RV NEWBIE? TOP 10 THINGS EVERY NEW RV OWNER SHOULD KNOW (RV LIVING HOW TO VIDEO)

Hello and welcome back to Keep Your Daydream. We are Mark and Trish and we are bringing you an educational video today. An educational video? This is an educational video. An educational video. Okay, here's what it's about. It seems like every day or three, we are getting another email that says something like, I just bought my first travel trailer. I just bought my first motorhome, fifth wheel, whatever. They're going RVing. It's exciting. And they're saying, it is very exciting, and they're saying, what do I need to know? What tools do I need to bring? All of that stuff. And if you have watched any of our videos, well, especially the first one, you know that we were like fresh off the press, total newbie, green, whatever you want to call it. We knew nothing. Nothing. Zero. You know nothing. That makes us an expert on knowing nothing. Our lack of knowledge makes us somewhat of an expert on the topic because now we have RVed 25,000 miles across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Woo-hoo! But more importantly, we know what you need to know if you're just diving into RVing. Yes, so if you're new and you're wondering, you're scouring, you're diving into the depths of YouTube, how do I go on my first trip? We're here to break it down. So let's do this. The top 10 things you need to know as an RV newbie, number one. Numero uno. All you need is a rig, some fuel, and ready to have some fun. It's true. At the end of the day, we're gonna talk about nine other things you need to know. You can absolutely get overwhelmed with everything you need to buy and everything you need to do before you start RVing. And you'll be like, I'm gonna call the whole thing off. I know, it can be overwhelming. So don't do that. We used to be boaters, and my friend Joel says, all you need are the boat keys and a bathing suit. And when we would go up to Lake Powell, and we'd have to remember all of these things, and I was driving to Lake Powell, oh, did I remember this, did I remember this? And I'd remember what Joel says. All you need are your boat keys and your bathing suit. Now, with that being said, you wanna be prepared, and so we have other ideas for you. So let's first talk about tools. What tools do you need to bring? Probably the most essential tool is this thing, okay? Now, before our RV trip, I thought this was like finding gold. Those things that you search for, like rings at the beach? Yeah, I think you're close. I think you're close. I did not know before we left, and please don't make fun of me, because I have about 1,200 other comments that did that for you, that the lug nuts on your trailer are not the same size as your truck. I did not have one of these special little things, and guess what? It didn't come with the RV either. No. This is an essential tool. This is called a four-way. Thank you for saying what it is, yeah. The other thing you might wanna have are wrenches for just about every bolt. These are big. They're big. They're kind of fun. Yeah, aren't these fun wrenches? I wrench. I feel like Gene Fonda. I could exercise. A wrench for every bolt you have on your trailer. So go around and look at your leaf spring bolts. Leaf springs are those things behind the tire. Yeah, yeah, behind the tire. Look for bolts, because you might need to be tightening some things, and you just wanna make sure you have a wrench for everything on your trailer, or your fifth wheel, or your RV. Are you saying no, you're nuts? All right, a couple other things. This right here is an infrared temperature gun. This is fantastic. You can quickly get the temperature of all four of your tires when you happen to pull over. This is one of my favorite little tools. This is a digital PSI reader. It's just so handy to just put it on and have a digital reading of your PSI on your tires. That's pretty cool. Or if you wanna step it up a notch, this right here is from Tire Minder. I feel like there needs to be a drum roll. I know. This is brand new. We prepare for a complete installation and review of this product, but this is a Tire Minder TPMS, Tire Pressure Monitor System, where I can get the PSI and temperature of all eight tires on the rig in the cab at all times. Guys, we are gonna super geek out on this. This is gonna be really fun. So we'll give you that scoop in a totally different video. Leveling blocks. These things are fantastic. They snap together. They're adult Legos. They are. And they're perfect for putting under your tongue of the trailer if you have a travel trailer. And they're great also for leveling out. If you need to kind of put one side, you can kind of put them out like this and then back up on them. Used them yesterday. But even big motorhomes