24: Wanna go fulltime or just buy an RV?

A medical emergency blew up our travel plans! In this episode, we're talking all about this crazy situation and how we're navigating through it. We also share how we manage healthcare overall, RV insurance, get mail/deliveries, renew vehicle registrations, and more while traveling across the country fulltime in our RV. Answering our fan question, we share our top 10 must haves you should get after purchasing your first RV, and our pick of the week is an often overlooked but extremely important safety check you don't want to miss.

Join the community by checking out beacons.ai/wanderingrvbabe and follow us on Tiktok @WanderingRVBabe, Instagram @WanderingRVBabe, YouTube @WanderingRVBabe, or Facebook Wandering RV Babe

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*Special thanks for our Intro/Outro music to Stock Media provided by stockmusic331 / Pond5

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
We are camping right next to anAir Force base and so and it's an
active like training base. So whatan F fives like a job? I'm
proud of you. Yeah, soF thirty fives all day like flying right
over, flying right over us.Their landing strip is like right that way,

(00:22):
and it's just right around the corner. And so we see them come
through, they put their landing geardown, they do touchdowns and get back
up. I mean it is.It has been a lot. It's like
an air show every day. Welcometo the Wandering RV Podcast. Your source

(00:47):
for our stories, our screw ups, and our success is living the full
time RV life. I'm your host, Kara, the Wandering RV Babe,
and this is my driver Ryan howd. Folks, we're not in Texas yet,
but you know I had to getinto them. But today that's true.
Yeah, we are going to betalking about all the last minute changes
that we've had to make this yearand how we've been doing it, plus

(01:11):
the things you need to know ifyou want to become a full timer like
us exactly. The other thing iswe had a really great fan question this
week. Came through our dms onInstagram and it's a beefy fan question.
So it's the top ten Well isit the top ten things that you need
to buy when you first get yourfirst camper? So like you first got
your your camper, you're ready tohit the road. What else do you

(01:34):
need? That's what we're answering.And then we have a pick of the
week for you that is actually reallyimportant. So stay tuned. It's going
to be a great episode. Butlet's dive right in. But first,
what are we drinking tonight? Oh, yes, we're always We're always drinking
something. Tonight, we're drinking water. We're hydrating. We're hydrating. See

(01:55):
here's the thing. We do,love our adulty beverages. You know this
about us by now, But yougot to drink responsibly and you gotta stay
hydrated, guys, like in moderation. So that is what we're doing tonight.
We are hydrating, drinking some It'sactually some really good spring water,
so I'm very excited. But that'sthat's where we're at. Well, we're

(02:15):
also hydrating because it's hot. Oh, we finally got to the cool part
of the country like three weeks ago, and we've been hanging out for three
weeks and now we're heading back intothe heat. Yeah, you know,
it was interesting. Was so assoon as you cross over to the west
side of the Cascade Mountains in thenorthwest, you know part of the country,

(02:39):
there's like an immediate like twenty degreedrop in temperature. It was gorgeous.
It was like in the mid seventiesall all week long. It felt
great. But there must be somesort of like barrier that the Cascade Mountains
provide that kind of keep that freshocean air from the Pacific like in that
area so it stays nice and cooler. Because yeah, as soon as we

(03:00):
crossed back over earlier this weekend onour road trip, it was so hot,
so quick in the nineties, evenyou know, even in Oregon,
even in like Utah and like northernparts of the country. So yeah,
that's that was kind of an interestingconcept. Yes, we're back in Salt
Lake City heading to Florida. Whyis that lail? So we had plans

(03:28):
this year because we were already onlike the northwest part of the country,
we were already on the west coast. We were just gonna like go down
through California, We're gonna spend sometime in Oregon. We were gonna hit
like Arizona, New Mexico. Allthose plans got scrapped. So you guys
have been amazing. You've been askingfor updates on my foot and how my
foot's doing. So I thought Iwould just share with you that update because

(03:51):
that is why we had to scrapour plans. So kind of starting off
just like recap for anybody who's joiningus New Memorial Day, I hurt my
foot. I wasn't even doing anythingcool. I literally walked on it wrong,
and all of a sudden I couldn'twalk. So Memorial Day, we're

(04:11):
still in Texas at the time,we end up having to go to the
er because I literally can't put weighton my foot at all, can't walk
on it. It's swollen, it'sbruised, it looks really gnarly. I
don't know, guys, it's justyou know, old age. That kind
of shit happens, I guess.But we had all of these travel plans,
so, like I tell him,not like we had so many travel

(04:34):
plans that we either really didn't wantto have to move or we really couldn't
move because we had reservations and thingslike that for other things that we were
doing in those areas. So withthat I will power through and hope it
gets better. Yeah. So wewere meeting family for July fourth in Steamboat
Springs, Colorado. Then we weregoing up to Vancouver, British Columbia to

(05:00):
go to a conference. Then wewere meeting family again in Port Angeles to
go check out the Olympic National Parksand all that stuff Victoria Islands, and
then we were gonna come kind ofdown the west coast through Oregon, California,
and then slowly make our way backover to Texas for the holidays.
Well, actually, originally after weleft Texas is going to go over to

(05:21):
I think No Mexico, Yeah,for a little bit before we went end
up into Colorado. Yeah, we'regonna go to like White Sands and yeah,
like I'll do some fun stuff overthere. So the first thing we
scrapped was New Mexico. We werelike, okay, you hurt your foot,
you need a little time to heal. So we stayed in Lubbock for
just a little bit longer. Sowe went ahead talk to the camp.
I'm like, hey, can weextend our stay? Yes? Can we

(05:44):
stay in our same spot? Yes, We've got space for you. So
we were able to stay there alittle bit longer. So we's nice.
Yeah, it was great, gotus through, gave us time to,
like in our minds, try andgive the foot time to heal. Yeah,
and then we started making our wayup to July fourth, and there
was a lot of things we weren'table to do there unfortunately. Yeah,
I mean, we were hoping thatit would be resolved by that point.

