January 18, 2020 • 17 mins
For our second installment of Boondocking with Brad, we'll go over the nuts and bolts of what you need to know about operating and maintaining an RV, from how to power it all the way down to what kind of toilet paper you need for the very different lifestyle on the road.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hi, I'm Matt and I'm Brad. This is park Landia,
our production of I Heart Radio. We sold are oft
in Chicago, moved into an r V in our job
in the country full time with a dog, Finn, exploring
American's national parks. Welcome back to Boon Docking with Brad.
(00:23):
Today we're going to go over the essentials. What does
this mean? The essentials the things that don't come with
your r V that you thought probably should have. UM,
that's what I thought at least, but they don't. UM.
And we're gonna be talking about things like sewer hoses,
water hoses, dump poses, you know, all the different kinds
of tanks and things like that. But first thing you
probably have to start off with because you really want
(00:44):
to protect your asset, which is that r V. Is
when you um hook up, you're hooking up into thirty
amp or fifty amp electrical ports on the outside. There
are specific surge protectors for thirty AM and pick ups
that you want to use us because this will protect
your RV from having a surge into the r V
park just in case there electrical isn't great. You want
(01:07):
to protect your asset or otherwise it'll just be sitting
and they're getting warranty work done or you'll have a
big bill if you don't have a warranty and you
don't want that one on the road. So this little
fifty eight tool really makes a difference. But going from there, UM,
I thought that water hoses and dump poses would come
(01:29):
with us. But I guess it's good that they didn't
sell me a used dump pose, right, because that's just weird.
I mean, it's already bad enough when you have to
deal with the dumps, uh and those tanks and everything
like that. Uh. So these dump poses basically hook up
to your r V and what it is is you
have two tanks that come from your r V. You
have your Black tank and you have your Great tank,
(01:50):
and then they going onto one hose and that hose
goes into the ground where you dump your stuff. Every
r V park, almost every r V park has full
hook ups, but there's some that don't, so you might
have to use a dump station and things like that.
But we'll talk about that in another episode, UM as
we dive more into this RV living and what that
actually entails. So basically, you have your black tank and
(02:15):
your Great tank. When you get those sewer hoses, you
cook them all up. It's all good. You're gonna pull
your black tank first because this is your bodily fluids.
This is more of like these um, you know, feces
and things like that, and so you want to dump
those first, so that way, when that hose it goes
through that hose and into this the ground. You know,
(02:35):
you take care of that first. Then you dump your
great tank, which is like your washwater, your shower water,
things like that. It's more clean. It's called gray because
there actually is like a grace tint to it, because
you know, there's dirt that you're washing off and it's
going through your systems. But you do this in this
order because that water will then go through that hose
and it will kind of clean it out for you,
so you don't have to spend a lot of time,
(02:58):
um cleaning out that hose at the end to something
that Matt does not do. Ah, he will not do it,
And that is absolutely fine because I don't blame him. Yeah,
not my area of expert. But that's why you're going
over boondocking with Brad with me. I'm learning from boon
docking with Matt, right, Yeah, I know, maybe this was
just more subconsciously a lesson for you so you could
(03:20):
help me out more. That's not gonna happen, I know,
but that's absolutely fine. UM. So basically, once you're done
with that, you're gonna want to make sure you always
close your black and your great tanks after you're done dumping. Um.
And that's because otherwise it will be like the Santa
Fe issue, which we're gonna talk on of the next
boon docking with brand and that we keep on teasing
you with because it gets nasty. Water hoses, Um, you're
(03:53):
actually gonna want to You're gonna want one to hook
up to your r V to put feed water into
your r V, and then you're gonna want in a
day after for that one that will go into your
boon docking tank. So basically you have an extra tank
where you can put water in there if you want.
If you know that you're gonna be on the lamp
for a few days around the road for a few days,
boon docking overnight without any hookups, you're gonna make sure
(04:13):
you have water in there so you can still use it. UM.
