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Invest in a current copy of the Woodalls Campground guide. WaldenBooks, Barnes & Noble, Borders all sell it, in the Travel section. It will be the best $25 you ever spent. It is THE indispensable guide to good campgrounds, telling you which ones are clean, how much they cost, and gives clear directions for how to find them from the Interstate. It also gives valuable information on local attractions.
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Be careful how much crap you load into your RV. It’s all too tempting to load it up with everything but the kitchen sink, because it looks so roomy and commodious, and you find yourself bringing out half the contents of your house, “Oh, we might need this”, and, “We can’t leave this behind.” So, what with microwaves, TV sets, box fans, Nintendos, luggage, spare shoes, pots and pans, food, Coleman lanterns, firewood, and whole truckloads of miscellaneous camping gear, you’ll wind up overloading it and have safety issues, because it’ll handle weird–and badly–if it’s loaded to the gunwales, plus if you hit a bad railroad crossing while overloaded you can actually break something. And there are serious safety issues with driving an overloaded vehicle at 60 mph.
The owner’s manual will have guidelines for how many pounds your rig can safely carry, and remember you have to figure in how heavy the full black-water, gray-water, and fresh-water tanks will be. Then as you pack, try to estimate how much you’re actually asking it to carry. And don’t forget the weight of the people, too.
Good info here.
http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/dl648/dl648pt9.htm
How you pack all this gear matters, too. Try to have the heaviest stuff, like the Xbox and the canned goods, over the axle. This probably means you’ll have to “stow for travel”, depending on how the storage is arranged in your RV–in our travel trailer, for example, “stowing for travel” meant the duffel bags with clothing came forward from the back bunkbeds onto the dinette, the microwave came off the counter to ride on the floor, and the various fans and lamps lay down flat on the floor. Then when you get to your camping spot for the night, you put everything where it goes. And the next morning you “stow for travel” again.
Just because the manufacturer installed some overhead kitchen cabinets doesn’t mean that you should put the canned goods up there. Put the heavy stuff down low.
And all the cabinet doors and drawers need to have those latches on them, because otherwise they’ll bounce open and you’ll open up the door to find silverware all over the floor.
Also, never travel with an ordinary pitcher full of liquid in the fridge. All juices, pops, milk, etc. need to have screw-tops on them, or otherwise be sealed shut, because things jounce around in there like you wouldn’t believe, and a pitcher of Kool-Aid, spilled, makes an ungodly mess.
- DON’T FORGET weiner roast equipment: marshmallows, matches, newspaper and cardboard scraps, hot dogs. In your kids’ minds, the success of your camping trip will all boil down to whether they had a campfire or not. That’s the thing they’ll remember when they get home. You don’t have to do it every night, but you do have to do it at least once.
And firewood–don’t assume that you’ll buy firewood as you go, because many campgrounds either don’t sell it, or they do but it costs an arm and a leg. And practically every state park and national forest you can name has strict rules against wandering around in the woods collecting firewood. Get one of those $3.00 firewood bundles at Kroger and some scrap lumber.
And get some long toasting forks–straightened coat hangers DO NOT work for this, the marshmallows and wieners just roll around and fall off into the fire, thus ruining the entire evening; be a big spender and pop for a bunch of those two-tined, regulation 3-foot long toasting forks. Wal-Mart sells them.
Do not try to start a slow and cranky campfire by squirting charcoal starter on it; you can cause a nifty explosion and someone can get hurt.
- At practically any campground, reservations are an excellent idea, and during July and August, are a necessity, even at the Mom-and-Pop “Park your RV in our cow pasture and run an extension cord to the house” sort of place. Calling ahead, and knowing you’ve got a place to park at the end of the day, makes a big difference at about 3 p.m. when everybody’s exhausted from driving.
At standing-room-only world-famous parks like Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon, reservations are a requirement, and sometimes need to be made weeks or even months ahead of time.
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Prices generally range from $20 to $50 a night, and it’s like with motels: they charge you by the number of people you’ve got on board. The more amenities the campground has (pool, laundry, game room, fishing pond, boat rides), the more expensive it’ll be.
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We traveled with 3 kids, and we found that investing a few extra dollars in a campground with a pool made a world of difference. It gives the kids something to do while Mom and Dad kick back and set up camp, for one thing. And knowing that they had “swimming in a pool” to look forward to at the end of the day made a big difference in the 2 p.m. doldrums, when you’ve finished with the morning’s attraction and now you just have to slog through the miles to get to your campground. “We’ll be there about 4:00, and then we’ll go swimming” kept the back seat reasonably quiet.
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Bring your own entertainment. Card games like Uno, decks of cards, Monopoly, books, crayons, whatever. Because there will be times when there’s “Nothing to Do!” Kids who are bored enough will play Scrabble, if you thought to bring it.
