Thank You Jesus!!!
Daddy and Little Miss ( and a dolly)
It is so great to be able to just bring everything you need along with you in a trailer( especially when potty training)! I have only tent camped before so this was really nice with 5 kids!
Snuggle Bug catching lightening bugs
Princess and Little Miss snuggling after a long, fun day.
On our 2nd night at the campground we had a really bad storm come through at 1:30am. We knew some storms were coming so we signed up for text alerts before we hit the hay. We got an alert and I jumped up to check the TV stations. We watched for a couple of minutes and it was nearly right on us and the main thing was 70-80 mph winds...that can easily topple and throw a trailer around
. I said we had to decide whether to jump in the truck and head 5 minutes to my mom's place to take shelter or to go to the bathroom/shower building right next to us. I quick woke up the kids as calmly as I could,"You have to wake up, quickly please. Stay calm, but there is a storm coming and you need to get your shoes on NOW, we have to go." Yeah, they were pretty freaked out. lol
It wasn't more than 5-10 minute after we got the text that the storm hit. I grabbed diapers and wipes and that was it. We decided to go to my mom's but as we slid open the sliding doors the 75/80 mile an hour winds hit us full in the face along with the stinging sheets of rain. We just had to yell,"RUN!" and head to the shower house. Bubba didn't even have his shoes on, Princess lost a flip flop in our mad dash. The lights went out as soon as we got to the building which only increased the panic( not to mention the flexing of the metal roof). There were others taking shelter in the building too, women wrapped in blankets to cover themselves, men in just their PJ pants holding children. There ended up being 2 tornadoes in the area and lots of lots of straight line wind damage.
Below and above are just a couple of the many many trips the grounds keepers made that next morning trying to clean up the snapped trees and limbs. They had to saw some downed trees in pieces and haul away. We were right between 2 trees but praise God our trailer stayed put and so did the trees!
Our power was out till the next morning and for a family that cannot sleep with out the sound of a fan, that was TOUGH.
Hubby chillin
This pic does not do the apple cobbler justice. The black is just the bottom of the pan through the liner BTW. I did it in the dutch oven and it was soooo good. It was a pinterest find. I will put more apples in it next time though.
We also tried making eclairs over the fire. We made these stick called 'dough boys'. It is just a thin dowel for the stick part and then a bigger dowel that Hubby cut and drilled a hole in and stuck on the end of the smaller dowel. That way the dough gets spread out more and cooks through. I would love to claim the idea, but again, found it on pinterest!
After you wrap the crescent roll around the stick and cook it till golden brown, you then put vanilla pudding inside and smear chocolate frosting on top. I really tried to have us eat as healthy as possible on our trip, but you got to make some exceptions ;)
Because what is camping with out smores? I did use organically made, minimally processed graham crackers at least though! lol And yes, they taste exactly like the regular, chemical/preservative laden kind ;)
Little Miss LOVED being outside all the time-and it showed! It was great having a bath right in the trailer.
I am proud to say that as a camping girl growing up and then as a scout leader for my daughter for 8 years, I cooked every meal over the fire! (go me, go me) Even though I had a perfectly good kitchen in the trailer. Above is a pic of our fave meal of biscuits and gravy over the fire.
Here was our meal list
Breakfasts:
Eggs, Bacon and Toast( everyone was astounded that toast can be made over the fire LOL)
Pancakes and sausage
Biscuits and Gravy
Cinnamon Rolls
( oh I did use the oven for this on our last morning because we didn't have time to make a fire)
Lunches:
1st day arrival was just quick sandwiches as Hubby got the trailer set up
Walking Tacos
Hot dogs
We allowed everyone to get something from the concession stand the one day
Dinners:
Pizza Roll ( from scratch not the frozen kind)
Foil Packet Dinners
Pork Burgers
Desserts:
Banana Boats
Eclairs
Smores
Apple Cobbler
And we had 1 more dinner that I cannot recall for the life of me!
With meals and for snacks( though we were never hungry for snacks!), we had fruits and veggies and some chips like pirates booty and Stacey's Pita Chips( I LOVE the parmesan garlic ones!)
The campground also had mini golf that we did and we picked the hottest day of our entire stay to do it. But I still beat the Hubby! I also conquered this course after last being there when I was 6 years old. I fell into one of the water hazards and have been traumatized every since. I am glad to report they have filled those in with rocks now so no other child has to go through that ;)
The 1st part of the week was hot and the last 1/2 we were in pants and sweatshirts. That's weather in the midwest for you though.
We did have some learning experiences. Our sewer hose didn't fit but we were blessed with a couple next to us who were just leaving and gave us a brand new hose.
Then we got the water hooked up and it started pouring out from somewhere under the bathroom. This was very disappointing as this was all suppose to be inspected and in good shape when we bought the trailer. It ended up being a cracked cap and we were able to replace it.
We couldn't get our hot water heater to work. We could hear it trying to ignite the pilot but it never would. Our other neighbor said to try using sand paper on the connectors and that worked.
Our living room slide would not go out when we 1st got there which was very problematic because when the slide is in we can't get into our pantry. After calling a couple people and looking things up on the internet Hubby finally got it working though.
I have a list of some things I would like to get for organization and storage after staying in the camper for week. You can't really get a good feel for what is needed until you are i there living for a bit.
We really had a great time and didn't want to leave. We hope to camp again for an extended weekend later this month at another campground( we want to try a bunch out). We have even talked about staying for a couple weeks at a campground and just having hubby commute to work. We may still do this actually...
We are still trying to sell our 1/2 ton truck to get a 1 ton 15 passenger van to haul the trailer on our own. For now, Hubby's uncle let us borrow his pick up. We are going to be getting a sway bar and stabilizer bar. We already had this all researched out( lots of mathematical configurations to figure out what is needed-YAWN) but hadn't been in any rush to purchase them because we didn't have anything to tow the trailer with anyhow.
Some newbies enter into the RV world without researching anything about GVWR's, dry weights, cargo loads,curb weight, tongue/hitch weight, etc etc etc and that can mean major trouble. I mean, life threatening trouble. I recommend rv.net forums to talk to people who have been there, done that. They really helped me in figuring out things, especially with so much math involved, acronyms to decipher and getting it all straight and knowing weight balance and how to figure it all up. I just gave them all our #'s before we bought our RV( no sense in buying a trailer we can't tow safely) and the forum community helped to give me the formula's to figure out everything else and pointed me in the right direction for vehicles( this is really tricky because we have so many people in our car that we have to figure into #'s), tongues and weight distribution systems(WDS) that can handle the right percentage of weight to balance the load up front which should be 10-15% ( extremely important with a big trailer like ours and people often miss this crucial fact), etc
Perhaps with a small trailer all this isn't as big of a deal or if you are just staying local. But with a large trailer and the fact that we will eventually be traveling cross country, it is a matter of utmost importance to do the research and know exactly what you need to tow safely- for both you and the other people on the road.
I will do a future post about all that and what exactly we are getting and what factors into deciding what is needed.
But I have already bored you enough with the technical side of towing an RV!
I leave you with a couple videos of our camping trip
( and yes, i realize I need to still post pics of our trailer inside and out!)
Many Blessings,
The Mama
