hello everyone and welcome back to the channel
if you are new here I am Charity and I'm Ben
in today's video is going to be all about campground
do's and don'ts so make sure that you stay tuned
and watch till the end where we give you probably what we think is one of our
most important campground etiquette unspoken
rules
we have been traveling in our RV for close to
three years now and we have visited over 38 of the 50 states in the United
States and with that means we've stayed at a
ton of campgrounds and made a ton of
mistakes now we prefer staying in RV
campgrounds versus boondocking and that is because we kind of prefer all the
comforts of home I like my full hookups I like
having all of the electricity without having to use the generator
hence the name glampers yes I'm totally a glamper I'm not a camper
I am a glamper so that means we've stayed at a ton
of RV campgrounds RV parks RV resorts and we've seen
some people make some mistakes and we've made some of these mistakes to ourselves
so today what we want to do is share some
campground do's and don'ts now these are rules
unspoken rules that are unspoken you're not going to really find these
necessarily on a campground rule sheet I mean you might but I I haven't seen
any of these rules on a campground rule sheet ever before
so we're going to share with you some do's
and don'ts of campground etiquette so that you just become a better
camper yes glamper RVer neighbor neighbor
we love neighbors we actually really do like when we have neighbors it's always
so much fun go say hi to your neighbors yes
our first do is be sure you observe the campground quiet hours
typically these quiet hours are from 10 pm to 8 am
so just kind of have an idea of when
that is recently we had an experience staying at
a campground that the folks did not observe
the 10 pm quiet hour they moved it a couple hours
and uh they're playing their loud music our kids are needing to
go to sleep because there is a a school day the next day so
and we get it if you're out for the weekend and you're wanting to have fun
you know you might want to stay up a little bit late but just be
remembering that there are people with families there are people with
young kids and the walls and the RVs are pretty thin
so just kind of be aware we are thin so if you have loud music or if there's
loud voices and people are laughing and joking
things like that and we understand we want everybody to have
fun while they're out camping that's part of the experience but
just remember after that 10 p.m in most campgrounds
you want to kind of make sure that you take that either inside or that you tone
it way down so that you're not disturbing your
neighbors primarily maybe families but also
people that just need to be on a sleep schedule as well
something you do not want to do is to walk
through campsites that are occupied so right now where we're staying we have
some neighbors that are in a campsite next to us and then we have a campsite
next to us on the other side that is completely empty
now I'm interested in hearing from some of you guys
in the comments below if you feel like it's okay to walk through a campsite
that's empty I personally don't have a problem
cutting through an empty campsite when nobody's in there but I've heard
some people see that as a do not
even if it's empty so drop us a comment and let us know if you think it's okay
to walk through a campsite when it's empty
but if there's somebody in it then you definitely
do not want to be walking through that campsite riding bikes through that
campsite look at it as their front yard and you wouldn't go walking through
somebody else's front yard if you were living in a sticks and bricks house or
taking a walk through your neighborhood so camp sites that are occupied
make sure that you're not cutting through those heading to wherever that
you're heading but that you walk around any occupied campsites
Okay another campground do do be aware of the
space that is yours so for instance you want to make sure
when you're putting out your patio rug or your patio chairs your
grill whatever kind of patio furniture that you tend to set out
when you are camping that you put it in your camp
site now this can be a little tricky because the boundary lines between one
campsite to the next are not always super clearly defined
so what you want to try to do is just be aware as possible
of the space that is yours in your campsite
versus somebody else's campsite so that you're not encroaching
the other thing is numerous times we've seen where
people do arrive late they arrive after dark and just because that campsite next
to you is empty for right now doesn't mean that
maybe somebody could be pulling in really late tonight
say 10 11 o'clock so make sure that bicycles and
patio chairs whatever is not in that other campsite
there's nothing worse than doing a late check-in
you're pulling in after dark you're exhausted you just want to get to your
site and set up and lo and behold somebody else's stuff
is in your site so just do be aware of that space that belongs to you for that
site and make sure you keep your things in
that space
so the next unspoken rule is do not put trash into a fire ring or
fire pit if you have one at your campsite
I've been guilty of this one ben has been guilty of this and
I have jumped on his case for this one I know that growing up especially
growing up in a rural area you tended to maybe even burn your trash in
some places and so you just get used to throwing garbage in the fire pit you do
not want to do that at a campground somebody else is going to come along
behind you and possibly want to use that to cook their food
or whatever else that they want to cook and
you don't want to be cooking your food over
somebody's toxic melted plastic solo cup and then alternatively make sure that
you leave the fire pit relatively clean so if you've had a fire and you still
have some bits of charred wood or there is trash on the fire pit just
do the right thing for the person that's coming after you next
and clean it up so that they have great use of that particular fire area
without having to clean it out themselves
so just make sure that you do have your dog on a leash and if you have
cats that you choose to take out either have them
leashed restrained or in like a catio something of that nature
just to keep them safe so that they don't run off
the other do is to make sure that you pick up after your pets
you don't want to leave any surprises behind
for anybody else coming to your campsite but also even if there are enclosed
pet areas those are not a free-for-all for the animals to go to the bathroom
without it being picked up so make sure that you are a responsible
pet owner when you're visiting campgrounds
and make sure that you clean up after your pet even in the designated pet
areas
the next do not is do not speed now we know that that could be kind of a