(06:09):
The er i'd kind of at thatpoint just kind of diagnosed it as officially
as a bruise. They said theythought it was probably sprained or strained one
of the two. And they said, you know, hey, stay in
this orthopedic boot for a few weeks. You should be fun. If you're
not, then do a fellop appointment. And so, you know, we
thought, okay, we're trucking along. We'll go ahead and keep our plans,

(06:29):
and we just have to limit thethings that we can do. And
man, like, it's really sadwhen you hurt yourself bad enough to where
you can't walk very far, muchless hike or do anything like that.
When you're going into like the premierhiking places across the country, like Colorado,
Utah, like all of those places, are gorgeous places to go hiking,

(06:50):
and we couldn't do any of that. We had to do a lot
of just like sight seeing from thetruck or very very short hikes, and
then I couldn't really do anything afterthat for the the day. So we
had to like really pare down ourplans. Yeah, and so I usually
make my plans like six months inadvance, but then this hit. Yeah,
and so we'd already planned everything upthrough going to Port Angelos and I

(07:11):
was like, well, and wewere in Steamboat Springs in Utah and it
wasn't getting better. So I waslike, Okay, I'm not gonna make
any plans right now. We wentto the doctor, got a did a
follow up. Yeah. We wefinally kind of had a chance after July
fourth to like settle in in theProbo area for a few weeks, and
so we went ahead and made anappointment. Thank goodness, like there was

(07:32):
a specialist that was able to getme in right away, got an MRI.
They let me know that I havea planter plate tear in my left
foot, so that means like theball of my foot is basically jacked up.
That's a good assessment. I Ilike it. Yeah, like I
can't put weight on the ball ofmy foot. I can't walk on the
ball of my foot right now,And so they gave me some steroid shots.

(07:55):
They said, you know, hey, like rested a little bit longer.
Gave me a brace that I cankind of wean myself into. And
thankfully that brace is cool because youcan actually wear it with a real shoe
and so I don't look like thiscrazy gimpy girl trying to walk around.
But they said, you know,hey, stay in the boot for another
couple of weeks, let it rest, let it heal, and you can
start to wean out of it.So that's what we did. So we

(08:16):
continued our travels up to Vancouver andthen to Port Angelis. And after like
the couple of days in Port Angelis, I mean still she's not able to
walk. Still, like she wecome off of doing even just a little
bit of walking and she's in painand pretty much a mobile for twenty four
hours afterwards. Yeah, the hardpart two is like I waited that two

(08:37):
week time period, tried to weanmyself into this other other brace, and
I lasted like twenty minutes in it, and then I was like I can't.
And so we're about at the time, we're about four weeks away from
Labor Day, and I'm like,okay, Labor Day is already hard enough
to get campgrounds as it is,and we still haven't figured out what we're

(08:58):
doing like for the next little while. And so we sat down and we
talked about it. We were like, okay, like, do we continue
with our plans, do we tryto still go down through California? Do
we do something more local, likedo we go to Bend or Spokane or
something like that. And the morewe talked about it, the more we
were like, that's it's a lotof stuff that we may not be able

(09:20):
to do because of the foot beinghurt. Now. So at that point
we realized it is not worth itfor us to try to like power through
keep our plans as is and notbe able to do anything and not be
able to see places. And wereally just kind of need to like have
a place to just land so Ican go to a follow up and have

(09:41):
a regular cadence with a doctor toreally like get this thing healed right.
And so we finally made the decisionfour weeks ago or three weeks ago now
two weeks ago, two weeks ago, two weeks ago. Less than that,
it was to go from Port Angelisdown to Salem, and then from
Salem we are have been making ourway over to Florida, where we're going

(10:03):
to basically early winter exactly. Imean, if you're gonna have to rest,
you're not gonna be able to doa lot physically, might as well
rest the beach, right like,have fun, enjoy the pool, enjoy
the beach. So that's where we'reheaded, is Florida, So we're essentially
kind of booking it there. Weobviously worked during the week from home and

(10:24):
so we have to stay put inplaces longer during the week, so we're
kind of traveling just on the weekends. But yeah, that's that's where we're
going. Unfortunately, it was sosad because we had to scrap Oregon,
we had to scrap California, wehad to scrap Arizona, New Mexico,
and some other cool places in Washingtonthat we wanted to go as well.
That's okay, they'll still be there, we can still go back. The

(10:48):
nice thing about us, you know, really starting RV life at this time
in our lives when we are stillvery young is we can, we can
go back, we can go doit again, and so we will absolutely
come back through there. We knowthat there's a bunch of you guys there
and would have loved to have metup or you know, at least loved

(11:09):
to have gotten a chance to reallyexplore your state. But it will happen.
It will happen one day. OhI will say, though, Oh
my goodness. US eighty four goingthrough Oregon runs right along the Is it
the Columbia River, Yes, theColumbia River, columb No, I think
it's Columbia. Whatever, correct usif we're if you're wrong. Geography,

(11:33):
geography, It's gorgeous. It's it'sthe most gorgeous drive ever. It's a
really nice drive. There's not aton of elevation to it or anything,
so it's pretty flat, which isnice when you're towing, and it doesn't
have a lot of switchbacks or anythinglike that. It's just a really cool,
easy drive. But the views andthe scenery and the river, it's

(11:54):
just gorgeous. And so we didget to do that at least in Oregon.
Didn't get to as much time aswe wanted there, but man,
it was beautiful. Okay, sotoday's main topic is about the things that
you need to know if you're thinkingabout going full time. Yeah, so
we just talked about things. Wejust talked about the foot, So like,

(12:16):
tell me about healthcare on the road. I feel like you have figured
it out at this point, amI. I don't know that I'm the
expert, but I have definitely hadsome things happen on the road this year.
So we've I've had two er visits. I don't get sick, I
don't get injured. I don't generallyhave a ton of issues. I do
have a chronic health condition that isvery manageable with medication, but beyond that,

