We had our first driveway surfing experience this weekend after bringing our Jayco 32 BHDS home from the dealership. Although we did not realize “driveway surfing” was what we were doing, we soon realized the value of this process being first time RV owners. After three days in the driveway, we have a list of tips to ensure you have a successful driveway surfing experience so that your next trip to a campground is as successful.
Tip #1 – Take Your Time
As with any RV adventure, it takes a lot of patience to make sure you have a great experience. We read from many RV groups that taking your time in the entire process is important, so we made this a point, even going as far as to remind ourselves of this over and over. From the drive home to tearing down on our last day, we moved slow and double-checked everything. I know if we did not do this we would have missed a lot.
Tip #2 – Keep Notes on Everything
First-time RVers should keep lists on everything, whether a notebook, journal or on your phone, lists help keep track of RV setup checklists, RV teardown checklists, what you bring in and out of your house, and even steps of how you fix issues. Being that we were home, I had my electrical running off of my house electric, and I made 7 different trips to the basement to reset breakers because I kept messing up the combination of using my air conditioner, the microwave, refrigerators and our water heater. I know what you experienced RV readers are thinking – did you not pay enough attention during the walkthrough at the dealership? No, I did not.
Tip #3 – Pretend You Are At the Campsite
Although your first-time will be much harder to do this because of the number of things you do not realize you need, try to not use your house for anything that is not essential. By pretending you are at your campsite, you can easily realize what items you “forgot” to pack up. We made a lot of trips into the house, but these items we grabbing went on our “things to pack” list.
Tip #4 – The Trip is Over when it’s Over
This is a hard one, especially with three small children, and we were battling to end the 3 day weekend. We had so much fun that the girls would probably stay in the RV all year if it were up to them (secretly, we wanted to as well), but it is important to end the driveway camping trip when you planned on it. Even if you tear down and move it over in the driveway to store until your next trip, or you move it to your storage location, it will help the kids understand that when we camp at an actual campsite that we are heading home at some point. This helped us with our teardown process and the timing of that. It honestly took us about 3 hours to tear down and clean up, a process we think could use some efficiency, but that gives us a nice idea when we have a pull out time at a campsite to know how much time we will need.
Tip #5 – Keep Track of Everything
Similar to keeping lists, we recommend keeping track of how much food you use, water, money, alcohol, tanks space, etc. The last thing we want to do on a camping trip is have to run to the store because we ran out of something or have to move the camper to drain a tank because we were not paying attention. This will sometimes be unavoidable, and we plan on making these mistakes, but a journal or list noting all of this will ensure we have an idea of what happens during a trip so that we can focus on the thing that is important – having fun!
What are some tips that we missed? Leave your comments below!
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