Well, we did it! We took Xena, our new 29-foot Forest River X-Lite 24RLXL travel trailer, almost 2,700 miles and camped nine nights in six different places on our great Montana adventure. Shawn drove more than 400 additional miles in our 2015 Ram 1500 to see the sights. The grand total of miles Shawn drove (he did all the driving; more on that later) was 3,145.
In this post, I’m going to break down what we’ve learned so far as new RV owners. If you want to know the specifics on buying your first RV, check out this post.
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About two months before going on our long, LONG road trip, we camped for two nights at Wilson State Park in north-central Kansas, less than two hours from our base at Plum Prairie Ranch.
The importance of a shake-down trip
My first recommendation for folks new to RV ownership is to go on a short trip close to home before taking your rig on a long, complicated journey.
We learned several things on our weekend outing.
Know the capacities of your tanks. When I first started researching travel trailers online, I noticed the model we purchased had a rather small gray tank. The 24RLXL has a 30-gallon gray tank, a 40-gallon black tank and a 40-gallon fresh water tank. If I were to allocate the size of the tanks, I would make the gray tank 45 gallons, the black tank 25 gallons and keep the fresh water at 40 gallons. Seriously, why didn’t they just switch the sizes of the gray and black tanks? We’ve never come close to filling the black tank, but we almost overflowed the gray tank over the weekend and ended up dumping dishwater outside the camper. Prior to our big trip, we purchased a portable 21-gallon holding tank for waste water, but we didn’t use it. Why? I guess because we weren’t in one site for more than three nights, and we had sewer hookups for both of our multi-night locations.
Check your tanks before you travel. We flushed the winterization fluid out of our plumbing lines before we left on our weekend trip, but we forgot to drain the gray tank. We probably filled up a third of our gray tank’s capacity before we left. If we’d checked, we would have dumped that tank before we set up camp. It’s also a good idea to check your propane tanks and get them topped off. Our girls went through more than one 20-gallon bottle of propane to keep warm at Christmas. I go to Tractor Supply Company to get my propane tanks checked and filled. I prefer that to exchanging them for tanks of dubious age and condition.
Make a list of items to add to your camper before a long trip. After our shake-down trip, I knew I needed a handful of items to make our trailer function even better. Here are my top picks.
- Multiple mattress toppers. I placed a second mattress topper at the top of my list because RV mattresses are notoriously bad. I knew I needed to add a topper, but one wasn’t enough for the rock-hard mattress. Two toppers worked well but kept the underlying firmness hubby Shawn liked.
- Oxygenics Shower Head. I also swapped out the pitiful OEM shower head for the ever-popular Oxygenics water-saving shower head adored by RV owners everywhere. If you have an RV with a shower, you need this in your life.
- Get organized. Find totes, bins and baskets that fit your spaces. We use a couple of super-sturdy black and yellow totes in the pass-through to hold things like the water filter and water pressure regulator, the 30 amp to 20 amp adapter, the surge protector, the gas hoses for the griddle, and more. My camper came with large, clear, food grade plastic totes that go under the dinette and sofa. I added plastic bins of various sizes from the Dollar Tree in the fridge, the bathroom and the overhead cabinets above the sofa. In them, I only put lightweight pantry items like chips, cookies, bread and cereal because the contents shift during travel. I also bought tension rods to keep items from sliding and spilling in the fridge and in the cabinet that stores toiletries. Fun story from our shake-down trip: a can of root beer secured in the back of the fridge exploded. Shawn got to clean up most of the mess while I took the dog on a potty jog. We learned not to secure soda against the back wall because it starts to freeze and spew.
- Keeping it clean.
Excuse the tractor in the background, but this is Xena’s home at PPR when we’re not camping. My talented sewing mom helped me adapt a fitted sheet as a sofa cover and create comfy pillows.
When we leave our dog in the camper for an hour or two, she gets on the sofa to look out the big window. My mom, who is quite the seamstress and quilter, helped me turn a fitted twin size jersey knit sheet into a cover for the jackknife sofa. The cover helps with wear and tear, and it can be tossed in the washing machine. Mom also helped me sew a few adorable pillows for the sofa (bonus for pretty/comfy things!). I also bought a hand broom and dustpan to keep in the little end table cabinet by the door. And I bought pods to flush into the black tank to keep bad odors away and to help break down, um, solids and the TP specifically designed for RV use.
Spend time planning
Plan your route and reserve spots at the places you really want to visit. I spent many, MANY hours pouring over maps, campground reviews and TripAdvisor to plan our trip. We reserved campsites at the three different Montana locations we visited, but for our last few nights I called ahead for spots. Our first night on the road, I’d made tentative plans to sleep at the Southeast Wyoming Welcome Center, but we still had several hours of daylight when we crossed the border and opted to try our luck at a city campground in Wheatland, WY. We had an electric hookup and water available nearby for FREE. They requested donations, and we happily gave one. If you don’t have a reservation ahead of time, make sure you have a B and C plan for a safe spot for the night.
I used Campendium, the Park Advisor app and the RV Life App (which includes RV Trip Wizard) The RV Life app will exclude roads that won’t accommodate your rig, very helpful in remote, mountainous areas. It costs $50 a year, and I’ll try to keep you posted on how useful it is. RV Trip Wizard will help you plan gas stops, camping spots and budgeting. Here’s what the fun-to-follow Long, Long Honeymoon Youtubers said about RV Trip Wizard.
For the less traveled (i.e. no data service) areas, I grabbed the National Geographic Road Atlas Adventure Edition (USA & Canada). Also, I’m a huge fan of atlases and paper maps. Go ahead, call me an old geezer, but I like holding a map and finding the next town up the road or looking at the name of the mountain range ahead. Long, Long Honeymoon, or LoLoHo for short, pointed me to this great atlas designed for outdoor enthusiasts.