have these, everything. Yeah, these things are great. You can also put these down for your stabilizers to go on so your stabilizers don't go into like muddy dirt and grass and stuff like that. Yeah, or rocks or whatever. And the other tool that we have that is super fun is a collapsible wagon, because there's so many times where you have to bring stuff back and forth and you can kind of like tell, and you could tell your kids, hey, go take out the trash. You can use the wagon. Makes things a little bit more fun. So- Not to mention laundry. It's super nice for laundry. Oh my gosh. We use it for laundry and trash. Okay, and Caleb here is bringing me this little puppy right here. Now, I'm not promoting this tool. What I'm promoting is this Robinson's drill bit. A Robinson's is a square. Robinson is the square. And a lot of RVs use that particular type of screw. Yes. Our entire, every single screw inside of our RV is that square. Is that. And we didn't own one. Very popular in Canada. So anyway, this is pretty handy. So make sure you don't leave home without one of those if your trailer has them. Number three, we're gonna talk tires right now. Tires, tires, tires, super important. But the first thing you can do is check the date on your tires. What does that mean? It means if you're buying a brand new travel trailer, it does not mean that your tires are new. It wouldn't be bad to go in and take a look at the date on the inside of the tire. I think it's a four digit number so that you can see if they're actually new. Other thing is you should really know the load capacity of your tires. So the reason that we know so much about tires is because we've had three blowouts. I mean, blowouts. Remember, professional newbies. We are professional newbies. Professional newbies. The reason we had blowouts is because we did not have the proper tires on the rig. Eight ply D rated tires and Ginger, our trailer weighs 9,200 pounds. That's just doesn't gonna cut it. It wasn't a good mix. We have not had a single flat knock on wood since we changed to a 10 ply E rated tire. And we have two spares now. And you can even go up from there, but it really depends on your rim size and all of that. But tires, again, another video. But we really want you to make sure that you know what you're driving. We're gonna do another video on tire safety and whatnot because it really, knowing your tires is important and knowing your PSI is important. So I have 80 PSI tires on Ginger right now. I run them at about 76 PSI. And I have a TPMS so that I know when the tires are hot that I'm right at 80. Okay, guys, number four. This one's important. How to avoid mistakes and accidents. Wow, that is a video all in and of itself. Yeah, it really is. But here are a few simple tips to break that down so that you can have the best time possible and you won't hit too many roadblocks on the way. The first one is go slow. Remember, you have nowhere to go and you have all day to get there. That's what I keep saying to myself, go slow. Mistakes are made and accidents occur when you're feeling rushed. And that could happen when you're feeling like brand new at something. So maybe you're at a dump station and you're like, this is the first time and people are lining up and you're like, I gotta go fast. Don't worry about it. You're just gonna go through the system and get it done right. It can happen if checkout is at 11 o'clock and you know that an RVer is waiting for your site and so you're going a little bit faster than normal. The important thing here is to know that you're not actually in a hurry. When I have been in a situation where I was trying to hurry and do things fast, A, I was not doing it any faster than if I was taking my time, and B, that's when the mistakes have happened. So you can check out the episode where we completely ripped off our awning out of New York. What else did I break? I don't know what else you broke. I broke the screen of my iPhone right before we crossed the border into Mexico and I'll tell you why that happened. Trish came into the cab and she says, do you have the car registration? And I panicked and I was like, I don't know if I have the car. I don't know if I put it back after I was getting insurance from Mexico. And in that moment, I went from a calm state to a hurried rush state. Hyper. Hyper state. And so I don't wanna know and I immediately wanted to check. So I got right up and out of the truck. My phone was in my lap and it crashed onto the ground. That's a perfect example of the fact that I was not in a hurry. So hurrying makes you hyper and it usually costs you money. So if you can slow down, remember this is all about fun and you have all day to get there and just kind of create a system for your family so that either