(12:41):
I don't really have these things comeup. But this year it's been
a totally different story. So twodifferent er trips, two different reasons,
two different times, two different places. And then of course we just talked
about the foot. Now we're havingto go to a specialist in all of
those things. Thankfully, we havegood insurance. We have insurance through our

(13:01):
our jobs that we work from homefrom and so that's that's really great,
but it is challenging finding healthcare onthe road that's consistent and gives you that
continuity. Most of the time,we can just do like teledoc services,
which is super nice and super easy. We just tell them a local pharmacy
if we, you know, havea cold or sinus infection. We got

(13:24):
COVID earlier this year, which wasit was rough on both of us.
We were both pretty down for thecount for about two weeks solid while we're
in Miami of all places. Butif you're going to be down for the
count, minus would be down forthe count in Miami at least is pretty.
At least it was pretty but yeah, so you know, we were
able to call and kind of getsome medication and to help us feel better
and things like that using teledocs.So that's primary strategy that we use for

(13:46):
healthcare. But with having to goto a specialist and having to do follow
up appointments and having to do Xrays and MRIs and you know, just
radiology and things like that, itcan be really challenging to get that cohesive
care that you need when there's achronic or an acute health condition. And
so one of the things I wouldsay that has really helped us one is

(14:11):
always ask Okay, where can Ihow do I get in touch with you?
To have my records faxed somewhere elseif I need to have my records
fact somewhere else and go to afoil appointment somewhere else. The other thing
that we just did is we werereally really straightforward with our doctor on here's
the situation. We're in town forX amount of time, We're not going

(14:33):
to be coming back through here.What can you do now to get us
into a place where we can kindof get situated until we can get somewhere
long enough to really be able totake advantage of a doctor that would be
a little bit more long term.So that's kind of what we do,
what we've done. Definitely interested inany stories that you have or any tips

(14:54):
that you have on that, becauseclearly we need it. I don't know,
but yeah, that that seems tohave worked for us in terms of
the strategy around getting good quality healthcarewhile we're on the road. But yeah,
it's definitely hard and it definitely canderail your plans. So the other
big thing, uh, just forno one getting into full timing is if

(15:16):
you have an animal like veterinary stuff, is there's a there's a thing there,
there's a thing. Yeah, yougotta figure that out. I mean,
there's vaccines, there's regular checkups,and obviously you're you're a little loved
one. Can uh fur baby,I think is the word we're not supposed
to say, you're a little furbaby. I got so much hate on
social media for using the word furbaby, and I was like, I

(15:37):
thought that was kind of like atrendy thing to say and or whatever,
and no, I got like totallytotally roasted. Stop trying to be trendy.
Anyways, but you're your fur baby. Uh. Mike get sick and
you know, as ours has weand so we had to ours actually got
hurt way she got hurt too.Yeah, she got hurt way long time

(15:58):
ago, and so we ended upI want to say it was like May,
March, March, May, May, May. She got hurt in
May, and then like we werelike, okay, we'll give her a
little time cefa heels, and acouple of weeks later nothing had changed.
It was like, okay, weneed to take her in. So we
were luckily were actually in an areawhere we had some friends and so we

(16:21):
just talked to them. We're like, hey, who's a good vet that
we can take our dog too?And we took him there, They did
x rays, they determined what waswrong, told us what the next steps
were. Basically six months of whatthey call cage rest, so bed rest.
Essentially bed rest. She's not allowedto do a whole lot. She
doesn't get to go on walk,she doesn't get to go play or anything
like that. She's really upset aboutshe's really really salty about it. And

(16:44):
then after six months, it mayheal on its own, or it may
may require surgery, or may justbecome a just a permanent part of her
life at that point, and we'relike, Okay, So we've been basically
monitoring her for the past several months, and we'll continue to monitor and in
a few more months we will doa follow up and we'll find out and
we'll just go from there. Yeah. The other thing to keep in mind,

(17:07):
there is a lot of campgrounds dorequire up to date vaccination records,
and so you do have to stayon top of it, and you do
have to make sure that you're doingthe vaccines that you need to do for
all of the pets that you have. The other thing I would say to
keep in mind, both for humanhealthcare and pet healthcare is anytime you get
to a new campground, just doa quick Google search. Just make sure

(17:32):
you know where the closest er is, where the closest just pharmacy is,
where the closest emergency VET clinic is. So that way, if something happens,
you know where to go and you'renot left panicking in the event that
there's an emergency. Yeah, theother thing as a full timer insurance is
actually a little bit different non healthinsurance, but o r V insurance is

(17:55):
different. So full timer r Vinsurance is design to cover you more similarly
to how it would cover a homeI covering your belongings a lot more and
covering you if you're if something happensmore so if you're at a campground.
Now there is non full timer RVinsurance that is cheaper, And I do

(18:17):
know a lot of full timers whodon't disclose that they're full timers, and
that's totally understandable, but there aresome limitations with that, and if they
find out that you didn't tell them, they might even decline your claim.
So just keep that in mind thatr V insurance you are technically whether you
choose you or not, as yourown business. But you are technically supposed
to tell them that you are afull timer and they will charge you more,

(18:41):
but they're going to also, intheory, cover more. Yeah.
I mean, that's the thing islike, you never want to get caught
up in like an insurance fraud issue, and so being forthcoming with your insurance
company is the best thing to do. And there are insurance companies that will
cover you as a full time rbeer yeah, next one. Mail and

(19:04):
deliveries. Yeah, So that's afun one. That's that question has come
up a number of times. Theanswers are kind of similar, but it's
a little bit of a different approach. In terms of deliveries, a lot
of campgrounds will actually accept deliveries,especially like Amazon packages and things like that,
and so you just have to talkto the campground if you're expecting something

