Discover Our Pro Tips for RV Living (6 Months In)
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📍 Bahia Honda State Park
This blog post comes to you from the white sands of Bahia Honda State Park. Perhaps one of the nicest beaches in the United States, Drew and I alternate between staring at our computer screens and out onto the Caribbean blue waters in front of us. A gentle breeze keeps us comfortable with the intensity of the Florida sun. It’s a Tuesday in January, and according to The Weather Channel, it is 18 °F in my hometown of Souderton, Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, for full transparency, we just begrudgingly had to pay around $1,000 in fees while changing our domicile to the sunshine state, spending a few hours in the Clermont Tax Collectors for the privilege, and we are still in the process of tracking down a very important package that got lost in the chaos of changing our address. Just like always, RV life has us feeling like we’re blowing in the wind.
As of this morning, we have officially been full-time RV traveling for 6 months. For all intents and purposes, most people would probably consider us experts in the RV lifestyle, but from the inside, it feels like we are currently stuck somewhere near the lowest trough of the Dunning-Kruger Chart. Shown below, this simple graph puts a visualization to the shared human tendency to experience a steady decline in confidence about a subject as we become both more knowledgeable about it and then simultaneously begin to comprehend the vast complexity of that subject. One day we will climb our way out of the well, clawing tooth and nail, but at least for the moment, we sit at the intersection of low confidence and actually some substantial knowledge about RV living.
We've come a long way since our rookie mistake days, and since many of you have suffered through our stories of disaster over the last few months, I figured you should also be included in our triumphs. As a result, we created the following list of pro tips for RV living, all of which we didn't know when we started the lifestyle and also weren't able to find anywhere else online. Perhaps it will help those of you out there who are starting a life of travel freedom. Our deeply rooted imposter syndrome actually had us considering naming this blog our "adept tips'' but it simply didn’t roll off the tongue. No, we will call these our pro tips, and perhaps if we keep saying it, we will one day believe it.
Please enjoy the following Pro Tips for RV living, written 6 months into our adventure.
Do regular check-ins
Something we didn’t understand until living on the road full-time, is how much the lifestyle can steadily drain your energy. It’s all part of the territory of adventure, with a new destination around every corner and the constant grind of figuring out where you will go next, how long you will stay, and what you will do while you are there. Many months will go by before you realize it has been a while since you scheduled a moment to breathe. This is why it’s so important to check in with yourself and your traveling partners on a regular basis, slowing down the schedule on those days when you just need to sleep in and do absolutely nothing. Burnout can creep up on you if you don’t take the time to monitor your mood, and there's nothing worse than feeling worn out when you’re looking down the barrel of a long travel day. Fortunately, this situation is totally avoidable, and only requires you to be honest about your mental health.
Keep s'mores ingredients stocked
There are a lot of luxuries that you give up when you decide to live on the road: online shopping, a consistent hairdresser, unlimited hot showers. One thing that you gain while living in the RV? Besides the obvious travel freedom and abundant adventures, you also acquire the social acceptance of having s’mores whenever you damn well please. Drew and I keep s’mores ingredients on hand at all times, not because we eat them all that often, but because on the days when RV life seems to be working against us, we like to come back to the rig, turn on our fire pit, and make a s’more. It’s a little luxury that reminds us why we’re doing what we’re doing and all of the unique benefits that we receive in the process.
On the worst days, you actually burn your fingers on said s’more.
Never travel hungry or tired
It’s really no secret that driving our motorhome is more difficult than driving around town in our Jeep. It requires a high degree of concentration and calm nerves, both of which suffer dramatically if your tummy is growling at you and you are someone who has a tendency to get hangry like Drew and I do. When we first started traveling, we were so focused on getting to our next destination on time that we wouldn’t pull over for meals unless it was an absolute emergency. This is when mistakes happen, and its when we made some of our worst. Luckily, none of the lessons we had to learn were very expensive, but I do know some families who weren’t as lucky as us in this department. No one is an exception to this rule, not even you. So, if you’re halfway through a travel day and need a rest or a good old fashioned cheeseburger, do everyone on the road a favor, and pull over. Don’t forget either, Walmart locations, Cracker Barrels and travel stops will allow you to spend the night in their parking lot for free, so you really have no excuse for pushing through your exhaustion.