But the second hose is your cleaning hose. And so
that is the hose that you're gonna want to use
to clean out your sewer hose. And that's because when
you're doing these different activities, you don't want what you're
drinking out to clean up your feces. Every r V liver,
(04:38):
every r V traveler will know that this is super important, UM,
and we all talk about it when I'm going to
When I was in Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta UM last year,
I was talking to people about dump tanks and great
tanks for like days because it was just you know,
there's ways to make sure that there's proper hygiene when
doing this, like always wearing gloves when for you're working
(05:00):
with your black and gray tanks because you don't want
those to get on your hands and things like that. Right,
I mean pieces seem madd He was just like right
and like just yeah, um, when you buy your r
V at the beginning, you're not gonna have any betting,
any towels, um, some window coverings or r vs don't
come with window coverings, uh, and things like that. So
(05:23):
the things that you think are really basic you need
to look for when you're buying r VY. Do they
come with this? Do I want someone else's use sheets
if you're buying it used, you know, where do you
find these things? Because ours is a queen size short
with a flip up. Our bed takes specific sheets and
(05:43):
bettings that you can't find at Walmart. You know, you
have to actually order these from Amazon or go to
camping World and find these different objects and things because
of the way that they're sized for an RV. Something
that Matt always throws in my face his DVD collection. Yeah,
what happened. When we first got on the road, I
(06:06):
was like, we don't need it. We'll have Netflix, we'll
have Hulu, we'll have Disney Plus. Well Disney plustn't exists then,
but now it does. So like what, um, what happened? Well?
I had a large DVD collection when we're in Chicago
because we have the space, and it was something I
amassed over years, and I just I was attached to it.
(06:28):
You know, there's a lot of movies I have that
I haven't watched in years and probably never even feel
like watching. But it's just something that I'm connected to.
And so when we downsized and how to like really
getting like minimize our possessions, I put a good amount
of those DVDs in storage and then only brought like
(06:50):
I don't know, a small amount I could fit in
a binder or something into the r V with us.
And then when you're back at the storage facility at
one line over the summer or something, I asked you, like,
could you go to this storage place and like get
the rest of my DVDs because I need them, And
they found a box and I brought that one back. Yeah,
(07:10):
well that was that was like one. I didn't realize
there was like three boxes full of DVDs and so, UM,
I keep on getting lambasted over that every week and
he goes to look for a different DVD they he had,
but he doesn't have it, and I understand it, but
this thing has These DVDs have really coming clutch. There's
(07:31):
multiple times where we just have bad internet and so
we watch a DVD and it's been great, or even
we have great internet, but we just want to watch
a DVD because it's not on one of those channels
or those streaming services, which leads me into mobile hotspots
and WiFi. Man, what a disaster. Um. We bought a
(07:52):
Verizon hot spot and we use that and it works
sometimes to be honest barely honestly, our team mobile like
tethering from our phone from my iPad work better. UM.
You know, I'm actually halfway a tempted to get one
of those team mobile sync up and drives because I
(08:12):
think that that also offers tethering and that might even
offer better tethering or mobile WiFi. But basically it kind
of comes into this thing where you're gonna realize that
really quickly you're gonna need multiple access to internet, especially
if you are are you living and you're working from
the road. R V parks sometimes offer WiFi. Uh. Sometimes
(08:33):
it's great, sometimes it's down the dumps uh. And then
sometimes you have to pay for it, and you can
pay for different levels like you know, basic and then
Premium and then streaming levels and everything. But it gets
really expensive really quick. So you're just gonna want to
make sure you have some things on the road with
you that makes sense. UM WiFi for us is just
(08:53):
the biggest thing we're actually looking into going to camping
World and grabbing one of those mobile UM there are
these mobile hotspot and WiFi extenders, so basically it'll extend
your service and they're like UM plus installation so it's
probably like five bucks, but it might be one of
those things that actually just boost all of our signals
(09:14):
to where we don't have to worry about that. So,
you know, there's just a lot of different options out
there when it comes to WiFi specifically UM and even
the different versions of mobile hotspots there are. Uh so
tethering from your phone might work um for us. Sometimes
it does, sometimes it doesn't. So it's just all spotty
(09:36):
and different depending where we're at. And we're in natural parks,
we really don't care because we're out there to see nature,
and you know, we'll watch a DVD because it's fun.