(19:25):
or you want to order something,ask them if that's something that they'll accept.
A lot of times they'll have likea spot in their office or in
a clubhouse or something like that wherethey'll put it where you can just go
pick it up if they don't acceptdeliveries or but also, i mean,
if if you're buying something really expensiveand maybe you don't want to just sitting
out in the middle of nowhere.Amazon also has their lockers, which is

(19:47):
really really nice and that's a greatway to get your package or if you're
buying something expensive, keep your packagelocked away until you manage to get there.
Yeah, it's cool. They're allacross the country. Most of them
are in very very public locations toso it's there's a safety you know feature
around, like making sure that there'speople around there. The other thing is
we use those Amazon lockers if we'renot one hundred percent sure that fed item

(20:10):
is going to arrive in time beforewe have to move on somewhere because it's
it's a very simple return process.You just don't pick it up and then
eventually like they'll just send it backthemselves. So that's made life really easy.
We use Amazon for all kinds ofstuff and so for us it works
out really well. In fact,you know, there's a lot of tips

(20:32):
and tricks and things that we featurethat are Amazon items on our page and
the reason why is because we actuallydo use them and we use them a
lot. So yeah, that's reallygreat for packages. There's also places like
pack and mail places where you canhave FedEx packages and ups packages sent there.
So there's ways to get deliveries onthe road for sure, but mail

(20:56):
mail is a little bit of adifferent story. If you're somewhere a really
long time, you might just beable to kind of just change all your
stuff over. And some campgrounds willabsolutely support you in that, and they
may even have like dedicated mailboxes forlong termers, but so will that's not
very common, and honestly, evenif you are doing that, again,

(21:18):
some of those documents may not bestuff that you want to be readily accessible
if you don't have one of thoselittle lockable mailboxes. Yeah, so there's
there's feature or there's services that youcan actually opt for. I know escapeis
rv as one, I know theservice. There's a service through good sam.
We have not used either one ofthem, so we're not we have
no experience with them. If youhave great experience with them, like put

(21:41):
it in the chat, let letthe community know, because I think that's
how we continue to just help eachother out. But those services will actually
set you up with a domicile,they'll set you up with a mailing address,
and then depending on how you knowwhat tears or level of service you
want to pay for. They'll goall the way up to like checking your

(22:04):
mail, scanning it to you,and then you know, either saving it
or shredding it or sending it toyou, whatever your preference is. So
it's a great service. It's supersuper helpful. And that's what a lot
of full time our years do justso that way they can stay up to
date with their mail on the road. For us, we actually have the

(22:26):
benefit of being able to have familymembers home where we're from in Texas,
we have our mail sent to youand who check it regularly for us.
Don't worry, we compensate them withloads and loads of wine. But that's
how we do it. It's areally beneficial opportunity for us. We're super
super blessed to be able to justhave that set up with our family where

(22:51):
we kind of get that for free. But there is a little bit of
a drawback to it. There is. So another one is jury duty.
So well we're gonna talk about thedraw with mail. Oh no, you
were gonna get into sorry, keepgoing, yep, see see TikTok.
You're seeing how the sausage is made. Se mess up. We have to

(23:12):
redo. Yeah, So with likejury duty. That's another thing that you
kind of have to figure out.But if your mail is being sent somewhere
and somebody has to check it foryou, and you get assigned jury duty,
how are you going to know if, for example, in our case,
my parents are the ones who checkour mail for us, and they

(23:33):
are on a big long trip too. They're on a big long RV trip
right now as well. So juryduty is one of those things that you
kind of have to figure out.She got jury duty earlier this year.
Luckily it lined up. It wasreally easy to just fly her in and
do it. No big deal.We just I thought about it afterwards that
I was like, you know,once my parents go on their trip,

(23:55):
if I had to happen to getjury duty, we'd have no way of
knowing. And so I guess I'lldeal with that next time I get go
through. Hopefully that's not something thatcame up. We're living dangerously. We're
living dangerously, but thankfully where we'refrom. When you get the jury duty
summons, it is a little it'spretty far in advance, and it's pretty

(24:18):
easy to change the date. Atleast once it's easy to change the date.
So no about it. I guessyeah, yeah, living dangerously.
We're living on the edge right now. But something else, and another another
civil duty of yours that we doknow when this comes up, is voting.
Voting. Yes, so wherever you'reregistered obviously, wherever your domicile is.

(24:41):
So if you have one like us, or you or you're using one
of those services, you're gonna havea domicile that that's where you're going to
be registered to vote. And sowhen it comes time for those votes,
you're gonna have to actually go backto that location. So our plan at
least for the presidential election in ayear is we're gonna be we're gonna get

(25:02):
ourselves into Florida by about October ishand we're going to fly back to Texas,
back to Texas one at a timeso that somebody's here to take care
of the dog and go vote,do early voting, and then come back.
Yeah, and thankfully we can.So Texas has a really long early
voting period, so it'll be reallyeasy for us to schedule that out.

(25:23):
There's some other states that just theyeither don't have early voting or they don't
have a really long window for earlyvoting. So that's definitely something to consider
too, depending on where your legalresonance is and where you're registered to vote.
And then the last thing is yourdriver's license renewals, your vehicle registrations,
passport renewals, things like all thingslike that are going to be affected

(25:45):
by going full time, and you'regonna have to again, it's going to
be based off of where your domicile'sat. Yeah, there are some vehicle
registrations one of those that I don'tknow that your domicile has to be.
I don't I'm not really sure onhow that works, and it's different from
state to state. So vehicle registrationyou're just gonna have to figure out.
And presumably if you have a domstile, it's probably just gonna be easiest

(26:07):
to register in that same place withyour vehicle and your r V which both
have their own separate registrations and inspectionsand all that stuff. Yeah, so
it's something where you have to planaround that every time that cycle comes up,
and so you just have to keepthat in mind and build that into
your travel plans to make sure thatyou get those done and you stay you

(26:33):
know, legal on the road,so that way you can hit the road
and not have any issues. Okay, So we've been doing a fan questions
segment for almost a year now andit's been great. It's been super easy
because of our wonderful TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. Our huge audience has been

(26:55):
been great at sending in questions thingsthat we may not have even thought of.
But if you are one of ourdedicated podcast listeners, like that's the
only way you inter it. You'reyou're in the car every single day listening
to us. I love it.Thank you. Yes, we want you
to have an opportunity to be ableto ask us questions as well. What
do you want to know? Whatdo you want to hear us talk about?