For a good example of why you should never travel if you’re hungry or tired, here is our rig stuck on the side of the highway. The full story of how this happened and how we got out of it can be found here.
Don't travel with empty fresh water tanks
Some people never travel with water in their fresh tank because it can add to your total weight, and cost you a bit of extra gas. Personally, we never travel without some fresh water for a few very important reasons. Your fresh water tank is important for passengers to use your bathroom and also to fill up their water bottles while on the road. One of the luxuries of driving in a motorhome is the fact that you often times don’t have to pull over at a rest stop when you have to pee, so why would you want to throw that perk out the window? The second reason refers to the previous tip, because if you ever have to call it a day, and spend the night at a rest stop, you’ll be thanking past you for stocking up on enough water to allow you to wash the day away.
As a bonus water tip, if you ever realize your grey tank is full, use your hose as a makeshift outdoor shower!
Keep towels handy
Try as they might, most RVs are never truly waterproof, but more water resistant. This becomes increasingly evident when you’re rolling in your slides in the middle of a rain storm. Sometimes there’s just no avoiding this. When it’s time to go its time to go, and until I master this sunshine dance that I’ve been working on, we have no control over the weather. While I keep practicing, I’ll keep my towels ready for moving days and I suggest you do the same. Personally, we put a towel at each corner of our living room super slide to catch any moisture that may have collected during the last storm. We leave them there while we drive, because if any water did make its way in, it will be sure to get absolutely everywhere as soon as you start driving. We also keep a small hand towel on a command hook by the front door. This lets us wipe our dog’s feet as he comes indoors, but would also work well for any small humans that you travel with.
Lower your expectations
Remember that scenario I talked about in the introduction? That beautiful day in the Florida Keys? Yeah, you won’t get that everyday. You may not get that every week, or even every month. One lesson that RV life has made sure to teach us on a regular basis is that you have to accept the good days along with the bad days. When the good days come your way, and they will come your way eventually, embrace every second you have with them. And as the bad days come, and they will show up as well, acknowledge them, knowing that they are impermanent. Lower your expectations, because those picture perfect lives of van life influencers you see on Instagram are all fake. Living life on the road will be hard, but it will also be worth it.
Just so we’re clear, it took us six months to squeeze in a work day at the beach.
Become members of the Calyx Institute
You're gonna want to read this one very carefully. There are a bunch of memberships that every RVer will tell you that you absolutely need. Sure, some of them have some cool perks (hello, Good Sam), but none of them are as epic as the Calyx Institute. The Calyx Institute is our secret to having high speed, unlimited, and completely unthrottled internet while on the road. Long story short, when Sprint was expanding their network, it was written into their contract that they had to provide affordable internet to non-profit agencies. The Calyx Institute was soon formed as a non-profit with the mission to educate the public about digital privacy. When you become a member of the Calyx Institute, they ship you a hotspot that can connect to both T-Mobile and Sprint cell phone towers, and unlike every other internet provider under the sun, the internet you receive from the Calyx Institute will never be throttled.
We opted for the 5G hotspot, so our initial investment for the first year of service was $750 ($62.50/month) and will be $500 ($41.66/month) for every subsequent year, but if you only want 4G speeds the prices decrease to an initial investment of $500 and will be $400 for every subsequent year. There is no monthly charge after that. Honestly, I was concerned that the whole thing was a scam before we started using it because unthrottled speeds are unheard of on the road. Let me be the lucky one to tell you that the Calyx Institute is legitimate, and it’s just as amazing as it sounds.
Here she is in all her glory! This is the 5G hotspot that the Calyx Institute will send your way when you become a member.
