What We Learned on Our First RV Road Trip (Texas to Colorado Edition)

We love to travel.  Obviously, or this wouldn’t be a thing.  Thankfully, our careers allow us to get away a pretty reasonable amount of time.  But we do still work full time and have a munchkin in school.  Add our introvert of the family and it becomes difficult to fly, not to mention expensive.  So we do a lot of road tripping.  Hitting the road in our car offers great opportunities to see quite a bit of our beautiful country.  Excluding the western part of Texas, most of New Mexico, and Oklahoma.  They are not so much.  This topic was recently discussed here if you’d like to review.  Driving can still get nerve-racking, expensive when you add in hotel costs, and cause some anxiety and discomfort in certain situations for our introvert. Compound all this with serious pet allergies being spiked in hotel rooms and airplanes and the world gets a little hard to see.  So what did we do?  We bought an RV.  A motor coach to be more specific.  Many a discussion were had on the idea of a house on wheels.  Costs, usage, and storage of course.  Neither of us had ever driven one, let alone owned one before.  We shopped around online first to check price ranges and styles.  Luckily Kerrville has a small, but good variety, dealership where we could peek inside a few and actually test drive a couple to see what it felt like behind the wheel. Kind of like feeling like you want a puppy so you go look at some, hold a couple, and the next thing you know you have a new barking child in your family is the same experience we had with our RV.  It seemed like the right size, drove well, super low miles/one owner, and had a reasonable price tag.  Next thing you know a 2019 Isata 3 Series, 25 foot RV is in our driveway.

Now what?  Where do we go? How long should we be away? How do we hook this thing up when we get there?  What if we have an issue?  All the same questions you have when you get home with the puppy. The friendly folks at McClain’s RV in Kerrville were super helpful with the buying process and gave helpful tips for our first trip.  They encouraged us to take it out, but to stay within a couple hours of home in case something happened.  Of course.  That way if absolutely necessary help could be on the way.  Yeah.  We didn’t do that.  Instead we decided to jump in with both feet and drive 16 hours to Silverton, CO.  Cool crisp temperatures, beautiful mountains, hiking, and nature.  Not the things you find within 2 hours of Fredericksburg in late August.  What would really be the difference between 2 and 16 hours away if something happened?  Not much really, so the other benefits easily swayed us to get the hell out of here.  Did we mention we made the decision the night before we left? If you’ve read several of these posts you might have picked up on that theme. I won’t bore you with all the details of 32 plus hours on the road getting there and back, but we would like to share some helpful hints about our impromptu excursion with our new puppy RV.  Here they are:

• Chat GPT is your best friend.  Nova and Sol (yes, we had them give themselves names) were like an immediate help desk.  And we used them A LOT.

• In a pinch, find a Walmart.  Many Walmarts allow overnight parking in certain sections of their parking lot.  Either call ahead or check with the courtesy desk when you arrive.  Free AND you get to pick up necessary supplies.

• Especially if it’s your first RV, get the warranty.  Generally the financing terms are longer than your car, but less than your house.  Adding 40 bucks a month for the peace of mind that you’re covered bumper to bumper is worth it.  You can pass it on to the next buyer if you decide to sell before it’s paid for, too.

• While we wouldn’t encourage you to drive as far as we did, we found that the best way to learn and figure it all our was to just take a trip.

• Tons of people travel via RV which means there are tons of phone apps with helpful tips and finding places to camp.  Campendium, for example, was where we learned about Walmarts.  Free for iPhone and probably Android.

• Keep your expectations tempered.  Like staying in a hotel for a few nights you might not get the best night’s sleep for a night or two.  You might burn your toast the first time and set off the smoke alarm.  You might not know exactly what that beeping is for when you start the vehicle to raise the jacks.  Why won’t the toilet flush? We are hooked up to water.  As frustrating as these things were at the time, they were also part of what made the experience worth it in the end.

• Check lists are your friends, too.  We asked Sol to create a couple lists of what to make sure was included with the purchase, what to pack for your trip, and procedures to set up and shut down. 

• Don’t forget to make it your own.  It’s literally a house on wheels. And just like you would your home, be sure to add little things to personalize it.  We brought Bear, Curious George, and Moose Moose (our stuffed animals) as comforts of home.  We have stickers to paste to the outside, and plan to add more functional items for future trips.

We could quite possibly add multiple pages with everything that happened our first time out. These are by no means everything, only a few key thoughts.  So stay tuned for more updates, information, and silliness.  We have at least one more trip in mind for the year.  As you know with Aly, another couple could be added any minute.  I’m just glad she isn’t the same with puppies!