Bug Smacker

99 Things NOT to do when RVing

Tim R. Enright

A bit of satire for all those RVers out there who see the humor in what we love.

 

Don’t…

1. Drive down the road with more than 2 slides out.

2. Use your sewer hose to fertilize your neighbor’s flowers.

3. Backup your RV into the … FILL IN THE BLANK.

4. Hang raw meat on the clothesline to scare away the bears.

5. Tie the dog to the rear bumper while you pack to go home and forget.

6. Put your awning out over the fire pit so the rain won’t put it out.

7. Use the air conditioner, microwave, coffee pot, hairdryer and toaster all at the same time and wonder why the TV went out.

8. Drive your rig down a one-way road if you don’t know what is at the other end.

9. Plan a camping trip for your church group only the find out the place you booked is clothing optional.

10. Fill your air mattress with LP gas if you smoke in bed.

11. Believe the salesman when he says that you can easily tow that new Toy Hauler with your Smart Car.

12. Put the RV up on blocks and yell out to the kids “we’re home now!”

13. Run out of gas only to realize that you put the gas into your water tank instead.

14. Use honey as suntan lotion in August.

15. Drive your Rig through the fast food drive-thru window without looking at the menu first.

16. Hang Grandma’s lawn chair (with her in it) on the bike rack because the seats inside are full.

17. Park your RV directly on your neighbor’s water hose.

18. Forget to put the support bars under the slide out of your Pop-Up before you leap into bed.

19. Take binoculars to the beach and try to convince your wife you are just going to look for birds.

20. Fix your flat tire with Duct Tape.

21. Put whiskey in your fresh water tank to keep it from freezing (OK, this one really doesn’t sound so bad.)

22. Hook the trailer up to the truck while your wife is still inside on the toilet.

23. Go up top and check the TV antenna during a thunderstorm because you can’t get the weather channel.

24. Pour water down the outside of the kid’s tent when they are inside while moaning “AHHHH”.

25. Carry your PETA sign through a deer hunting camp.

26. Feed the Seagulls and wonder where all the White Rain is coming from.

27. Put Arm Floaties on Grandpa, push him into the lake and expect him home in time for dinner.

28. Leave the parking brake in your toad on as you travel.

29. Explain to the kids how you through the cat’s toy into the fire and you’re waiting for it to return.

30. Walk past the neighbor’s Pit Bull with a pocket full of Hotdogs.

31. Cook marshmallows over a fire taller than yourself.

32. Steal the neighbor’s Cable connection on game day.

33. Clean your fish with a chainsaw.

34. Jam a stick into the black tank drain to unclog it.

35. Pet the neighbor’s dog if he has foam coming from his mouth.

36. Whisper sweet nothings into your wife’s ear while sitting in a group around the campfire, if you forgot to put on your hearing aid.

37. Try serving a veggie burger to a hunter.

38. Sunbathe on a Tuesday in the rain.

39. Cook microwave popcorn on a campfire.

40. Ride your bike if someone stole the seat and the tire is flat.

41. Get out, drop to your knees and kiss the ground after the first time your wife drives the RV.

42. Use a Roman candle to start a campfire.

43. Go jogging in high heels before 6AM.

44. Eat all your worms before you go fishing.

45. Sit with your back to the campfire after eating baked beans.

46. Take the Pop-Up down with your wife still in it.

47. Fill your fresh water tank using the hose marked “not to be used for drinking” at the dump station.

48. Light your cigarette with a bon-fire.

49. Practice casting your new fishing pole into a crowd.

50. Go swimming with bait in the pockets of your shorts.

51. Use a hack saw to disconnect the power cord because it is stuck.

52. Stretch a rubber glove over the head of your neighbor’s little barking dog.

53. Dive into a frozen lake within 30 minutes after eating.

54. Yell out profanities because you dropped a log on your foot at church camp.

55. Sing campfire songs around the fire in the middle of the night, all by yourself.

56. Drive a 13 foot trailer under a 12 foot bridge.

57. Roast marshmallows over the fire on the tip of your finger.

58. Go for a hike in the woods wearing a brown jumpsuit with a white hanky sticking out of the back pocket during Deer Season. (Actually, I wouldn’t find this fashionable
any time of the year.)

