ependydad...Doug

We have a travel trailer. How would I finagle a Wal-Mart, Flying J, Cracker Barrel, etc. overnight?  Could I open a few slides, just a tad (no more than a foot), so we could move around a bit? Do you use a generator for anything?

 

We will decide when we have about 1 hour more of driving and my wife will look around 60 miles from where we are.

My preference is to use Walmarts for overnights. My wife will call ahead and ask if overnight parking is allowed. The answer is either a clear cut "yes" or "no" or a more vague, "we don't allow it but no one hassles you" or "well no, but if you have to stop, then you have to stop". If it's no or vague, we keep looking. If it's a yes, we'll ask if there is a part of the parking lot that they prefer us to be in. Don't feel weird about the questions- you're not the first to ask; they're used to it.

As for slides and generators- it comes down to a situation by situation basis. Don't ever block a parking lot "road". Some Walmarts have nothing around and the sound of the generator won't be an issue; other Walmarts have houses nearby and a generator may be a nuisance. As for slides, I'm in the "use them" camp- I "need" to open 2-3 slides for my camper to be livable (I could do it with none and with kids on the dinette/couch and me climbing over the bed, but I greatly prefer having slides out).

Other do/do not- stabilizers and landing gear are up to you. I personally don't put them down. I don't want the extra work in the morning or in the rare/unexpected event that I get chased out overnight. I want to get in the truck and roll. For folks with heavy rigs and in the hot summer- know that the small footprint of the jacks can poke through hot asphalt.

Do not bust out the grill, chairs, awning. You're parking, not camping. :)

As I said, I prefer Walmart over others- with my want for slides, I'm very restricted in where in a truck stop I can park. I'd keep driving and get a hotel before taking up 2 truck spots. I also would have a hard time personally taking a truck spot in a very full truck stop- opting instead to leave it for a trucker who is mandated to be off the road. (Though, some Flying J/Pilot have whole separate areas for RV parking.) I find the RV spots at Cracker Barrel are to short for my 60' bumper to bumper length.

Speaking of Casper mattresses. I don't know if they were one of the 3 or 4 that the Technomads (bloggers) have tried for the 90-100 day trials. Each company lives up to its word about taking them back and refunding their money.

For bdm, we upgraded to a Sleep Number bed in the camper and couldn't be happier with it. It comes in a variety of RV sizes.

The only real hassle was getting it shipped turned into a comedy of errors. But maybe they're better at that by now.

Now if we could just improve the sofabed.  :)

 

For the sofa bed, we have an air mattress and then on top of that we put a mattress topper on it. Between uses, we suck the air out of it with one of those vacuum bags. It compresses down quite nicely.

Good article.  How were you picked, are you from the Baltimore area?

The reporter contacted a friend of mine (founder of Fulltime Families). My friend knew I launched from near Baltimore and put us in contact. We launched from Columbia, MD- which is about a 1/2-hour from Baltimore.

We have a celebrity in our midst!

I mean, I always knew I was famous... :)

My family was 1 of 3 families who were written about in a Baltimore, MD newspaper article for this week's paper about "Families ditch traditional homes, make road trips a way of life":

Families ditch traditional homes, make road trips a way of life - Baltimore Sun

Weird, I tried to fix it, but here it is again:

http://nowornever.learntorv.com/2016/07/a-long-weekend-in-myrtle-beach.html

You link is pointing back to FF.net, not your blog. Just FYI :)

Shhh, if I post bad links - people will think there's progress and that I'm just an idiot.

On 6/5/2016 at 11:48 PM, twiceblessed....nacole said:

This is cool!!

Thanks! My wife found the cork board at Target or somewhere like that. The pins were here idea. She's still not crazy about the style of pin, but it's tiding her over for now.

On 7/3/2016 at 0:30 PM, disney4dan said:

This is cool, but I have noticed a conspicuous lack of pins in the New England area!  I hope they get to travel through our nice looking part of the country sometime!

Believe it or not, that was initially the plan. Since we thought this was a 1-year trip, we'd exclude the north-east since we could explore there any time from our home in Maryland. Now that we're staying on the road, it's hard to say when we'll make it up there.

But, in other news... blogging is hard. It took me over a month to get the next less than 1-week installment out. We made our way to Myrtle Beach where we stopped at a Harvest Hosts location in Johns Island, SC. It was a nice farm and the scene of my infamous emergency exit attempts. Up in MB, we stayed at Ocean Lakes and had a nice visit. A little chilly because it was April, but we enjoyed ourselves.

http://nowornever.learntorv.com/2016/07/a-long-weekend-in-myrtle-beach.html

Very much wonderful. Thanks for the TR. :)

I like this guy's plan of getting his new rug home...