everybody has a role or they know that when you're trying to accomplish something, it's time for them to sit back and let you finish the job. You have a really good point. I have a system for everything. When you dump, dump the same way every time. Do this, then that, then this every time. Put your tools back and everything right back where they go so you're not looking for them. Maybe even a checklist. You know, we have a whiteboard right next to the door in the RV and it's fantastic for you can create a checklist or even a grocery list or a how-to Q&A video list. Or extra Spanish words to learn. I've done that too. Okay, number five, communication. Finding ways that you guys can communicate together because you may not be doing this alone. You might be doing it with your significant other or with your family or with friends. And when you start adding those layers in and rushing around, you need a system to communicate. So when you're backing into a spot, you need a certain way to talk. When you're- Getting set up in a new site. Yes, and then also being really careful about what you need and how you communicate it, where the blame is. Let's not play the blame game. Let's say, hey, I need this. Anybody know where it is? Well, here's what happens is everyone's so excited to go RVing and they get their RV and they're excited to go on a trip and emotions are high and everyone's looking forward to it. And then the first thing happens, you need to hook up the RV and something goes wrong. And so the expectation is, hey, this was supposed to be fun and now something's going wrong and it's really easy to snap at your family. And I could imagine that there were some, maybe some families out there that are about a day into their trip all yelling at each other saying, well, this is not what I thought it was supposed to be like. So it would be maybe our recommendation to in advance or after the fact, talk about how you wanna handle certain situations. So before you get to the site, what we'll do is we'll say, hey, we're about to arrive in 10 minutes. When we pull in, the first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna back the trailer in and then we're gonna get set up. And after we're set up, I'm gonna pull the bikes down. A lot of times our kids will stay in the car until we're completely backed in. That's my preference. Is the kids stay in the car, then we back in. We're communicating either visually or vocally through radios. Now, it's not always gonna work, but at least we have a system. And I think that for the person who's doing the towing, the hooking up, everything, I mean, if you're the companion to that person, it's what do you need, how can I help you? Or if you just need to like chill out and sit back. Because that's a lot of responsibility. And I know that if Mark is backing into something or when we pulled out in New York and he hit the tree with the awning, I would have done the same thing in the same situation. So I have to be really careful about, hey, how can I help? And let's just get through this situation. Yeah, I mean, a lot of times when people are communicating, well, how could that have happened? Or how could you have done that? If you can talk about it in advance, or if things didn't go right, don't talk about it then. Talk about it. Give yourself a second. Yeah, give yourself a second. Let it go, take a deep breath, wait until happy hour or breakfast, and then say, hey, remember yesterday when I was backing in? Can I tell you how we should do that or what I suggest next time? Go a lot better. Go better for your marriage and your kids. Okay, okay. Number six, know your measurements. Okay, what does that mean? It means know how high your trailer is. Super important. That number, until it's ingrained in your head, which ours is 10'4", 10'4", but it's 10 feet, four inches. Until it's ingrained in your head, it wouldn't even be a bad idea to write it down and put it in your cab. Because when you're on the East Coast and you're barreling toward a tunnel and you look up and that tunnel says 9'2", from experience, and you go, close your eyes, and then somehow, it's not good, all right? I don't even know how that happened. It wasn't 9'2", but the sign said 9'2". Well, I think it was because we were in the middle of the tunnel. All I know is we potentially were a statistic and we avoided it. It was gonna be bad news. Okay, number two, know the entire length. We're 53 feet from the front bumper of the truck to the back bumper of the trailer. Okay, this is important because when we were in Zion, we realized that we couldn't get in through the whatever entrance it was, through the main tunnel, because you could only be 50, and we were 53, and that's really important. So you're gonna get yourself into