on top of that it will only wet the appetite for more LOL. All throughout the winter we ask each other if you want to go camping then bust out laughing. The cat loves the adventure and is one of our main entertainment's.
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Hydro Junkie, that was a hilarious story! We've seen similar to that a few times, only not really to that degree..LOL. It's usually pretty easy to spot a new RV'er. There's a bit to learn it, but if you buy it from a decent dealer or someone that will show you the ropes it's not bad at all.

We worked on deciding what we wanted in an RV for about 3yrs this time. We've owned a few others in years past, so it wasn't necessarily new to us... but it had been quite a while since we'd been RV'ing.... and our kids are all grown and gone(3 girls in their 30's) We wanted to get something this time just for us, that we'll keep for a while, and actually use more then we did our previous rigs.

We're retired now, and wanted something simple, and affordable, so we went the used route and bought our Class C, real clean with only 22,000 miles. Was able to save several thousand dollars on it compared to a newer unit. No slides for us though. It's just the wife and I now, and we're outside most of the time anyway. We figured we didn't want the weight factor, and the unit we liked didn't have slides anyway. It's literally one less thing to deal with. Hook ups are a cinch, and with a 31' and no slides, we can get in anywhere. We're very happy with it.

We're heading over to Death Valley next week to hang out, do some hiking, and kick back for a while. I toss a plane or 2 in the back and we have a few fields we'll stop at along the way and do some flying. It should be beautiful over there.

That is one of those stories you just can't make up.
To make things even funnier, they had relatives in another rig by the gate to the pool, across the campground. The relatives were experienced RVers that left our neighbors to their own trouble as they felt it would help them to learn. I actually felt sorry for the group as they were headed to Yellowstone for a total trip of two weeks, one RV being total rookies and the other experienced that refused to help the rookies out. If it was me, I don't think I would have taken the trip with the relatives. It was kind of like watching the Griswalds trip to "Wally World" in the movie American Vacation except that it wasn't going to be a vacation

From your description, they kinda sound like the sort of people you can't tell anything to until after they've screwed up. Even being newbies, I'd think they should have read up on it and known how to hook things up and what's ok and not.
We see guys like that in RC training too. There was one 2 years ago at my club. Showed up with an RTF foamy trainer. Said he'd watched YouTube videos and been flying on the sim so he was ready. An instructor strongly suggested getting on the buddy box or at least having an experienced pilot trim his plane for him first. He refused. On a side note, he didn't have his AMA or club membership, so per our lease regulations he shouldn't have been allowed to fly on his own. But I wasn't privy to the conversation until later. He took off, promptly made a hard right turn, and scattered EPS all over the roof of the pit area next to the parking lot. After some colorful language, he said he was getting a refund because the plane was "ready to fly."
Now I know that the best thing to do is leave the guy alone and let him think it out over the next few days. But sometimes I just can't resist a good burn. So since I just happened to be the closest person to him while he was retrieving what he could from the roof and still going off about how he got gipped and was going to complain, I calmly told him, "Piloting skills aren't included in the box. Just because the plane was ready to fly doesn't mean you are."
I managed to survive that exchange, and he left. The craziest part is he came back about 3 weeks later, having bought another foamy. The whole refund thing didn't work out after all. He again refused help (both incidences were on training day, so instructors were everywhere) and again flipped his plane over and crashed it. This time, I brought up the AMA situation with the instructor who had talked with him and we had an impromptu meeting about following rules so we don't lose our property. The guy never came back.

Not really. There were actually three things going on in that campground:
1) Rookie Husband wanted to learn and was like a sponge. From what I could tell, the dealer that they bought the trailer from didn't really go over everything with them before letting them take the trailer home. Due to that lack of instruction, they watched the internet where, like everything else, they were given conflicting information that had them more confused than helped
2) Rookie Wife was only concerned about being able to be comfortable and didn't really consider that there were other things that had to be done BEFORE she could be comfortable. Where my wife helps me out leveling and such, the Rookie Wife felt she didn't need to do anything except run out the slides and kick her feet up. It's not quite that easy.
3) Experienced Relatives left them to their own devices, not showing up until after all the work was done. Had they come down and tried to help out the rookies, we wouldn't have had to step in and help. Since they were taking a two week long trip, the experienced relatives should have been helping them with setting up and tearing down the camp site and what to do both inside and out to get the trailer ready to move. The wife learned this from a friend when we stayed with them in their 32ft Winnebago. We've not had anything damaged inside in the 5+ years and 20,000 plus miles we've had our trailer due to her pre-trip packing

Sounds like you guys have it right. My father in law owns an RV. He bought the biggest one that he could park by his house, because that's how he decides on everything he buys- which one is the most expensive and the most trouble. He mostly owns it so he can fix it. I've never known him to take a trip in it without first needing to replace a battery, or tire, or get the generator fixed, . Watching all the time, aggravation, and resources he's put into his has made me hesitant, but I've always also thought it can't really be that hard for everyone. His boat and house are the same story.

