#RVLife

This is our first trip ever in a RV.  Driving 2500 miles across the country in 10 days is a bit of baptism by fire, but it has generally worked out well.  We are planning a RV trip in August to do South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming - which will get me to having visited all 50 states.  We had already done some research and had some idea of what we were getting ourselves into. That said, research and experience are quite different.

We are in a Cruise America Standard model RV.  You can see more about it and virtual tour on their site. I’d post pictures, but ours is a bit messy with all of us, especially with the kids' stuff for entertainment - crafts, tablets, kindles, etc.  Four people in a 25’ x 8’ space (200 square feet for the math geeks), including the driving cabin, is tight. We also didn’t pack with a pandemic RV road trip in mind, so we have multiple backpacks and bags with things that aren’t entirely useful.  There is so much clutter in our tiny space, even with constant cleaning. The kids are definitely benefitting from sitting at a table for the drive, but there are only two front facing seats in the back, so fights are breaking out over personal space.  Upside is that there is a loft above the cabin, which is great kid hideaway when we are not on the road. The table also folds down into a bed, which is kid magic overnight.

Driving the RV has turned out to be okay.  The RV we rented is “only'' 25 feet long (they can be as long 45’!), making it pretty easy to maneuver even in parking lots and gas stations.  We rented a 29’ for our August trip, and I can see how the extra 4’ will make a difference. When driving an RV, you sit up nice and high and have a great view of the road which makes driving easier.  The RV weighs about 6 tons, which means it doesn’t start or stop very quickly. It also doesn’t climb hills well. There were a number of times in the mountains in Arizona and Arkansas that we were doing 45mph uphill in a 70 mph zone.  That would drive me crazy in a car, but it is somehow easier to adjust to in an RV. The most unpleasant surprise however is wind. A 25’ long by 12’ high vehicle catches any winds from the side, blowing the vehicle around. Driving it in gusty winds can make it difficult to keep it in its lane.  We haven’t hit much traffic on the trip, so wind has been the most difficult part of the experience. 

Driving more than five hours a day is exhausting for everyone.  If it's windy, bad weather, curvy roads or traffic, four is a lot.  It can also be too much for the kids unless there are stops to get out and run off pent up energy.  We will go back and replan our August trip based on this as we probably have a day or two that are more than we all can handle.

This 2015 Cruise America rental RV now has 151,000 miles on it and we will be the last renters as it heads to Virginia to be sold.  While it is not that old, it is lacking in the creature comforts you are used to in a car. It doesn’t have a backup camera, bluetooth, or USB ports.  We thankfully bought a window cell phone mount for using the GPS and cigarette lighter USB chargers at Walmart before our journey. The outlets in the RV only work when the RV is plugged in at a campsite or when the generator is running (which has an hourly charge from Cruise America.)  The extra USB ports let us keep devices charged during the day - and we have a lot of devices.

The console seems to be identical to a late 90’s Ford Taurus.  Having rented a lot of them on work trips back then, it's quite familiar, but not quite what we were expecting.  The stereo is pretty basic, with a “line in” that doesn’t work - not sure if our cable is broken or it doesn’t work, but going to find another cable during a pandemic isn’t a priority.  It also is really loud when driving on the highway from the road noise, and even louder when it’s windy. We brought an Amazon Echo Tap with us on vacation, but it isn’t the most effective given the road noise, but does give us some tunes.  We are hoping that the RV we rented in August has some better features.

The fridge is actually quite large, which has been helpful.  The RV has a propane cooktop with three burners and a microwave.  What surprised us was that a lot of the RV campsites don’t have grills.  Some have fire pits, but not all of them have cooking grates on them. We stocked up making sure we could cook with just the cooktop and microwave, but with some flexibility if we got the ability to cook on a grill or fire.  Sausages do well on both a cooktop or fire, so we have a lot of those!

When we were planning this trip, as well as the one in August, we were focused on having “full hookups” (power, water and sewer) every night.  While that is convenient, we’ve already learned that for one night you can easily work without water or sewer. The RV has a huge water tank, and you can head to a dumping station at most RV parks and dump your sewer on the way out. If you don’t have power, you have to run the generator which is loud and costly or most of the RV doesn’t work.That might be unworkable for us.

Speaking of the sewer... It is really nice traveling with your own toilet during the coronavirus epidemic so you don’t have to use gas stations.  A friend who rents a RV every year also gave me some good advice to have rubber gloves for draining the waste water tanks. While the system is pretty well designed to dump the tanks, it’s can get a little messy at some point when taking out the hose or replacing it.  Having a sewer hookup at your site seems really convenient, if not essential. I’ll admit I was pretty intimidated about the sewer process but it's turned out to be pretty easy.

While the RV has a shower, we haven’t used it.  The campgrounds we’ve been staying at have been practically vacant and have had nice shower facilities with no one in them, so we have used those.  The water heater on the RV is pretty tiny, so the idea of four people trying to shower seems it would stress the system.  

Finally, gas mileage is not great.  We are getting about 10mpg, which definitely adds up driving 2500 miles across the US!  We were hoping to get 12-15mpg based on what we read, but that isn’t the case. The oil price war and the lack of demand given the pandemic has dropped gas prices below $2/gallon in all the places we have been so far, which is really helpful.  We paid $1.51 a gallon at one point on the trip.  

We’ve adapted well and enjoyed the #RVLife experience so far!  It isn’t something that fits well with our suburban Arlington, VA life, but we now have an appreciation for why so many people own RVs. We look forward to the August trip, knowing that our experience should make it even better.