a situation that you can't get out of. Yeah, there's places up by Mount Rushmore and the West Coast where the roads are so windy, they limit the length of the rig. So know that. If you own a travel trailer or fifth wheel, know the distance between your two tires on a double axle trailer. This space right here. We're gonna get into this. I'm visual aid right here. We're gonna get into this with a whole separate video, but our trailer was recently dog tracking, and there was five inches on the left side, eight inches on the passenger side. That is a problem. Huge. It's a big problem. It means that the tires on the front are gonna become bald. It means the tires on the front, on the front right, are gonna get hot, which they were. But there was a huge underlying problem. It's the same way with your health, right? You get symptoms for a reason. It was a missing, to give you a little clue, it was a missing center pin that has been since resolved, and we're gonna get into a video on that. Yes. Okay, number seven. We are going to talk about boondocking. Now, if you are brand new to this whole idea, you're gonna be going from one place to the next and some convenient location, like a Walmart. Ooh, Walmart Resort. Love those. Walmart Resort or a Cabela's will appear. Oh, hey, that's like five stars. Oh, that's amazing. So, and you might be like, okay, that's super weird and random. I'm spending the night in a parking lot. It totally works. Boondocking is amazing, and just kind of get comfortable with the idea. What else can you say about it? If you're brand new to RVing and you're maybe a weekend warrior, you might be thinking, I'm gonna just park in Walmart and go to sleep. The first night we slept in Walmart, it felt a little weird sleeping in an RV in Walmart. Now, it's like 10 in the morning, I'm coming out, I'm like, oh. Okay, speaking of boondocking, the number eight is know your tanks. Okay, gray water management, if you'd spent a lot of time not hooked up, there are some tricks to the trade. Trish has come up with a fantastic idea for a little, she's got a little red bucket, and the red bucket goes in the kitchen sink. So that way, when we wanna wash our hands and do dishes and things that accumulate kind of sink water, that doesn't go down in our gray water tanks. And because it's just from like, it's just soapy water from washing our hands, we could just go outside and just pour that into a bush or a tree or something like that. But it really does prevent a lot of gray water going down our tank. Speaking of knowing your tanks, that little indicator that tells you how full things are, those don't work. Maybe they do in the lap of luxury in somebody's wonderful rig. Yeah, maybe somebody's rig, they don't work in ours. More times than not, that those are off, like big time. But I'll tell you, as a full timer, you won't even pay attention to those. Those indicators aren't even relevant anymore. After a while, you just get to know your rig, and you just basically know how full certain things are, and when you need it done. Hey, I can go this many days, I can do this, I can do that. Speaking of tanks, speaking of tanks, you can get some bacteria and corrosion in your freshwater tank. It wouldn't be a bad idea, depending on how often you use it, to put just a couple teaspoons of Clorox in your freshwater tank and let that slosh around. Or, if you wanna get aggressive, you can put a quarter of a cup in there and then drive somewhere and then dump it out completely and rinse it out. However you wanna clean it, but just know, every once in a while, your freshwater tank could use a little. Yeah, just think if you had a gallon of water and you just kept refilling it, refilling it. At some point, it's gonna get kinda nasty inside. So, anyway. All right, one of the big questions we get is how do you plan your routes? Trish? Do I go back to this? No, I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding. No, she's not. So, I'm kind of, maybe a little. Okay, so we, for our route planning, we figure out the big destinations first, and then we fill in the blanks. But what this does for you is that if there's some place that you absolutely have to see, you make sure you get reservations. If there's some place that's high traffic, like when we went to Maine, we knew we were not gonna get waterfront unless we got our little act together and put a deposit on. If you're going someplace in the West Coast, you might need to get on it. However, if you leave a little wiggle room, a little noodling around, what you're gonna do is you're gonna learn along the way, because RVers are awesome, and they have so much to teach you. So, if you ask a few questions, you're gonna learn about the immediate area, you're gonna learn about really great