The start of our trip was dangerous and horrifying
After a long weekend trip to the desert with our friends in February, the seed was planted deeply that we should start looking for a recreational vehicle. We’ve rented several times in the past but we were ready to leap into RV ownership. Because we are almost empty nesters with just a year left of my younger daughter’s high school career, we decided it was time to consider this type of vacationing seriously.
I have also been a dance mom for 15 years and while I love it, the days are soon coming to an end with almost unlimited free time about to open up in our lives. We welcome the change and because we love to travel, the prospect of living out of an RV for a month or so sounds appealing.
Once home from our desert trip, we began researching until our dry eyes bled from too much time on the computer. We hit up different RV showrooms and browsed the used RVs online. After much consideration, we decided that a truck and a trailer would be the best option. I want to visit several national parks, and seeing as much is not feasible if you are in a class C motorhome. With a truck that detaches from the trailer, we can see so much more.
After much deliberation on the type of trailer, we finally met our match and purchased our first home on wheels. It was a very exciting day for us and it soon became all-encompassing. We had no idea how much time we would put into getting the RV, finding a storage facility, outfitting it, and setting it all up. There is so much more to it than initially met our eyes.
And, a blow to our pocketbook. But, something definitely worth splurging on because we will have many years of fun ahead of us, or so we thought. Plus, who knew that you could finance a home on wheels just like you’d finance a home on land?
When we first acquired it, we wanted to do a trial run with our RV, so I found a hook-up space available at our local beach.
Since our first overnight at the beach went so well, we thought it would always be this way. Even though it took us some time to park this massive structure at the beach, everything else went to plan. It was smooth as butter and we thoroughly enjoyed our evening watching the sunset and bbqing. My favorite part was being able to lace up my tennis shoes for a walk on the beach without driving anywhere.
Our next trip would be a few weeks later, back in the desert with our friends to ride dirt toys. We were excitedly looking forward to it more and more each day. My daughter was crawling out of her skin and bursting to take her boyfriend with us, which we agreed to.
About 4 days before our departure, my husband had an RV mechanic scheduled to arrive at our house to install a pin box on the hitch of the trailer so that it would smoothly rotate with the truck around turns. Sometimes if you aren’t careful, the trailer can actually hit the truck. Our friends learned that the hard way and so we were being proactive by getting this new piece installed.
But, things began to get dicey when my husband was called into the office for work in Los Angeles. Mind you, he rarely goes in but of course, it was on the day that the mechanic was coming to our house.
All eyes were on me. I had to deal with the mechanic and have no idea what I am doing in terms of anything related to the RV, besides stocking it. I was scared and nervous, to say the least. So, my husband drew me diagrams and I wrote notes, word for word, to relay to the mechanic.
The mechanic assured me that he knew what he was doing. He’d been an RV mechanic his whole life and his entire family was in the RV business. I was sold. I left him to do his magic and paid him when it was complete.
Our trip was the following day. I spent hours getting the food and necessities for dry camping out in the middle of nowhere. I love getting out of the hustle and bustle of the city and even though the desert can be bleak, it’s better than mad drivers and chaos.
We packed everything to the brim, loaded up in the truck, and hit the road. My husband stops to check something and notices that the water that he took an hour to fill, is leaking. Great. Well, we were prepared to face breaks because we learned that is what RVs do. They break and you fix them, it’s a constant battle.
He turned off everything and said the leaky water was probably just an overfill but we both have no idea because this is our first real trip out alone. I grew up camping in RVs but I never was part of the process.
He’s also not even positively sure how it’s supposed to feel on the freeway. We’d only driven it on surface-level streets, not highways. He mentions that it feels a little stiff, but shrugs it off because this RV mechanic knew what he was doing. Or, so we thought.
We make it up and down freeway climbs, seemingly without any problems. My husband is driving it like a champ while trying to lure me into wanting to learn how to drive the rig. Once we are through a big overpass, we meet our friends at the truck stop to fill up our tanks.
Being that they just got an RV and are still in the “super excited phase”, they wanted to see the new hitch that we had installed. As we are gassing up the truck, our friend exclaims, “Yo, Dude, you need to come check this out.”
My husband rushed to the back of the truck to see what our friend was seemingly nervous about. The hitch was shredded and barely hanging on by a thread. Even though my husband checked it several times, we did miss one thing.
The one thing that the mechanic also missed. It was the first thing stated on the instructions that he didn’t bother to read.
Warning = Remove the bolts before using.
The bolts were still in place, meaning that the Sidewinder could not move and was ripping the metal apart every time we went around a turn.
Flabbergasted and not sure of what to do, we slowly moved it out of the gas pump line and to the side of the truck stop. If we had kept going, the hitch would have broken off and we would have either all gone down, us in the truck and the trailer, or the trailer would have released, probably killing people behind us.
Our camping trip began to seem impossible, as we had no idea how we would move our trailer from the truck stop. My husband calls this mechanic who is now 2 hours from our home and while he says he is sorry, he is unsure if he can get the necessary parts to put a bandaid on the hitch.
We spent the next 4 hours at the truck stop, which was not the place I wanted to be. Let’s just say that I can see why it would be easy for children to be trafficked in such places. After what seemed like a hundred calls made, we finally found a place that was close enough to grab our part.
Five hours later, we had a mobile mechanic, the part, and felt like we were in good hands. We might even make it to the desert to be with our friends. We became hopeful that we would make it out of the truck stop, which the workers would be happy about because they hounded us to leave for the last hour we were there.
Once given the thumbs up by the mechanic, we were finally on our way. We left at 9 am and got to our campsite at 7 pm. It was a long day but we counted our lucky stars because it could have been life-threatening.
When we arrived, we were greeted by our relieved friends and family and now we were able to do the fun part. Setting up the campsite and the trailer, having some delicious food and smores around the campfire while star gazing. We were so thankful that we made it.