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All the state parks are way cheaper than the commercial campgrounds. This is because you get no bang for your buck: generally you get an electric hookup and a water hosepipe with potable water at your campsite, and that’s it. Plus scenery. A few state parks will offer sewer hookups, which is where you connect your black and gray-water outlet hoses directly to a designated hole in the ground. But most state parks just give you “electric and water”. And it’s cheaper that way. You’ve got the holding tanks in the RV, so you don’t really need to be connected to the sewer overnight. And then you get to discover the delights of the Dumping Station.
Dump your tanks whenever they’re half-full–do not put it off. Because once they’re full, they’re full, and nobody can use the potty. You do not want to be out in the middle of the Kansas interstate with a kid who needs to potty but can’t because the tank is full because you didn’t dump it.
Follow all directions at the dumping station to the letter. Also, the water that comes out of the hosepipe for rinsing out your sewer hoses is generally NOT potable (and will be so labeled), so don’t use it to fill up your fresh-water tank “while you’re there”.
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Just about every campground out there has a tiny “grocery” store at the office, where they will sell basics like marshmallows, matches, ice cream, candy, and postcards. But don’t expect to be able to buy bread, eggs, or milk. You need to take your food with you, because you can’t rely on finding fast food or a Kroger out in the boondocks. For trips longer than a weekend, figure on at least one grocery run in a town along the way.
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Laundry: most campgrounds have a tiny laundromat, so take a jar of quarters, dimes, and nickels. This saves you from having to wait to wash clothes until the office opens up in the morning and they can give you change. Also take your own bottle of laundry detergent, and your own fabric softener sheets. Some places have those soap dispensing machines, but it’s real expensive, and some places only have just the washer and dryer.
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Take twice as much film (or flash cards, or jump drives, or whatever) than you think you’ll need. Because camping is an invitation to a photography orgy. Really.
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And batteries: stock up on batteries for the camera, because you can’t always count on finding batteries at the camp store.
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Every person needs his own personal flashlight, for when you can’t find a campground and you end up at 8 pm at the state park that doesn’t have any more “electric” sites available. The Wal-Mart parking lot is well-lit, but you haven’t seen “dark” until you’ve spent a night in the woods with no electric. However, this is an excellent opportunity to take your kids out and show them the Milky Way.
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Designate one person to walk around the camper, when you break camp in the morning, and do an inspection patrol, looking for things like making sure all water, electric, and sewer hookups are not still hooked up. It’s embarrassing to drive off trailing a big orange extension cord.
And don’t forget the swimsuits on the clothesline.
- The majority of campsites out there require you to back your rig in, because your hookups are usually at the rear of the RV, and the electric outlets and water standpipe and sewer holes are always at the back of the campsite. So you usually have to back it in.
There are special campsites known as “pull-through” sites. These are campsites that you pull through, like a little road, and are intended for those big Greyhound bus campers and fifth-wheels, which are a bastard to back up.
So. You can request a pull-through site, even with your itty-bitty Volkswagen camper, but sometimes they’re all taken.
Backing an RV into a campsite is not something that everybody does instinctively. If you’re having trouble getting your rig into your assigned campsite, don’t be ashamed to leave it right there in the lane, walk up to the office, and ask either for another campsite, or have someone else park it for you. It’s much better to do that than to screw around with it, park it badly, and maybe ram it into the picnic table and break a taillight, or whack off the water pipe by backing into it. RV people are really friendly people, and actually, if you’re having trouble parking your rig, you’ll find you’ve got an interested audience at neighboring campsites, and there’ll be no shortage of folks happy to jump forward and park the wretched thing for you if you climb down and ask for help.
- In a Winnebago, for safety reasons you need to have ground rules for how much moving around the kids can do while you’re under way. Ask yourself, “If I flipped the rig right now, would they be safe?” Because rigs do flip.
Generally speaking, they need to be sitting down, facing front, belted in if possible. This means that no, they can’t set up shop on the floor and play Barbie or Legos. It’s tempting to treat the inside of the RV as a mobile living room, and to spread out with all your “stuff”, but it’s not safe. Plus, in some states, it’s illegal. In Illinois, for example, all the rules about child safety seats that apply to passenger cars also apply to RVs.
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There’s a reason for that special camping toilet paper: it’s thinner, it dissolves easier, and it won’t clog your sewer hose when you’re at the dumping station. 'Nuff said.
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Generally speaking, there are no RV parks in main cities, due to space considerations, but there are a few that do have them. They usually offer shuttle service to the various local attractions that are the reason why people wanna park their RVs there in the first place. These parks are invariably extremely expensive, are 100% concrete, have the rigs crammed in cheek by jowl, and will frequently also offer things like bingo and line dancing for the adults.
Chicago is one of the cities that does not have an RV park closer than Elgin or Tinley Park. I have no idea why.
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No, you cannot just pull over on a country road for the night. You will be rousted out at 2 a.m. by the local sheriff, who will courteously but firmly require you to take your camping self elsewhere. Ditto for pulling over into any kind of parking lot other than Wal-Mart–post office, car dealership, church. The cops will roust you.
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Take bug repellent.
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Take bug repellent.
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Take. Bug. Repellent.