(27:17):
So email questions or subjects or anythingto podcast at Wandering Urvbabe dot com
or if you are in you know, if you have at least one of
the social media's, We're on itat Wandering our Vbabe. We're even on
Snapchat. Okay, people Snapchat,you can find us there, send us
a DM just like this. Sothis week we got a DM from somebody

(27:41):
on Instagram did not want their namementioned, so I'm gonna leave that out
for him. What are the topten things you need after buying your first
RV. So we just got donetalking about if you want to be a
full time or now we're talking aboutbrand new you are just starting out.
Number one, the right to vehiclefor the job. Oh my gosh,

(28:02):
the number of people that we havemet and seen who are totally towing their
trailer with the wrong vehicle. Sure, and they run into so many problems
because of it, and it's alsokind of dangerous. Yeah, Like even
my dad when he got his firstbig pull behind, he got a half
ton is it or it wasn't atthe time, or it wasn't a half
tony. I don't even half Iknow, it's not a half done and

(28:25):
maybe a quarter ton I don't know, I don't remember. It was not
the right one. It was notthe right one for the job. And
he had so much trouble that firstsummer. It was horrible. So just
make sure you're observing all the youknow, like the twenty percent role.
Make sure you're thinking about like whatit's designed for, the type of trailer,
the type of truck. Obviously,like we've got a fifth wils you

(28:45):
kind of need something a little bitlarger and have your duty. But maybe
if you've got something small and easyto pull, you might just need a
light suv like. There are alot of options out there, but just
make sure you got the right vehiclefor the job. Yeah, I mean,
that's really paying attention to your payload. It's paying attention to your toe
capacity of your tow vehicle and thegross vehicle weight rating of your actual camper.

(29:10):
Now, if you have a motorhome, it's obviously going to be
a little bit different. You're notnecessarily gonna have to worry about having the
right tow vehicle to tow it becauseyou're driving it instead. But motor homes
don't fit in small places. Theydon't fit in the cities or places where
you might want to go visit onyour travels, and so you may want
to think about having a tow vehiclebehind. That's a smaller vehicle that you

(29:34):
can attach to the motor home,and and there's a lot of things that
go into that and making sure thatyou've got the right vehicle for that.
Exactly Number two, the right hitchto keep you stable, And this one
it's very important. Okay, Sothe reason I say to keep you stable
is because there are stabilizing. There'shitch with stabilizers, there's hitches with off

(30:00):
sets, Like, there's so manydifferent things out there, and what you
want to look into is you wantto make sure that for the weight that
you're carrying and the weight of yourvehicle, you want to make sure that
you've got a hitch that's gonna helpkeep that in control. So when you're
driving down the road, especially ifyou've got a trailer that maybe is heavier
than you are and you're driving downthe road, that thing's gonna want a
jackknife on you when you do.If you make a bad turn, or

(30:22):
you have a high speed or yeah, you hit the brakes at the wrong
time. So just keep that inmind, like do the research. There's
so many options out there. Sofor us, it was about having I
wanted to have a shortbed truck,and so what we got was a sliding
hitch. Now there's two types ofsliding. You've got a manual and an
automatic. I'm lazy. I wantedthe automatic slider and it's been amazing and

(30:45):
I'm so glad we put the extramoney in time into it. Yeah,
totally do y'all hear the rain rightnow, I'm so grateful for the rain.
It rained on us like the firstsix months of the year, the
entire time, pretty much, andso it got really irritating at one point.
But since then we haven't had anyrain, and it has been so
stinking hot here. I know youguys are feeling it too. We're all

(31:08):
having a heat wave across the country. But the rain is actually brought in
some cooler weather, which was reallynice. So it allowed the camper to
cool down a little bit more becauseguys, it was it was pretty hot
in here earlier today and we weresweating. Those aces were running and not
even cycling. They just couldn't keepup. So thankfully we got we got

(31:32):
some rain and now you have somelovely background noise with the rain. Number
three chocks blocks and rblocks had tomake a rhyme exactly, So, I
mean, that's so important, likeyou need okay's first of all, when
you're if you've got one of thesefancy auto levelers like we do, especially,
it's amazing, but if they're youdon't want to over extend them.

(31:56):
The RV will be more stable ifyou don't extend them too far. So
putting blocks down is a great wayto like keep that keep things level,
and they're also really useful, likewe have the little Lego ones and so
you can also use them to likedrive up onto if you're really at a
bad unlevel site. It's so amazing. They're so useful. And then on
top of that, well they helpus stability too, Like that's the thing.

(32:17):
So we have the with the Andersonbuckets as well for our hydraulics,
and it really helps with the movementinside the camper. It kind of keeps
everything stable and we don't kind ofhave that shifting around quite so much whenever
we're stationary. And then chalks areincredibly important. It helps your trailer from

(32:39):
light not rolling around. I mean, the most dangerous time is probably when
you're either hitching or unhitching, andhaving those chalks on there is so beneficial
for keeping the trailer where it iswhile you're getting hitched up or while you're
unhitching, making sure that it doesn'troll around. Once you get all of
your struts down, your problem notgoing anywhere. But it's still nice to

(33:00):
have that little extra mindset, especiallylike it's just piece of it's peace of
mind because like the shrug can bendyeah, absolutely, Like you definitely don't
want to uh not have chalks uhin at your wheels, like just just
buy some chalks. Yeah, andthen you know, the last thing is
RB locks and that goes for likethe door to your RV. You would

(33:23):
not believe the number of locks fromjust from the manufacturer that are universal and
you can literally get a pair ofkeys to and a regular ORB lock that
just comes standard from the manufacturers,all of the manufacturers pretty much on Amazon.
So your neighbor could have a keythat fits in your door lock and

(33:45):
vice versa. So it's a goodidea to get a separate, specialized lock
for your RV door that only youhave access to and you have access to
the you know, the A lotof them are like keypad versions and things
like that, which is really nice. But you can also gets. You
also want to have locks for likeyour hitch, so like we have a
kingpin because ours is a fifth wheel, so we have a lock for that.

