Friday: Last day in the Shack
We spent the day getting ready for our trip to the RV dealer
in Shoemakersville PA. on Saturday morning.
I made sure that the truck tires were the correct pressures and the
monitoring system was working. This has
been a long process as finding a place with high enough air pressure has been
less than convenient to say the least.
At the last minute the drivers front tire valve stem dill valve was too
far recessed to activate the monitor sensor.
Our neighbor helped out with a tool to adjust the dill valve so it would
work.
Patty and I got out the suit cases and assorted bags to fill
for our trip to get the RV in the morning.
We were not going to move everything, just enough so we would have some
stuff to set up camp for the first time at our friends, Cindy and Robs, house
in Keyport NJ. The main things to get
were the daily drugs, coffee and the coffee pot, and change of clothes. We will go back to the shack on Monday to get
the remaining items.
Our Shack mates/friends Tom and Michele arrived
early evening to start our final night.
They made us our favorite food, a fantastic dinner of king crab
legs. They were delicious! Thanks Tom and Michele. The plan was to go to
sleep early so we could get up rested and early, 4:30 am on Saturday. We were too excited and it was, our last
night in the Shack. After dinner we sat,
talked, and drank wine for way, way, too long!
I think I got 4 hours of restless sleep.
Saturday: The start of our RV life
Big day! 4:45 am we
are up and getting the coffee ready. So
are Tom and Michele to see us off. They
really are good friends. Most stuff was
already packed, just needed to get the last minute stuff like the coffee pot
and computers. We did our hugs and said
goodbye and we were off to our new home!
We arrived at 8:00 am and ready for our inspection and tour
of the RV. The tour/inspection took
about 4 hours. I was pretty happy that I
knew most everything from my years of research.
Still, nothing like seeing it yourself.
The big challenges will come when we actually doing it by ourselves. The inspection showed us that the RV doesn’t
come with much in the way of essential accessories, like water and sewer hoses,
electrical adaptors, and wheel chocks.
At around 11:30 we were ready to hook up the truck for the
first time. This is the stuff that I
could not really research, we were now moving to brand new experiences. We tried first to hook up to the RV while it
was still inside the work area, however, the truck was too high to couple to in
and the ceiling was too low to raise the RV.
So they coupled up a tow vehicle to the RV and put it in the back
parking lot.
Moving our Sanibel to the back lot
Here it comes around the corner
Getting it ready for me to hitch up to it for the first time
It took several attempts to
get the RV to hitch to the truck as the hitch was brand new and not worn
in. Finally we got hitched and we were
ready to go.
Finally got it hitched!
Here it is ready to head east to NJ
First, need to make the final payments, get the title, and
purchase the stuff we need that the RV did not come with. We added a water pressure regulator, 10 feet
of extra sewer hose for a total of 25 feet, 30 foot 50 amp extension cable for
a total of 55 feet, and adapters for 30 amp and 15 amp electrical service
connections. Oh, one last thing, Patty
got extendable marshmallow forks. All
for a grand total of over $300 for essential accessories! Now we are ready to take the RV 120 miles to our first camp spot.
The trip was fairly uneventful, thankfully! We went from PA state road 61 to I78 to I287
in NJ and then to the Garden state parkway to exit 117a. A few thing stood out though. First was the relative ease of pulling the
RV. The truck actually rides and handles
better. However, I was surprised that
the truck really does a lot of work going up long hills. I didn’t think it would rev as high as it did
with almost full turbo boost. I was
maintaining a 65mph highway speed though.
The other interesting thing was that people would actually give me room
to change lanes, even in NJ!
Now for the real test and one that I didn’t think would be
as hard as it was, backing in to the camp site, in this case a driveway. This site is actually a very forgiving site
with a wide road in front and nothing overhead.
Even with this easy site, It took us about an hour to accomplish the
feat! I learned a few things but not
enough yet. This will be very
embarrassing to do with an audience!
I think we did good for the first time parking it
No room left in the driveway, need to park in the street
We have a great view from of the back yard
We got the electrical and water hooked up the slides out and
the AC on. All good. We were exhausted! We ordered out for a strombolie and watched
the olimpics until 9pm and then went to bed.
We slept like dead logs for 10 hours. All is good!
Stay tuned!