(10:00):
And of course you have to get your basics, your
cleaning supplies, your kitchen and organizational items, your toilet trees. Um.
And that actually brings me to r V friendly toilet paper.
Don't use Sharman. I'm sorry, Sharmon, but that stuff will
clog up your r V so quick. Um. I remember
that's what I tried to use, you know, Sharmon soft.
(10:21):
I was so excited and it just clogged it up.
So we had to pay someone to come out hundred
fifty bucks to back flush our r V tank to
get all of the like cluttered up toilet paper out,
so get used to not using the good stuff. Um
in the r V. You're definitely need to find your
r V friendly toilet paper because you don't want to
(10:44):
make a hund fifty mistake because again, that's your resources,
that's your money that you're traveling. We could have went
out to dinner a couple of times multiple times with that,
but we had to spend it on back flushing r V.
So don't make the same mistake as we did. There's
a lot of brands of like r V friendly toilet paper,
and honestly you can find these at like Camping Worlds.
A lot of campsites actually carry our V friendly toilet
(11:06):
paper in the little mini camp store because they know
that's so important to your r V system. So you
can when you're traveling through our V parks in different
places walmarts, you can actually find a lot of places
that have friendly r V toilet paper all along the road.
And the last thing I really want to bring up
our trailer hitches because they're so important when you're driving
(11:30):
down the road. So for us we me nowadays just
have our Class S motor home and our scooter, but
there's a specific thing that we have to put our
scooter on. You know, we have this motorcycle hitch, so
it just goes right into our hitch. And then there's
a ramp that we can put our scooter up in
and then we use tie downs straps to tie down
our scooter. So that's one option of a trailer hitch.
(11:53):
Another trailer hitches their ball hitch, and those are the
ones that you're gonna trailers use. UM. They you know,
you just drop the trailer on it, you lock it in,
you use your latches, and you can take off, you know,
plugging your electricals. That way, there's break lights on your trailer.
But then there's the fifth wheels like we talked about
(12:13):
in the last boon decking with Brad, which are in
the middle of your truck. So this wouldn't be for
an RV. No, this is not for our r V,
but this is to go into a truck. UM. So
there's many different options for trailer hitches. UM. And our
saving grace this year was definitely the load bar sway
bar combo. UM. This this load bar sway bar combo
(12:36):
was like bucks, but it just it saves your rear
when you're driving eighty miles an hour down the road
in your RV with the trailer behind it, and then
you get a big, huge gust to win like we
did in Texas. I mean, I still had to pull
over because it didn't feel safe, but I know for
sure that this load bar sway bar combo really helped.
(13:00):
Now with this, what this load bar sway bar combo
does is it takes the load off of your rear
wheels and it puts them more towards your front wheels,
making it more even. And that's what a load bar does.
The sway bar what that does is it hooks up
to your trailer and it makes sure your trailer doesn't
sway back and forth or fish tail, so while you're
driving your you have complete control over your vehicle. One
(13:24):
thing that I learned is because I was pulling so
much weight in our trailer this year, is that we
needed to get front shocks that could hold up better too.
So we actually blew out like our shocks on this
year and so we um had to get those replaced.
That wasn't it was a cheap upgrade, but basically now
it's ready for that next time we ever have to
pull trailer behind us. So there's a lot of little
(13:46):
technicalities when you're towing behind um a trailer like we were.