(34:07):
Now, not all locks are great. They keep honest people honest.
It's it's really all it is.You're keeping honest people on us and exactly,
so nothing's one hundred percent know that, but yes, it is nice
to go ahead and put something on, but do the research. Find the
best one that you can that thatis available to you. We we haven't

(34:27):
done a lot of researching. Weknow that there's some flaws with ours,
but it's definitely something to look intoand just have a good solid lock for
your hitch as well as all yourdoors and storage exactly number four. Enough
water hoses and adapters to get everythingyou need hooked up, Yeah, pretty
much, pretty much, so,especially if you're gonna, yeah, if

(34:47):
you're gonna do any kind of hookups, you want to make sure you got
enough stuff to look up your water. Yeah, And so like for us,
we have at black tank flush.We have our main water inlet,
and so I actually have a widevalve. I have some hoses specifically for
that. I even have one specifichose that's only used for the black tank
flush, and I like to goahead and have it hooked up, especially

(35:09):
if I'm staying at a campground forany length of time. So that way
it's just nice and easy that evenjust a normal when I go to flush,
I can go ahead and do ablack tank flush at the same time
and clean it out, get alittle bit of that extra grime dumped away,
just really really useful. And youwant to have plenty of links to
get you too, because you neverknow where the hookup is going to be.

(35:30):
We've had some that have been waybehind the camper and so our campers,
I think our campers forty feet.I have one twenty five foot and
two tin feet hoses, so Ihave enough to get forty five feet so
the length of our RV, andthen some out of those hoses, and

(35:51):
I can obviously combine them together,but by having two short ones and one
long one makes it a little biteasier. And then I have two five
foot hoses that come off of thewide joint to go into our main inlet
and into our black tank flush numberfive. The reverse of that having enough
sewer hoses to keep everything's flowing smoothlyand get those tanks empty. Yeah,
yeah, so you want to haveagain, you want to have hoses that

(36:15):
are about the length of your trailerbecause you never know where it's going to
be. And spare is really importantbecause those suckers can break in a moment's
notice, and if you don't havea spare, well, then you're kind
of sunk. Yeah, and you'regonna want to have l joints so that
way you can get into the actualsewer receptacle. You're gonna want to have
forty five degree joints because that's reallyhelpful coming off of the actual hookup of

(36:39):
your vehicle. I've got a widejoint because I actually have two different places
to dump from. I have mygalley tank and then I have my gray
and black tank that are on thesame ones. So I have a wide
joint so that way I can combinethose two together. I've got plenty of
hoses to go whichever direction I needto go, then combine them, and

(37:00):
then the stinky slinky the stinky slinkyso that way I can raise it up
and make sure that there's a nicesmooth flow going down into the sewer.
Yeah, I mean he creates likea p trap essentially. That actually helps
a lot with the smell, makesure that the off gases don't come back
into the camper, and it alsohelps with the flow whenever he goes to

(37:20):
empty out the black and the graytank. Number six controversial, But even
if you decide to down the roadon your own, switch over to septic
safe start off with RV toilet paper. Yeah, that's so totally totally an
opinion and just our opinion. Butespecially when you're learning how to do RV

(37:43):
life and you're learning how to managethose tanks, it is really really stressful
when you get a clog in theblack take, and by using RV toilet
paper, it will help you tokind of get used to it, kind
of get to know your rig.Every rig is different and so it'll help
you to get to know your rigand hopefully help mitigate that. And then
from there, if you want toexplore different types of toilet paper, as

(38:07):
long as it is a septic safetoilet paper, then go for it.
But I would say, you know, like, don't don't give yourself that
headache, eliminate that variably. Yes, RVTP is more expensive than just regular
septic safe TP, but it mightbe worth it to you, especially when
you get through that learning curve.And here lately we actually started using Scott

(38:30):
Scott's making their own RV safe toiletpaper r V and Moraine, and it's
been working great for us. It'svery nice. I think it's really soft
too. Yeah, I would actuallysay I don't know if toilet paper is
necessarily more expensive, but it's generallynot as soft, and Scott is actually
really really soft. It's really nice. I don't know. We just started
checking them out not too long ago. We haven't been able to reliably get

(38:52):
them, so I don't know ifwe'll have any cloug issues. We may
not have any clog issues whatsoever withanything at this point, but I still
like to have it. Just makesmy life a little bit simpler in my
head. And so that's just anice little you know, there's others out
there besides just the really uncomfortable camcosand Aquasoft's number seven water filters, so

(39:15):
both getting a indoor pitcher water filterfor your drinking water as well as the
inline water filter that's part of yourwater system outside. Yeah, so I
mean the picture is great for drinkingwater, but you're still brushing your teeth,
So unless you're planning on going andgrabbing that, I would recommend having
a water filter. I honestly thinkit's the number one item you need is

(39:37):
a water filter. I think Imight have reversed the order of this list
and men like number one you needa water filter. I don't know that
these are necessarily in any particular orderunless you put them in any particular wade
when you created the dock. Butlike, we're just listing the ten things
that we can think of a narticularorder. But man, he really thinks
the water filter is super important.If you're not camping, you don't need

(39:59):
a you don't need anything. Butif you are camping, you need a
water filter. You don't need anythingat all. I mean, if you're
not camping, you don't need anyRV supplies. If you are camping,
you need a water filter. Evenif you're boomdocking, you need to fill
up your tanks, your fresh tankwith water. You probably want to run
that through a filter. So thereforeyou need a water filter. No matter

