The 10 Commandments of RVing

Do unto others etc. doesn’t always work. Some people seem to be oblivious to how obnoxious they are. So how about trying, just keep these things in mind when you camp.

1. Thou shall introduce yourself to your neighbors. This not only helps with campsite security when you are away from your site, but it also might come in handy in case you need something. We were camping in Louisville during a tornado watch. We had talked to one of our neighbors in the afternoon and when the siren went off for the tornado warning, we grabbed a few things and headed for the bathrooms (Yes, they were the designated storm shelters.) Our neighbors came by in their car and offered to take us with them to the Holiday Inn up the road, which was a lot more comfortable and, oh, yes, safer than the bathrooms, let me tell you. Our friendliness paid off.
2. Thou shall clean up after your pets. Enough said. You know how to do that.
3. Thou shalt be quiet coming and going, especially late or early. If you arrive late, try to keep noise to a minimum—no shouting, no door slamming, turn off your headlights as soon as you can. Same thing if you have to leave early. Keep that engine warming to a minimum. You can do that by driving.
4. Thou shall keep it down. Keep your radio and TV at a reasonable level. You shouldn’t be able to hear it in the next campsite. If you are watching TV or playing music outside, same thing goes. Wear headphones if you like it real loud. Here’s also where knowing your neighbor comes in, we were camped over Labor Day once and the first thing the young people next to us did was get out their boombox and start playing loud, LOUD rock music as they set up. We had said ‘Hi’ to them when they came in, and after it became clear that this was going to go on all day if we didn’t say something, we asked them (nicely) to please turn it down. They apologized and did.
5. Thou shalt speak softly. Particularly once everything has quieted down. Keep this in mind around your campfire. Have a good time but don’t keep everybody else awake or tell them all your good stories. If you invite your neighbors to the campfire early, they will likely be a bit more forgiving and possibly have some new stories.
6. Thou shall clean up. Your campsite is your home for the duration. Take the trash to the designated pickup place, don’t burn it in your fire ring. Besides trash attracts animals, and you probably don’t want to share with them.
7. Thou shall evacuate then evacuate. If you are using the dump station, do what you absolutely need to do and then move ahead so those behind you can get started on their dirty work.
8. Thou shalt not run your generator when the rules say thou shalt not. And if you need to, let your neighbors know how long it is going to last. But know the ‘no generator’ hours and conditions. And when you do run it, particularly if it is a noisy one and particularly if it’s dinner time, it’s a nice thing to talk to your neighbor beforehand; we usually say something like, “We are cooking in the microwave and we’ll be done in about 10 minutes.”
9. Thou shalt not trespass. Each site has four sides; don’t enter someone else’s site to get to the bathroom or the beach or your friend’s site. For the time being, that site is their property.
10. Okay, what do you think number 10 should be?

Level with Me

Leveling almost wrecked our marriage. Of all the tasks associated with RVing, leveling is, for me, the most stressful. Some people obsess about leveling; others have a ‘whatever’ attitude.  My husband is in the first category. And, I am afraid, probably rightly so. It’s all about the refrigerator. I can deal with rolling out of bed, or the oil being on one side of the frying pan, or things sliding off the table onto the floor. But our refrigerator? No way!!!! It is a fussbudget and wants to be level. If it isn’t, it threatens to self-destroy.

Okay, maybe I am exaggerating a bit, but only a bit. It’s like keeping elephants away by snapping your fingers. Maybe it works and maybe it doesn’t. But when it comes to the refrigerator, we just don’t want to chance it. So, how do we do it?

First of all, we have 2 different options when it comes to leveling. Forget about automatic levelers that come down. That’s for sissies and people who are willing to forego gas mileage (those things weigh a lot!). And they cost a lot.

We have the lego-looking blocks that lock together. We call these the Eriks, because Erik gave them to us. That means you are limited somewhat to how much you can level because we only have 10 of those blocks and they get eaten up pretty quickly when you are building a ramp. To raise a wheel 2 blocks high, which is about 2 inches, you need 3 blocks; to raise it 3 blocks high, you need 6 of them. You get the picture.

Option 2 is home made wooden ramps. We call these our Michaels, because Michael helped us make them. These are 2 levels high, with the highest level being 4 inches. So, as you can guess, the lower level is 2 inches. Well, 2 1/8 and 4 ¼ , if you think like my husband. For me, it’s just 2 inches. We have 2 of these. That means you can raise either 2 front wheels or 1 back set of dualies.

Next, we have a really cool iPhone app called iWoMoSet. It’s a German product that tells you how many inches you need to raise which wheel. You set the wheel base length, you set the track width, and then you calibrate it on any given surface in the RV. I use the countertop by the stove and a small level. You get the RV level front to back and right to left and set it. From that point on, all you have to do it lay it in the same place you used to calibrate it and it tells you, wheel by wheel, how many inches you have to go up. We know which wheel(s) need(s) to be raised and then we can use the Eriks and/or the Michaels to get level.