pain in a large campground the campground we're in right now is
rather large and if your campsite is all the way at
the back of the campground versus the front of the campground and
you've got a good quarter mile to maybe even half a mile
to get to your campsite we know that the temptation is there to
make those roads feel like just any other road but remember you're in a
campground you have other campers there could be
children pets people at any given point so make sure
that you follow whatever the posted speed limit signs
are for that campground and do not speed and make sure that you
just go slow you're gonna get there it's
better to get there safe and keep others safe
while you're getting there and typically the speed limit is seven and a half
to ten miles an hour seven and a half
so a campground do it's another kind of unspoken rule and just makes you
a good neighbor with your neighbors at the campground is
to make sure you do turn off your lights at night
now we're not just talking about headlights
although that is kind of a good rule to follow if you're pulling in after dark
and your headlights end up shining right into somebody's rig
probably don't want to do that so we try to shut off our headlights as soon as we
possibly can when we get to our campsite but we're talking mainly about the
outside lights that you have on your RV usually like the one above
the door that shines out away from the RV not talking about
the lights underneath your rig what we're talking about is the lights that
shine directly out and that could shine into other people's windows and we've
actually had that happen where we finally just got up
and grabbed some of our reflectix and shoved it in the window
to block out the light because we're trying to sleep at night
I prefer the room as dark as I can get it and there's a light
shining in from the neighboring RV so make sure that you do shut off any of
those outside lights at night time
that could possibly cause light pollution with the RVs that are next to
you do not hold your sewer hose up to the
spigot to rinse the sewer hose out what we do
is we have two separate hoses one for the fresh
water and one hose for the black tank flush
and we will use the black tank flush hose
to spray out the sewer hose the reason why you don't want to hold the sewer
hose up to the spigot is because when you spray it it can
blast fecal matter bacteria all over the
spigot so one thing I would advise you to do is
have some sanitized wipes or something in your basement
compartment to have ready to sanitize the spigot
right before you hook up your water because you just don't know
if the last person did actually rinse their sewer hose with the spigot
so now this is the most important one that we've been saving until the very
end and that is do have
fun camping glamping RV life is all about having fun and
making memories with your friends family children and
you want to make sure that you are making the most
memorable time that you can have one thing that we've constantly talked about
is we don't want our kids growing up seeing
those horrible times that we had over out in the RV
we want them to look at all of the times we had out in the RV is something that
was fun and memorable and that we talk about these experiences for
years to come in a good way and not a negative way so
make sure that you have fun while you're out there and look for
those things that maybe could make things extra special
camping journals are a great way to do that and we've got a couple of those
available on our website we'll put a link in the description
below to just kind of document all of those fun things that you enjoyed about
the different campgrounds and then the other thing is is there are
so many newer RVers out there this year aren't there
yep we were newbies when we first started out and
while we tried to do probably what most of you are doing right now and that is
watch some youtube videos follow some people that have been doing this for a
while to start to kind of learn the ropes for some things
we still made a ton of mistakes when we first started
and we're really super thankful for those experienced RVers that
saw us maybe making a blunder at a campground and came over and
gently coached us on how to maybe do it the right way
I remember earlier this summer when we were in utah
seeing another RVer that went to go put out their sewer hose
in the ladder to make the higher end of the hose towards the RV
and the lower end of the hose towards the dump well it was backwards
so they had the high end where it should be draining too
and the low end back at their RV and so I just
gently went over and started a conversation found out it was
a rental RV it was their first trip out and so I was able to just kind of give
them a little bit of a tip and say hey let's turn this around so
that way you know it flows downhill we all had a
good laugh and they didn't make a mess of their
sewer dump because it was put on backwards
so another great tip if you see somebody out there that
maybe isn't doing it quite right is to just ask
them if you can give them a tip a lot of times advice that isn't invited or not
asked for is not always received well and
understandably so you must know this from experience i've
been married for nearly 13 years so leading with a question like can i
give you a tip or do you mind if I share a piece
of advice about something i've learned it's a
great leading question to be able to maybe help somebody out
that's brand new to this lifestyle but help them to have a
more enjoyable experience because all of these little mistakes that can be
made well it's not just so much about doing it right or doing it wrong
but it's about some of these little mistakes could lead to a negative
experience and we want everybody to have fun
to make memories that are the good memories although sometimes
the bad memories make for a good story right yep so if there is something that
you would like to see us do a video on or questions you have about RV live
please drop them in the comments below we definitely read every single comment
and we would love to know if there's something that
is of interest to you that you would like to see us put in a video
or if there are any do's and don'ts that we may have missed experiences that
you've had we actually love to hear your stories and
things that you've recommend people do or don't exactly
thanks for watching and we'll see you out there
all right you said that save the end we're going to give them our
top unspoken rules I did yeah I guess I wasn't paying attention are
you watching this footage you'll see that I said that
wow that's gonna leave a mark ooch jeez all right you ready
okay the next dude try wonka get a straight line there alaska's
making it hard on me this is what fall in florida looks like
turning on the night at night at light night late at night
so thanks for watching sorry just kidding it's
oh