I mean, this one had it was probably a full
capacity between the weight of our ur V itself because
you have to factor that into towing power for your engine,
your specific engine, your chassis. UM it was like nine
thousand pounds, and I remember there was a point where
(14:07):
between what our housing was or r V itself and
the trailer behind us, because you have to factor in
the weight of the trailer itself. Even the toebar hitch
was like a hundred pounds U. The load bar sway
bar combo is a hundred pounds UM, and then the
weight so we had like two pallets of syrup, which
was another like five or five thousand pounds. So basically
(14:29):
we had seven thousand pounds when I was done calculating
it UH and eight thousand pound toe limit. And that's
good because you don't want to push to your limit
the whole time. But we were only driving for like
twenty hours with that, and then we dropped off one
old palette and kept on going out north when we
were heading to Las Vegas UM last year. So there's
(14:50):
definitely a lot of different instances, and you really need
to make sure that you understand what your limits are
for your vehicle and what they need. So just because
you have a Class SEE doesn't mean you can tow
whatever you want because it doesn't have the correct amount
of power to actually pull those behind. So then that
leads you into maybe upgrading to that Class A diesel
(15:11):
um or Class A gas. You know, you could do that,
but it's always better have diesel. It's definitely a better pusher.
It's better for when you're going through the Blue Ridge
Mountains in the Great Smoky Mountains, or if you're going
through the passes over Breckon Ridge and Veil. You know,
you definitely want that diesel pusher because otherwise you're gonna
be going up these at like forty miles an hour
(15:32):
and it's gonna like drive you and everybody around you crazy.
So knowing your limits and how to tow and where
you're going is so important when traveling. But I guess
that's something that will have to cover in a future
episode of Boon Docking with Brad and Uh. Today, I
was really happy to be able to take you through
the essentials that you need for RV living and just
(15:53):
go a little bit more into understanding your r V specifically, uh,
understanding your need and what it is that drives these
beautiful homes across this country. You've been listening to park Landia,
a show about national parks. Parklandia is a production of
by Heart Radio, created by Matt Carouac, Brad Carouac and
(16:17):
Christopher hasiotis producer and edited by Mike John's. Our executive
producer is Christopher hasiotis our researcher. It's jeff Lyn Shields.
A special things goes out to Gabrielle Collins, Cristal Waters
and the rest of the Parklandia crew and Hey listeners,
if you're enjoying the show, leave us a review on
Apple Podcasts. It helps other people like you find our show.
You can keep up with us on social media as well.
(16:38):
Check out our photos from our travels on Instagram at
Parklandia pod and join in on the conversation and our
Facebook group Parklandia Rangers. From our podcasts my Heart Radio,
visit the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows, and as always, thank you
for listening. BA
Hi, I'm Matt and I'm Brad. This is park Landia,
our production of I Heart Radio. We sold are oft
in Chicago, moved into an r V in our job
in the country full time with a dog, Finn, exploring
American's national parks. Welcome back to Boon Docking with Brad.
(00:23):
Today we're going to go over the essentials. What does
this mean? The essentials the things that don't come with
your r V that you thought probably should have. UM,
that's what I thought at least, but they don't. UM.
And we're gonna be talking about things like sewer hoses,
water hoses, dump poses, you know, all the different kinds
of tanks and things like that. But first thing you
probably have to start off with because you really want
(00:44):
to protect your asset, which is that r V. Is
when you um hook up, you're hooking up into thirty
amp or fifty amp electrical ports on the outside. There
are specific surge protectors for thirty AM and pick ups
that you want to use us because this will protect
your RV from having a surge into the r V
park just in case there electrical isn't great. You want
(01:07):
to protect your asset or otherwise it'll just be sitting
and they're getting warranty work done or you'll have a
big bill if you don't have a warranty and you
don't want that one on the road. So this little
fifty eight tool really makes a difference. But going from there, UM,
I thought that water hoses and dump poses would come
(01:29):
with us. But I guess it's good that they didn't
sell me a used dump pose, right, because that's just weird.
I mean, it's already bad enough when you have to
deal with the dumps, uh and those tanks and everything
like that. Uh. So these dump poses basically hook up
to your r V and what it is is you
have two tanks that come from your r V. You
have your Black tank and you have your Great tank,
(01:50):
and then they going onto one hose and that hose
goes into the ground where you dump your stuff. Every
r V park, almost every r V park has full
hook ups, but there's some that don't, so you might
have to use a dump station and things like that.
But we'll talk about that in another episode, UM as
we dive more into this RV living and what that
actually entails. So basically, you have your black tank and
(02:15):
your Great tank. When you get those sewer hoses, you
cook them all up. It's all good. You're gonna pull
your black tank first because this is your bodily fluids.
