Archive for December, 2007

Dec 19 2007

Our first camping experience plus dewinterizing the Fifth Wheel

Posted by JacQ

OK. It is time to put our team work to test. We found a nice little private-owned RV campground, Joy-O RV Park, between Memphis and Jackson in Tennessee. Since it is not too cold, and not going below 38 degrees. We decided to use this opportunity to dewinterize the Fifth Wheel. The camp host lady was really nice and we were staying there for the night – only $20.50 ($22.50 after sales tax.) :D Good deal for a nice clean campground with full service.

get directions
Joy-O RV Park
150 Highway 138 at I-40 Exit 68
Jackson, TN 38301
(731) 424-3725


We followed instructions I found over the internet regarding dewinterizing the water system in the RV. Extremely helpful.

After a few hours of running water through the system and cleaning, our new home is now fully functional. Jeremy took a nice shower and found out that with the size of the water heater, we can only do one shower at a time and have to do it fast! :D

Photos below shows our beautiful new home at the Joy-O RV Park.

Dec 18 2007

Our first boondocking and driving/pulling experience

Posted by JacQ

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. :D 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.

Swagman 2 Bike RV Bumper Rack

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…

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