Category: Revelation

First RV trip of the season Part 1

Last year, after putting our trailer away for the winter, we sat down and decided that it would be safe to de-winterize it and head out in late April, and just to be really safe, we’d head 5 hours south so we wouldn’t have to worry about sub-freezing temps while we were out.

And that was a really good plan, until Vicki and I both got really interested in the Facebook group for people who owned our brand of trailer (Keystone Cougar Half-Ton 22MLS). And it turns out that some of the members of that group had decided they were going to meet up at a campground in Ohio called Mary Jane Thurston State Park. That’s nearly a 6 hour drive away, especially if you consider how slow you drive when you’re towing a travel trailer. But Vicki got really enthusiastic about the idea of going there. And so did I after a while.

So on the last weekend of March, we went to the RV storage lot and brought our baby home. And with the help of a bunch of sort-of consistent sets of instructions, we de-winterized her. Drained the water tank and all the water lines of anti-freeze, flushed the lines with fresh water, filled the fresh tank about half way up with a cup of bleach, and let it sit overnight. The next day, drained the fresh tank and filled it with fresh water and ran all the taps until the water stopped smelling of chlorine. Afterwards, Vicki complained that she didn’t like the taste, but to me it tasted exactly like the water tasted when I lived in an apartment building in North York Ontario. But I took the point, and next time I disinfect the tank like that, I’ll flush it twice.

While we were getting ready to leave, we got a phone call from Mary Jane Thurston State Park. They said they had some flooding, so they were moving our entire group to Van Buren State Park, which isn’t too much further way. When they said “some flooding”, I envisioned wet fields and maybe puddles, but later one of the 22MLS group went over to look, and the water was up to the seats of the picnic tables and there were geese paddling around. The new park was very nice, nice flat newly paved trailer pads and full electric and water hookups (and a sewer dump at the entrance). Actually, the campsite info we found before we went said they didn’t have water hookups at each site, so on the way we were filling up the fresh tank when the camp host came over and said “we have water at each site”, which my travel addled brain initially interpreted as “the ground is wet”, but I soon realized really meant there is a spigot at every site.

I have to commend the staff at Mary Jane Thurston for being proactive about this and making sure we didn’t end up scattered and disorganized when we arrived and found the campground closed.

Because of the length of the trip, we decided to stop along the way at a Harvest Host. A Harvest Host is a business (often a winery or farm (which is where the name comes from) but now includes brew pubs, distilleries and other businesses) that allows you to park overnight. There is an annual membership fee, but the overnight stays are free, but you’re generally expected (strongly expected) to buy about $30 or so of whatever their product is.

The host we stayed at was a distillery. They had a restaurant, except the company that was staffing his kitchen left last week, so we ordered from another restaurant down the road. This was actually our first “boondocking” experience. “Boondocking” means staying without water, electric and sewer connections. I’m pleased to say our batteries lasted fine, with only a small amount of conserving. Vicki bought some nice distilled spirits to meet our expected buy.

Both days of travel were pretty fraught, with strong gusty winds and driving rain. I was pretty fried at the end of each day’s driving.

There is an app called RVLife Trip Wizard, which is a highly rated trip planner and navigator which takes your rig width and height into account when navigating so you avoid low bridges and narrow streets. It kind of didn’t work for us. Here is part of the route it sent us on:

RVLife’s route

And here is Google, showing how that “road” turned into a tractor track halfway through:

Fortunately the driveway for the barn on the left is big enough to do a K turn in. I think the driver of the school bus I followed up the road was amused.

Already getting excited for next season

In a triumph of hope over expectations, I’m currently preparing my cross country skis for this winter. But I’m also getting ready to start the RV season as early as possible. So far, since we winterized, we’ve been out to the trailer a few times to unpack some things, pack some things, and to switch the license plate holder from the left rear light to the right rear light because the old position was blocked by the ladder. I still need to do something to stop the dinette table from slowly falling down.

Yeah, I know my caulking isn’t extremely smooth

In a search for places where we could go early that were open, likely to have no time below freezing or only a few hours of below freezing at night, not overrun with blackflies, and with at least a water tank fill station, sewer dump station and electrical hookup, my eyes turned south to the Ridge and Valley section of Pennsylvania.