(40:21):
what, whatever your scenario is,you probably need a water filter at some
point. So I really just highlyrecommend get yourself a water filter. Get
self a water filter, uh numbereight, A separate set of RV safe
kitchen utensils and cookware and things likethat. Yeah, I mean it's it's
really easy. I know some peoplejust kind of bring what they have from

(40:43):
their home, but I don't recommendit. Just have something in the RV.
You gotta forget something, You're gonnaforget something have stuff in the RV
for that that's prepped and ready andeasily transportable in an RV that's safe,
it's not going to cause any damage, it's not gonna break on its own,
like easy to clean. Yeah,you don't want a bunch of glass
to if you want to have thingsthat are nice and easy to work with.
And if you do have glass stuff, you need to be really protective

(41:04):
of it. So there's just alot that goes into it. So having
a nice separate set that's really mentallydesigned for being in the RV, it's
a good idea. Yeah, Numbernine, a separate set of tools from
your home equipment. Common items area drill, torque, wringe for your
tires, break or bar for yourtires, socket set, screwdrivers, especially

(41:28):
any specialty ones for your RV.So like ours, we have a ton
of Sq two screws in the insidethe RV, and so I I have
a drill bit with that, andI have a bit for my screwdriver.
That's that, so that way Ican do all of the screws in here
that are Sq twos. There maybe you may have torques, you may
have stars, you may have otherthings whatever you've got make sure you've got

(41:51):
a set for that, and maybehave multiples just in case one of one
of your bits breaks or something.I don't even know what that means,
but I do know that they're notall Philip's head or flat haired screwdrivers or
screws. So good job. SoI know that much because I've tried and
I was like, well, thatdoesn't not fit and it does not work.

(42:13):
So number ten last, but notleast, this sends a little bit
of a throwaway, but a brandnew set of tires, and you need
that regardless of whether you have anew RV or a used RV. Yeah,
I mean, depending on how oldyour tires are, they probably need
to be replaced. If it's abrand you've never heard of, they replaced
something, they need to be replaced. We personally were big fans of Goodyear

(42:34):
Endurance. Ours came with Goodyear Endurance, so we went ahead and kept them
on. But they were a littlebit older and we probably should have replaced
them a little Maybe you have atire blow out this year. Yeah,
we may not have needed to havereplaced them immediately, but probably a little
bit sooner than we did. Sowe ended up having a blowout, and
so now we've got all brand newtires on there. I like Goodyear Endurance.
There are other brands. I don'tknow any of the other brands off
the top of my head. I'vejust always been a big fan. So

(42:58):
other than that, I would justkeep it. Just prepare mentally, prepare
yourself budget for replacing your tires assoon as you get your RV. Well.
The other thing to keep in mindtoo is I personally would have thought,
oh, yeah, you know,if I'm buying a used RV,
it makes sense to replace the tiresbecause you have no idea how those tires

(43:20):
have been used. You can checkthe year on the actual tire itself and
it'll tell you how old they are, but you know, you just never
know, and that's not something youwant to mess with. But you do
need to do it with a newRV as well, or at least double
check make sure that those tires arein good shape, because you have no
idea how long those tires have beensitting on that RV, sitting on the
lot, or sitting at the storagefacility for the RV builder before they put

(43:45):
it onto the RV, drying outand becoming old, like old tires is
really really dangerous. That's where youstart to get some of your more serious
blowouts and stuff is the older theyget. The tread may be fine,
but the age of the tire andits structure is not. Yeah, and
you would not believe the number ofmanufacturers that just put the cheapest tires that

(44:06):
they can find on an RV.So it's really not a great tire.
It's not really safe to be drivingdown the road and taking too many trips
with. So again, if it'san older tire, and or if it's
a brand that you're not familiar with, like if it's not a name brand
like Michelin or Goodyear or something likethat, Firestone, those kind of name

(44:27):
brand tires, swap it out forsomething that is name brand and that is
an appropriate tire four your RV andfor the weight rating of your RV.
So the bonus, I guess tothis top ten things that you need when
you first buy your RV, likeother than the actual RV itself, but
this is just a little bit ofa bonus. If you are not doing
the full time life and you haveyou know, your regular sticks and bricks

(44:52):
home and you use your RV togo and travel and do vacations and do
trips and things like that. It'sgonna potentially take you a little bit of
time to do this, but wehighly recommend that you have just things that
are just going to stay in theRV that are just duplicates of things that
you have in your home, Solike towels, sheets, toilet trees,

(45:15):
blankets if you bakeup. I thinkwe said this on the last podcast it
came up, but we wanted tothrow it out for this top ten list
that like, it's really important haveduplicates of anything that you would use on
a daily basis other than maybe yourclothes, and just so that way it's
already in there for you to go, yeah, if you have to,
or you want to take a spurof the moment trip. You don't want

(45:37):
to have to be thinking about everythingand essentially like moving half of your into
the camper and then half of itback over into your house every single time
you want to take a trip.And so having all of that stuff already
ready to go and dedicated to thecamper is going to be really helpful when
you're trying to plan your trips orfor some reason like you live in an
area like hurricane season, you know, in the Gulf or on the coast,

(46:02):
or tornado season or someplace where likeyou have to evacuate soon, it's
really going to be helpful for youto already have a fully packed camper ready
to go. Basically, buy morethings for your RV. That's a great
way to put it in. Justbuy stuff for your RV. Okay,
we have a question from two twozero neo. Do the carpets and floors

(46:27):
get dirty often going in? Alsoit is be wondering how to keep clean.
Yes, they get dirty all thetime, all day long. The
best thing that we do is wehave a stick vacuum. We love our
stick vacuum. Some RVs, includingours, actually came with like a built
in vacuum in the actual RV system. It's fine, but it has this

