August 08, 2020

Adventures on the Road: Our Airstream Maiden Voyage Experience

46 minutes

On episode 27, Julie & Art disclose their RV decision and being the story of their Airstream maiden voyage.

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This episode is a continuation of our California RV Show episode (Episode 9). Highlights include the Airstream purchase, first-time RV travel apprehensions, and learning moments. We also review our very first RV park experience at Oasis Las Vegas RV Resort.

Introducing Ty Arian (The Silver House)

Our Airstream is a 2014 27-foot International Signature model. We purchased from A to Z Motors in Winters, California with a superb buying experience provided by Vince Cardinale. And given a strong Welsh family roots connection on Julie’s side, we named our silver beauty with an affectionate Welsh moniker.

First-time RV Travel Apprehensions

Being new to RV travel, there were a lot of things we didn’t know. And we knew there were additional things we didn’t know that we didn’t know. This was a recipe for a bit of a stressful first-time experience

Among our first-time RV travel apprehensions:

Hitching process – will the trailer fall off the ball?

Hookup process – will we know how to hook everything up to the trailer?

Sewer hookup – you can imagine, this could be quite the messy process. Would we succeed in keeping ourselves clean of muck?

Long-distance towing – could we handle this and what would our limits be in time and distance per day?

Backing up – as this process is backwards from normal with a trailer, will we be able to get the rig backed up properly?

Tire quality – we’ve seen the horror stories of “China bombs”. Will our tires hold up on the road?

Getting Ready For The Maiden Voyage

We did a number of things to prepare for our first trip:

Camping with friends in their RV before ever purchasing our own rig

Booking an overnighter at a permanently setup Airstream to feel out being in a travel trailer without a slide. We did this at Flying Flags RV Resort in Buellton California (SP and Links)

Research, research, research

RV Show visits

Checklist development

Initial Outfitting of the Airstream: Bedding, towels, food storage, cleaning supplies, tool kit, connectors (surge protector, AC cords, water and sewer hoses, etc.)

RV Apps – we currently are using several including Allstays, Campendium, RV Life, RV Parky

Backup camera installation in the Airstream – an absolute confidence booster for us while towing the Airstream

Selecting a hitch. We landed on the Blue Ox and are very pleased with its performance.

YouTube videos on nearly every topic that these newbies didn’t understand

Tow vehicle. We actually bought our Ford F250 Diesel a few years before our travel trailer. But knowing the truck would one day tow something (most probably an Airstream), we landed on this model and of course, selected silver (just in case).

Newbie RV Learning Moments

We’ve towed for about 2,000 miles as part of our newbie experience with trips to Utah and Pismo Beach to date.

The first thing we learned was that this was a real good decision. Travelling in the Airstream feels like there is a piece of home with us during our travels.

We save money on food as we are preparing most meals in our trailer.

Additional learning moments:

Driving limits: We are comfortable at 4 to 5 hours maximum per day, which is about 240 to 300 miles. Towing a trailer is significantly more mentally taxing for us so we’ll take it slower and at shorter distances than our typical car road trips.

YouTube videos: We continue watching the experiences of others to keep learning – there’s a lot to know.

Make your own videos: When we purchased our Airstream at A to Z Motors, we filmed Vince Cardinale as he explained all of the features inside and outside our rig. Being able to re-watch these clips before our first trip (several months after our purchase), was immensely helpful in refreshing our memory of how to use our rig.

Route research. The app RV Life has proven useful to find roads that best for our specific rig. Waze and Google Maps might steer you on a road that isn’t optimal for your RV rig.

Go slow. We’re travelling on average 55 to 60 miles per hour. Slow, steady and safe.

Planning ahead for fuel stations. We research maps, via our RV apps, to find out where Truck stops are located on our routes to make sure we can fuel up at places where we can easily maneuver our rig

Fuel up when unhitched. When we arrive at a location, we’ll fill up the truck before our next hitching cycle. This helps us avoid problematic fuel stops.

Checklists still need to be refined. We take these on each trip and are still finding opportunities to update these. This process will probably take us a few more trips to get our lists fine-tuned for our situation. Still, the checklists are helping us not forget important parts of the RV process.

Fun Facts

We have a few, but you have to listen to the episode for the details.

Oasis Las Vegas RV Campground Review

We discuss our experience at this resort. Listen for the pros and cons. You can also read our blog post where we review the Oasis Las Vegas RV Resort.

Click here for our Oasis Las Vegas RV Resort blog post.

Coming Soon on The Places Where We Go Podcast

We’ll continue the details of our maiden voyage with several stops in Utah. Stay tuned, keep listening and give us a like on your favorite podcast engine.

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