Thanks to a referral from somebody on r/GoRV on Reddit, I booked a week in late April in Cowan’s Gap State Park. It looks nice. Too bad they don’t allow drones. (But of course every drone person knows they can ban you from launching or recovering in a park, but they can’t ban you from flying over it, so I might get some footage by launching from outside.)

It’s 5 hours due south of here. According to a gardening site, the average date of last spring frost is late March down there near Pittsburgh, but early May up here, so it’s probably pretty safe from a frost point of view. The trees might even be greened up.

My plan is a day or two before the trip, we’ll bring the trailer home. Hopefully we can park it on the road, but if not we can pull it into the driveway. We’ll re-install the batteries, hook it up to electricity, and get everything charged up. We’ll leave the anti-freeze in the grey and black tanks because why not? There probably isn’t more than a gallon in each. Also we’ll hook it up to the outside tap, fill up the fresh tank and then open the low point drain to flush it out. Maybe repeat that a few times. Then run all the hot and cold taps to get rid of any antifreeze in the pipes. Actually, I wonder if there would be any point in doing this once from the fresh tank and once from the “city water”? I’m unsure if I should fill up the fresh tank at home – doing so would increase the load we’re pulling, but also would protect us if the water filling station isn’t working.

The anti-freeze we buy is supposedly non-toxic so it probably is perfectly fine to let the drained anti-freeze run into the storm sewers. Considering once I saw a policeman shoveling horse shit into a storm drain after a “meet the public” police event, I wonder how much they care about the water.

Once this de-winterizing is all done, we’ll leave the trailer plugged in overnight so we can leave the heat on to keep anything from freezing, and also give the fridge time to cool down. Then get it packed and ready for an early departure.

Can’t wait!

Winterizing the RV

The great thing about RVing is that there a million YouTube channels out there to help you learn things. The bad thing is that those channels often contradict each other.

When you winterize your RV, the main thing you have to do is to get all the water out of the system so that it doesn’t freeze, expand, and crack your pipes. And by the way, you should also remove any liquids inside, especially if they’re in glass bottles. That includes things like dish soap and cans of Diet Coke.

The first thing you do no matter how you’re going to winterize is to drain as much water as you can by opening the drain on the fresh water spigot and also the two low-point drains, and opening at least one faucet (some people say to open them all). One video also suggested that you then drive it around a few miles to slosh any remaining water out.

There seem to be 2 main schools of thought with the fresh water system. The first is to use an air compressor to blow all the water out of all the pipes. We don’t have an air compressor, so I ruled that one out.

The second main method is to replace the water with anti-freeze, or in some cases just to dilute the water with anti-freeze. The is a special pink non-toxic anti-freeze that is made especially for RVs. Other anti-freezes are definitely discouraged, probably because they might harm the plastics or they just might kill you if some of it gets left in your fresh water tank.

Now the anti-freeze method has two sub-methods. The first one tells you to install this bypass thing on the intake side of your pump so you can use the water pump to suck the anti-freeze into the system. I didn’t want to install anything, and I especially didn’t want to pay somebody to install anything, so I kept looking for more options.

The second sub-method I found was to use a funnel (or a cut up water bottle) to pour anti-freeze into the fresh water tank, and then use the water pump to pump that anti-freeze through the system. It appears that uses a lot more anti-freeze, but it also looks very quick and easy, so that’s what I was originally going to do.

One thing all these different videos do is tell you about how to treat the hot water tank. We have a tankless water heater and it was nearly impossible to find information about winterizing it, and what we did find was contradictory.

Vicki and I struggled for quite a bit of time trying to feed anti-freeze through the fresh-water hook up, but nothing was going in. We tried buying another funnel, and a few other things, until we suddenly realized there was a spring loaded thing that looked like its job was to prevent water flowing in unless there was a certain amount of pressure behind it. Maybe if we’d had one of those big funnels like they use in NASCAR we could have got enough pressure, but it seems like we needed to rethink.

