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Thursday, June 18, 2020

Top 7 items for your first RV trip

You top 7 items and a few bonus items for your first RV trip.
 
1.You should have a power cord(30 or 50 amp based on your specific connection) if you plan to connect to power in an RV park. If your boon docking your power cord may connect to a generator and you may needed an( 30 to 50) adaptor.

2. A Fresh water hose or full fresh water tank. We like the blue zero G 25' with a camco water filter.  this should be a potable water hose and not a general garden hose if you dont want the general garden hose taste.

3. Sewer hose - all that water from your freshwater tank or park connection has to go somewhere and that is normally your black or grey water tank. You will need a way to drain those tanks. We like the Valterra 15' dominator hose. 10' has been to short and 15 has worked great as an in between the 10 and 20' versions. your airstream can hold 2 10' versions but they just take more work to set up and tear down vs starting your camping earlier.

4.Leveling blocks or a way to level your rig side to side / front to back for a comfortable nights rest and for your RV refrigerator to work correctly. We like the lynx 10 pack. They are bright orange so less likely to drive off and leave them. We also hear some good things about Anderson drive up leveler but know too many people that have broken them on rocks and gravel after just a few uses. Leveling side to side is the first part of backing into you camp site.

5. Chocks to keep your MH or trailer where you put it. We like the big rubber blocks or x chocks if you have tandem wheels. Just remember to put these out as soon as your leveled and before you even think of unhooking. This is really step 2 of backing your trailer into your camp site. once your leveled put the chocks in tight especially if the site has some incline as the trail may want to slide a few inches once it pops off the ball of your tow vehicle. be safe and use a good chock.

6. Surge protector. We like the progressive mfg 50 amp model for our airstream. This saved us on our first trip as the power in the camp ground  kept going out and the  2 AC's would have been toast.

7. You should have a wrench or socket that fits your lug nuts. A big breaker bar to make it easy to loosen lug nuts and a cheap torque wrench to put the lug nuts back on our check them every few hundred miles on a new trailer since they tend to come loose until you get some road grime in there. As part of this tire changing kit a ramp or bottle jack able to sustain 50% of the full trailer weight would be very helpful. If course knowing where to put the jack is also every important to know before you need it. Technically this kit has 3 items in it but if you get a flat you will need all 3 to fix it. Or even if you call a service or somebody stops to help you, it's better to have the tools to complete the jobs.  Check your lug nuts before every trip(even  just down the driveway)

We have also included a bonus item
Your check lists
We have the following check lists and you can find a link to the detailed lists we use here.
Pre departure - these are items we do the day before we leave if we want to get a jump on packing or if we have some extra time.
Departure - this is our detailed list for inside and outside the day we are leaving. As an example our outside list starts as you walk out of the trailer and goes around the trailer in a clock wise direction.
Arrival- we have both internal and external and we use these even if we just stop for lunch. Better to check and verify than forget you left the waterpwater on while traveling.
Storage- this check list helps us get ready to store the RV for a few weeks or a few months. This could also double as winterization check list. Things like empty the hot water tank and turn off propane.

How we got started

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