This is more of like these um, you know, feces
and things like that, and so you want to dump
those first, so that way, when that hose it goes
through that hose and into this the ground. You know,
(02:35):
you take care of that first. Then you dump your
great tank, which is like your washwater, your shower water,
things like that. It's more clean. It's called gray because
there actually is like a grace tint to it, because
you know, there's dirt that you're washing off and it's
going through your systems. But you do this in this
order because that water will then go through that hose
and it will kind of clean it out for you,
so you don't have to spend a lot of time,
(02:58):
um cleaning out that hose at the end to something
that Matt does not do. Ah, he will not do it,
And that is absolutely fine because I don't blame him. Yeah,
not my area of expert. But that's why you're going
over boondocking with Brad with me. I'm learning from boon
docking with Matt, right, Yeah, I know, maybe this was
just more subconsciously a lesson for you so you could
(03:20):
help me out more. That's not gonna happen, I know,
but that's absolutely fine. UM. So basically, once you're done
with that, you're gonna want to make sure you always
close your black and your great tanks after you're done dumping. Um.
And that's because otherwise it will be like the Santa
Fe issue, which we're gonna talk on of the next
boon docking with brand and that we keep on teasing
you with because it gets nasty. Water hoses, Um, you're
(03:53):
actually gonna want to You're gonna want one to hook
up to your r V to put feed water into
your r V, and then you're gonna want in a
day after for that one that will go into your
boon docking tank. So basically you have an extra tank
where you can put water in there if you want.
If you know that you're gonna be on the lamp
for a few days around the road for a few days,
boon docking overnight without any hookups, you're gonna make sure
(04:13):
you have water in there so you can still use it. UM.
But the second hose is your cleaning hose. And so
that is the hose that you're gonna want to use
to clean out your sewer hose. And that's because when
you're doing these different activities, you don't want what you're
drinking out to clean up your feces. Every r V liver,
(04:38):
every r V traveler will know that this is super important, UM,
and we all talk about it when I'm going to
When I was in Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta UM last year,
I was talking to people about dump tanks and great
tanks for like days because it was just you know,
there's ways to make sure that there's proper hygiene when
doing this, like always wearing gloves when for you're working
(05:00):
with your black and gray tanks because you don't want
those to get on your hands and things like that. Right,
I mean pieces seem madd He was just like right
and like just yeah, um, when you buy your r
V at the beginning, you're not gonna have any betting,
any towels, um, some window coverings or r vs don't
come with window coverings, uh, and things like that. So
(05:23):
the things that you think are really basic you need
to look for when you're buying r VY. Do they
come with this? Do I want someone else's use sheets
if you're buying it used, you know, where do you
find these things? Because ours is a queen size short
with a flip up. Our bed takes specific sheets and
(05:43):
bettings that you can't find at Walmart. You know, you
have to actually order these from Amazon or go to
camping World and find these different objects and things because
of the way that they're sized for an RV. Something
that Matt always throws in my face his DVD collection. Yeah,
what happened. When we first got on the road, I
(06:06):
was like, we don't need it. We'll have Netflix, we'll
have Hulu, we'll have Disney Plus. Well Disney plustn't exists then,
but now it does. So like what, um, what happened? Well?
I had a large DVD collection when we're in Chicago
because we have the space, and it was something I
amassed over years, and I just I was attached to it.
(06:28):
You know, there's a lot of movies I have that
I haven't watched in years and probably never even feel
like watching. But it's just something that I'm connected to.
And so when we downsized and how to like really
getting like minimize our possessions, I put a good amount
of those DVDs in storage and then only brought like
(06:50):
I don't know, a small amount I could fit in
a binder or something into the r V with us.