We went into the RV and opened up the box where the water came in. My hope was we’d find a pipe we could unscrew from a connector and pour the anti-freeze into the fresh tank. But after trying that, and discovering that the inside pipes were too narrow to put our funnel into, we noticed something interesting. There was a bit of clear plastic tubing with a screw-on fitting. The plastic was slightly stained with pink. I immediately knew what that was – a tube to siphon anti-freeze out of the bottle and into the pump. All I had to do was to figure out where to connect it. After 5 or 6 false starts, I finally figured out that this nice little brass fitting on the pipe leading into the pump contained both a capped off connector and a valve. I eventually figured out the right setting of the valve (you’d think it would take at most two tries, but you’d be underestimating my ability to get things wrong) and it started siphoning anti-freeze out of the bottle and into the pump.

We ran all the taps until we saw a good stream of pink coming out, both hot and cold. That included flushing the toilet and holding down the flush until it was running very pink. We put in some of the magic liquid down the toilet that breaks up poop and toilet paper – possibly TMI but we have a clear segment on the black tank drain hose, and we can verify that it actually works.

So with all that done, we now have anti-freeze in all the pipes, and also in the grey and black tank. Although the tanks probably have a mix of water and anti-freeze, they’re big enough and the amount of water in them is so small that even if they did freeze they probably wouldn’t burst. Next we pour some anti-freeze down all the drains, and in the toilet to make sure the p-traps and the toilet ball valve are full of pure anti-freeze, not water-anti-freeze. And lastly, we removed another connector and poured about a quart of anti-freeze into the fresh water tank. Again, the fresh tank is as empty as we could make it, but there might be some residual water in there, so putting that anti-freeze in there will make sure it doesn’t freeze.

I’m second guessing myself now and wondering if I shouldn’t have run the taps for longer and get more anti-freeze in the grey tank, but I think we’re probably fine. If it looks like it’s going to get really cold this winter, I might run out to the trailer and throw another gallon down the drains.

The last thing I did was to remove the lithium batteries and turn off the two electrical shut-offs (I think one isolates the batteries and one isolates the solar panels). I asked about this on Reddit, and a bunch of people said I should remove them, a bunch said they’re fine to leave them, and a few said “might as well remove them just to be safe”, and that’s the opinion I went with. Of course I had to do this last, after the trailer was parked at the storage site. But because I wanted to make sure I knew how to remove the batteries before I took it there, I had turned off the battery isolation switch, so when we parked the RV the tongue jack was going really slowly, because it was probably only drawing power from the solar panels.

So we sadly said goodbye to the trailer for the winter, although we’ll probably visit it a couple of times to fix some of the problems I mentioned in the previous post.

First trip in the new RV and truck

Less than a week after we picked up the trailer and truck, and we were off for our first trip.

The first day we drove to a little RV park just outside Niagara Falls Ontario. The drive up went well – the truck and trailer combo was surprisingly easy to drive. Luckily the spot Vicki had booked us in the park was a pull-through, meaning my pathetic back up skills wouldn’t be tested. It was a full-service site, with electric, water and sewer hookups. But it was also in a wide open field with just a few scattered trees. There was another part of the site that was more wooded, and obviously the older part. It had a street or two of spots for RV travelers, then an another street or two of spots for permanently parked RVs., with gardens, decks, and lawnmowers.

Our first night we thought Gizmo had escaped the trailer, and we split up and went around the site calling for him. I encountered two very nice couples, and they recruited their children and they went around looking for him as well. Eventually we discovered Gizmo was just hiding under the table. Luckily the kids were modern kids so I just had to tell one and she texted the other, but Vicki and I brought the dogs on a walk by the nice couples. In a first, afterwards Vicki complained that the two women were so talkative that she could barely get a word in edgewise. I, however, learned a lot about driving a trailer, including the fact that one of the two men was more scared about it than I am.

The next day, we met up with Alyssa, James and Maeby – first they came to see the trailer, then we went to the Butterfly Conservatory. It was gorgeous, but Maeby found them a little overwhelming when they kept trying to land on her.