I know a lot of people that are the same way, buy the biggest and most expensive so you can show up everyone else.
The problem with doing that is how practical is it? For the wife and I, our 26 footer is big enough for what we need. It has a place to sleep, a place to cook, a place to eat and a 3/4 bath. To go larger is to add problems that we just don't need to add. Slides can and do leak and add a considerable amount of weight. Large holding tanks add a lot of weight as well, specifically when full. My trailer has a total capacity of 42 gallons(36 in the tank & 6 in the hot water heater) of fresh water, 19 gallons of sink/shower drain(grey) water and 19 gallons of sewer(black) for the toilet. If I had all three tanks full, that would be 668 pounds, if the black tank just had liquid in it. We will be taking our trailer out a couple of times over the next few months, one dry camping(no hook ups) and one with power and water. Both have their own challenges. Dry camping requires you to monitor you propane, water and batteries very carefully. Use too much of any and you will run out. When you have power and water, you can never run out of either one, which creates it's own problems. With the water, you also have to be careful of over-filling your holding tanks. Put too much water down the drain and you will have water backing up into the shower/tub and/or sinks. What I prefer to do is to dump the holding tanks as soon as possible after camping or when the tanks register a specific amount of contents. Many rest areas have dump stations and I prefer to stop at them as they are free. Many camp grounds have free dump sites for those who have stayed there the previous night as well.

We kept it simple and affordable as well with our 31' Class C. No slides, didn't need the weight or mechanical issues that can come from them... a slide is nice and all, but we're outside most of the time. We have smaller holding tanks, around 40 gallons I believe, again weight factor.. and we're conservative.

We tossed around the idea of a conventional trailer or toy-hauler, but neither of our vehicles will comfortably tow something that large. We're at a 3500lb tow capacity, and a trailer would be borderline heavy, and loaded it would probably be over weight. There are light trailers, but they're generally more money... and we just didn't want to chance it with our vehicles. So we opted for the Class C, with a powerful Ford V-10. Probably the best power plant for a large RV. Really about the only one other then the Chevy Workhorse.. which isn't highly rated. The Ford V-10 does it's job very well, and is quiet smooth power. We stayed well away from anything diesel... servicing those, and getting them worked on can be challenging, whereas the Ford V-10 can be serviced by many places...and parts are readily available. We probably won't need parts for a long time though.

It would have cost us much more if we went for a trailer, as we would have needed to replace one of our current vehicles with a tow vehicle. If you already have a tow vehicle though you're half way there, and a nice used trailer can be had for a very reasonable price. If you have a vehicle to tow, a nice trailer can be had for probably $10k or less if you shop it. Toy-hauler styles are a bit more expensive, but still not bad. Another factor for our Class C is it tows our plane/toy trailer... or whatever we want. We couldn't carry my planes with a conventional trailer, my planes are too big to fit through any RV door. If you fly smaller planes, the sky's the limit though.

So there' was much consideration before we bought this recent RV. Hopefully it will last us for years. We did 7,000 miles last year, and are about to take our first trip this year into Death Valley... after that the IMAC season starts for us here in Central Cali, and we can get out and fly those events. They've already started in Az, and So Cal, and we have to catch up to them.

Lost the op sometime back as the topic jumped ship as usual LOL

But, the question is "was it because the topic jumped ship or was it because he didn't like the advice he was given?

I've seen topics shift but this is ridiculous. No wonder the op bailed out. Who could blame him?

The OP's last activity on this site was

• Last Activity: 02-18-2020 09:03 PM

If you read and do a timeline on comments, it's likely he might not have gotten the information he was needing(for whatever reason)..... It had nothing to do with any current topics... I digress, as I'm guilty of going off topic, but really it wouldn't have mattered.... he hasn't been on this site to read anything past that time stamp I put up. Think what you want though, and draw your own conclusions. It's not too often at all I go off topic, but it was a good off topic conversation I thought.

... but I guess the topic police have now entered the scene. I'm guilty, I'm sorry someone apparently had a problem with it. I can take the hit and do the time. I'll just take my RV and hit the road.
It was nice chatting with you all. Bye.

I don't see a problem here , ALL threads drift after the original topic has gone stale , and the only time it's a problem is when the sub topic gets nasty . And here we have a few guys talking about their RVs ? I hardly see that as reason for calling in the thread purity police , and I don't even own an RV ;)

I don't generally like going off on tangents if the original topic is still live, but this one ended as soon as the OP saw that we weren't going to do his homework for him. I might have been too harsh; I usually am not with new people. But I really thought he was probably about a 10th grader by the way he wrote and what he seemed to already know. When I realized that he was a college senior, I just lost all patience.

I agree that it appears that the OP had bailed prior to the RV talk starting however from a different perspective, as a Composites kinda guy when I would see that there was a new reply to this thread I would take a look incase there was something useful I would be able to contribute. It ended up being a small waste of my time. I have in the past when in someone else's thread and asked a off topic question suggested a new thread in which I would be more then happy to answer the question. I have also apologized to a thread OP when it appeared that somone specifically came into their thread to rudely object to some information that I provided.