Archive for the ‘boondocking’ Category

Well, here’s the overall update of our first couple days of full timing. A lot has happened in the last 60 hours.

We left San Antonio for Dallas on Wednesday around noon. Decided to take 281 North instead of I-35 for the scenic route. Jeremy drove all the way. Around 5PM we were about 5 miles north of a little town called Stephenville. The truck made some noise and just stopped working… it just died on us~ Jeremy tried his best to steer our rig to the side of the road with the little bit of momentum left.

Well, our AAA Texas – Plus RV membership actually came in handy for this. Called their toll free number for Roadside Assistance… the lady did not seem to understand what a Fifth Wheel was~ but the Tow Truck company came about 90 minutes later and was able to tow our truck with the Fifth Wheel on the back to the closest GM dealer/service center – Bruner Motors, Inc. We will tell you more about what we did while waiting later~

We boondocked at the employee parking lot of the Bruner Motors GM service center and was able to get in first thing in the morning for them to take a look at the truck. The service was very good! The staff was friendly and helpful. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday was our first day with the Fifth Wheel was a long one.

On the way to pick up with Fifth Wheel, I realized that we forgot to take the mountain bikes with us from Dave’s. More about this later…

At RCD, the outside temperature was below freezing, so a few of the items they weren’t able to show us because the doors were frozen shut or the locks were frozen. After dealer walk through, which was a whole lot of information to take in. We finally drove the baby out of the lot.

Jeremy did an awesome job driving the rig! For first timer, he really did great! I am so proud of my baby!

So we headed down to south end of Columbus and parked the rig at a Lowe’s parking lot. Jeremy’s dad and us drove the element and headed to Dave’s to pick up with mountain bikes. We also picked up some strips and tarp to protect the bikes. The RV bumper bike rack we got from RCD is pictured below.

We didn’t have any tools with us, so we had RCD service department installed the rack for us. We discovered that they were positioned too far apart. But the thing we did not foresee was that the bike tired were too fat for the rack. Plus the handle bars were going to really damage the back wall of the Fifth Wheel. We decided to put them in the truck bed.

That was a 15 minute struggle in the freezing old… So we were finally ready to take off for the long way home. That was 7PM.

Jeremy drove all the way and we finally got tired around 12:30 AM this morning, and decided to boondock at the Love’s truck stop.

I believe the temperature outside was around 26 degrees. So we turned on the heater in the Fifth Wheel and lowered the jacks so they took off some weight from the truck bed.

The Fifth Wheel finally warmed up and we slept in the master bedroom without sliding out the bedroom section, since we are parking in the middle of the Love’s parking lot.

I was so excited… our first boondocking. Everything seems to be good. We had to be inside our sleeping bags, but that was ok…

We woke up this morning around 9AM and felt rested. It was awesome. I realized that this is the beginning of the end for our hotel stays.

Jeremy quickly found out that the truck’s battery was completely dead this morning.

Lesson learned today: Do not leave your Fifth Wheel plugged into the truck when boondocking.

So we had the truck battery powering the heater all night instead of using the propane to heat the Fifth Wheel. Bad idea~ haha…