And then when you're back at the storage facility at
one line over the summer or something, I asked you, like,
could you go to this storage place and like get
the rest of my DVDs because I need them, And
they found a box and I brought that one back. Yeah,
(07:10):
well that was that was like one. I didn't realize
there was like three boxes full of DVDs and so, UM,
I keep on getting lambasted over that every week and
he goes to look for a different DVD they he had,
but he doesn't have it, and I understand it, but
this thing has These DVDs have really coming clutch. There's
(07:31):
multiple times where we just have bad internet and so
we watch a DVD and it's been great, or even
we have great internet, but we just want to watch
a DVD because it's not on one of those channels
or those streaming services, which leads me into mobile hotspots
and WiFi. Man, what a disaster. Um. We bought a
(07:52):
Verizon hot spot and we use that and it works
sometimes to be honest barely honestly, our team mobile like
tethering from our phone from my iPad work better. UM.
You know, I'm actually halfway a tempted to get one
of those team mobile sync up and drives because I
(08:12):
think that that also offers tethering and that might even
offer better tethering or mobile WiFi. But basically it kind
of comes into this thing where you're gonna realize that
really quickly you're gonna need multiple access to internet, especially
if you are are you living and you're working from
the road. R V parks sometimes offer WiFi. Uh. Sometimes
(08:33):
it's great, sometimes it's down the dumps uh. And then
sometimes you have to pay for it, and you can
pay for different levels like you know, basic and then
Premium and then streaming levels and everything. But it gets
really expensive really quick. So you're just gonna want to
make sure you have some things on the road with
you that makes sense. UM WiFi for us is just
(08:53):
the biggest thing we're actually looking into going to camping
World and grabbing one of those mobile UM there are
these mobile hotspot and WiFi extenders, so basically it'll extend
your service and they're like UM plus installation so it's
probably like five bucks, but it might be one of
those things that actually just boost all of our signals
(09:14):
to where we don't have to worry about that. So,
you know, there's just a lot of different options out
there when it comes to WiFi specifically UM and even
the different versions of mobile hotspots there are. Uh so
tethering from your phone might work um for us. Sometimes
it does, sometimes it doesn't. So it's just all spotty
(09:36):
and different depending where we're at. And we're in natural parks,
we really don't care because we're out there to see nature,
and you know, we'll watch a DVD because it's fun.
(10:00):
And of course you have to get your basics, your
cleaning supplies, your kitchen and organizational items, your toilet trees. Um.
And that actually brings me to r V friendly toilet paper.
Don't use Sharman. I'm sorry, Sharmon, but that stuff will
clog up your r V so quick. Um. I remember
that's what I tried to use, you know, Sharmon soft.
(10:21):
I was so excited and it just clogged it up.
So we had to pay someone to come out hundred
fifty bucks to back flush our r V tank to
get all of the like cluttered up toilet paper out,
so get used to not using the good stuff. Um
in the r V. You're definitely need to find your
r V friendly toilet paper because you don't want to
(10:44):
make a hund fifty mistake because again, that's your resources,
that's your money that you're traveling. We could have went
out to dinner a couple of times multiple times with that,
but we had to spend it on back flushing r V.
So don't make the same mistake as we did. There's
a lot of brands of like r V friendly toilet paper,
and honestly you can find these at like Camping Worlds.
A lot of campsites actually carry our V friendly toilet
(11:06):
paper in the little mini camp store because they know
that's so important to your r V system. So you
can when you're traveling through our V parks in different
places walmarts, you can actually find a lot of places
that have friendly r V toilet paper all along the road.
And the last thing I really want to bring up
our trailer hitches because they're so important when you're driving
(11:30):
down the road. So for us we me nowadays just
have our Class S motor home and our scooter, but
there's a specific thing that we have to put our
scooter on. You know, we have this motorcycle hitch, so
it just goes right into our hitch. And then there's
a ramp that we can put our scooter up in
and then we use tie downs straps to tie down
our scooter. So that's one option of a trailer hitch.
(11:53):
Another trailer hitches their ball hitch, and those are the
ones that you're gonna trailers use. UM. They you know,
you just drop the trailer on it, you lock it in,
you use your latches, and you can take off, you know,
plugging your electricals. That way, there's break lights on your trailer.