Know how your slides affect your leveling
The first time I tried to make eggs for breakfast in the RV, the pan nearly slid off the stove. Why? Because we leveled the RV, and then when we rolled out the slides, it subtly tipped the entire rig in their direction. We weren’t level, and it took us quite a few days to realize it. This not only makes breakfast hard to cook, but it also can be bad for your fridge. Now that we know this, we level our rig while taking into account how the leveling will change after extending the slides. The degree to which you may have to do this will depend on the number of slides you have and how big they are but it's absolutely something to look for and to take into account when necessary.
As beautiful as this spot was, it ended up being one of the worst offenders for un-leveling us because of how soft the ground was!
Keep electrical grease on hands
On our first day of RV life, when Drew and I originally went to pull away from our sticks and bricks home, we went to hook up our flat towed vehicle… and it didn’t work. The Invisibrake system which we use, which is supposed to depress the brakes on the Jeep as we apply them in the RV, wasn’t connecting properly and made for the most anticlimactic moment of our lives. It only took a short conversation with a friend about the issue for us to discover dielectric grease, a silicone compound that improves an electrical connection. It has saved our sanity countless times since then. Things just seem to shake loose in the RV, and more often than not, any loose connections that may be causing you issues can be temporarily repaired with a touch of dielectric grease. We use a dab on each end of our umbilical cord when hooking up our towed vehicle, and it gives us a sense of security knowing that the brake system will stay security connected during our drive. If you’re ever in a pinch, and need a way to improve an electrical connection before you take your rig to a professional, then this stuff may save your sanity as well.
Don't keep perishables in slide cabinets
If your RV has a slide, and that slide has cabinets, you may have noticed that the contents of that cabinet can get particularly warm on a sunny day. It’s strange, but makes a lot of sense when you really think about it. The roof of the slide is typically black, and that black roof is being exposed to direct sunlight for the extent that the slide is extended. Any cabinets directly underneath it basically gets treated to a natural heating system which isn’t the most ideal scenario for certain perishable items. We used to keep bread in our slide cabinet, and after throwing away our dozenth moldy loaf, we decided to completely reorganize our kitchen. Let me save you some time and advise you to avoid placing perishables in your slide cabinets to begin with.
Here, Charlie sits below the offending cabinets. On a warm day, you can actually feel the heat come out of them when you open them up!
Upgrade your bed
RV beds suck, and that’s not an opinion, it’s a recognized fact. Some manufacturers will give you the option of upgrading the mattress in your rig if you buy it new, but since many of us buy our motorhomes and trailers second hand, that’s not an option for us. Your bed is the most important piece of furniture in your home. It’s the place you will end every day and start every morning, so make it a place of sanctuary, not an uncomfortable slab of plywood posing as a mattress. I would go so far to tell you that if you only make one renovation to your RV before moving in, let it be your mattress. And for all those wondering, no, a mattress topper will not work just as well. I will accept thank you cards from your lower back sent directly to my personal mailbox.
I do recognize that many RVs require unusual mattress sizes, but we were able to find a great selection of mattresses at Brooklyn Bedding in a wide variety of RV friendly dimensions. We personally opted for the signature hybrid mattress in the RV King size, and it is one of the best investments we ever made.
Our lovable pup, Charlie, seems to enjoy our bed just as much as we do.
Find what works for you
At the end of the day, all of us full-time RVers can write as many tip blogs as we want. It’s up to you to get on out there and see what works best for you. You’ll figure out your setup, pacing and daily routine in your own time, but in order to do that, you have to, well, do it. There will always be a million reasons to delay the start to your life of adventure, but if you let those stop you, you’ll only ever dream of RV life. You really only need one reason to start so please let me be the one to give it to you. You are worthy of the life you’ve always dreamed of, and that life is waiting for you. Go ahead and live it.
Here we are when we first bought our home on wheels, back when we knew nothing about RV life. Somehow we survived, and so will you.
Were any of these tips helpful? Please let us know in the comments down below! And don’t forget to subscribe for more travel tips and science inspired destination guides across America.
Thank you for joining us at Discovery Detour, where the destination is always unknown.