(46:50):
like huge long hose and it's kindof unwieldy, so we don't really even
use it. We had a stickvacuum from our house. We carried it
over into the RV. We absolutelylove it. I probably vcuum like twice
twice a day. Though, whenwas the last time you vacuumed? Well,
no, I haven't this week onebecause we're not really in an area
where it is getting super super dirtyinto because my foot hurts. But yeah,

(47:15):
but we use the stick vacuum thatreally helps. The other thing we
use as a shark steam mop forthe floors and so it doesn't use a
ton of water. It actually justuses steam to get the floors ninety nine
percent bacteria free, which is great. So we do that. But we've
actually heard of like stick vacuums andsteam mops that are like combined, like

(47:37):
there, it's one one device.Have never used one, but I've heard
it's kind of cool. So yeah, the floors get dirty real easy with
people trapesing in and out, especiallyif you're camping in a more rustic campsite,
which is always really nice, you'rejust gonna track stuff in. So
yeah, it's use those stick vacuums, use those steam mops. They're really

(48:00):
helpful. Now onto our pick ofthe week. Pick of the week.
This week, I wanted to makea safety call out and legit, I
was just kind of sitting here workingon the dock and I looked up and
I saw our fire extinguisher and Iwas like, you know, in a
business, when you have a fireextinguisher. You're required, if you're required

(48:22):
to have a fire extinguisher, you'rerequired by law to have that fire extinguisher
inspected every single year. And soI thought to myself, there's probably a
reason for that. Well, weare in a little wood box that has
propane running through it, so youknow it would be helpful to have a

(48:43):
working fire extinguisher all the time.So this is just a call out to
check your fire extinguisher. I don'tget one. If your RV doesn't have
one, or if it's if you'vehad the same fire you're extinguisher for many
many years in your RV, itmight be time to upgrade. It might
it might not upgrade, but geta new one, like I don't.
I don't know the longevity of fireextinguishers. Obviously they have a reason for

(49:04):
wanting to have it inspected once ayear. So Jeff definitely check on it.
Ours has a little gauge on it. You can kind of see what
the level is and all that stuff, but for sure keep an eye on
it. By one. If youdon't have one, replace one if it's
really really old, and if nothingelse, just look at it and make
sure that it still looks good.Okay, there we go. Florida Boy

(49:24):
nine one one says you need torecharge them every year. So they so
have you checked ours? I've no. I literally saw it today and I
was, let you know, there'sprobably something I should check on. So
apparently I should have ours recharged becauseit has been more than years. So
there you go. There's an answerstraight from the audience. You need to
get your fire extinguisher recharged every year. So don't just look at it,

(49:47):
don't just inspect it, actually rechargethat thing. Go get it taken care
of. So I have worked inbusinesses, so that's a little bit interesting.
I have worked in businesses where thiswas something I had to worry about
and we didn't have it recharged everyyear. We just I had an inspector
would come look at it, signI don't know what all. He probably
did some tests, signed off onit, and I have been a different
kind of fire extinguishment on the oneof the camper is much much smaller and

(50:12):
more compact than the one that wehad, you know, like the building
that we were working at or whatever. So who knows, who knows?
There's their new information. You canget it recharged once a year straight from
a twenty eight year firefighter paramedic.You are the person to know. Thank
you very much. We will bejoined at just the right time to help

(50:34):
us give that pick of the week. Somebody else says, if it's in
the green, you are good.That's kind of what that was. Kind
of My analysis was like, there'sa gauge on it. If it's showing
full, you're fine. Yeah yeah. But the nice thing though too,
And Florida Boy like, correct usif we're wrong. But you can talk
to your local fire department and theywill absolutely help you out and shoring that

(51:00):
the fire extinguisher that you have issafe and is actually in working order.
That's awesome. Florida Boy says,yes, you really need a ABC fire
extinguisher that covers grease, electric firesand gas fires. Perfect, yeah,
definitely you need one. Definitely checkit, recharge it if it needs it,
look at the gauges. Trust yourlocal authorities. They will help you

(51:20):
out with everything. But if you'rein an RV a giant wooden box with
propane and electronics, oh yeah yeah, do you definitely need to take care
of your fire extinguishure. So I'massuming that you're going to do that tomorrow,
that's on your to do list todo tomorrow. Then since you haven't
done it, I might be lookinga little bit more into that. Yeah,
yeah, awesome. So hey friends, thanks for listening. Hopefully this

(51:44):
was a great episode for you.Stay connected. We would love to interact
with you. We would love youto tell us about the topics you want
us to talk about and you wantus to cover. We are on all
the social media platforms TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, snapchat, threads, hopefully
Facebook. Hopefully I didn't miss any. Feel free to drop us at DM

(52:05):
put something a comment in one ofour videos and we will absolutely get to
it. The other cool thing isour website is also in the bio of
all of our social media platforms.It's beacons dot ai slash Wandering r v
Babe so b E A c On s dot ai slash Wandering r v
Babe. That's where we have linksto a lot of the different products that

(52:25):
we talk about as well as merchandise. So we've got a Trucker hat and
we've got a Fannie pack that areup and live and ready to go.
So if you want some wandering RVmerch. That's the place to get it
for now. We'll see you nexttime and thanks so much for listening.
By lovely people. Bye. SoSteve says, I live in key West.

(52:54):
In Key West, it's five hundreddollars a year with Progressive. So
I'm with Progressive. Are you isthis like a full Are you doing full
time insurance? Are you just doinga recreational vehicle insurance? So what the
big difference? I probably should havetalked about it in the episode a little
bit. But the big thing thatthe other big thing that I've we have
with the Progressive is that are withour full time is that it'll actually cover

(53:16):
up to eighty percent and I thinkwe might even have gap insurance on topic,
so one hundred percent of what thevalue is of the trailer, so
we can go get a new oneand pay off our note at the same
time. So we can go geta new a new trailer. Something happens
because this is our home