Thru both windows and I couldn't see that it was secured in any way.

If it's any consolation, this video is from the future. Just avoid Michigan on November 16, 2016.

What brand of camera did you purchase? I have wanted to look into a mets like you mentioned here.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Agreed. I'm looking for something for the truck and our travels.

We'll be at the Fort in August (well, the Fort and Coronado Springs- Grandma is keeping the kids for a long weekend at the Fort while wife and I stay at Coronado Springs for a Jamberry Conference and weekend "away").

Hey, I'll be there at the same time.

I like the kind that have a zipper 1' down from the awning roller tube. It lets you leave that portion on the tube and then you zip/unzip the bottom part. Don't know brands, though.

16 hours ago, shoreline99 said:

I'm loving the update. I completely agree with you about POTC and HM - they just feel different in DL than WDW. We generally liked a lot of the DL rides better than the WDW versions.

But, Haunted Mansion - what a difference without the NBC overlay! I'm shocked to see how "plain" it looks.

Sounds like you all had a good day regardless of the weather and I'm happy for that!

3 minutes ago, Beckers said:

Shall we call you Dory?

That's one of the nicer things I've been called, so yeah- let's go with that.

Page 5 and caught up. I had comments, but I've forgotten them by now. Sounds like a wonderful trip.

On 6/7/2016 at 1:07 PM, hunter99 said:

the total time to drive over, meet him, take the truck and trailer, drop off, and bring back to him was around 45 minutes. 

45 minutes? That took me 70 (and that was without dropping the trailer/cart).

Once we left Tampa, we did a bunch of Disney visits. Let me share my entries since my last post:

After Tampa, we headed to Fort Wilderness for the Princess 5K. I think I covered some of this in a Trip Report here, but for blog prosperity:

http://nowornever.learntorv.com/2016/05/the-mouses-house-disney-world.html

Leaving the Fort, we went up the road to Clerbrook Golf and RV Resort. Pretty quiet stay, but we did make a couple of trips into Disney again:

http://nowornever.learntorv.com/2016/05/groveland-fl-at-clerbrook-golf-rv-resort.html

We left there to another Thousand Trails park called Peace River in Wauchula, FL. Nice place and we had a pretty quiet stay. It was great until our friends "talked us into" heading back to Clermont. So we cut it a couple of days short.

http://nowornever.learntorv.com/2016/05/peace-river-in-wauchula-fl.html

And our last Disney-fied update, we stayed at Thousand Trails Orlando for a week.

http://nowornever.learntorv.com/2016/05/thousand-trails-orlando-which-is-really.html

From here, we head north. I'll hopefully get those updates written shortly!

1 hour ago, Retired and Happy (Ken) said:

Doug,  Not sure I understand your gray/black tank situation.  You say you have two gray tanks...but no black?  Why do you have a black outlet if you have no black tank?  Do you have a toilet plumbed through the floor? ..into a tank?  Do you have two gray outlets and a black outlet?  Are the two gray outlets close together?  Inquiring minds want to know...or just nosy.  

No, I'm just a terrible writer. I have 3 gray tanks and 2 black tanks connected to 2 different sewer outlets. Each tank has its own pull valve.

Sewer connection #1

• Gray tank for shower + front bathroom sink
• Gray tank for kitchen
• Black for front bathroom toilet

Sewer connection #2

• Gray tank for outside kitchen sink
• Black tank for rear bathroom toilet + sink

The sewer outlets are separated by a good 10-15' or so. I can't combine them due to lack of slope + that there is a blank tank involved back there.

3 hours ago, Cortezcapt (Derek) said:

Did you install them yourself?

I did not. The way that my camper skin wraps around to the frame- I didn't have any easy access to the back-side of the existing steps in order to remove them and bolt these on. I had a shop do it and a few other things all at once.

5 minutes ago, djsamuel said:

It may have been ready sooner, but after an hour without a text message I walked to the Outpost and was told that the site is now ready.

It seems I read fairly regular issues with the texting and getting the messages quite late.

We stayed at Lake City RV Resort (used to be called Oaks N Pines). Decent place with long/level pull thrus at one end for the transient traveler. Not much to it and fairly close to the highway. BUT, it had a fantastic pool table - literally one of the nicest I've seen outside of someone's home. I don't think they had a pool.