Life on the road

In a brief diversion from the usual travel-focused blog posts, we thought we’d give you all a quick insight into life in the RV.

As mentioned, we’ve named our RV ‘Ronda’. No idea why, but now when the hills are steep or we need a little extra grunt from her to overtake a tractor somewhere in the backcountry, we both sweet talk her into giving us a few extra horses with encouraging words like ‘come on Ronda, you can do it”, or“that’s a good girl” along with a gentle pat on the dash when she’s done well.

Yes, life in an RV does send you a little loopy and it certainly isn’t for everyone. Ronda is 22 foot long and apparently can sleep six people. We’d say four adults comfortably but they’d probably be bored of the lack of space after a week. There certainly wouldn’t be any secrets anyway! Some of the RVs out here are more like moving palaces. One parked across from us this morning was so big we joked you’d need a phone to call someone the other end.

In truth Ronda isn’t much smaller than your average one bedroom London flat. At the back we’ve got a double bed, next to the loo, which has a pleasant sit down throne and a one person shower. We try to avoid going to the loo when the other person is still in bed as the walls are pretty thin – good for fuel consumption as they are light; not so good for noise suppression!

In the middle of the RV on each side we have a sink and gas stove, and fridge and freezer respectively. Then comes the table – which would seat four at a push – before you get to the front driver and passenger seats. It’s walk through which means you can get access to the living part of the vehicle without leaving the cab. It’s pretty handy for a quick loo stop or tea break on route, especially if it is foul weather outside, or for running the engine early in the cold mornings to blow through the hot air. Sometimes it’s a dash to the front, engine on, dash back to bed, a wait for the engine to warm up, then a dash back to the front and blowers on full.

All our gear is stored in cupboards around the RV although as were not using the over cab double bed, that’s handy for storage. We’ve learnt the hard way not to store anything heavy or fluid based high up. The other day in Cody, when pulling out of a bumpy turn out, the top cupboard behind Hoff flew open and our four, one gallon water bottles fell out, leaking everywhere. Cue Hoff conducting an in the move damage mitigation action with every towel and drying up cloth she could find. Ironically we’d just finished visiting a dam so maybe she’d learnt a thing or two!

We’ve got into a pretty good RV daily routine. Waking up early, as mentioned earlier, the RV is often pretty cold, especially when we’ve been further north. This means it can be hard to leave the warmth of the duvet, but Hoff is usually the one to give in and get up first, mainly because she needs a wee! On goes the kettle and we rustle up a couple of teas (with teabags from the UK as the Americans don’t do good tea) before breakfast – bagels, porridge, bran flakes, bacon and eggs, essentially anything you can have at home. The fridge has been a bit temperamental recently so we might be eating more bagels the further south we go!

We try to only do 3 hours driving (or 150 or so miles) a day otherwise you end up just driving and not seeing anything. Hoff has swallowed her fear and driven a couple of times as well, which isn’t easy. Ronda is almost as tall as she is long, and that means in cross winds she can be a bit of a brute to handle. Driving the mountains passes in what is essentially a vehicular version of a kite is also interesting.

Dinner is much the same as breakfast – pretty much anything is possible with the hob and oven – but one pot meals are easiest on the washing up. We’ve realised how much water we use when we are back in the UK – with a fresh water tank of 173 litres for all cooking, cleaning and flushing, you need to be sparing with your use of it. This means showers Navy style – get wet, turn off and soap up, then rinse off. In and out in just a few minutes.

One of the most unpleasant but at the same time amusing jobs is emptying the tanks. Once all the gauges are full, it’s time to empty the black (septic) and grey (waste water). This usually involves me doing the dirty work and Hoff strategically heading off to find somewhere to refill our drinking water. It’s a pretty mucky job – think gloves and nose pegs – but as long as you take it slowly things tend to go ok. Another RV’r told us a story the other day about when she watched the RV in front of her go to ‘dump’. The man doing the ‘dumping’ was evidently new to it all and hadn’t quite got the hang of it. On hands and knees he attached their waste pipe, and thinking all was good to go, released the sluices. Unfortunately said pipe was not attached properly and he received a full frontal hose down of human waste – I doubt the fact that it was his own made it much better!

At the end of our last post I mentioned that we had a slightly disturbed nights sleep a few days ago. In the middle of the night Hoff woke me up saying “Oh my god Alex there is someone in our RV”. I couldn’t hear anything but dutifully got up and looked around ready to confront the intruder. Nothing found, I went back to bed. Hoff didn’t sleep a wink for the rest of the night, convinced that there was someone hiding somewhere. Quite where they’d have hidden I don’t know but anyway, I digress.

The next day, when we came to have dinner, we opened up our dry food locker and noticed a number of what can only be described as black rice grains dotted all over our food. On closer inspection we saw that our actual rice bag had been nibbled through and that the black rice looked more like mouse droppings. Seconds later, Hoff screamed and jumped onto the sofas. She’d seen said mouse running along the top of our cooker. So Ronda now has three inhabitants – two human and one mouse – and we’ve discovered that the RV burglar was in fact the mouse rustling away, chomping its way through our provisions. We’ve since had a thorough decontamination and rejig of all foodstuffs and touch wood, we think the mouse has trotted off to another RV in search of easier pickings. Not quite the animal sightings we’d had in mind but we added it to the tally anyway.

Next time – Hoff will pick up on our trip from Vernal down towards Moab and then on into Ouray, the ‘Switzerland of America’ (whatever that means)!