Shake down trip
So we took our shake down trip with our new RV this weekend. We left Friday late afternoon and arrived at the camp site about 6pm. The trip out was nice, Traffic was heavy as typical for a California afternoon. We had a pull through spot which made me happy because I hadn’t practiced much backing the Raptor up and attached to the Ram 3500 with a long bed it’s a long unit from bumper to bumper. Set up was easy, got disconnected, hit the auto leveling button and a few minutes later all was good. Plugged in power and water and we were set. The pass through storage is nice and I liked not having to go in and out of the camper to pull out stuff, as was the case with our last unit. An hour or so into it the AC’s had cooled the inside down, although it was still really warm in the garage. We relaxed, grilled dinner outside and had some friends over to eat. By time dinner was done it was very cool in the unit.
We went to be a couple of hours later. We found the bedroom to be comfortable, nice and cool with the AC running and the bed was comfortable. We woke up Saturday mad breakfast and continued with the day, what we did find is in the afternoon the garage was HOT, damn hot! So I opened the door between the living quarters and the garage to see if it would cool. A few hours later I returned to find the garage comfortable enough to enjoy.
Sunday, was nice we spend the day relaxing and left in the early evening. Break down of the camp didn’t take long, made a lap around the camper to ensure everything was right and we headed out. Pulling out of the camp was a bit of a challenge was the unit swings wide and there was a tree close to its turning radius I was concerned about. We made it out though, and the trip home was uneventful. We got home emptied the fridge and our clothes and headed to the storage lot.
Trying to park was a fiasco! I’m 100% positive because of my inexperience backing a 5er and partially because of the setup of the lot. I couldn’t pull much past my spot because the lot is bordered by a solid concrete wall. The area between the rows is wide, but it could be wider so backing was tough. I tried a few times and gave up not wanting to crash my unit (or anyone else’s) so I went in the isle past mine and turned into my slot. It was difficult because the slot was only a bit (4 inches maybe) wider than my toy hauler and even though I swung the corner wide the toy hauler still wasn’t straight in my lost I pulled forward, backed up a bit and called it a night!
All and all it was a great trip. Still learning the functions of things like the TV and other remote controllers but that will take time. The 5er was comfortable; I’ll certainly be leaving the back door up to help the garage cool when we have company staying with us. Just thought I’d share
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