Our First Trip in the RV – Part One

This weekend we are traveling to Taylorsville Lake for two nights.  This will allow us to figure out the RV and really test the different systems.  Taylorsville Lake is not too far from our house so if necessary we could easily travel back home.  We left Sunday afternoon around 1:30pm, we needed to stop at a fueling station to fill up the RV.  Since the RV is a diesel, I found a station where pulling in and out should be easy.  There aren’t any tight turns, and the pumps face North to South allowing easy access.When we arrived at the gas station there was plenty of room for me to pull in and get close to the diesel pump.  Luckily the pump was near the entrance we entered.  I pumped $100 in the tank which was the limit for one transaction.  This nearly filled the RV up so I called it good.  As we were getting things ready to pull out someone pulled in front of me blocking my exit.  They then went inside without pumping any gas, very frustrating.  After a couple minutes someone else came out that was parked in front of the store and they left leaving room for me to get around the other cars.  So we were off, next stop the lake.

As we turned on the road leading to the lake the kids who were following in the van didn’t make the light.  We pulled over to the side of the road to wait and I turned on the hazard lights.  By this time the kids were already heading our way so I pulled back on the road, but I couldn’t get the hazard lights to turn off.  We ended up driving a mile or so with them on, until we came to our turn.  When I turned on the turn signal the hazards turned off.  The kids were laughing about the hazard lights the whole time.

I ended up taking the wrong turn, so my wife began looking for a place to turn around.  About a mile down the road there was a parking lot, which looked a lot larger on the map.  I was able to squeeze through the parking lot and turn around.  The rest of the trip was uneventful and we arrived at the campground safely.

There wasn’t anyone manning the booth at the campground, but their sign stated we could just go ahead to our site.  I had reserved a handicapped site, so it was all asphalt instead of gravel.  It took some maneuvering to position the RV where I wanted it due to the curve of the site.  Once we got positioned we put the jacks down to level the RV.  My son asked if we were going to use the jack pads since it is asphalt, good catch so back up with the levelers and we positioned the jack pads and put the levelers down.

I hooked up the water hose to the RV hoping to avoid having crawl under the slide out once we put it out.  I forgot the slide out would also block the electrical cord bay.  We started to put the slides out, I was outside looking for any obstacles and my son was manning the controls.  He put the slide out about a foot and then stopped.  I went inside to see what was going on and the kids told me a drawer in the bedroom was open and the slide was about to hit it.  My daughter held the drawer closed and the slide was put out the rest of the way with out incident.  The bedroom slide was put out with no issues.

I then turned of the engine and generator, I also turned off the A/C.  I got us plugged up to the electrical connection and we waited for the SurgeGuard to verify the electricity was properly wired and send power to the RV.  This process takes about 2 minutes.  Once we had power I turned on the A/C.  The A/C kicked on and then we started smelling something burning.  My son and I ran outside to the electrical bay but couldn’t smell anything burning.  We went back inside and didn’t smell it again.  I hate things like this, something isn’t working but we can’t figure it out.

The RV was incredibly hot, just like the night we spent in the RV dealers campground.  The air was set on 72 but the RV was around 85 degrees.  We just couldn’t cool off, luckily we had brought a fan that we setup and it began to help a little.  It was a very hot afternoon in the RV.  We ended up drinking a lot of cokes, especially since the water at the campground tasted like sulfur.  After dinner my daughter and I went to the local grocery store and bought more cokes and also some ice cream to help cool us off.

As we were getting ready for bed we noticed the burning smell in the bedroom.  I ended up placing my nose in the A/C vent and could smell the burning smell.  Turns out the bedroom A/C was only blowing hot air which was in the 90’s.  I shut it off and we put the fan in the bedroom so we could try and cool off to sleep.