that is standing on the counters
goes into the shower. I latch the door. The cabinets are closed. That's it. Probably easiest
room in the house. We'll have a quick breakfast, and then we'll clean up the last few things
and finish getting the kids ready for the day. Then, I help the kids clean up the kids room.
This is the reality of how chaotic it often gets in here. It has gotten easier now that both kids
are sleeping in the loft. They decided they'd like to do that. Gives us more room to just pile
things into the slide. If we're in a rush, we can really just shove it in there and go. I put
away the last few things from breakfast, clean up last few dishes. We have several things on
the counter here that we just stick in the sink. I am grabbing the food that I prepped
last night. As soon as I grab everything out of here, I kind of do a once over to see if I think
anything looks like it might be in peril of falling out
when we open the fridge again later, and lock it up. Christine usually
stages everything by the door for me so I can take it out to the truck. But first, the dog.
So we always make sure to check under the slides before bringing the slides in,
because inevitably there's all sorts of toys that we find under there.
And it has ended up gouging a part of the floor in the past. So this is just part of the routine.
Next up, before the slides come in, where I still have room to be here,
I'd like to turn the breakers off so most things are off when we're traveling down the road.
Now we put the main slides in.
Next I get the kids out of the RV and we hang out around the campsite. They
play a little bit or we go on a little walk while Kevin finishes up. Then at some point
I get them in the truck. Now it is time to disconnect and dump the tanks,
and I've got to say I am really happy with the way that the weather has turned out today because
the weather was saying that it was supposed to be pretty rainy and ugly today. This is great.
Next I gotta roll the cover back on the truck to get ready to hitch up,
but first I'm gonna take the garbage out. It's the last load of garbage and then we can
finally get hitched up and hit the road.
It's nice because I can control the whole leveling system from this touch screen in here,
and it also saves the last position where it hitched from. So I should be able to
just press this auto hitch button, and it will retract the rear levelers and raise the front
to the height that it was hitched at last. Next up I get in the truck and actually hitch up.
Next I actually have to lower the trailer onto the truck,
and this is a really good opportunity to make sure the propane is off
because the other control panel for the leveling system is in the propane compartment.
So the trailer has rolled back just slightly onto those wheel chocks. So the next thing
I'll have to do is pull the trailer forward just a little, but I gotta get the door closed first.
So now I've got to put the stairs in. We love these stairs. They're super sturdy.
The only thing about them is if you don't clean them off really well,
as soon as you lift it up and put it inside all the dirt just rains down in the front doorway.
Now it is time for what we like to call the final walk around.
I'll turn on the emergency blinkers to make sure all the lights are working.
We walk around the trailer and just make sure that everything looks
totally normal, nothing out of the ordinary. Right because Kevin's been doing all the other stuff. So
he gets to look again, and I put a fresh pair of eyes on it just to double check. Here we go.
Walk around the back, make sure my lights look good.
I checked the levelers, that they're up all the way, there's nothing extended.
The tires look good.
The door is locked. I think we're ready to go.
All set? Yeah! We checked the hitch. I think you mentioned the other things.
Make sure there are no branches that we need to be aware of as we leave. It's time to hit the road.
We wouldn't leave you behind. Let's go.
Is that good luck or what?! We're on the road. I was just filming us turning onto Highway 101.
Brought the camera in. It started raining. We're not always that lucky. Sometimes poor Kevin is
out doing all of that pack up, hitch up stuff in the rain. Thankfully we haven't had to deal with
that too often, but it does happen. Got very lucky today. Now we're gonna drive for a bit,
and then we'll show you a little bit about what that looks like for us here on the road.
So I always do all the driving. Christine's always been the better navigator, especially if I need
help getting through some area, even before we were doing RV life. She also takes care of the
kids, snacks, other needs. I always make sure I corroborate our route with truckrouter.com.
I just tell it we're a full-size 18-wheeler so it routes me the right way. We've never run into any
problems with low bridges that way. I also like to corroborate what they give me with Google Maps,
and sometimes I'll check out the route on satellite view if I'm not entirely sure.
But then I will just follow the GPS for the most part on my phone because I already know
in advance where we're going and where not to go. I also plan our fuel stops in advance
and we will have one of those today. So the way the kids stay entertained on travel days
is we have a little travel organizer that sits between both of their car seats in the back.
They can reach their stuffed animals, a few little toys. We have books. It's just a combination of a
bunch of different things to give them variety to cycle out throughout the day, and that keeps them
pretty entertained. The cold bag we packed sits in the front here between the driver
and passenger seats so I can just reach in, get anybody a snack as we go. Sometimes we
stop for lunch and sometimes we just keep going and I hand snacks back as people get hungry.
So I also try to get a little work done on the road depending on the day
and what we have going on. So that is what I'm going to do now for a little bit.
So we've driven all the way in from the coast. We've made it to the interstate which we'll
probably be on the rest of the day, but first we're going to do a bathroom break for everybody.
This isn't our fuel stop for the day. We normally try to have a bathroom break with our fuel stop,
but we're not gonna make it that far without one today.
It's not the most glamorous place for a stop, but it works. If we can find a nice scenic overlook
or a rest area on the interstate, we prefer those. But it's nice to have our own bathroom on board,
and anywhere the rig fits we can have a stop. The pretty rainbow is a nice touch though.
We've actually been seeing rainbows almost the entire way. That makes the rest area quite nice.
Next stop, gas station. You might be wondering, why didn't we just stop here.
Prices are much better at the stop that Kevin has planned out for us.
So we're here at our fuel stop. It is a truck stop and it's really loud outside
so we're just gonna talk in here for a bit. We like to use truck stops because
we can use our TSD Logistics fuel card which gets us a nice discount. Ironically enough
we're actually here more for DEF than we are for diesel fuel, but we can fill up on both.
So we just finished fueling.
And if we hadn't stopped not long ago we probably would drive over to the truck parking area
and have everybody take a break, use the bathroom there. But because we recently did that,
we're just gonna hit the road again and keep going.
We've made one more stop at a rest area before we make our final push to our destination.
As you can tell it is completely dark outside. I honestly can't remember the last time we traveled
in the dark, but it's getting dark earlier this time of year so it happened today.
And also I don't think we've told you exactly where we're headed. Our final destination tonight
is not another campground, not a boondocking spot. We're actually headed to family
where we plan to spend the holidays. So it's a little bit different arriving there
rather than you know a standard campsite, and... We have to make it down an s-curved driveway,
and so because it's dark we really don't want to attempt that tonight. So I think we're just going
to get there, park at the top, and go in and have dinner. And because there is more that we want to
tell you guys about what it's like arriving at a destination, whether it's family, friends, or
a campground, we think that we're gonna have to make a second video. So we're gonna tell you more
about that in the morning when we go down our nemesis, the s-curve driveway. So you're not
going to want to miss that. We hope that you enjoyed this video, and you caught a glimpse
into what moving day is like for us. Let us know if there's anything that you didn't expect
on a travel day or if you have any questions and we'll see you next time. Bye guys. Bye.
Look how bad our, our knives are. We can't show this. How I do it like this and then
I rip it apart. Thank you Schatzi. Good job. Great job. Help, help, stop.