Afterwards, they went back to their hotel room and Vicki cooked dinner in the trailer. The relatively big kitchen compared to other trailers we’ve looked at, or the motor home we rented was a selling feature, but I still don’t think we could both work on dinner at the same time. At least that’s my excuse for now.

The next day we met the three of them in Niagara On The Lake (NOTL). As we often do in NOTL, we mostly just wandered up and down the shops on the main drag. It was too cold for the park or the lake front, but Maeby loves the Christmas Store. And I love the chocolate shop.

Afterwards, Vicki and I went to dinner at this brew pub that was in the middle of nowhere, in an industrial estate near the campsite but with no signs of life on a Sunday night. As is unfortunately too common, their beer menu was heavy on the IPAs, but there was a nice amber lager that wasn’t too bad.

Evenings in the trailer are very cozy and companionable – we sit together reading, crocheting, petting the dogs and just generally relaxing. Lovely.

After one long drive and a couple of nights of RV life, we’d discovered a couple of problems:

  • The shower leaked. It took a bit of effort to diagnose where the water was coming from, but after we figured it out it was the shower, it wasn’t hard to figure out there wasn’t any caulk on where the shower pan meets the walls. After a trip to Canadian Tire to buy some silicon caulk, we got that fixed and the leak went away.
  • The trim around the base of the benches in the dinette kind of popped out. We’d tried to glue it, but it didn’t fit very well. I think we’re going to have to pull it mostly off and reglue it and put a trim strip with some large headed tacks or nails. Oh well, something for the off-season..
  • The plastic piece that prevents the bottom of the sliding door of the bathroom from flapping about broke in transit. It looked like it had the wrong screws put in it. I found a very similar piece on amazon yesterday and I’ve ordered a new one.
  • The shower glass has a clip thing that’s supposed to keep it from sliding around, but in two trips it’s come undone. It feels like it’s really solidly in there, but it’s come undone twice. We’ve got to figure out some way to keep it from popping open.
  • The dinette table doesn’t really have any way to prevent it from sliding down. There is a thing that turns and looks like it’s supposed to clip into something but there’s nothing there. Another one to figure out in the off season.

The next day, we packed up and hitched up and moved on to Darlington Provincial Park (DPP). Actually before we left, I pulled out of the spot, and then tried backing into it. Only took a few tries. Maybe I’m getting the hang of this? Or maybe not.

We chose DPP because it’s about 10 minutes drive from Liane’s home in Whitby and 10 minutes drive from Alyssa’s home in Bowmanville. I can anticipate spending a lot more time there in the future because of the convenience.

DPP is brilliant because the sites are semi-isolated from each other by trees. The sites have electricity, but no water or sewage, although there is a dump station on the way out. We’d planned ahead and filled up the fresh water tank before we left the first place. Supposedly the sites at DPP aren’t pull-through, but ours kind of was. Only two problems – there was a tree between the road and there was a rather large mud puddle right where I originally parked. But after I parked and unhitched, I realized I was too far from the electrical hookup for my cable to reach, so I had to hitch up again and move the trailer, which luckily moved us away from the mud puddle. I didn’t realize it until just this moment that RV electrical cables have different plugs on each end, so I couldn’t chain two of them together. I guess I’ll have to see if anybody wants my second electrical cable and put a proper 30 amp extension cord on my Amazon wishlist. I also decided I want some of those semi-circular ramps to help level the trailer side to side, after the blocks of wood I’d wedged below the tires ended up sinking and tilting.

The park was nice, and we took the dogs for a couple of walks around and found a nice beach area and a bit of a playground.

Gorgeous weather, and very empty beach

Alyssa, James and Maeby came to visit on our second day at DPP. We had a bit of time together, and they presented us with two art works that Maeby had made. They now have pride of place in our RV, right in front of the picture window in the kitchen area. Afterwards, we went out to dinner together at a chain restaurant in Bowmanville. So nice to be able to leave the trailer set up and just take the truck.

