Before we started our journey Laine and I spent a lot of time reading about RV travel. We scoured blogs and books gleaning everything we could and deciding what we would need with us. Some things we got right, but some we didn’t. It came down to the way we assumed we would travel, compared to how we actually have traveled. Now that we’re in our fifth month on the road we have found some things that are really useful, or handy, or that simply make our life easier.
Kitchen Essentials
The first two items are something we misjudged at first. When we set out we anticipated spending a decent bit of time outside of traditional campgrounds or away from full hook ups; instead we have been parking in full campgrounds and using them as a jumping off point to explore more remote areas by car. When we packed, we brought a pour over coffee pot and a stove-top camping toaster in lieu of traditional electric appliances. It quickly became apparent that these replacements were not all we thought they would be. The coffee maker could only make two cups of coffee in a cycle no matter how much we played with it. The toaster required regular turning and quickly went from not quite toasted yet to burned. After a few weeks, we picked up a simple “Mr. Coffee” coffee maker and Walmart brand toaster all for $24 and mornings are easy again.
WiFi connections
RV parks are not known for having high quality internet connections. Most advertise WIFI, but few have usable connection speeds. We have a cabinet next to the TV with various resources to handle this and keep us connected and streaming (because we admittedly are addicted to streaming tv). Before hitting the road we upgraded our cell phone plan to an “unlimited” one. We use this as the dependable nearly always available data connection for work and web surfing.
Video streaming eats through data and would run us up to our high-speed data limits on this plan very quickly. So I picked up a sim card for my LTE enabled iPad Air 2 from a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) who resells T-Mobile data plans. The MVNO I use still has T-Mobiles old data plans which included truly unlimited streaming of video and music using apps on the device. That means we can watch all the Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, YouTube we want without using our high-speed cell plan data. But being stuck with the small iPad screen only doesn’t cut it. The solution I found is to use an Apple Lightning to HDMI adapter to connect my iPad to a regular TV. The dongle mirrors the iPad’s screen and most streaming apps recognize it as a preferred video output and send out the correct aspect ratio, no messing with black bars on the sides of the image!
The final piece of connection hardware, our personal in RV WIFI router and network, which we have only recently gotten up and running. There are times when RV parks do have decent WIFI, particularly during the daytime when many people are out. In those cases, it is possible to connect a device directly to the campgrounds network but it is very unsecure and isn’t always a good idea. The trick is to put a barrier between your devices and the public network. Until recently everything I read led me to believe this would require at least $150 in hardware and that just wasn’t worth it. But then I came across a guy named David Bott who has a website (Outsideourbubble.com) and YouTube channel that talks quite a bit about practical data connection solutions for full time RVers. He created a detailed step-by-step walk through describing a cheaper, though more technically demanding, system to create a home network and connect to campground WIFI. Using the router we had in our old apartment and a Ubiquiti LOCO M2 from Amazon I was able to get us up and running in about half an hour. This system has an external antenna and amplifier that boost weak WIFI signals and allow us to connect to more distant access points. We don’t have to worry about device connection limits that the campground or it’s WIFI vendor may have because we only have one access point to the campground network for all our devices.
Walkie Talkies for Driving
I don’t remember where I first heard about using two-way radios while RVing but they are quite
common. Lots of used RVs from the last decade have CB radios in them, and families use FRS and GMRS radios at amusement parks and even malls to keep track of each other. I like electronic things such as radios, I have a ham radio license and listen to shortwave from time to time, so I was keen to get reliable walkie talkies. In our prep phase I researched FRS/GMRS radios for us and decided on the Midland GXT1000VP4. I had five key features I wanted: the ability to run off rechargeable or alkaline batteries, good power output, adult form factor and construction, ease of use, and water resistance. The final factor was price, I wanted something that wouldn’t break the bank or break the first month out. The Midlands hit all the criteria and are serving us well.