59. Eat a Popsicle after it falls on the ground and more than 2 ants get on it.

60. Dump your tanks while driving down the road.

61. Water ski behind a red row boat.

62. Use gasoline to start the electric fireplace in your RV.

63. Swim in shark infested water if you are blonde.

64. Go to the beach wearing only the top half of your wife’s swim suit.

65. Kiss that sweet little puppy if you can’t tell which end you are holding up.

66. Pull the handle on your tanks before you hook up the hose.

67. Expect the life guard to save you if his seeing-eye dog is a sleep.

68. Go hiking with the wrong map.

69. Use your outside shower in the nude.

70. Put peanut butter on a jellyfish.

71. Start the campfire with your only remaining roll of toilet paper.

72. Take ownership of your air mattress by carving your name in it.

73. Play the cornhole game with cream-style corn.

74. Brush your hair with a grill cleaning brush.

75. Use a meat thermometer if you think you have a fever.

76. Yell “Fire” in the middle of bingo.

77. Run and Jump head first into the kiddie pool.

78. Clean your fish in the hot tub.

79. Shoot hoops with a shotgun.

80. Pitch a tent that is two-thirds or more in a lake.

81. Forget to duck under the bed slide on your 5th wheel while chasing after the dog.

82. Put all the snacks in the kid’s tent so the bears don’t steal them.

83. Shove all your fishing hooks into your front pockets.

84. Crow like a rooster at Dawn, or Sue, or Peggy, or Mary, or Jill…

85. Whittle a snake out of Grandma’s cane.

86. Try to squeeze your big butt into a small folding chair.

87. Throw flaming marshmallows at the neighbor’s kids.

88. Rent a RV for vacation if you don’t know how to drive.

89. Pour sugar all over the table to create a sand trap for the ants.

90. Run barefoot through the campfire so you don’t mess up your new sandals.

91. Practice your yodeling at 3AM.

92. Drive into town without unhooking either the electric cord or the hitch.

93. Tell the nice man at the boarder that your husband needs to carry a lot of guns because he likes to kill stuff every once in a while.

94. When your wife and kids go back to the trailer to eat lunch at the rest stop, unhook and take off. (However tempting this may be, it never works out well.)

95. Ask the salesman if you will need reindeer to pull your new Toy Hauler.

96. Shove the Kid’s hamster into the tank drain so they can run around and clean the tank out.

97. Put the steps away without letting anyone inside know.

98. Try to write a book about 99 things NOT to do while RVing, when you can only think of 98 things.

 

Article Courtesy of : www.BugSmacker.com : Copyright © 2013

Winter Camping

Tim R. Enright

RV manufacturers are doing a fine job of building units that are more capable of handling the colder temperatures that follow the busy summer camping season. Things like a fully-enclosed underbelly, thermal-pane windows, additional insulation, heated holding tanks, high-efficiency furnaces and even a fireplace are very common in newer RVs. With these improvements you can extend your camping season and broaden your northern destinations.

Even with all of these improvements you still want to exhibit some caution in these colder temperatures. When temperatures start dipping below freezing for most of the night any water that is exposed to these conditions can present a freezing hazard. When water freezes it expands with such force that it can cause damage to pipes, hoses and tanks.

Specific areas of concern can be water supply hoses, drain hoses, outside shower faucets and any drain pipes that are not protected by an enclosed underbelly.  Batteries that are exposed to the outdoors can also be a concern. These will become more of a problem if they are not kept fully charged.

Snow can present you with additional problems. Besides the obvious, snow can not only deter your travel but it can do damage to your RV as well. Snow can add an enormous amount of weight to the roof of your unit. It can also hinder with the operation of RV slideouts.

These are just things to be aware of but don’t let them prevent you from going camping when it gets cold outside. Winter can be a great time to RV.  You will find it to be very peaceful. There are no crowds and better yet NO BUGS.  There are also a lot of fun and exciting activities to do this time of year.

You will find that there won’t be a large selection of campgrounds open in the winter. This is not to say that there are not any. Places to look will be larger private campgrounds, state parks, membership resorts, state and national forest land or any campground that caters to winter activities. Just make sure you call ahead first.

Article Courtesy of : www.BugSmacker.com : Copyright © 2012

What difference a week can make in Michigan. Last weekend the temperature outside was a high in the 50s, a low in the 30s and a windchill due to 40 mph wind-gusts. Like the weatherman said ” it is a blustery day”. This weekend the temperature outside shot up to over 80 degrees. That’s Michigan for you this time of year. You never know if you will need shorts or a coat.