The next day Liane, Nash and Gray came to visit. The boys were typical 8 and 10 year olds in that they decided they wanted dogs, an RV trailer, and a pickup truck. We also spent some time playing at the playground and on the beach. I’m not sure if the boys are budding geologists or just destructive, but they sure enjoyed using big rocks to smash smaller rocks open. Maybe they need a geologist’s hammer for Christmas?

Up until now, the weather had been pretty nice, but we could see virga and rain coming towards us. We got some rain off and on that night and also the next day as we were packing up, and using the waste dump, and a bit on the drive home. Glad we didn’t get that when the kids were visiting, at least.

The drive home was pretty uneventful. Because it was basically the combination of both the previous drives, I had thought I was going to have to ask Vicki to drive for part of it, but I ended up driving the whole way because my pain level seemed pretty managable. The only hard part was backing into my driveway. I think it went easier than the first time, but I wouldn’t call myself an expert.

By the way, if you drive a diesel vehicle, you need to download the Mudflap app. On the way home, we refueled at a stop that takes this app, and they normally charge $4.00/gallon, but we only paid $3.53/gallon. If you do sign up, use my referral code https://download.mudflapinc.com/invite/pa442950 and we both get a $10 credit.

Sadly, it’s now early October and just about every campground is closing, so reluctantly we decided it’s time to winterize and put the trailer away for the season. But that’s for another post.

We did it! We bought a truck and trailer!

So after our First RV Trip in a rented motor home, we thought we had an idea about what we wanted. That’s all detailed in that previous post so I won’t go through it again.

In the mean time since that trip, we went out west to visit our BC family. My brother Dave drives a Ram 1500 Laramie, and he waxed rhapsodic about the EcoDiesel engine, and the great power and fuel mileage it got. I drove it a few times, and it seemed very powerful and yet comfortable to drive. And it is rated to tow 9,210 pounds, which is plenty for the sort of trailers we had in mind. So even before we got home, we started looking for used Ram 1500s with the EcoDiesel engine on the used markets.

We also had some very useful conversations with Dave’s son Brad, who owns a nice trailer and has owned a couple before this one. We got to stay in a few nights, and learned more about life in a trailer.

Not long after we got home, two things converged – I found a really nicely equipped 2018 Ram Laramie EcoDiesel with all the extras, including a towing package. The towing package was the deal-maker, but it actually had some other nifty features, like the “Ram Boxes” aka saddle bags, a tonneau cover, and a sunroof. And the second thing was that Meyers RVs was having a big show and end of season show. So we test drove the truck, but didn’t commit to it, then the next day we went to the show and bought the first RV we looked at (which fortunately was well within the towing capacity of the truck), then went back the next day and bought the truck. Then took the truck and went to pick up the trailer.

If you care about the specs, the trailer is a year or two old Keystone Cougar 22MLS with a bunch of extras put on by the previous owner, including 2 solar panels, inverters for all the outlets, two lithium 100Ah batteries, and a tank-less water heater. Also wireless cameras on the back and sides.

When we got home, we’d discovered that in spite of Meyers doing all the hooking up, somehow we had no running lights, no brake lights, no reverse lights, and only one turn signal. It’s kind of a wonder that we had the trailer brakes. I figured I’d be getting a run-around with finger pointing between the truck dealer and the RV dealer, so I looked up the pin-outs of the 7 pin connector between the truck and the RV, and verified with a multi-meter that the problem was on the truck side. We took it back to the truck dealer, and after 3 days, they said they’d fixed it and tested it on their own trailer. But when I got it home, it was exactly the same. By this time, we’d already planned and booked a trip leaving the very next day. I called the truck dealer, and they said a friend at a local muffler shop owed him a favour and he’d get them to take a look at it the next day.

The muffler guy seemed very pessimistic about whether he could get a look at it, but then the truck dealer guy called me an hour later, and less than half an hour later the muffler guy called me to say it was ready. Turns out the problem wasn’t the 7 pin socket like the truck dealer had assumed, it was a couple of blown fuses. I suppose if I’d owned the truck for longer, I might have thought to check those myself but I hadn’t, so I didn’t. I gave the muffler guy a tip in relief.

And so we left on our first trip, which is a story for the next blog post.