trips, and you won't be totally locked in to every single step on the way, so it leaves some flexibility, so you can have a little fun and figure out something new. Like Devil's Den, that's how we found that in Florida. And we didn't have any plans, and we didn't have any reservations, so we just popped over there, and then we found out Devil's Den was like $24 a night parking, so then we stayed the night. Yeah, so it all kind of fell into place. Because we had the flexibility. We knew that we had to be in Pensacola by a certain date, but everything before that date was whatever we wanted to do. And you got Walmarts and all sorts of other things. Yes, so figuring that out, but one of the things that you absolutely must do right now is go on the App Store and get Allstays. Oh my gosh. Oh man, that's so cool. And people leave little reviews about Walmart parking lots, about RVs. They give you like little dollar signs so you know kind of what you're getting into before you even get there. Not to mention BLM. It's how we find any of the BLM we've done is through Allstays. And BLM, by the way, stands for Bureau of Land Management, and you can basically park kind of in the wilderness up to 14 days for free. Yeah, it's mostly on the West Coast. Yeah, a lot on the West Coast. Yeah. There's like donkeys in the background. There are donkeys. That's legitimate donkey. That's legitimate donkey action going on back there. Donkey action? Well, it's like, brr, brr, brr. Number 10, we are on number 10. We're rounding this out, man. We're bringing it home, sliding in. Okay, so number 10. 10. Yes, document. Yes. It's kind of important. It is. It's kind of important because you're making these experiences, and we have to say that they're probably gonna be some of the best things for you to look back on. So document what happened, however you like to do it. Camera, video. Blog, YouTube, whatever. Whatever you like to do. Have your kids write one sentence about something, but make sure that you also include the things that go wrong because you and I both know those are the funniest stories. Those are the best ones. And plus, your friends will hate you a little less if you're transparent about that type of stuff. Oh, we had an amazing time. Nothing went wrong. No, no, no, everything's fine. Yeah, stuff goes wrong. Stuff goes wrong. It's gonna happen, but you're gonna make it through. It'll be no big deal. But there's another thing about documenting that I think is really important, and that is after you get off of a trip, document the things that you liked and the things that you didn't like. So before we were full-time, Trisha and I would take a trip for maybe a few days, and on our way back, we would document some things that we would do next time. And then the next year, when we would take the same trip, we would look at that document. We'd be like, oh my gosh, I totally forgot that I didn't use this and I wanted more of that and whatnot, so. That was created from a habit at Thanksgiving. We would throw Thanksgiving, and then we'd look and see what was like nobody ate and what everybody loved, and then we'd go, save this recipe, get rid of that, chicken wing. That's right, and then next Thanksgiving, we'd pull up and be like, oh yeah, everyone really liked this. Oh, now I know exactly what to go to the store for. And you kind of evolve, you can keep growing instead of constantly digging yourself out. Yeah, there you have it. Those are the top 10 things you need to know as an RV newbie, and if you want more ideas on the stuff that's inside the trailer, Trish has a fantastic RV tour loaded with ideas of how to basically make the most of the space inside of an RV, so check that out. And if you're super brand new to RVing and you don't even know how to hook up or set up, you can check out our hookup video that we did in Mount Rushmore, and I go through step-by-step, leveling everything, and I think I was about a month and a half old then, so I covered every single detail. Yeah, because if you're new, you want all the goods. You want it all. Don't leave it out, because I don't know. Okay, where does this thing go? I don't know where this thing goes. Overall, stay confident and get out there, because you are gonna have so much fun. RVers are the coolest people. They just wanna hang out, they wanna share their stories, and you will learn and have a blast. And if you wanna meet anybody at the RV park, just raise the hood of your truck, and in about 15 minutes, you're gonna know about half of the people there. Have a couple cold beers ready. Yes. There you have it, guys. We'll catch you this weekend with another episode of Keep Your Daydream. Where I am spanking new, sparkly. Sparkly. All right, that's it, that's all we got. Okay, bye, guys.