But then there's the fifth wheels like we talked about
(12:13):
in the last boon decking with Brad, which are in
the middle of your truck. So this wouldn't be for
an RV. No, this is not for our r V,
but this is to go into a truck. UM. So
there's many different options for trailer hitches. UM. And our
saving grace this year was definitely the load bar sway
bar combo. UM. This this load bar sway bar combo
(12:36):
was like bucks, but it just it saves your rear
when you're driving eighty miles an hour down the road
in your RV with the trailer behind it, and then
you get a big, huge gust to win like we
did in Texas. I mean, I still had to pull
over because it didn't feel safe, but I know for
sure that this load bar sway bar combo really helped.
(13:00):
Now with this, what this load bar sway bar combo
does is it takes the load off of your rear
wheels and it puts them more towards your front wheels,
making it more even. And that's what a load bar does.
The sway bar what that does is it hooks up
to your trailer and it makes sure your trailer doesn't
sway back and forth or fish tail, so while you're
driving your you have complete control over your vehicle. One
(13:24):
thing that I learned is because I was pulling so
much weight in our trailer this year, is that we
needed to get front shocks that could hold up better too.
So we actually blew out like our shocks on this
year and so we um had to get those replaced.
That wasn't it was a cheap upgrade, but basically now
it's ready for that next time we ever have to
pull trailer behind us. So there's a lot of little
(13:46):
technicalities when you're towing behind um a trailer like we were.
I mean, this one had it was probably a full
capacity between the weight of our ur V itself because
you have to factor that into towing power for your engine,
your specific engine, your chassis. UM it was like nine
thousand pounds, and I remember there was a point where
(14:07):
between what our housing was or r V itself and
the trailer behind us, because you have to factor in
the weight of the trailer itself. Even the toebar hitch
was like a hundred pounds U. The load bar sway
bar combo is a hundred pounds UM, and then the
weight so we had like two pallets of syrup, which
was another like five or five thousand pounds. So basically
(14:29):
we had seven thousand pounds when I was done calculating
it UH and eight thousand pound toe limit. And that's
good because you don't want to push to your limit
the whole time. But we were only driving for like
twenty hours with that, and then we dropped off one
old palette and kept on going out north when we
were heading to Las Vegas UM last year. So there's
(14:50):
definitely a lot of different instances, and you really need
to make sure that you understand what your limits are
for your vehicle and what they need. So just because
you have a Class SEE doesn't mean you can tow
whatever you want because it doesn't have the correct amount
of power to actually pull those behind. So then that
leads you into maybe upgrading to that Class A diesel
(15:11):
um or Class A gas. You know, you could do that,
but it's always better have diesel. It's definitely a better pusher.
It's better for when you're going through the Blue Ridge
Mountains in the Great Smoky Mountains, or if you're going
through the passes over Breckon Ridge and Veil. You know,
you definitely want that diesel pusher because otherwise you're gonna
be going up these at like forty miles an hour
(15:32):
and it's gonna like drive you and everybody around you crazy.
So knowing your limits and how to tow and where
you're going is so important when traveling. But I guess
that's something that will have to cover in a future
episode of Boon Docking with Brad and Uh. Today, I
was really happy to be able to take you through
the essentials that you need for RV living and just
(15:53):
go a little bit more into understanding your r V specifically, uh,
understanding your need and what it is that drives these
beautiful homes across this country. You've been listening to park Landia,
a show about national parks. Parklandia is a production of
by Heart Radio, created by Matt Carouac, Brad Carouac and
(16:17):
Christopher hasiotis producer and edited by Mike John's. Our executive
producer is Christopher hasiotis our researcher. It's jeff Lyn Shields.
A special things goes out to Gabrielle Collins, Cristal Waters
and the rest of the Parklandia crew and Hey listeners,
if you're enjoying the show, leave us a review on
Apple Podcasts. It helps other people like you find our show.
You can keep up with us on social media as well.
(16:38):
Check out our photos from our travels on Instagram at
Parklandia pod and join in on the conversation and our
Facebook group Parklandia Rangers. From our podcasts my Heart Radio,
visit the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows, and as always, thank you
for listening. BA
Parklandia News
Hosts And Creators
Brad Kirouac
Matt Kirouac
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