If you notice an RV backing into and out of a variety to sites at your next campground, that might be us because, truth be told, we would rather not level. We don’t tow a car, so if we need to level, that means we have to unlevel when we want to go somewhere. If we do need to level, we want it to be the front tires and certainly never the 2 back sets of dualies. That’s why you might also see us head in at a campsite that slopes away from the road. With our Michaels, our Eriks, and our iWoMoSet, we are truly set for leveling—and our marriage it no longer in danger.

Moving On Down the Road

This is a guest post from one of our most prolific contributors: joannb. She offers her perspective on how they RV. Let us know what you think in the comments.

We have a 07 Navion, a 24 foot, class C powered by a Mercedes engine and get 17 to 18 mpg when we drive at a reasonable 60 to 65 miles an hour. We have put over 60,000 miles on it in the 5 years we have owned it and have spent more than 400 nights in it. Choosing a destination is always fun for us. Our first step in planning a trip is to set aside a month or two on our calendar; we like to get out in the winter (February and March seem to suit us best) and the fall (usually September and October).

Needless to say, the destination is frequently dictated in some way by the weather, not because of the RV but because of us! If it’s winter in Illinois, we don’t really mind 50 or 60 degree weather. In fact, we seldom head for the really warm regions in the winter. And in the fall we tend to stay north in September and only head more southerly come October or November. We have folders on all 48 continental states and as we read articles about interesting things in the various states, we drop them into the folders. My husband can’t pass up a welcome center, so as we enter every state we get new materials to add to our files. Once we have decided on a general destination, I request information on the state’s attractions, state map, etc. from the travel bureau in the state, using the internet. We also check out park reviews on RVParking.com for ‘destination’ camping.

Sometimes the destination is dictated by an event we want to attend. We were going to a family reunion in Denver in August, 2010, so we drove the RV to Boulder, went to the four-day party, left the RV at a friend’s ranch, flew home, and then flew back out after Labor Day. We continued the RV trip up into the northwest, looping west to Washington State, down to Oregon, and back to southern Utah. We did have a single planned event, a date with friends for lunch at Yellowstone, so that controlled some of the pre-date travel plans. In general, though, our planning consisted of pulling the folders for the states that were likely candidates for our travels.

Last fall we went to the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque, so that dictated another westerly trip, this time to Sedona, the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Las Vegas and points west. On that trip we picked up a friend in Santa Fe before the Balloon Fiesta and she flew home from Las Vegas. So we planned the trip from start to Las Vegas, but after that we decided day by day where we would be that day, never planning more than a day or so ahead.

This February we took what I have called the Stream of Consciousness Tour. Asked by our friends where we were going, my husband replied, “We’ll head south and turn left when it gets warm enough.” We ended up spending a night along the Ohio River, where we had watched it in flood last spring. We wanted to see it out of flood! We wandered south and as far west as Lake Charles, LA, then ‘turned left’ and headed  relatively straight across to Jacksonville, FL (taking more than 2 weeks to get there) before heading north again.

Because we are so loose in our planning we find very little concern about getting to the next destination ‘on time’. We use rvparking.com on the iPhone all the time to look forward to potential parks along our way. There have been a few times when our circumstances limited our options. We were in the Florida panhandle right at spring break time and the parks were getting full, so we did make some reservations. We had a real challenge when we were in upstate New York over Labor Day one year. We reserved what was probably the last campsite at a state park, and you know that means it was probably the worst as well. There was no way that we were going to be able to level the RV front to back, so we eventually found that by pulling into the space sideways we could get level enough that glasses didn’t slide off the counter. But, in general, because we do most of our travel at the off seasons, we find that we are often one of a very few RVs camped for the night.

Travel planning? Yes and no. We plan by gathering information and then we head out. Works for us. Try it; you might like it.

New iPhone/iPad Update Now Available

A new version of our very popular iPhone and iPad app is now available in the Apple App Store. I definitely want to thank our users for their feedback since a lot of the updates come from your suggestions.

First off, and most notably, we have major updates to our data. We've added 324 new parks and we now have information on over 20,000 RV parks in the U.S.! We've also updated information or added reviews for 3,207 RV parks.

There are a few other small tweaks:

• Now you can navigate directly to a RV park's website (user requested feature)
• Improved usability on "Favorites" list makes it easier to select a park from your Favorites (user requested change)
• Fixed photo select issue on iPad (user reported error)
• iOS 5 tested

If you have the app already installed, you can just go the App Store and hit "Updates" to download the new version. And if you don't have it already installed, what are you waiting for? Head here: http://itunes.apple.com/app/rv-parks/id368237320?mt=8.