Maiden Voyage with the Camper

Trip:1
Total Nights:2

No more pandemic diary, but you get a camping journal in its place. Fair trade?

We took the Ascape out this weekend, just 60 miles east to Williamsburg VA. Camping near the coast in humid 90F+ weather is not my idea of ideal camping weather, but it did let us stress test the AC.

The AC in the Ascape works really well. 10 minutes is all it takes to get the temperature comfortable in the camper after it’s been in 90 degree sun all day. The AC is pretty damn loud but you get used to it quickly and it just becomes background noise by the 2nd day.

Camp set up sure beats messing around with a tent. It’ll bet really pay off the first time I don’t have to set up a tent in the dark, while it’s raining. Park it, plug it in, connect the water, and you are ready for your first beer.

You adjust to the RV. It doesn’t adjust to you.

Somebody on one the RV forums I’ve been haunting said that, and I'm trying to keep it in mind as we discover the various quirks of our Ascape.

It has nifty slide down screens in the windows. The screens share a channel on both side of the window with some seriously effective black out shades. However, because you’ve got two different things using one channel, the vertical edges of the screens aren’t actually attached to anything in the channel. Gnats and various other tiny flying things in VA figured that out quickly, and we probably swatted or smushed over 50 of them Friday night. That led to us closing the windows and using the AC. I think I can use weatherstripping and just wedge it in the channels anytime we have the windows open in the evening and that will seal up the channels so the flying things stay outside where they belong. We’ll find out this weekend if that works.

The bed is an odd size between a Queen and King, so plenty of space. Michelle bought king sheets to sleep on, but we decided very quickly that making up a king size bed where we only have physical access from one side sucks. So I’ve ordered a couple of very lightweight sleeping bags instead. Live and learn. Or maybe that should be spend, live, and learn. The spending has only just started once you have the RV.

Another thing we learned is that RV fridges take quite a while to cool down - about 5 hours to be not-so-exact. So I think in future trips I'll plan ahead, freeze a milk jug full of water, and put that in the fridge when we leave. That will give the fridge a head start on cooling down. Also I leaned that a little portable fridge fan to help move the air will speed things up too.

Friday night we played a new to us card game called Codename Duet. It’s a cooperative language game that is rather difficult. We managed one win in 4 or 5 tries. Saturday we slept in, then spent the day at the beach, as we were only 45 minutes from our normal 90-minute day trip beach. If you are wondering if that was planned...of course it was!

Coming home I noticed the trailer tows a little smoother with a little bit of weight in it from the stuff we are storing it in. At times, it almost felt like it wanted to bounce behind me when it was empty, and we hit a literal bump in the road.

So that’s it for the checkout trip. It checks out. Next up we head into the mountains for the July 4th holiday.