We are currently at Valley Plaza RV Park and this place has literally gone to the dogs. We are now surrounded by them. The last several days were bad enough with the twin dogs from hell that live next to us. These pint sized pups continuously went off like a stuck air raid siren. The saddest part was that I think the owners were both deaf. These people never made any attempts to stop the intense blast that poured out of these two little demon creatures. It got so bad one day that Terri had to actually go over and tell both of these dogs to shut up. Apparently they were not used to hearing this command because it actually worked and they were quiet, at least for a while.

We thought that this was bad enough until Lassie moved in on the other side of us yesterday. All was good until some little kid started to mess with the dog. I don’t think Lassie enjoyed playing with the kid because it sounded like a coyote with its tail caught in a bear trap. This would then trigger the twins from hell to join in. In fact, it would get so bad that even the well behaved dogs in the park would scream back at them.

The RV resort at Disney World has a solution for the barking problem. They segregate the animals from those that would rather not listen to your dog bark the entire day while you are off at the Magic Kingdom. They offer non-pet areas to camp in. I have never seen this in any other parks but it would be a nice addition.

Don’t get me wrong, I love dogs. We had our beloved Monet for over 13 years and I actually cried the day she passed on. I don’t even blame the animals as much as I do the owners who have no respect for the people camping around them. People usually have more respect for others around them and try to keep their dogs in check. We were just here for a little rest and relaxation which was not going to happen. We have been camping with more dogs than this in the past but nowhere has there been more barking. To best describe our situation is to imagine it as an episode from the Jerry Springer Show, only the people screaming at each other were actually dogs.

Sleeping with Truckers

Tim R. Enright

After the sun sets following a long full day of driving on the open road, there may come a time when the only choice you have is to find a spot to pull over and sleep with a trucker. Nothing personal about truckers but they wouldn’t be my first choice to sleep with. They don’t stick around very long and tend to be quite noisy when they leave. But then again it is free to sleep with them and you don’t need to make any reservations.

By far the most difficult part of spending the night between two truckers is the noise. Not just the coming and going at all hours of the night but the noise they make just sitting there. Some places post signs telling them to shut off their engines but I have found very few of them that are willing to do so. The worst of the bunch are the refrigerator guys. Those guys keep their motors revving up and down, up and down, up and down. And they do it all night long.

These days you can’t just sleep anywhere you want to. There are rules and local laws to govern this type of activity. Some of the safest places are the ones that the truckers know of. They have been doing this for a long time and generally know how to do it right.

Rest Areas are the most common places that come to mind. These are by no means the only place where you could end up sleeping with them. Other places include: Service Plazas, Mall Parking Lots, Department Stores and Municipal Parking Lots.

Some rest areas have segregated overnight parking for Truckers and RVers. These places are actually not bad places to stop at. The RV parking spots may even come with electricity hookups. We have found some places that provide you with restrooms and showers as well.

Other rest areas offer nothing more than a place to put your rig in park. Some even go as far as to discourage overnight parking of any kind. I have seen these warnings ignored and have often wondered if I would get my rig towed while I was in the back of my fifth wheel sleeping. That would be a real eye opener.

When you’re on a long road trip sometimes you just don’t know how far you can travel in a day. That makes it somewhat difficult to schedule places to park your rig for the night. It only makes sense that you need to pull into a place to get some rest for a while. Weather it is at a Wal-Mart, Mall or a Rest Area sometimes you have no other choice than to sleep with a trucker.

Article Courtesy of : www.BugSmacker.com : Copyright © 2010

Following a long winter, we are finally back on the road. It is really nice to be camping again. The weather has been quite cold until now. Not very many resorts have the water turned on yet due to the cold nights.

We went to a baseball game on Saturday so we decided to stay at the Valley Plaza RV Resort to be nearby. The Great Lakes Loons were playing in Midland. It was a good game. But let me tell you how quickly the weather can change in Michigan. When we arrived at the ballgame it was near 85 degrees outside. By the time we left the game it was about 45 degrees out. In the words of my good friend Tom, “Absolutely Incredible”.

I would like to mention one thing about the Valley Plaza RV Resort. In fact I can say it in just one word, TRAIN! The park is located along side of the train track that leads into Dow Chemical. The site we were on was just several yards from the intersection of the tracks and the street. And you know what the train does when it reaches a crossroad? 

You got it…TOOT! TOOT! TOOT! It is enough to lift you right out of your shorts.