On travel days I drive the RV and Laine drives the Elantra “chase car”. We use the radios to keep in touch, the push to talk nature of communicating with them is critical. It means we don’t have to dial cell numbers while driving and wait for connections. If there is an abrupt lane change coming I can quickly hit the mic button and let Laine know we need to move over. We also use them when maneuvering in campgrounds and even gas stations. One trick we have is to set the radio channel and forget it, we leave the radios on the same channel and privacy code all the time. That way we can grab them, do a quick radio check and go. So “Little E” (Laine’s radio handle) and “Big B” (my radio handle) can have a smooth ride.
RV Navigation App
I learned to drive in the 90's. Back then there were no smart phones, Google Maps, or in car GPS. I grew up reading paper maps. At 16, my mother took me to the local AAA office to get a Trip Tik for an upcoming family vacation where I would be doing part of the driving. The route, balancing speed of travel, with a slight nod to scenery, was laid out step by step. Though somewhat formulaic it worked, and you knew you would get to your destination with minimal fuss.
In my twenties I started riding a motorcycle, and that calls up an entirely different travel ethos. On trips I use a GPS to tell where I was and give some guidance which way to turn at a country crossroads, but on the motorcycle exploring is always the best part of the journey. A motorcycle can go almost anywhere, and my Suzuki V-Strom could handle anything from freeways to farm roads without breaking a sweat. If four miles in the one lane forest road that looked like a short cut was flooded out, who cares, spin the bike around backtrack and find the next one.
RVs are not motorcycles… They can get stuck if the road gets too tight, and making a U-turn in a class A Motorhome requires some room. On the way to our first campground, blissfully following Google maps through rural Virginia two lane roads I missed turning at a poorly marked fork in the road. Quickly realizing my mistake, I began searching for any place big enough to turn around in. But for the next two miles there was nothing but ditches and tight driveways lining the empty hilly road. Finally, I spotted a church just off the road with a reasonable sized driveway up to its parking lot. I stopped and backed the RV onto the drive just as an off-duty police officer came by… He pulled up and asked if we were okay and did we “miss that turn a couple miles back?”, apparently, I was not the first person to do that. According to him we had picked the only place a 37-foot RV could turn around on that road and if I was ready to pull out he’d stand out in the road and make sure it was clear of cars coming over the blind hill. We gingerly pulled out and made the correct sharp turn towards the campground a few minutes later.
Once parked and set up, I kicked back on my iPad and studied the area around us on Google earth, hoping to avert such a scenario on the way out. With some work, it became apparent that we had taken the shorter, though harder, way in. For a car the directions from Google were fine but for a motor-home, not so much. So I went looking on the interwebs for a practical solution. RV and Truck specific GPS navigation units are available but they are pricey, two to three times the cost of standard ones. But as the saying goes, “there’s an app for that.” As cell phones and tablets improve it is getting harder to justify paying for the antiquated hardware found in most Garmin and TomTom GPS units, navigation apps are the way to go now, whether for the family car or RV. I downloaded CoPilot’s RV navigation app to my iPad shortly after that incident. It lets me enter dimensional data about our rig as well as many more routing preferences than a typical automotive GPS receiver or Google maps. The route options the app creates are then much better suited for us, sometimes taking the slightly longer and roundabout way to a location. After all, the faster route is only faster if you don’t get stuck.
Our Stik Ladder
When you full-time, your RV is your house. And just like a sticks and bricks home they need regular maintenance and looking after, both inside and out. A quick way to spot a full-time RVer is what they carry with them, and most carry a stepladder of some kind. Some strap a standard ladder to the back or squeeze one in the storage bays. We went with a seven-foot STIK ladder from Telesteps. When folded it has the end profile of a 4x4 post and easily packs away in the storage bays below our slide-out. There were many things we needed to do around the outside of the RV before we hit the road like resealing windows and even replacing some light bulbs. The only way to reach a window frame that is 10 feet off the ground is from a ladder. When living on the road you need to be able to fix things where ever you are. For example, a thin tree branch flicked the gutter spout off the front passenger side of the RV as we left a campground. At the next campground, out came the ladder to reach the roof line to replace the spout, reseal everything, and before water could start leaking in.
These are just some of the gadgets that have assisted us along our journey for the first five months. Over the next few months, we will probably find the need for more interesting and different gadgets along our journey.