What type of camper are you?
In your planning, think about where you want to stay. Do you prefer lots of amenities or a more natural setting? It’s okay to try both. That’s what we did.
We stayed at RV parks with full hookups, state and city parks with electricity only, a state park with electric and water and a national forest campground with no hookups at all. We liked the public campgrounds better than the private ones, for the most part. Despite our small gray tank, we prefer the more open, natural setting of many of the public campgrounds.
Our favorite campsite had no hookups, but it overlooked Devil’s Tower. The sites at Belle Fourche River Campground at Devil’s Tower National Monument ring open space in the middle, so you don’t feel crammed together. Water and flush toilets are available and the area is gorgeous. Devil’s Tower National Monument isn’t on the way to anywhere. You have to go off the beaten path to find it, but it’s well worth the effort. Even if you’re not a fan of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” you’ll enjoy the natural beauty of the area.
The only problem we had there was our battery died just before sunrise, which meant our 12-volt fridge wasn’t operating. But we left a few hours later, and everything stayed cold. For the future, we’d like to get a second battery to double our amp hours. Maybe someday, we will get a generator or solar panels, if we continue to enjoy boondocking (camping without hookups).
Our daughter camped with us at Yellowstone’s Edge RV Park. Fun times!
The best private campground we visited was Yellowstone’s Edge Rv Park, also the most expensive at $63 a night with our Good Sam discount. But the park is right on he Yellowstone River, just 35 miles from the Gardiner, MT, entrance to Yellowstone National Park. Most of the sites, while close together, include a view of the river and mountains. The facilities are sparkling clean and well-maintained. I used the laundry room, and we refilled one of our propane tanks at a reasonable price there, too. The staff is super helpful. If you want a place with full hookups near YNP, it’s a great option.
Expect Problems
Any big trip likely will include some challenges. Our epic Montana trip had a few concerns.
Will we get blown away?
Pulling the trailer wasn’t a problem for our Ram 1500 4X4 except when it was windy. It was windy a lot, especially on our big travel days.
I drove our pickup pulling the trailer for about half an hour on our late March shake-down trip just to get used to the experience. But I didn’t drive at all on our epic 3,000-mile road trip because of windy and/or rainy conditions. My Fix-It Farmer hubby grew up pulling trailers. He even won a trophy as a teen in 4H for backing a tractor pulling an implement through an obstacle course at the State Fair of Kansas. Backing a trailer around obstacles takes some skill, for sure!
Driving west on I-70 to start our trip, we had a stiff south wind around 20-25 mph with gusts to 35 mph. Driving east on I-90 in central Montana and south on U.S. Highway 89 from Livingston, we encountered 30-35 mph winds with gusts up to 45 mph. Going through the mountains, you often get dangerous crosswinds whipping through. We found more wind (no big surprise here) on our last day on the plains of Nebraska and northern Kansas. When you’re towing a sizable trailer, you’re going to feel those winds rocking your tow vehicle. Hubby Shawn knew to keep both hands on the wheel and slow down 10 to 15 mph below the speed limit, depending on the wind. He said that with winds any stronger than that day with gusts into the 40s, we should be prepared to park the rig and wait for the wind to die down. Why? Travel trailers can flip over in big winds.
We have to stop for gas AGAIN?
Gas mileage proved to be worse than I expected. The wind and mountain ranges impacted us, as did going 75 mph or more. On one stretch climbing in elevation on I-25 in Wyoming, we got around 6 miles to the gallon. The truck didn’t struggle to pull, but it did guzzle gas. Driving in unpopulated Wyoming and vast, open Montana, we had to be strategic in stopping for gas. There were stretches of 50+ miles with no services. After the first few days of driving, Shawn decided to slow down a bit to save on gas. There really was a difference between going 70 mph vs. 80 mph on the Montana Interstates. According to his truck’s computer, we got 7.6 mpg for the trip. Contrast that with 8 to 9 mpg for the trailer’s inaugural trip from Texas to Kansas.
When your level best isn’t good enough…
Campsites on a hillside meant trouble for our RV steps.
We broke our fancy steps on our second morning while packing up to head out. The sites at a little RV park in southeastern Montana were on a hill. We used all the boards we had (even firewood) to get the trailer’s downhill wheels and stabilizer jacks level with the uphill set, and there was a big gap between the door and the ground. I thought I had the steps set up okay, but I’d extended the feet beyond the last notch for locking them in place. Somebody not named Sandra took a little tumble down the steps. Fortunately, only the screws holding the steps onto the trailer broke and not any bones. The aforementioned tumbler tossed the steps into the back of the pickup. At all our other stops, he propped them into place with the feet sitting on a block of wood for added stability. My Fix-It Farmer is confident he can reattach them to the trailer.
That confirmed our efforts to be prepared for something to break. Just before our trip, Shawn bought a lockable tool box for his truck bed (here’s a similar model on Amazon). He found it handy to have a lot of tools available when setting up camp and to be prepared for potential problems.
All in all, it was a great trip. The challenges played a part in the overall fabric of our adventures. You can’t have all the joys of travel without dealing with some adversity. But it’s worth the effort. Montana’s beauty is awe-inspiring, and Wyoming, South Dakota and the rolling plains of Nebraska and northern Kansas also have their charms.
I hope you’ll get out there and enjoy some outdoor adventures of your own!
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“Let every created thing give praise to the LORD, for He issued his command, and they came into being.” – Psalm 148:5
